Sakyamuni who comprehended selflessness
What kind of community organization was established?
A person who has completely let go of the "I"
How can you manage the rules?
Management community
Manage other people's sleep and food
This question
I thought about it for a long time.
Something tells us that.
Those who have realized should float with fate
Extrajudicial ascent
Or just sit alone under a tree
But history tells us that
Quite the contrary.
Last episode we talked about the power of Buddha's silence
Fourteen questions he refused to answer
Than all the words he said put together
It's more clear what he's going to do
And at the end of that episode
We are left with a suspense - a doctor who is well versed in machine talk
Leaving a room full of prescriptions
It's not marked who it was opened for.
No manual
Gone forever
Successor disciples
What do you do?
But before the disciples' conundrum began
We need to figure out one thing first
During the 45 years that the Buddha preached the Dharma
What kind of people are there around him?
How are these people organized?
What do they do?
Because figuring this out
You can understand why after he left
Trouble can come so hard
So fast?
So hard to handle
Hello
Hello.
I am Wang Lijie
Today we enter the fifth episode of practicing along the historical context of Buddhism
Talk about a particularly interesting topic that is rarely talked about positively
The Birth of the Sangha
I'm going to ask you a question.
You think about the answer in your mind first
A person who has completely realized "no self"
Will you build an organization?
Now, your first instinct might be to say
Really?
A person who sees no eternal self
Also engage in community
Make rules
Engage in system
Isn't that a contradiction?
Before I speak
Let me tell you my answer first
Quite the opposite - precisely because of a complete understanding of selflessness
Buddha became an extremely pragmatic community architect
The organizational system he built
Today, 2,500 years later
It remains one of the longest-lived non-state communities in human history
In a sense
This judgment is valid
There's a deep logic to this.
We open slowly
Let's start from the beginning
After the Buddha taught the Dharma for the first time in Kaneyuan
He had five disciples
It's the five who used to ascetic with him
And she left him.
I was moved by his words after he became enlightened
Those who come back to hear the Fa
These five people
The first order of monks
There was no system at that time
No commandments
No manual
No initiation ceremony
They are a group of practitioners who learn from an enlightened person
Walking in the wild
Meditating under a tree
Survive by begging
Then more and more people came
The son of a merchant
There were Brahmins.
There are nobles sent by the king
There are civilians at the bottom
There are even thieves.
More people
So here's the problem.
Imagine this scene
A group from a completely different social hierarchy
People from different cultural backgrounds
Living together in the forest
Common practice
Their living habits are different
Different judgments about what behavior is appropriate
And I have a different idea of what meditation is.
No rules
It's chaos.
Some people eat excessively
There is a fight for a seat
Someone says the wrong thing to the faithful at home
Some people snore too loudly to affect others' meditation
What did the Buddha do?
He didn't develop a complete set of rules from the outset
This
Decided everything
His approach was - something went wrong
Solve that problem
Then turn the solution into a rule
Next time similar problems occur
Just use this rule
This process continued throughout his 45-year teaching career
Behind every commandment
There is a specific event
There is a specific person
Palilutsani
Almost every commandment has a dependent part
Pali is nidāna
Nitona
Under what circumstances is this rule?
Because of what person's behavior
And was formulated
For example, there is a commandment that monks must not plant by themselves
It means you can't farm by yourself
What is the origin of this commandment?
There is a monk who likes to grow vegetables
Saw by family
I think he's going to destroy the bugs in the field
Against mercy
So the Buddha made this rule.
For example, there is a rule that monks are not allowed to cross the river alone
The cause was that a certain monk was seen crossing the river with his clothes wet
Cause unnecessary misunderstandings and discussions
Affected the local reputation of the Sangha
You see
The logic of these rules is not, "This is morally right."
It's like, "Do this.
It is helpful for practice
Good for the operation of the Sangha
Good for social relations "
It's a function-oriented rule system.
It's not divine.
This
The organization established by the Buddha
One of the most fundamental differences among contemporary religious organizations
Contemporary Brahminism
Where do its rules come from?
From the Apocalypse
From the Vedas
Will from Brahma
So those rules
Whether it actually works or not
Can't be changed
Because changing it is against God's will
And the caste system is based on this unalterable sacred order
Where were you born?
Forever in that position
It's destiny.
It's part of the cosmic order.
Buddha's logic is completely different
His rules come from experience
Specific solutions to specific problems
Respond to the practical needs of practitioners
What does that mean?
This means that the system can be updated
It can be adapted to local conditions.
Can be adjusted as the situation changes
Actually.
According to the Pali Scriptures
The Buddha said a word to Ananda before his death
And there was a huge controversy.
So he says.
If the Sangha deems it necessary
You can do away with the little ring.
What does the "little ring" in this sentence refer to?
Later disciples quarreled for nearly 2,500 years
So far, no decision has been made.
But the attitude revealed by the sentence itself
Is extremely clear - rules are tools
Not the purpose
Rules exist to enable practitioners to practice well
Not used to lock practitioners
The sentence in the Diamond Sutra
Live directly here - Fashang Yingshe
Not to mention illegal
Rafts are used to cross rivers
To the other side
You still walk with it on your back?
