IB World Religions 2.6.3. the Vinaya, Transgression and Karma in Action and Intention Notes

2.6.3. The Vinaya, Transgression and Karma in Action and Intention

The Vinaya as case law

1. The Vinaya Pitaka is the first of the three baskets of the Tipitaka and holds the rules that govern the life of monks and nuns.
2. It is built as case law rather than as a code issued in advance. Each rule arrives with the incident that prompted it, and with the qualifications added when later cases exposed a gap.
3. The core list is the Patimokkha (Sanskrit Pratimoksha), which carries 227 rules for bhikkhus in the Theravada recension and 311 for bhikkhunis.
4. Its reach goes well beyond grave offences, covering robes, meals, furniture, speech to laypeople and conduct in a village, because the code guards the reputation of the sangha as much as its morals.
5. The text states its own purpose as the comfort of the community and the confidence of the laity, so Buddhists read the Vinaya as a training in restraint rather than as a penal code.

Reciting and confessing

1. The community keeps the code alive by reciting it. On uposatha days at the new and full moon the resident monks assemble and the Patimokkha is chanted aloud.
2. Each monk is expected to have confessed any offence to another monk beforehand, so the assembly proceeds on the understanding that everyone present is clear.
3. The recitation asks three times after each section whether any offence remains undeclared, and silence counts as a statement that none does.
4. Staying silent while knowingly unconfessed is itself an offence, which puts the weight of the system on honesty rather than on detection.
5. Vassa, the three month rains retreat, closes with Pavarana, at which each monk invites the others to name anything they have seen, heard or suspected in his conduct.
6. The design is corrective rather than punitive, since most offences are cleared by admitting them and concealment is treated as the graver failure.

Grades of transgression

1. Offences are graded, and the grade decides what has to be done about them.
2. The four parajika (defeats) are sexual intercourse, theft, causing a human death, and falsely claiming a spiritual attainment. A monk who commits one ceases to be a monk at once and cannot be reordained in that life.
3. The thirteen sanghadisesa offences need a formal meeting of the community, a period of probation and reinstatement by a quorum, so the community and not an individual decides the outcome.
4. Most rules sit in the lighter classes, above all the ninety two pacittiya offences, which are cleared by confessing them to another monk.
5. Expulsion is therefore automatic rather than imposed. The texts compare a parajika to a severed head or a palm tree cut at the crown, which cannot grow again.
6. The sanction is not the whole consequence. Buddhists hold that the act also generates kamma (Sanskrit karma), and no confession cancels that.

Vinaya across the branches

1. Three Vinaya lineages survive today, and which one a monastery follows shapes its daily routine.
2. Theravada communities in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia keep the Pali Vinaya, with its rules on handling money, eating after noon and contact with women observed closely.
3. East Asian Mahayana monasteries follow the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, which travelled into China and from there to Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
4. Mahayana monastics take the bodhisattva precepts in addition, most often the set in the Brahmajala Sutra, which adds duties to act for others rather than only prohibitions.
5. Tibetan monastics follow the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya and add the samaya commitments taken at tantric initiation, so a Vajrayana practitioner may hold three sets of vows at once.
6. Japan moved furthest from the older pattern. From Saicho onwards several schools replaced the full Vinaya with bodhisattva precepts, and most Japanese clergy today marry and inherit temples.

Lay and monastic morality

1. Lay Buddhists are not under the Vinaya. Their baseline is the Five Precepts, abstaining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, false speech and intoxicants that cloud the mind.
2. These are sikkhapada (training rules) that a person undertakes, not commandments issued by a god, and the formula has the layperson say that they take up the rule.
3. On uposatha days many laypeople keep eight precepts for a day and a night, adding restrictions on eating after noon, on entertainment, on adornment and on luxurious beds.
4. Novices keep ten precepts, which make the eight permanent and add the rule against handling money, so the lay and monastic codes form one graded series.
5. The two ways of life aim at different nearer goals. Laypeople usually pursue punna (merit) toward a favourable rebirth, while monastics aim more directly at nibbana.
6. Buddhists deny that this makes lay morality second class, since the same sila (ethical conduct) is being trained at whatever depth a person's conditions allow.

Intention as the act

1. The most quoted statement on Buddhist ethics defines kamma by intention. It is cetana (intention) that the Buddha calls kamma, since having intended, a person then acts by body, speech and mind.
2. This makes the moral weight of an act depend on the state of mind behind it, so one physical movement can carry very different consequences for different people.
3. Killing an insect by accident and killing one deliberately are therefore not the same act, though neither is simply harmless, since carelessness is itself a mental state with results.
4. The Vinaya applies the principle in its own way. A number of offences require that the act be intentional, and a monk who acts while deranged or genuinely unaware may be excused.
5. Intention also explains why confession settles the sanction but not the kamma. Admitting an offence restores standing in the community, while the fruit of the act ripens on its own terms.
6. Buddhists therefore value remorse only where it changes future intention. Guilt that merely repeats itself is classed as another unwholesome state rather than as atonement.