Many people are unaware that, from the beginning, Buddhism has said as much about how you should behave in your daily life as it does about meditation or study. In this episode, I cover the first Buddhist teachings about moral conduct, and then talk about the evolution of the Buddhist precepts, including the code of discipline for fully ordained monks and nuns.
Quicklinks to Transcript Content:
Buddha’s First Teachings on Moral Behavior [3:48]
A Code of Discipline (Patimokkha) for the Ordained Sangha [9:25]
Gradual Creation of the Patimokkha, As Needed [14:33]
A Glimpse into the Content of the Patimokkha [17:05]
The Extra Precepts for Nuns (Bhikkhunis) [25:38]
The Patimokkha: Creating Ideal Conditions for Contemplative Practice [30:00]
Additional Purposes of the Patimokkha [32:43]
“Petty” Versus Major Vinaya Rules [36:25]
Moral behavior – meaning unselfish, compassionate, wise behavior – is so central to Buddhism, including Zen, that when you formally become a Buddhist in my Soto Zen lineage, you do so by vowing to keep a set of sixteen precepts. These precepts include not killing, stealing, lying, or indulging anger. I always find it interesting that formally becoming a Zen Buddhist does not require promising to meditate, or study the Buddhist teachings, or realize emptiness! Of course, it’s implied, if you’re becoming a Zen Buddhist, that you will avail yourself of these tools – but the most important thing is how you’re going to act in your everyday life, particular in relationship to other people. In other words, even if you don’t have the insight of a Buddha, you should at least try to act like one.
In this episode and the next, I want to give you a sense of how the Buddhist guidelines for appropriate and moral behavior have evolved from the beginning of the religion, over 2,500 years ago, up through today, where devout Buddhists, monastic and lay, still vow to follow moral precepts as a central part of their practice. In this first episode, I’ll cover the very first moral teachings in Buddhism, how they evolved into an elaborate system of precepts for ordained monks and nuns, and why appropriate behavior was viewed as so important for both monks and lay people. In the next episode, I’ll talk about how the precepts evolved in the Mahayana tradition, particularly in China and Japan, and how those changes affect the way modern Buddhists conceive of and use the precepts.
Buddha’s First Teachings on Moral Behavior
It all began with the Buddha’s first teaching, on the Eightfold Noble Path. The eight aspects of the Path of practice prescribed by the Buddha included meditation and cultivating wisdom, but it also included Appropriate Action, Appropriate Speech, and Appropriate Livelihood. Appropriate, or “Right,” Action was defined as “abstaining from taking life… stealing… and unchastity.” Appropriate Speech meant “abstaining from lying… divisive speech… abusive speech, [and] idle chatter.” For a lay person, Appropriate Livelihood meant refraining from “business in weapons… human beings… meat… intoxicants, and… poison,” and livelihoods that required “scheming, persuading, hinting, belittling, and pursuing gain with gain.” As far as I was able to figure out, that last bit – “pursuing gain with gain,” refers more or less to “wheeling and dealing” – or dealing in goods in a dishonest way in order gain advantage or make a profit.
What was the reason for such an emphasis on moral behavior if there is no God in Buddhism? That is, if there is no divine authority who has laid down a law and will be displeased if you fail to act in accord with it? This is an important question. Many theists react with disbelief when Buddhists tell them that morality is central to Buddhism, because it may appear that Buddhism lacks the critical point of reference – God – which would make sense of morality. However, this did not prevent the Buddha from observing how human nature works, and how human society works. He saw that certain actions – killing, stealing, illicit sexual conduct, lying, etc. – tended to have negative consequences. Not only did they often cause suffering to those on the receiving end of the action and cause social conflict, they tended to agitate and trouble the mind of the person performing the action.
In response to a question from his disciple Ananda, the Buddha explained the rewards of virtue by saying that “wholesome morality” resulted in “freedom from remorse.” He went on to state that freedom from remorse led to joy, joy led to rapture, rapture led to tranquility, and so on, through happiness, concentration, vision and knowledge according to reality, turning away and detachment, and finally “vision and knowledge with regard to Deliverance.” So, in other words, moral behavior is a prerequisite for enlightenment.
