Virtuosity, Charisma and Social Order

The Sangha's organizational structures

Doctrinal Buddhism may seem to have originally addressed itself to the individual renouncer, emphatically enjoined to rely only on his own efforts in the pursuit of spiritual progress and salvation. The relentless emphasis on transcending family and property ties, on moving from home into homelessness and seeking refuge in none but oneself, “wandering along like the rhinoceros,” all seem to point toward an essentially individual, isolated, or even solitary way of life.

Nevertheless, the Buddha never advocated the practice of extreme solitude, and the idea of a Sangha, of a community of ascetics, appears to have been present from the very start, if at first only on a limited basis. The early followers of Gautama Buddha were supposedly enjoined to become wandering mendicants – not an uncommon vocation at the time. At least during the three-month rainy season, however, and following a practice common to other wandering sects as well, bhikkhus were supposed to retreat to a common residence. The development of a collective form of asceticism is often traced to this period of restricted mobility, favoring the intensification of communal life and the fulfillment of more lay-oriented duties. Be that as it may, the existence and corporate self-consciousness of a monastic order are already manifest in the Patimokka, probably the oldest layer in the Vinaya literature, stipulating various categories of offenses to a shared ascetic discipline.