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64 Cha pter Four “Profit and Honor” A Critique of Sedentary Monasticism I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches. —John Wesley, founder of the Methodist church1 The Râ½¾rapâla is in many ways a Puritan tract. Its authors were clearly disillusioned with what the institution of Buddhist monasticism had become in their day. Like the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reformers in the Church of England , they championed an ascetic vision, a return to the righteous times of the first disciples. Sharp-tongued and curmudgeonly, the authors of the Râ½¾rapâla set out to defend the Buddha’s Dharma against the tide of monastic laxity and wantonness to which they saw it succumbing. Accusing their monastic confrères of fawning after patrons and consorting with householders, they describe a sa²gha that had accommodated itself to its socioeconomic environment with considerable aplomb. And they were, to say the least, not very happy about this. These concerns of the Râ½¾rapâla show it to be closely allied with a significant strand of early Mahâyâna literature, namely, the sharp criticism of sedentary monasticism and the elevation of ascetically inclined forest dwellers. Given that monks for most of the history of Indian Buddhism participated in complex relationships with the laity and their fellow monks, our contemporary caricature of the ideal monk is a far cry from how the average monk in the first few centuries of the Common Era actually lived and practiced his religion. Meditating monks were the exception, not the rule.2 The distribution of resources, in contrast, was a constant problem requiring extensive legal maneuvering in the formation of monastic law codes. It was in this context that reform-minded monks began authoring strong reactions against what had become Mainstream “Profit and Honor” 65 monasticism, and some of these reactions find expression in a number of Mahâyâna texts. Few Mahâyâna sûtras, however, rail against the establishment quite like the Râ½¾rapâla. Its authors repeatedly characterize their contemporaries as given to arrogance, envy, conceit, and pride. Such monks constantly engage in backbiting of their fellow recluses while shamelessly soliciting wealthy patrons in towns and villages. Indeed, our author tells us: A householder is not as covetous with passions as these [corrupt monks] are after going forth. They would have wives, sons, and daughters just like a householder. At which household they are favored with robes, alms, and requisites, they are desirous of the [householder’s] wife, for these ignoble ones are always under the spell of defilements.3 These charges may not be as outlandish as they sound. When we have extracanonical sources, generally on the periphery of the Indian Buddhist world, we find similar complaints. In describing the moral decay of the sa²gha in medieval Sri Lanka, for example, the author of the Mahâvaºsa notes: “In the villages owned by the Sangha the morality of the monks consisted only in supporting their wives and children.”4 From the other side of the Indianized Buddhist world—and at a time that may be roughly contemporaneous with the composition of the Râ½¾rapâla—a similar portrait of monastic behavior would have looked all too familiar to our author. Among the documents from the ancient Shanshan kingdom found at Niya (in modern Xinjiang, China), we find records of monks who gave their daughters away in marriage to other monks (no. 418); injunctions that imposed fines on monks who arrived at the uposatha ceremony in householder’s garb (no. 489); some who owned slaves and kept servants (no. 506)—in short, monks who in many respects led lives within the household and not in segregated communities.5 Whether such activities of Buddhist professionals were common outside of Niya is difficult to know, but the remarks in the Râ½¾rapâla are suggestive.6 What makes such behavior by these monks all the more reprehensible, the Râ½¾rapâla continues, is their hypocrisy: “They always say to householders: ‘These passions are not to be followed; they will cause you to fall into the realm of animals, of...

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