In addition, the Buddha described three benefits we give by abstaining from taking life, stealing, illicit sex, lying, and abusing intoxicants. Through this moral restraint, we give “freedom from danger, freedom from animosity, freedom from oppression to limitless numbers of beings.” In so doing, he points out, we ourselves gain “a share in limitless freedom from danger, freedom from animosity, and freedom from oppression.” Such freedom is extremely important for our ability to practice the other aspects of the Eightfold Path, such as mindfulness and concentration, which aren’t easy. If, on the other hand, we are constantly creating conflict and trouble through our behavior, we’ll have to be dealing with problems – or worrying about the potential for problems – rather than doing our spiritual practice. It’s far preferable, according to Buddhism, to maintain a clean conscience.
The five moral rules already mentioned – not killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, or abusing intoxicants – gradually become known as the Five Precepts, and to this day devout Buddhists voluntarily commit to them with the understanding that they are conducive to spiritual training. As a side note, the fifth precept actually entails abstaining from “intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness,” but in practice lay Buddhists are not required to completely abstain from intoxicants. The precept certainly suggests this and that is clearly the intention, but a lay Buddhist takes the five precepts voluntarily and there is no central authority determining whether a lay Buddhist’s practice is acceptably disciplined.
A Code of Discipline (Patimokkha) for the Ordained Sangha
On the other hand, a Buddhist monk, called a bhikkhu, or a Buddhist nun, called a bhikkhuni, has much less latitude in their behavior. Early on, followers of the Buddha sorted themselves into two main categories: householders, or lay people, and home-leavers, or the monks and nuns. As I described in Episode 17 (Life of Shakyamuni Buddha Part 3: Buddha’s First Sermons and Students, and the Early Sangha), home-leavers renounced their worldly goods, relationships, and status in order to engage in Buddhist practice full time, and lived on alms. The community of home-leavers was called the Sangha, and over time the Sangha came to be defined and governed by its adherence to a set of precepts specific to monastics, called the Patimokkha (or Pratimoksha, in Sanskrit).
If the Five Precepts of the lay person are presented as prerequisites for successful spiritual practice, the Patimokkha is presented as creating a way of life for the Sangha that is ideal for practice and enlightenment. As I discussed in Episode 17, while it was acknowledged that lay students of the Buddha were capable of the highest levels of spiritual attainment, the lay life was viewed as a “confining, dusty path” which often presented significant challenges to those seeking to attain liberation on the Buddhist path.
In addition, the future of Buddhism was seen, more or less, to rest in the hands of the ordained Sangha. That is, the stability and strength of the religion as a whole relied on the community of monks and nuns who were completely dedicated to the practice of Buddhism and to teaching the Buddhist path to others. The stability and strength of the ordained Sangha, in turn, was dependent on its Patimokkha, or code of discipline, which was elucidated and explained in the part of the Buddhist scriptures called the Vinaya. (Throughout this episode, I’ll use the terms Patimokkha and Vinaya more or less interchangeably to refer to the code of discipline for fully ordained Buddhist monks and nuns, but keep in mind the Patimokkha is the list of monastic precepts specifically, while the Vinaya includes the precepts as well as the scriptures, explanations, ceremonies, and traditions surrounding the them.)
The importance of the ordained Sangha’s code of discipline is strongly emphasized in the Pali Canon, where the Buddha explains to his disciple Sariputta that there had been quite a number of Buddhas – or completely awakened teachers – throughout the history of the world, and that some of them established a holy life that lasted a long time, but some of them did not. All the Buddhas had taught authentic Dhamma (truth, or teaching) and led disciples to full enlightenment, but some didn’t establish a “Patimokkha,” or code of discipline, for their community of followers. Subsequently, their Dhamma died out around the same time their enlightened disciples did. That is, essentially, a Buddha’s Dhamma won’t outlast him and people he directly teaches unless he establishes a code of discipline for the community. In the Pali Canon, Shakyamuni Buddha compares a Patimokkha to a thread holding together a bunch of cut flowers. Without such a thread to bind them together, when the wind blows the flowers will be “scattered about, whirled about, or destroyed…”
It’s difficult to overstate the emphasis the Pali Canon makes on the importance of the Vinaya. The Buddha often referred to the spiritual path he was teaching as “Dhamma-Vinaya” (or Doctrine-Discipline), implying that ethical training and cultivating wisdom were inseparable. In the Vinaya texts it also states that “Though the Buddha’s discourses (sutra) and advanced doctrines (abhidharma) may be forgotten, so long as the vinaya still exists the Buddha’s teachings yet endure.”
