Bhikkhu

The fully ordained Buddhist monk is bound by a procedure of exceptional exactness and, at the same time, by no expectation of permanence, and the two facts sit together in a way that surprises those who assume monastic vows are for life.

Procedure and the grave offences

Ordination requires a quorum of existing monks, ten in a settled region and five in a border region, performed within a properly determined boundary with a formal motion and three announcements, and an ordination with a defective quorum or boundary is invalid. The monk is bound by the Patimokkha, 227 rules in the Theravada recension, recited fortnightly. Four of them, sexual intercourse, theft, killing a human being, and falsely claiming spiritual attainments, are parajika, and breaking one expels the monk permanently and automatically, with no judgment required and no re-ordination in that lifetime.

Temporary by design

Ordination is not for life by design. In Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia temporary ordination is expected of most men, sometimes for a rains retreat, sometimes for a few weeks, and disrobing carries no stigma at all. This differs sharply from the Christian understanding of an indelible character, and it means the same person may be a monk more than once. Monks own almost nothing, eat nothing after midday, and depend entirely on lay donation, which is the material basis of the relationship between sangha and laity.

The Buddha's original ordination of monks in the sixth or fifth century BCE produced a single monastic community, but as Buddhism spread across Asia in the following centuries different regions preserved different versions of the ordination lineage and its rule: the Theravada countries of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia kept the Pali Vinaya of the Theravada school, while China, Korea and Vietnam adopted the separate Dharmaguptaka Vinaya lineage, so that a monk ordained in Thailand and a monk ordained in Korea today stand in entirely different, independently transmitted ordination lines even though both trace their authority back to the same historical founder.

The women's full ordination lineage, which requires ordination by both an order of bhikkhus and an order of bhikkhunis together, died out in the Theravada countries many centuries ago, apparently for lack of a surviving bhikkhuni order to complete the required joint ordination, while a bhikkhuni lineage did survive within the separate East Asian ordination tradition. Since the 1990s and 2000s a revival movement has used that surviving East Asian bhikkhuni lineage to re-establish full ordination for women within Theravada Buddhism, a move some senior Theravada monastic authorities in Thailand and elsewhere reject as lineage-invalid, while other Theravada teachers and entire monastic communities, particularly in Sri Lanka, have accepted and continued it, leaving the validity of the modern Theravada bhikkhuni ordination a live and unresolved dispute within the tradition itself.