Two Storms
3.3 Two Storms
Rājagaha. The Saṅgha had assembled over some matter, and the hall was full.
A man rose from his seat and began to take the count—passing the tally-sticks down the rows for a vote. The man was Devadatta, the Buddha's cousin. He said in a ringing voice:
"Whichever elders hold that these five things are Dhamma, are Vinaya, are what the Buddha taught—let them take a stick."
Whoever holds these five things to be the Dhamma, the Vinaya, the Buddha's teaching—take a stick. Five hundred young bhikkhus, new in the training and without discernment, took sticks.
Then another man stood up—Ānanda. He slipped off his uttarāsaṅga—the upper robe—laid it to one side, and said as clearly: whoever holds these five things to be not Dhamma, not Vinaya, not the Buddha's teaching—lay your upper robe to one side. Sixty elder bhikkhus slipped off their robes and laid them aside.
The count lay in plain sight: five hundred against sixty. Devadatta looked around the assembly and spoke the words of rupture:
"Elders! We have no need of the Buddha or of the Saṅgha; we will perform the formal acts ourselves and recite the precepts ourselves."
We do not need the Buddha, and we no longer need this Saṅgha—we will do our own formal acts (kamma), recite our own precepts. He led the five hundred bhikkhus away to Gayāsīsa. The gravest deed in the history of the Buddha's house had been done: the breaking of the Saṅgha.
Where the Storm Came From
What were those "five things"? The story starts earlier. Devadatta proclaimed five dharmas in the Saṅgha, to be undertaken by every bhikkhu for as long as life endures. The Shisonglü records the five he proclaimed:
"A bhikkhu should, for as long as life endures, wear rag-robes; for as long as life endures, live on alms; for as long as life endures, eat but a single meal; for as long as life endures, dwell in the open; for as long as life endures, abstain from fish and meat."
Five items, each fronted by the same three words—for as long as life endures—this one life through, never once let slack. Look clearly at the crux: every one of these five is a good ascetic dhutaṅga practice. To wear rag-robes, to live always on alms, to sit in the open, to abstain from fish and meat—the Buddha had always praised fewness of wishes and contentment, and some in the Saṅgha did observe these lifelong; the Buddha permitted those who so wished to practice them. What He would not allow was the compulsion in those three words, "for as long as life endures": turning austerities that ought to follow each person's capacity, undertaken as an open allowance, into a dead decree binding everyone for life. The precepts the Buddha laid down were a living law—laid down case by case, as offenses arose, its allowances kept open; what Devadatta wanted was a dead law, cut once and fixed forever. One permits; the other compels—there lies the root of the storm.
The banner of austerity is stirring. And so five hundred bhikkhus not yet deep in the Way took the sticks—they thought what they were following was a stricter practice.
After the Break, the Door Stays Open
When the Buddha heard of it, He spoke words of utmost weight: "This foolish man has broken the Saṅgha," and said that Devadatta was bound on a wrong course, "in hell for an eon, beyond rescue." So heavy is the offense of breaking the Saṅgha.
But it is what came next that shows the hand and eye of the Buddha's house.
Sāriputta and Moggallāna went to Gayāsīsa. Devadatta was preaching before the great assembly, and seeing the two great disciples arrive, he was overjoyed—thinking the Buddha's foremost disciples had come over to him too. Imitating the Buddha's manner, he bade Sāriputta preach in his stead while he himself, "my back aching, will rest a little," lay down on his right side—and the Vinaya's pen is sharp here: imitating the Buddha's lion posture, he rolled, without knowing it, onto his left, "like a jackal—a wild fox—sprawled and snoring in sleep."
He slept. Moggallāna displayed psychic power; Sāriputta taught the four truths. Hearing the Dhamma, the five hundred bhikkhus grew far from the dust and free of the stain, and rose then and there to follow the two venerables away. Devadatta, shaken awake and told that the five hundred were gone, "hot blood burst from his face."
The five hundred bhikkhus returned to the Buddha. Sāriputta asked: these five hundred followed Devadatta into a separate assembly—must they receive the full precepts anew? The Buddha's answer is the warmest sentence in the whole storm:
"The bhikkhus who followed Devadatta—their former precepts stand as they were; they should only be taught to make confession of a thullaccaya [grave transgression]."