Gradual Creation of the Patimokkha, As Needed
Before I get to why the Vinaya was held as being so central to the existence of Buddhism, I want to give you a sense of what the code of discipline for fully ordained Buddhist monks and nuns consists of.
To begin, the Buddha did not create a Patimokkha all at once. After he explained to his disciple Sariputta that his Dhamma will last a long time only if he establishes one, Sariputta naturally requested him to create a Patimokkha right away. However, the Buddha answered that it wasn’t yet time to do so. He promised that as soon as problems arose in the Sangha, he’d make the course of training known in order to “ward off those conditions causing the outflows” (“outflows” being defilements that increase your attachment to the world of suffering, such as sensual desire or ignorance).
Even when problems started happening in the Sangha, though, the Buddha made only one rule at a time, in direct response to a particular offence. For example, the very first rule he made was after one of his monks was convinced by his family to have sex with his former wife in order that she would conceive and provide the family with an heir. When this action came to the Buddha’s attention, he said it had been entirely inappropriate behavior for a monk, and set for the first rule of training: Any monk indulging in sexual intercourse would be “defeated” (parajika in Pali), and therefore no longer a monk or part of the monastic community.
Over time, the number of precepts gradually grew as the monks came up with new and inventive ways to misbehave, until there were 227 rules for male monastics, or bhikkhus, and 311 for the nuns, or bhikkhunis. (I’ll explain later why the women have more.) (Note: These numbers are for the Pali version of the Patimokkha; there are other versions of the Buddhist monastic code, such as the one that made its way to China, which end up with slightly different numbers of rules but for the most part the codes are very similar.)
A Glimpse into the Content of the Patimokkha
So, what are these hundreds of rules for fully ordained Buddhist monks and nuns? I’ll share with you a sampling of the some of the most important or typical rules. I thought you might find these rules interesting for their own sake – especially if you keep in mind that fully ordained Buddhist monastics have kept these rules for 2,500 years! Although they may not seem directly relevant to the practice of lay people, they reflect an ideal of Buddhist behavior that is informative even if it’s understood that not all Buddhists can live this way.
As I describe the rules, I organize them by the categories used in the Vinaya – that is, by the severity of the penalty for breaking the rule. For a full list the Patimokkha rules, visit the Access to Insight website and search for Patimokkha. (Note: the numbers I cite for each category apply to the Pali Patimokkha for male monastics; I’ll say something about the extra rules for nuns in a bit.)
Defeat: There are only four rules that are characterized by parajika, or defeat, meaning that if the Sangha examines the evidence and concludes a monastic has broken the rule, they are expelled from the community and no longer a monk or nun. These are 1) sexual intercourse (with human or animal); 2) theft (of something valuable, with intention); 3) killing a human being (including by having them killed or encouraging their suicide), and 4) claiming a superior state or spiritual knowledge you don’t actually have.
