In the Buddha's Words - Bhikkhu Bodhi [60]
Finally, with section 6, we come to a selection of texts on “the Community.” I use this word to refer broadly to both the Saṅgha, the monastic order, and the civil society in which any branch of the monastic order must be rooted. From the Nikāyas, it is clear that while the Buddha principally aimed at guiding people toward moral and spiritual progress, he was fully aware that their capacity for moral and spiritual development depends upon the material conditions of the society in which they live. He acutely realized that when people are mired in poverty and oppressed by hunger and want, they will find it hard to hold to a path of moral rectitude. The sheer pain of hunger, and the need to ward off the elements and provide for their families, will compel them to stoop to types of behavior they would avoid if they could obtain fair employment and adequate remuneration for their services. Thus he saw that the provision of economic justice is integral to social harmony and political stability.
The first two texts included here prescribe two sets of guidelines for the monastic order. Both are excerpts from a long discourse the Buddha spoke shortly after the death of Mahāvīra, the leader of the Jains. According to the Nikāyas, following their leader’s death, the Jain monastic order was already beginning to split up, and the Buddha must have felt compelled to lay down guidelines to protect his own order from sharing the same fate after his passing. Text IV,6(1) enumerates six qualities that lead to quarrels and disputes, which the monks should be wary of and strive to eliminate when they discover them within themselves. Although these guidelines are laid down for the monks, they can easily be given a wider application to any organization, secular or religious, for it is the same six factors that lie at the bottom of all conflicts. The positive counterpart to this set of cautionary guidelines is Text IV,6(2), which enumerates “six principles of cordiality” that lead to love, respect, and harmony among the members of the community. Again, with appropriate adaptation, these principles—loving acts of body, speech, and mind; sharing of possessions; common observance of precepts; and unity of views—can be given an extended application beyond a monastic order to the wider community. The same sutta provides more detailed guidelines for preserving harmony in the monastic order after the Buddha’s death, but these deal with aspects of monastic discipline too specialized for the present anthology.
Text IV,6(3), a long excerpt from the Assalāyana Sutta, captures the Buddha in debate with a precocious brahmin pundit about the brahmins’ claims on behalf of the caste system. In the Buddha’s age the caste system was only beginning to take shape in northeast India and had not yet spawned the countless subdivisions and rigid regulations that were to manacle Indian society through the centuries. Society was divided into four broad social classes: the brahmins, who performed the priestly functions prescribed in the Vedas; the khattiyas, the nobles, warriors, and administrators; the vessas, the merchants and agriculturalists; and the suddas, the menials and serfs. There were also those outside the pale of the four main classes, who were regarded as even lower than the suddas. From the Nikāyas it appears that the brahmins, while vested with authority in religious matters, had not yet attained the unchallengeable hegemony they were to gain after the appearance of such works as the Laws of Manu, which laid down the fixed rules of the caste system. They had, however, already embarked on their drive for domination