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The term pratimoska (Pali patimokkha) is one of the most interesting and important terms in Early Buddhism or, more precisely, in what some scholars have called Early Monastic Buddhism. Despite the importance of the term, however, its real meaning, and even the nature of its original significance for the Buddhist community, are still matters of debate. With Childers, most modern scholars seem to regard it as being the same word as pratimoksa in the sense of “binding, obligatory, obligation”, so that pratimoksa (with a long “a”) means “that which should be made binding”. A popular traditional explanation is that it means “release from”, the release in question being the release (moksa) from (prati) a breach of the precepts obtained by a monk when he confesses his offence at the fortnightly meeting of the chapter of the monastic community. According to a Tibetan tradition, possibly deriving from Indian sources, pratimoksa is to be understood as “individual liberation” (so sor thar pa) in the sense of the discipline that supports the individual liberation of the monk or nun. Whatever the literal meaning of the term, and whatever the nature of its original significance for the Buddhist community may have been, there is no doubt that it very early came to be applied to the set of 150 rules binding on the individual monk – rules that formed the backbone, so to speak, of the code of between 227 and 263 rules (the traditions differ) governing the system of fully developed cenobitical monasticism. By an extension of its meaning, the term also came to be applied, eventually, to the respective codes of all seven of the different socio-religious classes of persons comprising the Buddhist community. Besides the bhiksu-pratimoksa there was a bhiksuni-pratimoksa or code of rules for the nuns, a pratimoksa for the siksamana or female probationer, a pratimoksa for the stramanera or male novice, a pratimoksa for the stramanerika or female novice, a pratimoksa for the upasaka or male lay devotee, and a pratimoksa for the upasika or female lay devotee. Thus there were seven different pratimoksas or seven different sets of rules or sets of precepts which, though they were different as pratimoksas, were not always different in respect of the actual rules or precepts of which they consisted.
In those parts of the Buddhist world where the Precepts, i.e. the pratimoksa, took the place of the Going for Refuge as the highest common factor of Buddhism, the fact that the monks observed a much bigger number of precepts (the nuns, who were neither numerous nor influential, do not come into the picture), and the male and female lay devotees a very much smaller number, meant that the difference between the monks and the laity was exaggerated to such an extent that the unity of the Buddhist community was virtually disrupted. When we compare the different sets of precepts, however, from the 227-263 observed by the monk to the five (occasionally eight) observed by the lay devotee, we find that the precepts which they observe in common are of far greater importance than the precepts which are observed only by the monks. Indeed, we find that some of the precepts observed only by the monks represent, in fact, not additional precepts so much as either (a) a more thoroughgoing application of the precepts observed by the laity, i.e. the precepts which the monks and laity observe in common, or (b) an application of those precepts to certain more specific conditions, especially the conditions of cenobitical monastic life.
We also find that some of the precepts observed only by the monks are of no real ethical significance, being in some cases concerned with matters of a quite trivial nature and demonstrably the product of social conditions prevailing at the time of the Buddha or shortly after. Unfortunately, it is “precepts” of this sort which, only too often, have been emphasised at the expense of that part of the bhiksu code or rules which is of a genuinely ethical character, i.e. at the expense of what I have called the “Mula-Pratimoksa”, with the result that the division between the monks and the laity has widened, in some Buddhist countries, to so great an extent that one is justified in speaking of there being, in the religious or spiritual sense, first class Buddhists and second class Buddhists.
If the spiritual unity of the Buddhist community is to be preserved from disruption, therefore, what is needed is (a) an uncompromising assertion of the primacy of the Going for Refuge as the fundamental Buddhist act, and (b) a drastic reduction of the rules comprising the seven different pratimoksas to those precepts of genuinely ethical significance which they have in common, together with a firm insistence on the necessity of one’s actually observing those precepts. If the different pratimoksas are “reduced” in this way what one will have left will be, in effect, the Ten Precepts – though inasmuch as they include three purely “mental” precepts the Ten Precepts are, in fact, more comprehensive in scope than are all the seven pratimoksas combined.
The Ten Precepts therefore constitute the “Mula-Pratimoksa” or “Fundamental Pratimoksa”, as I have called it, the term being not a traditional one – though it might well have been – but one of my own devising. It is the Ten Precepts in the sense of the ten great ethical principles which, in reality, all practising Buddhists – and there is really no other kind – have in common. When one has refined the crude ore of popular Buddhist ethical and pseudo-ethical observance, whether “monastic” or “lay”, when one has removed the accretions and excrescences, and picked out the foreign bodies, one finds that one then has left the scintillating diamond, the gleaming gold, and the pure crystal and so on, of the Ten Precepts, i.e. one has left those ten great ethical principles which, as prolongations of the act of Going for Refuge into every aspect of one’s existence, govern and eventually transform one’s life.