Formal Meeting of the Sangha: The breakage of one of the 13 rules in the second-most-serious category requires a formal meeting of the monastic community. If the Sangha decides a rule has indeed been broken, the transgressing monastic is put on probation for six days, during which time (as Thanissaro Bhikkhu describes in his essay “Introduction to the Patimokkha Rules”), the monastic is “stripped of his seniority, is not trusted to go anywhere unaccompanied by four other monks of regular standing, and daily has to confess his offense to every monk who lives in or happens to visit the monastery. At the end of his probation, twenty monks have to be convened to reinstate him to his original status.” The kinds of offenses that trigger this kind of penalty include:
- intimate physical contact with the opposite sex driven by lust
- lewd or flirtatious speech to someone of opposite sex
- behaving inappropriately or neglecting practice in order to become popular with lay people
- making an unfounded charge to a bhikkhu that he has committed a parajika offence, in hopes of having him disrobed
- persisting in one’s attempts at a schism within the Sangha, after the third announcement of a formal rebuke in a meeting of the Community
- acting as a go-between to arrange a marriage, an affair, or a date between a man and a woman not married to each other
Confession with Forfeiture: This is a less serious but practical category of rules which govern the material lives of monastics, who are supported by alms from the laity and are supposed to limit their personal belongings to what is absolutely necessary, such as their robes, a begging bowl, a blanket, etc. Breakage of one of the 30 rules in this category require “confession with forfeiture” – that is, the monastic has to admit to the wrongdoing and then give up the item in question to the community. Transgressions in this category include:
- taking something for oneself that was given to the community;
- accepting money (directly, as opposed to food or other requisites);
- keeping an extra alms bowl for more than ten days
- [and] various ways monastics could maneuver to get better material possessions instead of simply accepting what they’re given within the prescribed parameters
Confession: There are 96 offenses in the Patimokkha that can be cleared by confession or acknowledgment to another monk. These include:
- killing a living (breathing) being (other than a person)
- damaging living plants
- evasive speech and causing frustration
- spending a night under the same house as a woman (in a situation that could lead to inappropriate interactions or suspicion)
- convincing a donor to give something to a specific individual instead of to the community
- eating outside of established meal times
- drinking alcohol
- making an insult made with malicious intent to another bhikkhu
- criticism of the training rules
Trainings: There are 75 training rules governing monastic conduct, etiquette, good manners, and mindfulness. These rules are meant to guide the monastic training and aren’t associated with specific penalties. These include monastic aspirations such as:
- wearing one’s robes appropriately and modestly
- not swinging the arms while walking, or sitting with “arms akimbo”
- receiving alms food appreciatively
- not taking up an overlarge mouthful of food or opening one’s mouth until the portion of food has been brought to it
- not teaching the Dhamma in inappropriate situations, such as when someone is holding a weapon
Settlement of Disputes: Finally, aside from a handful of rules in other small categories, there are seven rules governing the settlement of issues within the monastic Sangha, particularly as regards the breakage of rules. These seven rules read as a remarkably democratic and modern system of community justice, and include the requirement of a face-to-face verdict, the possibility of a verdict of innocence based on past insanity, and a stipulation allowing a decision by majority vote if the Sangha can’t agree on an outcome unanimously. The seven rules also include a remarkable option called “covering over as with grass.” This applies when monastics on both sides of an issue have acted in ways that are “unworthy of a contemplative” and agree that continuing with the dispute will only result in more divisiveness. All the monastics in the monastery have to gather, while a representative of each side makes a blanket confession for their side of the argument, after which the issue is considered resolved (or, as the name suggests, at the very least “covered over” and set aside).
The Extra Precepts for Nuns (Bhikkhunis)
For most women with modern sensibilities, it’s disturbing to hear that Buddhist nuns, or bhikkhunis, have 311 Patimokkha rules (in the Pali recension of the monastic code) as compared to the 227 rules of the male bhikkhus. In addition, the bhikkhunis have to abide by eight “rules of respect” that subordinate the bhikkhuni Sangha to the bhikkhu one, and individual bhikkhunis to all individual bhikkhus. According to the story, when women were pressuring the Buddha to accept them into the Sangha (that is, give them ordination into the homeless life), his condition was that they accept and follow the eight rules of respect. The first of these states that a nun who has been fully ordained for even 100 years must respectfully treat a monk as a senior even if he’s only been ordained for a day. The rules also require communities of nuns to involve nearby monks in their bimonthly confession ceremonies, and invite admonition from the monks even though no nun is ever allowed to admonish a monk.
It’s possible to interpret the Buddha’s special requirements for the nuns in different ways. On the one hand, you could see it as a sign of the sexism of his time and conclude that he wasn’t immune to it despite his spiritual attainments. On the other hand, you could give the Buddha the benefit of the doubt and recognize how incredibly radical it was that he would ordain women at all. In a time and culture where women were subordinate to men at all stages of life and had very little freedom, the Buddha was giving an official way to leave all of that and join a (mostly) self-governing community of women devoted entirely to spiritual practice. You can imagine the eight rules of respect appeasing the concerns of social conservatives to some extent, allowing the bhikkhuni Sangha to operate in relative peace. This is probably why the first Buddhist nuns accepted the extra rules without argument.
