Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c10.70

c10.70

“Community of mendicants” (Bhikkhusangha) was the name given to themselves by this fraternity of fully-accredited, ordained monks. This name indicates that among their duties that of poverty ranked next in order to chastity. This had always been so, ever since there was a monastic system in India. A Vedic text belonging to the age of the first rudiments of this monasticism says of the Brahmans who renounce the world: "They cease from seeking for children, and seeking for possessions, and seeking the worldly, and they itinerate as beggars. For what seeking for children is, that is also seeking for possessions; what seeking for possessions is, that is also seeking for the worldly; the one is seeking as much as the other."* So the Buddhist monk also renounces all property. No express vow imposes on him the duty of poverty; both the marriage tie and the rights of property of him who renounces the world, are regarded as *ipso facto* cancelled by the "going forth from home into homelessness."† Property was felt to be a fetter, which holds in bondage the spirit struggling for freedom: "Very straitened," it is said, "is life in the home, a state of impurity: freedom is in leaving the home"—"Leaving all property behind must one go thence"—"In supreme felicity live we, who possess nothing; cheerfulness is our diet, as of the gods of the regions of light"—"As the bird, wherever he flies, carries nothing with him but his wings, so also a monk is content with the garment, which he is wearing, with the food, which he has in his body. Wherever he goes, he everywhere carries his property with him."