The Buddha’s Collected Teachings Repudiating Those Who Violate the Discipline
Introduction

Repudiating Those Who Violate the Discipline is located in the General Sūtra section of the Degé Kangyur and is structured in eight chapters followed by a long epilogue. Although it purports to be a text on discipline and how it is violated, its main doctrinal thrust is to set out a view of Buddhist practice based uncompromisingly on the ultimate view of emptiness. To practice or teach others in ways that do not fully embrace that ultimate view turns out to be the transgression of discipline to which the sūtra’s title refers, and the Buddha goes even further in insisting that those who follow such mistaken ways are not only failing to follow his teachings correctly but are also not qualified to receive offerings and are not even to be considered members of the Buddhist saṅgha.

The sūtra begins with Śāriputra expressing his astonished admiration of how the Buddha has been able to formulate and express teachings about what is intrinsically inexpressible‍—the nature of his awakening to how phenomena are uncompounded, unarisen, and devoid of distinguishing marks and characteristics. The Buddha then uses various analogies to reinforce how paradoxical it is indeed that there can be any teachings at all on emptiness free of apprehending, and he elaborates on the ultimate nature of phenomena.

Next, the Buddha differentiates between virtuous friends and evil ones, emphasizing that evil friends are those who cause others to apprehend phenomena mistakenly. This teaching is followed by a discussion on the meaning of recollecting the Buddha, which is described here as a state in which all directing of the attention on an object or notion of any kind is avoided. The Buddha then explains how a virtuous friend must teach others, insisting on the nature of the correct view. He elaborates on the meaning of the noble saṅgha, revealing that there will be monks in the future who will deceive householders with wrong teachings in the pursuit of their own livelihood. The Buddha also warns against the many groups of non-Buddhists who will reject the unsurpassed and perfect awakening of the buddhas, and thus cause the Dharma Jewel to disappear.

This is followed by a detailed presentation of ten faults that lead monks who violate their discipline to rebirth in the lower realms. The Buddha gives predictions of monks who will teach an impure Dharma in the future, supporting these predictions with a lengthy discussion of badly behaved monks who became highly influential in the past and spread mistaken interpretations of the Dharma in the world. Śākyamuni then discusses several of his past lives in which he worshiped and pleased countless other buddhas with the wish to attain awakening but lacked the view of emptiness free of apprehending. Finally, the epilogue highlights the need to abandon all clinging to the view of a self, and it cautions against the numerous non-Buddhists and badly behaved monks who will lead immature beings astray.

As the title suggests, one of the primary concerns of this sūtra is the identification and repudiation of those who have violated their discipline. The Buddha makes it clear that what determines the purity of one’s discipline is not just how one maintains the formal vows one has taken, but is even more a question of whether one has a proper understanding of emptiness in terms of the nonapprehending of phenomena, as he has taught.

Not to follow properly the teachings he has been at pains to formulate on this crucial point is a betrayal of them, to the point that people who fail to take full notice of them are not worthy of offerings made to the saṅgha, and are not to be considered his followers at all. The Buddha argues throughout that such people must be excluded from the monastic saṅgha, because their presence compromises one of the saṅgha’s primary functions as the proper recipient of gifts that are given through faith. In this regard the sūtra makes frequent mention of the necessary qualities seen as criteria for the worthiness of the saṅgha to be an object of refuge overall, for the worthiness of members of the saṅgha to be recipients of offerings individually, and by extension for their worthiness to teach and guide others‍—these qualities being most often mentioned in the context of their absence in those who violate discipline.1 When such people hide in the monastic ranks, we are told, they are no better than thieves and robbers who steal the Dharma. The worst of them are those members of the Buddhist saṅgha who teach a corrupted Dharma based on their misunderstanding or rejection of the doctrine of emptiness as nonapprehending. The severity of the negative karmic consequences that these beings incur is compounded by the fact that their teachings lead beings further from awakening and result in the corruption, suppression, and destruction of the Dharma.

