Vinaya means Discipline. The monastic discipline covers around three thousand pages in printed text, whose rules and traditions ended up defining each particular aspect of the way of life of the bhikkhus and bhikkhunīs. The essence of the rules for bhikkhus is contained in the Pātimokkha, the Ascetic Codes.
The conjunction of the Dhamma with the Vinaya forms the core of the Buddha's doctrine, the “Dhamma-Vinaya”, that is, the Teaching and the Discipline.
The purpose of the Pātimokkha was to give a good image to the laity who were the ones who, ultimately, supported, sustained and maintained this community.
At first, not many rules were needed, the first bhikkhus were decent and responsible people and were under the control of the Buddha himself. However, the fame of how well people lived in the Sangha ended up becoming a magnet for lazy people, hustlers and scoundrels who sought to live off the story, a tradition that has remained unchanged until today.
This avalanche of people led the Buddha to have to delegate the new ordinations to the bhikkhus themselves, which led to a myriad of conflicts that the Buddha faced by creating a battery of rules to control so many undesirables, so that they did not damage the image. of the Sangha in general, essential for the laity to continue maintaining it.
The rules did not apply to him, nor to his friends, nor to his family. The rules are exclusively to control the Sangha. For example, notorious murderers cannot be given renunciation, but the Buddha gives it to Aṅgulimāla, or exemption from the four months of probation for sakkās.
It must be noted that these are not in any case norms referring to the practice of liberation, which is included in the suttas and is common to laymen, laywomen, bhikkhus and bhikkhunīs, but only and exclusively to maintain harmony and harmony. good image of a heterogeneous community, culturally located in its time and culture and extended in a subcontinent where history had not yet dawned.
This first text, The Great Chapter of the Great Division, is essential to know the first years of the wheel of Teaching.