I forsake the Buddha, I forsake the Dharma, I forsake the Sangha - not

Had our Religious Ethics class recite part of the monastic rule (vinaya) for Buddhist nuns today. This was in part because we're a day shy of the New Moon and the Pratimoksa Sutra is (supposed to be) recited every New and Full Moon, and in part because we'll be talking soon about the significance of sutra recitation as a practice (ultimately the sutra recites you). But mainly it was because the Pratimoksa Sutra with its 365 rules (we read a translation of the Tibetan Mulasarvastivada version) is deadly dull if you just read it. Texts from oral traditions, full of repetition, can be tedious to read at the best of time, even when they're not a deliberately expansive list of prohibitions.

But texts like these are not meant to be read. Given a chance to speak, the Pratimoksa Sutra proves utterly fascinating in content, form and performance. It's a community constituting and reconstituting itself in synch with the cycles of nature. It's a work of casuistry as well as of law. Like a lump of amber if contains particular cases of ethical infraction from the distant past enough to supply a historical ethnography of the early sangha; when you think of them recited over the centuries you need to switch to the metaphor of a pearl. But I also wanted students to feel what it is to recite such a text - to feel the words on your lips, resonating in your chest - and to recite them together with your fellows. For the Pratimoksa Sutra names (so you, the reciter, name) all manner of proscribed activities, and even things you should never ever say; usually they are repeated, too, in a formula both mnemonic and therapeutic. An example:

If a bhiksuni [nun], agitated by anger, becomes enraged and says, "I forsake the Buddha, I forsake the Dharma, I forsake the Sangha. The Buddhist renunciants are not the only ones who keep moral discipline, have qualities, are chaste and virtuous. The brahmins and other renunciants also keep moral discipline, have qualities, are chaste and virtuous. I can practice celibacy among them." Then the bhiksunis should say, "Noble Sister, you should not become agitated with anger, enraged and discontent, saying 'I forsake the Buddha, I forsake the Dharma, I forsake the Sangha. The Buddhist renunciants are not the only ones who keep moral discipline, have qualities, are chaste and virtuous. The brahmins and other renunciants also keep moral discipline, have qualities, are chaste and virtuous. I can practice celibacy among them.' Noble Sister, we admonish you to give up such a nonvirtuous view." If the bhiksuni gives up her misconduct when admonished thus by the bhiksunis, good. If she does not, she should be admonished and instructed properly two or even three times so that she may give up her misconduct. If, after being admonished and instructed peroperly two or even three times, she gives it up, good. If she does not, then the bhiksuni commits a sanghavasesa on the third declaration. (Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Sisters in Solitude: Two Traditions of Buddhist Monastic Ethics for Women [Albany: SUNY Press, 1996], 86-7)

Now, what does it do to you to utter the words renouncing the Three Jewels every fortnight, even in this setting? (Significantly it's only twice; some other proscribed utterances are repeated three times.) Won't it give you ideas, plant seeds? It is hard not to think of Foucault's analysis of the baneful influence of the confessional, with your confessor teaching you a whole vocabulary of vices you might never have thought of on your own. And yet this makes for a fruitful contrast. The iteration of vices (others we read were assorted flavors of lust and flirtation, covetousness, suicide, and indignation at being treated unfairly by your fellow nuns) in this setting is a kind of preventive medicine. Since the whole Sutra was memorized, the words and indeed the community regularly performing it would spring to mind the instant one of these thoughts or feelings arose in an individual nun's life - as, it seems to acknowledge, they almost inevitably will. In the short run it might set your mind racing at new possibilities of folly, but ultimately - with the help of the Sutra and of your sister nuns - it will let you master them.

... it is difficult to tame the wild horse of the mind.
This bridle of the Pratimoksa
Drives in the appropriate sharp spikes. (79)

Does it really? Even if it doesn't give you new ideas for vice, does not its formulaic character mean reciters will only go through the motions of reflection and repentance, making them less likely to take the wild horse of the mind than before? Might it not make people morbidly obsessed with infractions and overlook the positive new form of life the life of the renunciant is supposed to make possible? It's a gamble, sure. But the Pratimoksa Sutra knows all that. Recite with me:

If a bhiksuni, at the bimonthly recitation of the Pratimoksa Sutra, belittles the precepts saying, "Bhiksunis, what is the use of our reciting these very trivial, petty precepts of the Pratimoksa Sutra every half-month, when it just causes remorse, weighs on our minds, and makes us negative," she commits a payantika. (99)