To the SuttaCentral team: a letter to Sujato and Brahmali regarding the problem in Pārājika 1

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Dear SuttaCentral Team,

I write this with the wellbeing of the Sangha in mind.

I want to express my deep and urgent concern regarding the translation and public hosting of the Pārājika 1 text, specifically the passage involving a ‘monk’ who assaulted a child with his thumb, resulting in the child’s death. I cannot quote it here due to its contents, but it involves a ‘monastic’ assaulting the child in the worst way possible with his thumb, resulting in the child’s death. The passage talks of the abuser talking about the offense entailing a suspension but not an expulsory offense. There is no mention or explanation for this and it just jumps to another problematic topic and leaves a big problem unaddressed within the Pali text. This passage, translated by Bhikkhu Brahmali and hosted on your platform, is immensely disturbing and without ethical framing or content warnings, poses serious risks to readers and communities.

As someone with professional experience in child protection, I must emphasize that this passage constitutes textual child abuse. Its graphic nature, combined with the legalistic parsing that classifies the act as a mere suspension offense, is not only morally indefensible, it is potentially dangerous. I have personally witnessed online discussions among monastics debating whether such acts are expellable or entailing a suspension, citing this very text. This is not just theoretical harm. There is a serious level of confusion being shown here.

I am deeply troubled that the passage is presented without content warnings, ethical commentary, or explicit condemnation. Also, the translation is hosted in full view on SuttaCentral, a site that many treat as a spiritual authority. Bhikkhu Sujato, as a central figure on the platform, has not publicly addressed the moral implications of this content on the part of the website that contains this passage. The community culture surrounding SuttaCentral appears to prioritize textual reverence over ethical clarity sometimes, and that’s why such translations can be dangerous.

This is not only a matter of academic transparency, it is also a matter of Right View, Right Speech, and Right Action. Preserving such passages without framing them as morally wrong is tantamount to enabling their misuse. Rapists and abusers often seek religious or legal justification. This text, as it currently stands, could be weaponized.

I urge you to remove the passage from public circulation, or at minimum restrict access with clear warnings. Also it is important to add explicit ethical commentary stating that the act described is morally reprehensible and not representative of the Buddha’s teaching. Most importantly, it is important to publicly acknowledge the harm caused by hosting this content without context. Please reevaluate the platform’s approach to canonical transparency, ensuring that it does not come at the cost of ethical responsibility.

The Dharma is meant to be a refuge, not a way to forget the truth. If SuttaCentral wishes to serve the true spirit of Buddhism, it must confront this issue with courage and compassion.

Please consider that there is something very big at stake here, and it involves innocents that society is meant to protect the most.

I mean no ill will, but there is a way to practice Buddhism and there is also not one. I hope you can meet this with your own transparency and understanding, because so many are depending on you, and the future of Pali Buddhism is at stake here and now.

I hope you can come to terms in how to deal with this.

With your wellbeing highly in mind,

A very concerned Buddhist.

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The text explicitly has the Buddha condemning the act as “āpatti:” “a wrongdoing” (in Ajahn Brahmali’s translation “an offense.”) So this is simply not true.

Also not true. This is in the “frame” of the permutation series on the Parajika Offenses: it is explicitly framed as a list of serious immoral actions.

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Many of the offenses in that text are either cited as suspension worthy or expulsion worthy. That particular passage has the perpetrator say it’s suspension worthy and not expulsory then it abruptly ends and moves to the next passage. That is the very issue.

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A few words to explain it in the text as extremely immoral or it’s removal would quickly help this issue be addressed and reframed for better understanding.

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And didn’t the monk kill someone, a child? Isn’t that a heavy offence?

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In the Vinaya, it is only an offense of killing if the killing is intentional. In this case the killing was unintentional. There are many examples of non-intentional killing, several of which that stretch the boundaries of what we might consider unintentional. There is no Vinaya concept of manslaughter or negligent homicide. Either you meet the criterion of killing or you don’t. There might be some lesser offenses along the way, like if you only intended to hit someone (itself an offense) but the person died from the blow. That would only be the lesser offense of hitting since your intention was not to kill.

In the case quoted, the lesser offense (if you can even call it that) is because of the sexual contact, not unintentional killing.

Naturally it doesn’t make the situation any less abhorrent.

I honestly don’t think a foot note is going to change the mind of anyone who has doubts about the abhorrence of the act. Neither the text stating that it is not a parajika, nor anyone discussing the technicalities on line are saying that this kind of action is ok.

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Thank you for the clarification.

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Before becoming a monastic I had an 8 year career in CPS, 2 years of which as an investigator of various cases, including sexual abuse. I’ve had to ask little kids questions about things most people don’t even want to have in their mind, and i’ve had to sit across and interview the adults who did those things.

As a fellow CPS person I’m going to assume that you have been to court many times, including being on the stand and just being used to the way legal writing and thinking works. When I make these assumptions please don’t read them as condescension, thats not my intention, i’m making my case and It’s good knowledge for other readers.