As for the additional Patimokkha rules for nuns, I don’t have time to go into their fascinating composition and history in this episode, but essentially the bhikkhuni rules evolved separately from the bhikkhu ones. Of the 311 rules for nuns, 181 are shared directly with the monks, some of them are variations on those of the monks, and 85 have no direct correspondence to the monks’ rules. Many of these unique rules were created by the bhikkhunis themselves. For example, there’s a rule forbidding a nun from accepting food from a man who is lusting after her (frankly, this scenario is pretty easy to picture), and a rule essentially forbidding cliques, where groups of bhikkhunis live “entangled” and behave badly together and hide one another’s faults. There are also a couple rules preventing exploitation of bhikkunis by bhikkhus, forbidding nuns from attending on monks while they’re eating, and forbidding monks from having nuns do their laundry (the latter rule is actually part of the monks’ Patimokkha). Notably, the penalties for sexual behavior and touching – short of actual intercourse – are significantly stiffer for bhikkhunis, but you could interpret this as a way to protect the nuns from pressure and harassment by men (because they could use the severity of their rules as an excuse to avoid any situations where they could be taken advantage of).
The Patimokkha: Creating Ideal Conditions for Contemplative Practice
Now that you know some of the actual Patimokkha rules, it’s probably become clear that the code of discipline for Buddhist monastics serves a number of different purposes.
First, as one might expect, the Patimokkha gets more specific and exacting than the Five Precepts that also apply to lay people. For example, the first of the Five Precepts is “I undertake the precept to refrain from destroying living creatures,” but the Patimokkha specifically forbids monastics from taking the life of anything that breathes, as well as damaging living plants, digging in the soil (because they may inadvertently kill the tiny creatures in it), or even drinking or pouring out water on the ground if they know it contains living beings. The idea is that any killing causes harm and therefore disturbs the mind and obstructs one’s practice, and therefore, ideally, you refrain from doing anything that could harm a living thing. Essentially, this is taking the admonition not to kill to such an extreme that not everyone could live according to these rules; someone has to raise food to feed even the monastics, and that entails digging in the soil and damaging living plants.
How is this fair, if lay people have to kill to some extent (as well as handle money, etc.) in order that monastics can dwell in a rarefied state ideal for contemplative practice? Well, in short, the whole question of fairness is a relatively modern one. Throughout history, and in most of the societies in which there are fully ordained Buddhist monastic orders, lay and monastic Buddhists are seen as mutually dependent and supportive. Lay people, who chose to live as they do for one reason or another, support the monastics materially and thereby gain merit by doing so. The monastics, in turn, rely on the lay people and return the favor by teaching the Dhamma, upholding the tradition, and practicing diligently (thereby increasing the merit of the lay people’s support). Keep in mind that throughout much of the traditionally Buddhist world, people have assumed that we’re all reborn after we die – giving lay people the opportunity to train as monastics in a future life if they’re so inclined.
Additional Purposes of the Patimokkha
Anyway, I digress – back to the multiple purposes of the Patimokkha. First, the code creates ideal conditions for contemplative spiritual practice by ensuring monastics completely abstain from any kind of killing, stealing, lying, use of intoxicants, sexual activity of any kind, or any kind of self-serving, pleasure-seeking, or frivolous activity. Second, the Patimokkha effectively prevents the monastics from engaging in any kind of work for money or other worldly affairs, making them completely dependent on lay people for alms. This makes them concentrate on spiritual endeavors, and also compels them to act in ways that will inspire the laity to support them.
This need to inspire the laity brings me to the third purpose of the Patimokkha, which is maintaining the reputation of individual monastics and the Sangha as a whole. There a quite a few rules which deal with monastic comportment, as well as guiding a monastic’s behavior so that she not only minimizes temptations to break the rules, she minimizes the chances that anyone would suspect her of breaking the rules, or of any behavior unbefitting for a contemplative. An example of the this is the injunction against handling money. Naturally, lay people wanting to support monastics may on occasion be inspired to hand them money as well as food, medicine, or material for robes. However, people complained to the Buddha when they saw one of his monks accept a coin from a donor, saying, “Just as we lay people accept money, so too do these Buddhist monks!” While you can easily imagine how handling money could lead to corruption, the origin of this rule actually has to do with maintaining the respect of lay supporters.
