Dhamma Principles › Eighteen Ways a Community Splits: When People Bend the Rules Bit by Bit
Eighteen Ways a Community Splits: When People Bend the Rules Bit by Bit
Everyday life

Eighteen Ways a Community Splits: When People Bend the Rules Bit by Bit

Aṭṭhārasa bhedakaravatthūni

The Parivāra counts what causes a community to break apart. The answer is eighteen things, and nearly all of them are saying that what is not so is so, and that what is so is not — together with six roots of accusation and the six forms of respect that stand opposite them.

7 points

In the Parivāra of the Vinaya Piṭaka there is a section called the Kati-pucchā-vāra, the section on the question "how many?" It asks in one breath: how many offences, how many classes of offence, how many disrespects, how many respects, how many failures, how many roots of dispute, how many roots of accusation, how many grounds of schism, how many legal issues, how many settlement procedures — then answers with numbers and explains each heading in turn.

The heading at the centre of this page is the eighteen grounds of schism, which the book sets out as nine pairs: from presenting what is not the teaching as the teaching, down to presenting a non-gross offence as gross. Every one of them has the same shape — making others understand the rules differently from how they actually are.

Worth reading alongside it are the six roots of accusation, whose list of traits is identical to the six roots of dispute. Only the outcome differs: the same traits, when they come out as accusations within a community, likewise lead to the harm of many. The six roots of dispute and the six memorable qualities are treated in detail elsewhere on this site.

  1. 1

    Bending what counts as the rule Adhammaṃ dhammoti dīpeti

    The first four of the eighteen are: presenting what is not the teaching as the teaching, the teaching as not the teaching, what is not the discipline as the discipline, and the discipline as not the discipline. All four make people misunderstand what the actual rule is.

    Applying it in daily life

    When someone says "the regulations allow it" or "that's banned anyway", ask to see the text before believing it and passing it on.

  2. 2

    Bending who said what Abhāsitaṃ alapitaṃ tathāgatena

    The next six concern quotation and precedent: presenting what the Tathāgata did not say as said, what he said as not said, what he did not practise as practised, what he practised as not practised, and the last pair on what he did and did not lay down.

    Applying it in daily life

    Don't quote a manager or a senior person second-hand. A remark relayed three times has usually become a different remark.

  3. 3

    Bending heavy into light and light into heavy Lahukaṃ āpattiṃ garukā āpattīti dīpeti

    The last eight concern grading: presenting an offence as no offence, a non-offence as an offence, a light offence as heavy, a heavy offence as light, a remediable offence as irremediable and the reverse, and a gross offence as non-gross and the reverse.

    Applying it in daily life

    In complaint handling, watch out both for blowing small things up and for pressing big things down. Either one makes people stop trusting the process.

  4. 4

    The roots of accusation in a community Cha anuvādamūlāni

    The six roots of accusation are: being angry and resentful; contemptuous and domineering; envious and miserly; deceitful and fraudulent; of evil wishes and wrong view; and adhering to one's own view, holding it tightly and relinquishing it with difficulty. Such a person lives without respect for the Teacher, the Dhamma and the Saṅgha, does not fulfil the training, and then generates accusations in the community. If you see these roots in yourself or in others, strive to abandon them; if you do not see them, practise so that they do not arise in future.

    Applying it in daily life

    Before filing a complaint against someone, ask yourself plainly whether you are carrying anger, envy, or simply refusing to lose an argument.

  5. 5

    The six respects are the opposite side Cha gāravā

    The book counts six disrespects — towards the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Saṅgha, the training, diligence and hospitality — and then six respects as their exact opposites. The fifth and sixth are striking: diligence, and greeting and receiving people well, are ranked as things to be respected alongside the first three.

    Applying it in daily life

    Courtesy in small things, like greeting people and receiving guests properly, is not decorative. It is what stops distance from forming.

  6. 6

    Every list of faults has its counterpart in abstaining Setughāto

    Each time the book finishes counting a class of offence or a set of disrespects, it follows with an equal number of "matters disciplined": keeping far from, desisting, abstaining, the intention to abstain, not doing, not deliberately committing, not overstepping the limit, and destroying that thing by the noble path — called "breaking the bridge".

    Applying it in daily life

    When you list what you don't want happening in a team, always pair it with what to do instead. A list of prohibitions alone rarely changes behaviour.

  7. 7

    Closing the count with four legal issues and seven settlements Cattāri adhikaraṇāni

    The section ends by counting the four legal issues — disputes, accusations, offences and duties — and then the seven settlement procedures that resolve them. Placing these two headings last says that once you know what breaks a community, you must also know how what has already happened is brought to an end. This point is for overall understanding.

    Applying it in daily life

    Both headings are treated in detail on their own pages on this site.

Try it in daily life

The list of eighteen reads like a description of people quarrelling in a group chat, in a meeting, or across an organisation, because almost every item is citing the rules wrongly to make one's own side look right rather than arguing from the facts.

Notice that the book counts making a small matter big and making a big matter small as equally destructive. The person who exaggerates to stoke anger and the person who plays things down to protect their own side damage a community's trust about equally.

The most direct defence is to go back to the actual thing: what the regulation really says, what the person really said, instead of believing what was passed along.

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