[Buddha-l] Vinaya Texts trans/ed. by Oldenberg

[Jampa Tsedroen]

Well, as it is the Tibetan tradition, you study the Vinaya after you 
have been ordained, and by that time you may find out that some mistakes 
already occured which you need to purify now. The major things to 
observe you learn in preparation for ordination. But this is not 
referred to as Vinaya studies, but preparation for ordination.

By the way: as far as I found out no such rule in the Pali Vinaya 
exists. There is only a principle that when the Patimokkha is to be 
recited, all qualified bhikkhus inside the sima (boundary) should be 
sitting within forearm's length of one another, and no lay person should 
be within forearm's length of the monks. However, lay people can even be 
sitting in the recitation hall beyond the forearm's boundary while the 
monks recite the Patimokkha.

It is said that in Sri Lanka there are lay people who study the entire 
Tipitaka and some are very knowledgeable about the Vinaya. I heard that 
in Sri Lanka at some universities lay women even teach monks Vinaya. 
According to a dharmafriend it seems that at some point in Indian 
Buddhist history, perhaps when the monks were not observing numbers of 
minor rules, they  did not want the laity to know about them from fear 
the lay people would criticize them for neglecting these rules.

In the Tibetan tradition for lay people it is not allowed to be inside 
the hall, when bhikshus confess their misdeeds or when they recite the 
pratimoksha sutra after having purified. It would cause doubts whether 
the legal act (karma) were valid then.

Tibetan masters use to say that it would be unwholesome if lay people 
study the Vinaya in order to search for mistakes in the discipline of 
monks and to criticize them (nuns are also not allowed to criticize 
them). Some Tibetan masters allow Western lay people to read parts of 
the Vinaya by themselves and to ask them questions, if the motivation is 
that they want to find out whether they can keep it.

However, some Tibetan nuns have studied up to 17-18 years the geshe and 
khenpo curricula, but they were not allowed to study the whole Vinaya 
and thus still have not obtained the geshe and khenpo titles. This is, 
because they have not studied the same full curriculum, i.e. the full 
Vinaya, which they could only do after being fully ordained. On top they 
cannot criticize the monks for not granting them the respective titles, 
what they would not do anyway, because they have a lot of respect for them.

Bhikshuni Jampa Tsedroen

On 26.01.2010 02:02 [DPD CDT] Shen Shi'an wrote:
> If laity cannot study the Vinaya, i wonder how they ever decide to be monastics! Committing to what they are uncertain of for life sounds like anti-Kalama spirit :-[
>
> On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:22 PM, Weng-Fai Wong wrote:
>
>> By the way, in Chinese Buddhism (not sure if this is the case in Tibetan
>> Buddhism), lay people are NOT to read the Vinaya. I was told that the same
>> is true in Theravada Buddhism - till the "red hair devils" came along.
>
> I had an incident in my classroom about this at McGill about fifteen years ago. A Chinese nun was horrified that I had students reading sections of the vinaya. She said this would disqualify students from being ordained as monks or nuns later. I asked some Theravâda monks about this, and they said there is no such prohibition. One Theravâda monk told me that lay people are actually encouraged to study the vinaya. As far as I know, there is nothing in the vinaya itself about this. If there is a taboo against lay people being informed about the vinaya, it may be more a "house rule" than a rule coming down from the Buddha.
>
> Richard Hayes
> Department of Philosophy
> University of New Mexico
> http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
> rhayes at unm.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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