A fourth, and extremely significant, purpose of the Patimokkha is maintaining harmony and order within the monastic Sangha. There is a reason why the ordained Buddhist Sangha is one of the oldest human institutions in continuous existence, largely unchanged for over 2,500 years: the Patimokkha, along with the larger Vinaya within which it’s contained, carefully governs the relationships and activities within the Sangha. There are rules requiring monastics to treat each other respectfully, refrain from gossiping, complaining, and making false accusations, and refrain from hoarding possessions or taking advantage of others.
As we have seen, in the Patimokkha there are rules governing the settlement of disputes, and parts of the larger Vinaya lay out the appropriate conditions and ceremonies for monastic ordination, requiring each newly ordained monastic to go through five years of junior training under a mentor. In short, the activities of the Sangha as an institution are highly regulated; although this hasn’t prevented problems or corruption entirely, there is always the Vinaya to return to when the Sangha needs to be stabilized or purified.
Finally, in addition to these four purposes, the Vinaya links a monastic order to the Buddha and establishes its legitimacy, defines religious identity, and distinguishes the differences between ordained and lay practitioners.
“Petty” Versus Major Vinaya Rules
Before I end this episode, I want to share a Vinaya-related story. According to the Pali Canon, the Buddha told his disciple Ananda that, after the Buddha’s death, the Sangha had the option of nullifying the “petty” Vinaya rules. Apparently, Ananda was so astonished at this statement, he neglected to ask the Buddha which of the rules could be considered petty. When the ordained Sangha convened after the Buddha died in order to establish the official doctrine and code of discipline, they decided they’d better keep all the rules, just in case.
There’s more to be said about the Vinaya, how it’s maintained, and how it affects the process of ordination for monks and nuns. I’ll continue the story next week, including the ways lay people practice with the precepts in Theravadin Buddhism. Then we’ll follow the evolution of the precepts in Mahayana Buddhism in China and Japan.
Bodiford, William ed. Going Forth. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press: 2005.
Horner, I. B., M.A. The Book Of The Discipline (Vinaya-Pitaka) Vol. I. (Suttavibhanga). London: Pali Text Society, 1949
Thanissaro Bhikku. The Buddhist Monastic Code: The Patimokkha Training Rules. Valley Center, CA: Metta Forest Monastery, 1994.
Yifa, Venerable. Origins of Buddhist Monastic Codes in China (Classics in East Asian Buddhism): an annotated translation and study of the Chanyuan qinggui. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002.
 “Magga-vibhanga Sutta: An Analysis of the Path” (SN 45.8), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn45/sn45.008.than.html.
 “Vanijja Sutta: Business (Wrong Livelihood)” (AN 5.177), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 3 July 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an05/an05.177.than.html.
 “Maha-cattarisaka Sutta: The Great Forty” (MN 117), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.117.than.html.
 “Virtue: sila”, edited by Access to Insight. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sila/index.html.
 “Abhisanda Sutta: Rewards” (AN 8.39), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an08/an08.039.than.html.
 “The Five Precepts: pañca-sila”, edited by Access to Insight. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sila/pancasila.html.
 Horner 1949, pg 14
 “Vinaya Pitaka: The Basket of the Discipline”, edited by Access to Insight. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 17 December 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/vin/index.html.
 Bodiford 2005
 “Introduction to the Patimokkha Rules”, by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 17 December 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/vin/sv/bhikkhu-pati-intro.html.
 “Bhikkhu Pāṭimokkha: The Bhikkhus’ Code of Discipline”, translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 17 December 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/vin/sv/bhikkhu-pati.html.
 “The Bhikkhus’ Rules: A Guide for Laypeople”, compiled and explained by Bhikkhu Ariyesako. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 17 December 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/ariyesako/layguide.html.
 Bodiford 2005, Introduction