Ten Points and One Question

The account in the Cullavagga begins with a monk named Yasa arriving at Vesali and finding the resident monks holding out a bowl of water on observance day and inviting the laity to drop coins in for the community. He tells the laity this is not allowable. The monks move to discipline him for insulting their supporters; he appeals to elders elsewhere; and an assembly is convened.

The assembly considers ten claimed allowances. Nine are small and technical, and reading them is a useful corrective to the idea that monastic law is about grand principle. May salt be carried in a horn against a day when the food is unsalted? May a meal be eaten when the sun has moved two fingers' breadth past noon? May a monk who has eaten go to another village and eat again? May unfermented palm juice be drunk? May a sitting cloth be made without the prescribed border? To each the assembly answers that it is not allowable, citing the rule it offends.

The tenth is different in kind. May a monk accept gold and silver? The rule against it is explicit and old, and the practice at Vesali had made the community's finances depend on breaching it. The assembly rejected it with the rest.

The doctrinal weight of the case lies in the method rather than the outcome. Each answer is given by citing the text of the rule and the case that generated it, which establishes that the discipline is not to be adjusted by local convenience.