This sūtra is notable for how it places the view of emptiness and nonapprehending firmly in the realm of discipline (śīla). While discipline is usually explained more in terms of placing restraint on physical and verbal behavior through the observation of rules and precepts‍—the training of the mind being rather the domain of meditative absorption (samādhi) and wisdom (prajñā)‍—this text makes it clear that the commitment to follow the Buddha’s instructions and through them attain awakening is also a precept in the domain of discipline, yet has to be accompanied by a profound understanding of the nature of that awakening.

Translations of this sūtra survive in both Chinese and Tibetan, but no Sanskrit source has been identified to date. The Tibetan translation was completed in the late eighth or early ninth century by the Indian scholar Dharmaśrīprabha and the translator-monk Palgyi Lhünpo at the Lhenkar (Tib. lhan dkar ma) Palace, and it is included in the Lhenkarma (or Denkarma) royal catalog of works that was compiled in the early ninth century.2 Both translators also worked on the Tibetan translation of the vinaya literature, and Palgyi Lhünpo is given the title “chief editor” (zhu chen) in other colophons.

The Chinese translation (Taishō 653)3 was completed by the renowned translator Kumārajīva (344–413 ᴄᴇ) in 405 ᴄᴇ, during his stay in the former capital of Chang’an, modern-day Xi’an. Chung-hui Tsui has identified one Chinese sūtra manuscript as the Buddha­piṭakaduḥśīlani­grahasūtra in her study of scriptural calligraphy based on the Buddhist manuscripts excavated from various sites in Turfan (an oasis located on the Silk Route along the northern edge of the Taklamakan desert).4 According to Tsui, this manuscript is the latest transcribed Buddhist manuscript of the Gaochang period of Northern Liang (444–60 ᴄᴇ).5

Both the Tōhoku and Taishō canonical catalogs link Taishō 653 to another Tibetan sūtra translation, Toh 123, which appears to be a direct translation of the Chinese in Taishō 653, rather than of a Sanskrit source, as seems to have been the case with our text, Toh 220.6 Based on a cursory comparison of Toh 123 and Toh 220, we can say that their content and structure are generally very similar. However, these two Tibetan translations also differ in many respects, including their titles, their length,7 the number of chapters, the initial settings, and the literary styles and lexicons.

Repudiating Those Who Violate the Discipline does not rank among the best-known sūtras extensively quoted in Buddhist literature, and does not seem to have received attention in Indian treatises. However, it has been mentioned or cited by a range of Tibetan authors over the centuries, including Gampopa and Drolungpa Lodrö Jungne in the eleventh, Tsongkhapa in the fourteenth, Pawo Tsuklal Trengwa in the sixteenth, Karma Chagmé and Drigung Chungtsang in the seventeenth, Yongdzin Yeshé Gyaltsen in the eighteenth, and Shabkar and Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Thayé in the nineteenth. Nevertheless, most of these citations refer to the later chapters that speak of the decline of the Dharma that will be caused in the future by monks whose discipline is corrupted in general, i.e., mostly in an outer sense, and do not seem to take account of the important and profound points that the Buddha makes in the earlier chapters about the much more far-reaching “inner” corruption of discipline in terms of wrong views of emptiness. Kongtrül cites this sūtra to show how distractions can lead to suffering over innumerable lifetimes.8 In modern scholarship, Jonathan Silk has cited it to highlight criticism of monastic greed and illegitimate practices.9 Jason McCombs refers to the scripture in his discussion of the practice of making donations, and he points to concerns related to monastic corruption expressed in the text.10 Robert Morrell quotes the sūtra’s warning against monks who take ordination merely to escape secular duties.11 And finally, Wendi Adamek has quoted the sūtra in reference to monks who pretend to be genuine Dharma teachers when they are not.12

This English translation is based on the Degé Kangyur edition, in consultation with the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) and the Stok Palace Kangyur.