Gautama Dhamma

During our winter retreat, our monastic community undertook Vinaya training. As part of this effort, we relied heavily on The Buddhist Monastic Code I by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu as a practical reference manual for understanding monastic rules and procedures. The text served its intended purpose well in many respects: it is detailed, systematic, and highly useful for navigating the technical aspects of monastic discipline, including the precise analysis of offenses, their factors, and communal procedures.

Yet one glaring issue persisted throughout our study: the treatment of the term Pātimokkha (rendered as Pāṭimokkha in the book’s orthography), particularly the deliberate muting of the element mokkha. Mokkha is moksha—the Pali rendering (in Sinhala Pali tradition and standard Pali orthography) of the Sanskrit mokṣa, meaning liberation, release from saṃsāra, the very goal of the Buddha’s teaching. In the book, however, this liberative orientation is carefully distanced, almost hidden. The term is explained in a way that avoids identifying mokkha with moksha outright.

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu describes the meaning of Pātimokkha as “a matter of conjecture.” He cites the Mahāvagga (Mv.II.3.4), where it is glossed as “the beginning, the head (or entrance — mukha), the foremost (pamukha) of skillful qualities.” This aligns with the canonical Padabhājana analysis, deriving the term from mukha (“mouth,” “entrance,” “face”) with prefixes suggesting primacy or forefront. The book prioritizes this etymology, framing Pātimokkha as the foundational code supporting skillful qualities in monastic life.

This choice conveniently sidelines the far more profound—and widely attested—etymologies rooted in liberation. Traditional sources, including Theravāda commentaries and cross-traditional analyses, derive Pātimokkha from roots tied to protection (pāti, from √pā “to protect”) and release (mokkha, from √muc “to release” or “deliver”). It is “that which protects and releases,” or “that which delivers the one who upholds it” from fears of bad rebirths, remorse, defilements, and bondage. Other explanations render it explicitly as “towards liberation” (pati “towards” + mokkha “liberation/moksha”), or “individual release/delivery from evil.” These are not fringe speculations; they reflect how the tradition understood the code’s core function: a mechanism for purification leading directly to freedom.

I must state this plainly: downplaying or omitting the mokkha-as-moksha sense is a serious misrepresentation. It is not a minor scholarly preference; it borders on misinformation that distorts the Vinaya’s essence. The Buddha did not establish monastic discipline merely to organize a religious institution, ensure communal harmony, or provide procedural guidelines. The Vinaya is a carefully constructed system designed to lead practitioners out of worldly entanglement toward liberation—complete release from suffering, nibbāna. Its rules are instruments (upāya) for abandoning defilements, not ends in themselves.

The name Pātimokkha encodes this liberative purpose at its root. Reciting the code bi-monthly, confessing offenses, and upholding restraint purify the mind, eliminate remorse, and orient every action toward release from the fetters of saṃsāra. The ten purposes of the Vinaya—curbing shamelessness, inspiring faith, establishing true Dhamma—all converge on this: discipline as the foundation for the path to nibbāna. As the Parivāra (Pv.XII.2) makes explicit, discipline leads through restraint, freedom from remorse, joy, rapture, tranquillity, pleasure, concentration, insight, disenchantment, dispassion, release (vimutti), and knowledge of release—culminating in total nibbāna.

By muting this explicit connection, The Buddhist Monastic Code risks portraying the Vinaya as primarily regulatory, procedural, or communal—rather than a direct skillful means for transcending suffering. This is especially damaging in monastic training contexts, where practitioners need unflinching reminders that every rule observance is a step toward liberation, not mere compliance.

Linguistic precision matters profoundly. Words shape perception, intention, and practice. When the name of the core code points unmistakably to moksha (mokkha), it serves as a constant, piercing reminder: these rules protect the path to freedom, release one from defilements through confession and restraint, and lead toward the foremost skillful quality—the unconditioned release taught by the Buddha. Reclaiming this etymological dimension does not contradict the canonical mukha gloss (which highlights the code’s foundational role); it completes it by underscoring that the “foremost” quality is liberation itself.

In an era where Vinaya study often overemphasizes technical accuracy and communal procedures—as admirably detailed in Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu’s otherwise valuable work—insisting on the liberative meaning of Pātimokkha restores critical balance. It transforms observance from obligation into empowerment, reminding us that the monastic code exists not merely to regulate, but to liberate. This insight aligns the Vinaya seamlessly with the Buddha’s core promise: a path leading beyond all entanglement to complete freedom—the deathless realm of nibbāna.

