乾县铁佛寺移动版

QUESTION: I have heard that there are no more Buddhist nuns. Is this true?

ANSWER: The Buddha founded the order of nuns during his lifetime and for five or six hundred years, nuns played an important role in the spread and development of Buddhism.  But for  reasons that  are  not  clear  nuns  never  commanded the  same esteem, or got the same support, as monks and in India, Sri Lanka, Tibet and South- east Asia the order died out. However, in Taiwan, Korea and Japan the order of nuns has continued to flourish. Today in Sri Lanka steps are being taken to reintroduce the order of nuns from Taiwan although some traditionalists are not very enthusiastic about this. However, in keeping with the Buddha’s original intention, it is only right

that women as well as men have the opportunity to live the monastic life and benefit from it.

11. THE BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES

QUESTION: Nearly all religions have some kind of holy writings or Bible. What is the Buddhist holy book?

ANSWER: The sacred book of Buddhism is called the Tipitaka. It is written in an ancient  Indian  language  called  Pali which  is  very  close to the  language that the Buddha himself spoke. The Tipitaka is a very large book. The English translation of it takes up nearly 40 volumes.

QUESTION: What does the name Tipitaka mean?

ANSWER:  It is made up of two Pali words, ti means ‘three’ and   pitaka   means ‘basket’ . The first part of the name refers to the fact that the Buddhist scriptures consist of three sections. The first section, called the Sutta Pitaka, contains all the Buddha’s  discourses  as  well  as  some  by  his  enlightened  disciples.  The  type  of material in the Sutta Pitaka is very diverse which allows it to communicate the truths that the Buddha taught to different types of people. Many of the Buddha’s discourses are in the form of sermons while others are in the form of dialogues. Other parts like the Dhammapada present the Buddha’s teachings through the medium of poetry. The Jatakas, to take another example, consist of delightful stories in which the main characters  are  often  animals.  The  second  section  of  the  Tipitaka  is  the  Vinaya Pitaka.  This  contains  the  rules  and  procedures  for  monks  and  nuns,  advice  on monastic administration and procedure and the early history of the monastic order. The  last  section  is  called  the  Abhidhamma   Pitaka.  This  is  a  complex  and sophisticated attempt to analyze and classify all the constituents that make up the individual. Although the Abhidhamma is somewhat later than the first two sections of the Tipitaka, it contains nothing that contradicts them.

Now  for  the  word  ‘pitaka’ .  In  ancient  India  construction  workers  used  to  move building materials from one place to another by means of a relay of baskets. They would put the baskets on their heads, walk some distance to the next worker, pass it to them, and he would repeat the process. Writing was known in the Buddha’s time but as a medium it was considered less reliable than the human memory. A book could rot in the monsoon damp or be eaten by white ants but a person’s memory could last as long as they lived. Consequently, monks and nuns committed all the Buddha's  teachings  to  memory  and  passed  them  on  to  each  other  just   as construction workers passed earth and bricks to each other in baskets. This is why the  three  sections  of  the   Buddhist  scriptures  are  called  baskets.  After   being preserved in this manner for several hundred years the Tipitaka was finally written down in about 100 BC in Sri Lanka although it might have been written down in India before that. (责任编辑：admin)