That's not wisdom.
Is persistence
OK
Let's move on to a more controversial issue.
The birth of the bhikshuni order
This story.
It is one of the most powerful stories in Buddhist history
It revealed something very real.
Including the hesitation of the Buddha himself
The distance between institutions and consciousness
Including a reformer in his day
The social reality we have to face
Here's how it started.
Buddha's aunt Mahabojabati
The woman who raised Siddhartha after his mother died
After the Buddha became enlightened
I really hope to be able to practice as a monk
According to the records of the Palileo Collection
She brought 500 Sakya women
Three times I asked the Buddha to allow them to become monks
Buddha refused three times
Ananda can't watch it anymore
Ananda was the Buddha's closest attendant
It is a person who is full of compassion for all sentient beings
A gentle person
He went to Buddha.
Asked a direct question - if a woman becomes a monk
Practice four thoughts
Can you prove the arhat fruit?
Buddha said
Ananda said
Since you can
Why not let them become monks?
You see
Ananda used the Buddha's own logic to challenge the Buddha
If the goal of practice is to prove an arhat
If women can also achieve this goal with the right practice
So what is the reason for refusing them to become monks?
Facing this question
Buddha finally agreed
He allowed the Mahabha Jabha to become a monk.
The bhikshuni order was established
But at the same time
He formulated the famous eight-respect method
That is, the eight nuns must abide by
Lower status regulations relative to bhikkhus
For example
Even a bhikshuni who has been a monk for a hundred years
When I met a monk who had just left home for a day
You must also pray to him
This eight-respect method
In modern times, it has aroused great discussion and controversy
Many people consider this to be discrimination
Is a person who claims that all beings are equal in the system
The unequal treatment of women
Some scholars also believe that
And these eight commandments were added later.
Not necessarily from the Buddha himself
About this.
The academic community is still inconclusive
There are also differences in the claims of the South and North
This question
I put it there.
Leave it to yourself to feel
But one thing is certain
Regardless of the historical authenticity of Hakkeifa
The fact that Buddha finally allowed women to become monks
In his day
Is a radical move
In India in the fifth century BC
The social status of women is extremely low
female monastic practice
It shattered the entire social definition of women's roles at the time
Even with these eight constraints
The birth of the bhikshuni order
It was still a true social revolution of that era
In Barry's classic little department
There is a book called "Elder Nekah"
Recorded the words of spiritual enlightenment of more than seventy nuns
These words
It is one of the earliest female religious literature in human history
It contains the joy of their enlightenment
There is their farewell to the old life
Have their expression of freedom
There is a verse
It was written by a bhikkhuni named Sumo
It is said that once
The incarnation of Demon King Pozen appeared in front of her
Say to her - a woman's wisdom is only two fingers wide
How can you possibly achieve that state that only the sages can achieve?
How did Sumo answer?
She says
Beware has been decided
When wisdom shines brightly
When you see the Dharma as it is - the female body
What does it have to do with this?
In the forests of India 2,500 years ago
A female practitioner
Use a verse
Hit that question back
OK
Let's go back to the overall structure of the Sangha
Buddha established this system
What is it like?
It has several characteristics
I think take it out and talk about it alone.
It will make modern people feel very different
The first characteristic
Democratic decision-making
Daily affairs of the Buddhist Sangha
Including the interpretation of the commandments
Handling of disputes
Implementation of important decisions
Requires the unanimous consent of all monks
Or at least through an open voting process
This mechanism
There are very detailed regulations in the Palileum Collection
It's called karma.
The pronunciation is jiémó.
It means "to act" or "to act."
The process of karma is like this
Put forward a motion
Read it out loud three times
Ask if anyone objects
If no one objects
Bill passed
If anyone objects
It must be fully discussed
Until an agreement is reached
Or resolve differences in some way
Does this program seem familiar?
This is similar to the procedural structure of many modern democratic parliaments
And the time when the Buddha established this program
It was the fifth century BC.
It was around the same time as the democratic reforms in ancient Greece
China is still in the late Spring and Autumn period
The second characteristic
Not relying on authority
When the Buddha was alive
The final authority of the Sangha community is, of course, himself
But he never named a successor
On his deathbed
What he's talking about is - take yourself as the continent
France as a continent
Meaning
Make yourself an island
Take Law as an Island
Don't rely on an external authority
Return to your own practice
Relying on the Dharma itself
This sentence had far-reaching consequences
It means
The Buddha himself was involved in the design of institutions
Rejects the organizational form of establishing a center of personal authority
No Pope
No emperor
There is no ultimate leader
There is a set of rules
And a process for collective decision-making through this set of rules
This is very rare in the history of religion
Many contemporary and later religions
Requires a central authority to maintain doctrinal unity
The Buddha chose
It's about decentralizing authority into rules and procedures.
The third characteristic
Complete economic equality
All monks
Whether you were a nobleman or a slave before you became a monk
Is it a Brahmin or a Sudra?
After joining the Sangha
They are completely equal economically.
You beg for food together
You share equally
The items that bhikkhus are allowed to hold are extremely limited - three clothes and one bowl
That is, three kasaya.