No new ordination—the precepts they had received still counted; have them make one confession, and it is done. For five hundred who had followed the wrong man down the wrong road, the threshold of return was a single confession. However heavy the break, the door of return stayed open—always.
Later Vinaya masters gave the breaking of the Saṅgha its classification. The Song-dynasty master Yuanzhao, in his Zichi-ji, set it out clearly:
"The breaking of the Saṅgha is twofold: the first, establishing five dharmas to convert the world, breaking the four reliances and the eightfold right path—this is called the breaking of the dharma-wheel saṅgha; the second, performing separate saṅgha-acts within the same boundary—this is called the breaking of the procedural saṅgha."
To set up five rules of one's own and raise a rival wheel is the breaking of the dharma-wheel saṅgha; to perform one's own formal acts and recite one's own precepts within a single Saṅgha-boundary is the breaking of the procedural saṅgha. Devadatta committed both. Yuanzhao adds that in the whole of the Buddha's dispensation in this Jambudvīpa, the one who carried the breaking of the dharma-wheel saṅgha through to the very end was "Devadatta alone."
A Hundred Years Later: Vesālī
The second storm came when the Buddha was no longer in the world. Fascicle fifty-four of the Sifenlü records:
"At that time, one hundred years after the World-Honored One's parinirvāṇa, the Vajjiputtaka bhikkhus of Vesālī practiced ten things, saying: 'These practices are pure; the Buddha permitted them.'"
A hundred years after the Buddha's passing, the Vajjiputtaka bhikkhus of Vesālī were practicing ten things and declaring them pure, lawful, permitted by the Buddha—that after finishing one's meal one might still take food with two fingers; that salt might be stored overnight for seasoning; down to the tenth: that gold and silver might be accepted. On the uposatha day, they divided among the Saṅgha the gold and silver the donors had offered.
A bhikkhu traveling through, Yasa the son of Kākaṇḍaka, was allotted the share under his name. He said one thing:
"I do not accept it. Why? A renunciant son of the Sakyan should not accept gold and silver; the renunciant sons of the Sakyan have cast aside pearls and jewels and do not adorn themselves."
The Vajjiputtaka bhikkhus would not let it stand: you have slandered the Saṅgha; admit your offense before the assembly. Yasa refused—and to the householders of Vesālī he recounted the ruling the Buddha had given with His own mouth while He was in the world: one who accepts gold and silver accepts the five sense-pleasures; and one who accepts the five sense-pleasures—"this is not the dharma of a renunciant son of the Sakyan."
One man, facing the monks of a whole city. Yasa knew that this dispute could not be carried by his one mouth; it needed procedure in accordance with the Dhamma. He set out to find the most venerated elders of Jambudvīpa.
"Where Was It Laid Down?"
Yasa went first to find the elder Revata—and a hard search it was: to the bank of the Vāhā River; not there. On to Kaṇṇakujja; not there. On to Aggaḷapura; again not there. At Saṅkassa, at last, he caught up with him. At midnight, carrying his sitting-cloth, he came to Revata's room and asked, matter by matter. The first—taking food with two fingers: after one has eaten one's fill, may one scoop up leftover food with two fingers and eat it? Revata answered: "One may not." Yasa pressed at once: "Where was it laid down?"—this rule, where had the Buddha laid it down? Revata answered: at Sāvatthī, on account of eating without performing the leftover-food procedure, it was thereby laid down.
Notice the shape of that question: "Where was it laid down?"—this rule, where did the Buddha lay it down? On whose account? Through all ten matters the questioning ran the same way: the salt matter—laid down at Sāvatthī, in the Medicine Khandhaka; the liquor matter—laid down at Kosambī, on account of the bhikkhu Sāgata; the gold-and-silver matter—laid down at Rājagaha, on account of Upananda the Sakyan… Each one went back, for its provenance, into that law of the last chapter—the law that remembers every name.
Among the ten there was one craftier than the rest, called "established custom"—what has always been done thereby counts as lawful. Revata's answer is the passage in the whole storm most worth learning by heart:
"One should examine the suttas and the Vinaya, checking against the Dhamma and the discipline. If, without examining the Vinaya, without checking against the Dhamma and the discipline, a thing goes against the Dhamma—then if it has been done, it should not be done; and if it has not yet been done, neither should it be done."