From Sectarian Pride to Kindness and Compassion – The Liberation Teaching Is for All Mankind

The reason many Buddhist scholar-monks have deviated from—or deliberately downplayed—the true meaning of Pātimokkha as “toward liberation” (or “leading to moksha”) is largely historical and sectarian. The word moksha (Sanskrit), rendered in Pali as mokkha, originates from the broader Indic spiritual traditions, including the Vedic, early Hindu, and Jain streams that predated and coexisted with the Buddha’s teaching. In the centuries following the Buddha’s parinibbāna, as Buddhism encountered philosophical rivalry, institutional competition, and at times outright sectarian conflict with these other groups, there was a strong incentive to emphasize what made the Buddha’s Dhamma distinct. Highlighting shared terminology—especially a term as central as moksha, which in some traditions was tied to rituals, caste, or theistic liberation—could be seen as blurring boundaries or conceding ground to rivals. Thus, the mukha-based etymology (“foremost of skillful qualities”) was elevated and the mokkha-as-liberation sense quietly sidelined or treated as secondary conjecture, even though both strands appear in ancient commentaries.

This was understandable in its historical context: early human civilization was marked by intense philosophical and religious “wars” over truth, authority, and followers. Identity was forged in opposition. But the era has changed. We now live in a time when humanity faces shared existential crises—suffering, aging, death, ecological collapse, and the search for meaning across all cultures. Sectarian pride, once a survival mechanism for preserving a teaching, has become an obstacle to compassion and wisdom. It is time to let go of defensiveness and treat human differences with truth, kindness, and mutual respect.

The teaching of liberation is not the exclusive property of Buddhists. All mankind is born with this deep instinct: the intuitive recognition that aging, illness, death, and the endless round of craving and disappointment are not acceptable as the true mode of existence. That is exactly why the young Gautama, a young man of privilege, was shaken to the core by the sight of an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and a wandering renunciant. He questioned the human condition itself—“Why must there be aging? Why death? Is there a way beyond?”—and went to the furthest measures to find an answer. When he awoke to the truth under the Bodhi tree, he did not hoard it for a select group. He spent forty-five years teaching, establishing the human Sangha, and creating structures like the Vinaya and the Pātimokkha to ensure the path to liberation could endure and be transmitted across generations and cultures.

If the end goal is liberation from the world—from ignorance, craving, and the cycle of rebirth—then many streams can lead toward it. Some traditions emphasize collective salvation, devotional surrender, or gradual moral evolution as necessary stages or temporary stops on the way to eventual freedom. Others, like the direct route shown by Gautama Buddha, cut straight to the root through insight into the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the training in sila, samādhi, and paññā. There is no need for rivalry. All would appreciate the same existential release from aging and death.

We must now see the bigger picture: the origin and fate of mankind as one conscious race among countless beings and civilizations in this vast universe. The Buddha’s liberation teaching is a gift to mankind as a whole, not a proprietary doctrine. Let us work together with all religious and spiritual groups—Hindu, Jain, Christian, Muslim, indigenous, secular humanists, and others—who seek freedom from suffering in their own ways. Let us share Gautama Buddha’s clear, direct path without fear or apology. Let us respect the deep origins of Pātimokkha and cease being shy about using the word moksha, even though it is shared with other traditions. Almost all key Pali terminologies—dukkha, anicca, nibbāna, samādhi, paññā, and yes, mokkha itself—were not invented by the Buddha or his disciples. They were inherited from ancient cultures, from our ancestors who, across millennia, developed sophisticated sciences of mind and body to transcend ordinary human limits. The Buddha refined, tested, and clarified these insights, stripping away superstition and dogma, but he built upon a shared human heritage.

To insist on the liberative meaning of Pātimokkha is therefore not only an act of fidelity to the Vinaya’s purpose—it is an act of compassion toward all beings. By reclaiming “toward moksha” as the living heart of the monastic code, we honor the universal aspiration for freedom that pulses in every heart. We move beyond narrow ownership of truth and open the door wider: the Pātimokkha is recited not merely to preserve a Buddhist institution, but to protect and deliver any sincere practitioner—Buddhist or not—toward release from the aging and death.

In this spirit of kindness and inclusivity, let the monastic training we undertook in our winter retreat become a bridge rather than a barrier. Let Pātimokkha—in its full, unmuted meaning—remind us that the Buddha’s gift is for all mankind: a practical, compassionate path to the deathless, the realm of nibbāna. May all beings, without exception, come to know this freedom.