A begging bowl
In addition to having nothing
And it makes sense.
In a society with a deeply entrenched caste system
The Buddha created a space - here
Where you come from doesn't determine your status
Your cultivation determines your status
It's not just a spiritual institution
It was also a social experiment
There is a famous example
One of the Buddha's closest disciples
Youboli
Before becoming a monk, he was a barber of the Sakya tribe
Serve the royal family
But according to the caste system
He was born a sudra.
Subjected to all nobles
He was in the process of becoming a monk
Shaved earlier than many aristocratic-born Sakya princes
In the order of abstinence - that is, the year of ordination
The princes met him
Must worship him
Some princes are uncomfortable at first
Later accepted
The most powerful thing about Brahminism is that
It allows people to accept their place from within
You don't need prison
Because the whole cosmology itself is a prison
Brahminism rationalizes the caste system with a cosmic order
Let everyone think from birth that their place is determined by heaven
And the Buddha's Sangha
In a limited space
Did something that the Brahmins thought was impossible
Replace lineage with abstinence
Replace birth with practice
Now we come to the heart of the problem
Is the system working well?
When the Buddha was alive
He was there to mediate.
Backed by his personal prestige
It's working really well.
But it has an inherent vulnerability.
We mentioned that earlier -- it relies too much on machine talk.
The Buddha gave too much flexibility
He is in different places
Facing different people
Made regulations that sometimes differ slightly from each other
In more remote areas
He may allow something that is not allowed in the core community
Due to the different local cultural backgrounds
The local practice conditions are different
He knew what he was doing.
He knew the core principles.
What are the convenient adjustments for local conditions?
But
When he's gone
These subtle differences
It starts to matter.
Monks in different places
Remember the different versions of the regulations
Some people say
The Buddha said this in Kanoya
Some people say
He was talking about that in Wangshe City
Some people say
He said on his deathbed that the little ring could be abolished
Some people say
Ananda didn't even ask what he was talking about.
These differences
When the Buddha was alive
Irrelevant
Because he is here
Feel free to ask
But after he left
These differences
It becomes the seed of the crack.
and
There's another, more fundamental tension.
The entire system of the Buddha
It is based on the premise that the ultimate reliance of practitioners is the Dharma
It is a truthful understanding of the law
It's direct experience through practice.
But here's the thing.
The law doesn't speak for itself
The law must be passed on through people
Explained through people
It's people doing it.
And people
There is a difference.
Same thing.
Different People
Understand things differently
A person who has seen the Buddha
And someone who has never met him
Just someone who listens to others
Understanding of the law
Will it be the same depth?
second generation
third generation
After the tenth generation
What will it be like
This is a paradox that all great ideas must confront
The deepest thing
Often the hardest to be delivered faithfully
And the way the Buddha chose to pass it on
Is oral
No text
There are no scriptures.
Only memorization and memorization
One person remembers
Pass it on to another person.
Another person passes it on to the next person
In India at that time
It's not a strange choice
The core texts of Brahmanism, the Vedas.
Before being written down
It's been sustained by word of mouth for almost a thousand years
Indian memory training
It is a rare height in the history of world culture
But
Oral transmission has one characteristic - it requires a controlled
A disciplined community to maintain
One can get it wrong.
Two people against each other
If it is different
Can be discussed
A huge crowd.
Form a disciplined recitation group
Recite collectively on specific occasions
proofread each other
Someone got it wrong.
The collective can correct
This is another key function of the Sangha.
The Sangha is more than just a place of worship
It's also a memory storage system.
So you have the whole picture here.
The Sangha established by the Buddha
At the same time, it undertakes the monastery and democratic deliberation
The four functions of social revolution and distributed memory storage
They're all bound up in the same set of rules.
interdependent
Support each other
This system
When the Buddha was alive
Sophisticated and effective
But it also has a fate that no system can escape
After the designer leaves
How will the system work?
Shortly after the Buddha's death
The disciples held their first meeting
What the Buddha said
group recitation
check
confirm
The text that formed the original scriptures and laws
The story of this gathering itself
Full of tension
Full of human complexity
It's full of "How to Establish Your Authority in the Shadow of a Giant."
This eternal puzzle
And about a hundred years after the first assembly
A second assembly took place that fundamentally divided Buddhism as a whole
The starting point of division
It is said to be a subtle disagreement on the Ten Commandments
But the real smell of gunpowder
Far deeper than meets the eye
That's another story.
But before you wait for the next episode
There is a question you can take first.
Any system designed for the living.
When the living person who knows it best leaves
Those who stay
Will be loyal to the spirit of the system
Still loyal to the words of the system
This choice
2,500 years
It never stops.
I would like to ask the audience
How do you feel about today's issue?
This system built by the Buddha - using specific questions to drive rule making
decentralized authority
Equal Economy
Democratic deliberation - look at it today
Do you think it brings you some new associations?
Like what?
The best-run communities or organizations you've ever seen
The logic behind them
Is there any similarity to this system?
Please let me know what you think in the comment section.
Also welcome to tell me
What do you most want to hear in the next issue?
I am Wang Lijie
See you next time.