Custom cannot certify itself. Even "it has always been so" must be brought before the suttas and the Vinaya and checked; what violates the Dhamma must stop, however long the habit.
Nor were the Vajjiputtaka bhikkhus idle—they prepared the finest robes and goods of Vesālī and brought them to Revata's attendant, asking him to put in a word. Revata dismissed the man with one sentence: "You foolish man! You would place me in the impure faction. Go!" Would you drag me into the impure party?
The Seven Hundred
The elders gathered at Vesālī. The most senior elder then in Jambudvīpa was Sabbakāmī—he, with Revata, Sambhūta, Vāsabhagāmika, and the other aged elders, "all had Ānanda as their preceptor": every one of them a disciple Ānanda had tonsured with his own hands. From the Buddha, one generation removed.
The procedure of the hearing accorded with the Dhamma at every step. The two parties each put forward their adjudicators, four facing four, eight completing the panel; the elders, considering that open questioning in the great assembly might "breed yet further disputes," first performed a formal motion and withdrew to the Vālika Grove to deliberate behind closed doors. In the grove, Revata put the questions and the elder Sabbakāmī answered; the ten practices were checked one by one; and as each was settled, a stick was laid down:
"This is the first matter: not Dhamma, not Vinaya, not what the Buddha taught."
Ten practices checked; ten sticks laid down. Then the elders said: what has been settled apart must be checked through once more before the whole assembly—"so that everyone may know." So they returned to the Saṅgha, and the same questions and answers were walked through from the beginning: ten practices, and ten sticks laid down again. Ten times the verdict came back the same: not Dhamma, not Vinaya, not what the Buddha taught.
Seven hundred arahants were present. History calls it the Council of the Seven Hundred—the Council of Vesālī—and the section of the Vinaya that records it bears the very name "The Seven Hundred's Collection of the Dhamma and Vinaya."
Breaking and Deliberating
Set the two storms side by side.
Devadatta's was a breaking: five rules of his own, his own formal acts, monks drawn away—the Vinaya masters named it the breaking of the dharma-wheel saṅgha. The Vesālī storm was no smaller than the first—the ten practices touched the root, and the two sides held out against each other for a hundred days—yet it did not break. Why not? Because from the moment Yasa refused his share of the gold and silver, every step walked a procedure the Buddha had left behind: the formal motion, the kamma, the naming of adjudicators, the checking against sutta and Vinaya, the verdict pronounced before the assembly. The Buddha had been gone a hundred years, and the law He laid down was still running—it took its own dispute and settled it clean.
This is the deepest layer of the Vinaya's craft. It is not merely a sheaf of rules; it had prepared in advance even the road for the day the rules themselves would be disputed. The tenth of the ten purposes—the long-enduring presence of the true Dharma—rests not on the articles never being challenged, but on there being, when they are challenged, a road to walk that accords with the Dhamma.
With this, Part Three is walked to its end.
We went in through the Vinaya's gate and looked at three things: how the first precept was laid down—case by case as offenses arose, the ten purposes, a law that remembers every name (chapter one); how the one Vinaya was passed down—five garments, one body, the shared core not moving by a thread (chapter two); and the Saṅgha's two storms—in the one that broke, the door of return stayed open to the end; in the one that deliberated, seven hundred elders used the procedure the Buddha left behind, and the law kept itself (chapter three).
One sentence to close Part Three: the Vinaya is a living law that grew—alive in being laid down case by case as offenses arose, alive in the fortnightly recitation, and alive in this: that after the storms had passed, the true Dharma still long endured.
But once the Vinaya has been walked through, a question begins slowly to surface. What the Vinaya governs is body and speech, the boundary within the Saṅgha; it can judge deeds, but it does not ask after the heart that moves them; it can hold the Saṅgha's boundary, but its light does not reach the beings outside the wall. When the Mahāyāna arose, these were exactly its two questions: what of the mind-ground? what of the beings?
The precept was about to be laid out from inside the Saṅgha's walls across the whole world of beings.