[Buddha-l] Back to the core values?

[Franz Metcalf]

Gang,

Lance, quotes Joy, then comments,

>> I can easily see how it becomes central as soon as a lay community 
>> constitutes itself around a community of Bhikkus, for whom the 
>> service and support of the community becomes central as a practice. 
>> Am I missing anythin here?
>
> But surely a lay community of some sort must have existed from the 
> moment the Buddha began teaching a group. Otherwise what could they 
> eat?

I think the "lay community" in the very beginning may have been the 
families and friends of the bhikkhus before they were bhikkhus. Having 
been reading the Vinaya, recently, I've been struck by the frequency of 
references to individual supporters of individual bhikkhus. Further, 
I've been surprised by the codification in scores of rules of the 
difference between support given by relatives and by non-relatives. 
Taken together, these (and other factors) paint a picture for me of a 
sangha and of bhikkhus fully in continuity with the landscape of other 
samanas. I also see continuity with the bhikkhus' state when and if 
they were samanas before they became bhikkhus. Surely these bhikkhus 
supported by their families were supported similarly by their families 
if they were previously samanas in other schools or independently.

What strikes me as so novel in the Vinaya, is the scale of the sangha 
and the complexity of its rules (also the establishing the sangha as 
validly a field of merit despite the bhikkhus following a middle path 
and not an ascetic one--that's another topic). But, as Lance reminds 
us, this development only happens gradually over many years.

Franz