Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c10.77

c10.77

The dwelling, food, and clothing of the monks are laid down in detailed regulations. The character of these rules is very decided: the abstaining from everything which implies comfortable enjoyment, being at one's ease in worldly possessions, is just as urgently demanded, as on the other side excesses of ascetic praxis are wholly eschewed. Here we find none of those strange features, with which a fanciful inquirer has recently made up the picture of what he calls original Buddhism: a society of ascetics, who were allowed to live under no roof, but to pass their whole life under the open heavens, sitting in cremation-grounds or under trees, whose whole appearance bears upon it the stamp of deformity and impurity.* In truth all negligence in outer appearance, especially in clothing, is most strictly tabooed. In the case of younger monks, who are placed under the superintendence of an elder brother, the latter has to pay attention to the appearance of those committed to his care; he is required to see, that they make their clothes right, dye them, and wash them properly. The sanitation and ventilation of the quarters occupied by the monks, the cleaning of furniture, the sunning of all articles that require it, are prescribed with the greatest minuteness in the works on the rules of the Order. Touching the greater or less degree of abstinence from the necessities and comforts of regular life, a certain freedom is allowed to the individual, to allow scope for his individual likes and dislikes. Whoever wished might take a vow to live only on the food which he might obtain on his begging expedition from house to house, but no one was forbidden to accept the invitations of pious laymen to dine, and we read that Buddha himself accepted such invitations on numberless occasions. Whoever wished might patch together rags, which he had collected, to make himself a monk's yellow garment; wandering monks, who happened to come to a cremation-ground, used perhaps to gather there the shreds from which they made their clothes.