Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c10.t1.22

c10.t1.22

In this manner, in more than two hundred paragraphs thrown together somewhat unsystematically, are specified those injunctions, which govern the daily life of the monks, their residence, eating and drinking, clothing, and their intercourse with each other and with nuns and laity. Even the most external and the most trivial matter finds a place; to the painful fondness for rule, which is here traceable in every word, nothing is unessential. In the fact that the Buddhist Order has not been able to invest its most prominent liturgical creation with any other form than that of a paragraphic collection of monastic rules we may perhaps detect an element of illiberality; but insipidity and paltriness he alone will call it, to whom serious and scrupulous obedience to rule even in the most trivial matters appears insipid and paltry.