IB World Religions 2.4.5. Authority: Monks, Laity, Merit and the Lama System Notes

2.4.5. Authority: Monks, Laity, Merit and the Lama System

The dhamma as authority

1. Buddhists locate final authority in the dhamma (Sanskrit dharma: the teaching, and also the truth it describes) rather than in an office or a person. The Buddha is presented as the discoverer of something already the case, not as its author.
2. The Mahaparinibbana Sutta has the dying Buddha decline to name a successor. He tells Ananda that the dhamma and the discipline he has taught will be the teacher once he is gone.
3. There is therefore no Buddhist equivalent of a pope, and no council that speaks for all Buddhists. Authority runs through many lineages of teachers rather than down one chain of command.
4. The Kalama Sutta adds a test. The Buddha tells the Kalamas not to accept a teaching merely on tradition, report, scripture or the standing of the speaker, but to watch whether acting on it leads to harm or to benefit.
5. Authority in practice is tied to attainment. A teacher's standing rests on the claim that the teaching has worked in him, which is why the tradition ranks the arahant (Sanskrit arhat: enlightened person) above the scholar.
6. Doctrine and organisation are therefore linked tightly. Because the dhamma has to be transmitted and practised rather than merely decreed, the body that carries it becomes the working seat of authority.

The fourfold sangha

1. Sangha means community, and the word carries more than one sense. Its narrow use names the order of ordained monastics, and its wide use covers the whole Buddhist community.
2. Texts describe a fourfold sangha of bhikkhus (monks), bhikkhunis (nuns), upasakas (laymen) and upasikas (laywomen). Authority is spread unevenly across the four, but all four are counted in.
3. A third sense is narrower still. The ariya-sangha is the community of those who have reached a stage of awakening, whether or not they wear robes.
4. The sangha is the third of the Three Jewels, so Buddhists take refuge in the community alongside the Buddha and the dhamma. Commentators differ over which sangha the refuge formula means.
5. That ambiguity matters for authority. Reading the refuge as the ariya-sangha grounds authority in attainment, while reading it as the monastic order grounds it in ordination.
6. The branches weigh the four groups differently. Theravada practice concentrates teaching authority in the bhikkhus, while Mahayana communities have long given lay members a larger share of it.

Vinaya and monastic order

1. The Vinaya Pitaka is the part of the canon that governs monastic life, and Buddhists treat it as the Buddha's own regulation of the order rather than as later administration.
2. Its core is the Patimokkha (Sanskrit Pratimoksha), a list of training rules that monks recite together twice a month at the uposatha observance.
3. Rank inside a monastery follows seniority rather than election. It is counted in vassa, the number of rains retreats a monk has completed since his ordination.
4. Serious matters are settled by the assembly rather than by an abbot alone. The Vinaya lays out procedures for hearing a case and names four offences that end a monk's ordination outright.
5. Ordination is itself a lineage. A valid ceremony needs a quorum of already ordained monks, so the order's authority is held to reach back in an unbroken chain to the Buddha's own community.
6. Councils have been the tool for larger disputes. The tradition reports a first council at Rajagaha to recite the teaching, and later councils that settled the canon and revised discipline.

Monks, laity and merit

1. Theravada teaching sets out a division of labour rather than of worth. Monks are expected to aim directly at nibbana (Sanskrit nirvana), while most lay Buddhists work for punna (Sanskrit punya: merit) and a better rebirth.
2. The two halves depend on each other. Monks own almost nothing and receive food, robes, medicine and shelter from lay donors, who receive teaching and the opportunity to make merit in return.
3. Dana (giving) is the main lay practice in that exchange, and the morning alms round is its most visible form. The monk does not thank the donor, because the gift is held to benefit the giver.
4. Merit can be shared out. Ceremonies of transfer direct the merit of a good act to dead relatives, which is why funerals in Theravada countries centre on offerings made to monks.
5. Lay people hold real leverage in the arrangement. A monastery depends entirely on local support, so a village that disapproves of a monk can simply stop feeding him.
6. The line has shifted in the modern period. Lay meditation movements in Burma and Thailand taught insight practices once reserved for monastics, and many lay Buddhists now aim at awakening directly.
7. Buddhists disagree about how far that shift should run. Some teachers welcome it as the dhamma reaching more people, and others hold that sustained practice still needs the conditions the Vinaya was built to create.

The lama system

1. Vajrayana Buddhism adds a further layer of authority in the lama (Sanskrit guru: teacher), a figure whose personal instruction is treated as indispensable rather than merely helpful.
2. The reason given is the nature of the material. Tantric practice is held to be powerful and easily misused, so it passes by abhisheka (Tibetan wangkur: empowerment) from a qualified teacher to a prepared student.
3. Guru yoga makes the relationship itself a practice. Students visualise the lama as an embodiment of the awakened mind, and devotion to him is treated as a means of realisation.
4. Authority also travels by recognised rebirth. A tulku is a teacher identified as the continuing presence of a previous master, found in childhood through signs, tests and the judgement of senior lamas.
5. The best known lines are the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, each traditionally involved in confirming the other. Tibetan Buddhism holds several hundred further tulku lines besides these two.
6. Four schools carry the system in their own ways: Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and Gelug. Each has its own transmission lineages, and none of them governs the others.
7. Recognition is contested in the present. The Chinese state claims a role in approving reincarnations, and the fourteenth Dalai Lama has said the institution's future is for Tibetans to settle.

Authority across the branches

1. The branches agree on the source and differ over the channel. All hold the dhamma to be authoritative, and they disagree about who is qualified to interpret and transmit it.
2. Theravada keeps interpretation close to the Pali Canon and to the monks who preserve it, treating the commentaries of Buddhaghosa as the standard reading.
3. Mahayana widens the field considerably, since it holds that all beings may aim at Buddhahood and accepts sutras that appeared long after the Buddha's death.
4. Upaya (skill in means) supports that breadth. If teachings are shaped to fit the hearer, differing teachings can each be authoritative for different people without any of them being false.
5. Founders of schools therefore carry weight in East Asia. Honen, Shinran, Nichiren and Dogen are read as authoritative interpreters, and Japanese Jodo Shinshu priests marry and are not monastics at all.
6. Vajrayana keeps the monastic frame and sets the lama on top of it, so a student can owe loyalty to a personal teacher as well as to the Vinaya.
7. Buddhists present this variety as tolerable because the test stays practical. A teaching's authority is shown in the end by whether following it reduces greed, hatred and delusion.