Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c10.28

c10.28

But if the Order be regarded as the ideal unit of believing monks over the whole face of the earth, as the bearer of a holiness which resembles the holiness of Buddha and his Doctrine, yet in actual life the Order never appears in this universal sense. There is really not one order, but only orders, communities of the monks sojourning in the same diocese. Devout persons might indeed present gifts and endowments to the "Church of the four quarters of the world, those present and those absent;" then the monks happening to be present, or the monks present of the diocese concerned, appear to have been regarded as the legitimate representatives of the "Church of the four quarters" for the receiving of such a gift and the administration of property so acquired: but regular standing organization for the superintendence of its concerns the collective Church had none; for the forming of any resolution, the completion of any act in its name, there was a total absence of legal form.