Vinaya Pitaka
Vinaya Pitaka
A monastic community can only remain a functioning path to liberation if its members submit to an exhaustive, case-derived code of discipline, and the text works out that code by narrating the specific offense that provoked each rule.
- case-law method: rules derived from narrated offenses
- the Patimokkha code recited communally by monks and nuns
- procedural rules for ordination and communal governance
- foundation of continuous Sangha self-governance
The first of the three baskets (pitakas) of the Pali Canon, containing the rules of conduct for monks and nuns (the Patimokkha) along with narrative accounts of the offenses that supposedly prompted each rule, plus procedural material on ordination, communal life, and dispute resolution. Distinctive for its case-law method, deriving general discipline from specific incidents rather than stating abstract principles first, it underlies the continuous self-governance of Buddhist monastic institutions across two and a half millennia. Its gravest category, the parajika offenses, carries permanent expulsion from the monastic order and covers only four acts, sexual intercourse, theft, killing a human being, and falsely claiming spiritual attainment, with every lesser offense graded below these into its own scale of confession, penance, or forfeiture.
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