When you read legal documents prepared by the court(im sure you have written many such documents, as I had to), they are meant to be factual and perhaps anecdotal in a small way, but with no added commentary or extra layers.

The Vinaya is a legalistic document that covers very narrow and specific events related to the specific rule breach. The line mentioned is here :

"At one time a monk who was an alms-collector saw a little girl lying on a bench. Being lustful, he inserted his thumb into her vagina. She died. He became anxious … “There’s no offense entailing expulsion, but there’s an offense entailing suspension.”

This is found in Parajika 1, which is all about penetrative sexual activity. This case was brought up as it illustrates penetrative activity, but not using a sexual organ, so it would not be a parajika. In the rules when describing a female, it is always “even a female born that day”. So if a monk were to do any act with their sexual organ, even with a child, it’s parajika. The case in question was done digitally, so it would be a breach of Sanghadisesa, where a monk makes contact with lustful nature.

With the sexual acts covered I’ll move on to the child’s death. As others have mentioned before, the death was not the intention of the monastic, so it would also not be a parajika. Even in modern law if this case were brought to trial the monk would not be charged with murder, but with something like manslaughter, acknowledging wrongful death but also that it was not intentional. Premeditated murder is taken much more serious in law then unintentional.

With all that out of the way, I sincerely hope the vinaya is not censored on suttacentral, nor that modern commentary is plastered over the section like youtube does with videos. Nor do I feel the monastics need to “address” anything.

Many monastics have always had concerns about lay people reading the vinaya for a number of reasons, including misunderstandings and misinterpretations. I am not one of those monks and I appreciate that I can have a fully translated vinaya easily accessible whenever I have internet.

When I was a lay person intent on ordination, the only major translation of the vinaya, the book of the discipline, didn’t even have these sections translated. I had to wait till I was at the monastery and Bhante Suddhaso gave me his translation of the vibhanga to actually see the translation, just because the translator was uncomfortable translating the parajika sections.

These are obviously sensitive and uncomfortable topics, and should be treated as such, but I disagree with the request of the original poster.

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This is the very problem I’m talking about. A man in the description raped a child to death. Any sane court would get him in trouble for murder and rape. Rape in the modern United States carries a 25 year sentence. And you’re still treating this like a legal document. There is no mention of the perpetrator having to go to prison in what you call the vinaya there, and he isn’t even forced to leave what is considered the Sangha. Raping someone has such a heavy intention of evil, that in every instance if someone rapes someone to death, they are also tried with murder. What you have in that text is illegal, and it promotes illegal activity. It is wrong to have a document that gives the worst kind of criminals an insensitive to break the law in such a cruel way. There was a recent case of a serial rapist in another country of raping many children in a very similar way, and people who follow what is called this same vinaya were arguing whether he should be expelled from the order or not! Because of this same text which is considered the vinaya. It was recently the topic of a recent thread on Dhammawheel.

Religious texts have been used to justify all kinds of crimes, including rape, murder, and severe torture, even mass murder. In nearly every case it would not have happened if the religious texts were not there or if they did not enable such atrocities. Do not be the institution that turns away from addressing such issues, being complacent in them. In this case there is something extremely dangerous at work, and if it is not addressed within the text, as it hasn’t fully been, there is a result of a invalidation of the ethics of translating the so called vinaya in this case. It cannot be treated as a legal document. It’s too dangerous, and it has been used to justify rape. It’s likely many false ‘monastics’ who raped children in such ways wouldn’t do such things if they had no excuse coming from what many turn to as their primary source of instruction. Like I said, criminals are always looking for an excuse. Look at history about cases of certain religious texts being used to justify atrocities as abhorrent as mass murder as I said before. This case is no less disturbing. If there is even a chance of it enabling rape, especially rape in what is considered a Buddhist community, it must be addressed in such a way where the text no longer enables rape. The issue must be addressed with the utmost care.

I’m begging you to very visibly annotate the text, put a warning on it, or remove it all together. It is not too difficult of a task. Most importantly because there was a recent case of a serial rapist within a community, a community attempting to follow this same text—this rapist was raping children in a very similar way as the text describes—please consider the ethical responsibility SuttaCentral holds to its readers in this case. Please reconsider the approach to what is considered by many ‘the vinaya’, and practice the Noble Eightfold Path by addressing the need to approach the topic in a rational and careful way. In today’s world each mistake, even by a translator, could spell the difference between someone being raped and killed, to the difference of there being a lesser chance of that, if the issue is addressed within the texts with heavy warnings or a removal. It has to be more than a footnote. Buddhism asks us to be moral. Please consider a rational and sane approach to this issue.

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The thread is closed temporarily for moderation.

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Ven, I didn’t know this. I just wanted to say thanks for helping those kids, and thanks for your comment here.

Agreed, that will never happen so long as I’m around.

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