Vinaya Pitaka (2): Bhikkhuni-vibhanga (the analysis of Nun’ rules)
by I. B. Horner | 2014 | 66,469 words | ISBN-13: 9781921842160
The English translation of the Bhikkhuni-vibhanga: the second part of the Suttavibhanga, which itself is the first book of the Pali Vinaya Pitaka, one of the three major ‘baskets’ of Therevada canonical literature. It is a acollection of rules for Buddhist nuns. The English translation of the Vinaya-pitaka (second part, bhikkhuni-vibhanga) contain...
Nuns’ Expiation (Pācittiya) 39
Bi-Pc.39.1.1 BD.3.320 … at Rājagaha in the Bamboo Grove at the squirrels’ feeding place. Now at that time nuns walked on alms-tour during the rains. People … spread it about, saying: “How can these nuns walk on almstour during the rains, trampling down the crops and grasses, injuring life that is one-facultied, bringing many small creatures to destruction?”[1] Nuns heard these people who … spread it about. Those who were modest nuns … spread it about, saying:
“How can these nuns … during the rains … bringing many small creatures to destruction?” …
“Is it true, as is said, monks, that nuns … during the rains … bringing many small creatures to destruction?”
“It is true, lord.”
The enlightened one, the lord, rebuked them, saying:
“How, monks, can nuns walk on almstour during the rains … bringing many small creatures to destruction? It is not, monks, for pleasing those who are not (yet) pleased … this rule of training:
“Whatever nun should walk on almstour during the rains, there is an offence of expiation.” Vin.4.297
Bi-Pc.39.2.1 Whatever means: … nun is to be understood in this case.
BD.3.321 During the rains means: not having spent the first three months or the last three months.[2]
Should walk on almstour means: in a village close enough for a cock (to walk) … see Bi-Pc.37.2.1 … in what is not a village, in the jungle, there is an offence of expiation.
Bi-Pc.39.2.2 There is no offence if she goes away for seven days because there is something to be done; if she goes away because she is troubled about something; if she is mad, if she is the first wrong-doer.
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
These three phrases occur at Vin.1.137, Vin.1.138, where rains-retreat is allowed to the monks, for lay-people had complained that by walking for alms in all seasons they did harm to crops and small living things, and where it is made a dukkaṭa for monks to set out on almstour before they have kept the earlier or later three months of the rains. For “life that is one-facultied,” cf. BD.2.223, BD.2.226, and for “small creatures to destruction,” cf. BD.2.71.