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THE GREAT BUDDHIST KINGS
It is recorded that the following complicated report one day was brought to the Buddha's cars:
"A certain monk, Lord, had committed an offence which he considered as an offence, while the other monks considered that offence as no offence. Afterwards he began to consider that of(cnce as no offence, and the other monks began to consider that offence as an offence. . . . Then those monks pronounced expulsion against that monk for his refusal to sec that offence. ... Then that monk got his companions and friends among the monks on his side, and sent a messenger to his companions and friends among the monks of the whole country. . . . And the partisans of the expelled monk perscvered on the side of that expelled monk and followed him."
The Buddha exclaimed piteously: “The Order is divided! The Order is divided!" and delivered words of stern rebuke to those that had taken it upon themselves to excoinmunicate their fellow. "Do not think, () monks,” he declared, “that you are to pronounce expulsion against a monk for this or that, saying, 'It occurs to us to expel this monk.'” 16
When the founder was no longer alive the party differences grew; and yet, on the whole, we find in Buddhist history an impressive tendency to tolerate minor and even major differences of practice and opinion-perhaps as a result of the warnings of Gautama himself against dissension. The Pāli canon of Ceylon records that immediately following his decease, a certain monk named Subhaddha said to his companions: "Do not grieve, do not lament! We are happily rid of the Great Ascetic. We used to be annoyed by being told, 'This beseems you, this beseems you not'; but now we shall be able to do what we like, and what we do not like we shall not have to do." 17 The great monk Kāśyapa, hearing of this disgraceful utterance, proposed
16 Mahavagga 10. 1.
17 Cullavagga 11. 1. (As summarized in H. Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, 1896, pp. 101-102.)
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