It is for this reason that the Ten Precepts have been adopted by the Western Buddhist Order in preference to any of the other traditional sets of precepts, whether they are merely mentioned in the Buddhist scriptures or actually transmitted by the various Buddhist schools. For the Western Buddhist Order the Ten Precepts, as “Mula-Pratimoksa”, are in fact the discipline that supports the “individual liberation” not only of the monk and the nun, but of all members of the Buddhist community irrespective of life style.
Since there is only one set of precepts, i.e. the Ten Precepts, so far as the Western Buddhist Order is concerned there is only one “ordination”, i.e. the Dharmacari(ni) ordination, which means that in the Western Buddhist Order one is not ordained as a monk, or as a nun, or as a female probationer, or as a a male novice, or as a female novice, or as a male lay devotee, or as a female lay devotee, but simply and solely as a full, practising member of the Sangha or Buddhist Spiritual Community, though it is of course open to one to observe, as personal vows, any of the rules traditionally observed by the monk, or the nun, and so on. Strictly speaking, these rules are not observed in addition to the Ten Precepts but as representing the more intensive practice of one or more of the Precepts within a certain specific situation or for a certain purpose.
Not being a bhiksu, a member of the Western Buddhist Order does not wear the stitched yellow garment of the bhiksu, and not being an upasaka. He wears the ordinary “lay” dress of the society to which he belongs, thought without the implication that because he is not a monk he must therefore be a layman in the traditional Buddhist sense.
Thus from the reduction of the rules comprising the seven different pratimoksas to the Ten Precepts or “Mula-Pratimoksa” there follows a reduction – or rather an elevation – of the various socio-religious groups within the Buddhist community to one great Spiritual Community or Mahasangha. Such a reduction represents a return to, and a renewed emphasis upon, the basics of Buddhism. It can be regarded as innovative only by adopting a standpoint from which those basics are ignored or from which they cannot be seen for the accretions and excrescences by which they have become overlaid.
As we saw when considering the sources of the Ten Precepts in the Majjhima-Nikaya, Sariputta and the Buddha are represented in the Sevitabba-asevitabba-sutta as in turn expounding the Ten Precepts in front of an assembly of bhikdus or monks, though we may be sure that they were not “monks” in the full cenobitical sense of later times. Among the fifty suttas of the Anguttara-Nikaya, another canonical source of the Ten Precepts, there are three suttas in which the Ten Precepts are referred to as being observed (or not observed) by womenfolk (matugamo), by a female lay devotee, and by a female lay devotee who dwells at home with (or without) confidence, respectively. The Ten Precepts are thus shown to have been the common observance of persons of different socio-religious classes. Moreover, the Sevitabba-asevitabba-sutta concludes with the Buddha saying, with regard to all the teachings given in the sutta, including that of the Ten Precepts:
“And, Sariputta, if all nobles … all brahmans … all merchants … all workers could thus understand the meaning in full of this that was spoken by me in brief, for a long time it would be for their welfare and happiness. And, Sariputta, if the world with the devas, with the Maras and Brahmas, and if the generations of recluses and brahmans, devas and men could thus understand the meaning in full of this that was spoken of by me in brief, for a long time it would be for their welfare and happiness.”
This would suggest that the Ten Precepts represent the norm of ethical behaviour not only for all Buddhists but for all human beings – indeed, for all forms of self-conscious sentient existence.
Such being the case it is the Ten Precepts which, together with the Three Jewels or Three Refuges, constitute the surest possible basis for unity among Buddhists. The time has come for Buddhists to give greater emphasis to what is common and fundamental rather than to what is distinctive and superficial, and in this respect the Western Buddhist Order has, perhaps, given a lead to the rest of the Buddhist world. In the Ten Precepts we have a set of ethical principles that is both clear and comprehensive. There is no point whatever in taking a large number of precepts in the knowledge that one will not, in fact, be observing some of them. Such a proceeding, unfortunately so common in many parts of the Buddhist world, is extremely demoralising in its effects, and in fact undermines the whole basis of the ethical and spiritual life. In the Western Buddhist Order, therefore, the Ten Precepts are not only seen as “Mula-Pratimoksa”, but also taken with the intention that they should be observed more and more perfectly, as an expression of an ever deepening commitment to the Three Jewels.