The study called "Seeking the Roots" will gradually be published here, chapter by chapter. For now this page is just reserving the name-space!

Seeking the Roots will present the results of my research into the communal and positive parts of the early Buddhist Vinaya (Discipline) for the monastic Order. 

It will attempt to compare the evidence about the earliest Buddhist monastic culture and later developments in India, beyond India and especially Sri-Lanka and SE Asia, and the recent transplantation of Buddhist monasticism into the West. 

Simply for practical reasons, the scope will be limited by giving primacy to the Pāli sources. I would like to compare the other recensions of the Vinaya in Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan, but I'm not sure yet how much I will be able to manage.

The chapters which I've started or planned are currently called:

  •  Drawing out the Guideline of Dhamma 
    (a collection of relevant Sutta and Vinaya passages)
  • The Earliest Buddhist Monastic Culture 
  • The Contextual Meaning of 'Dhamma-Vinaya'
  • Kinds of Authority
    • Seniority vs. Hierarchy 
  • Kor-Wat and Katika
  • Uposatha and the Origins of the General Confession
  • The Seven Issue Settling Procedures 
  • Individualism
  • Nissaya (Dependency) Past and Present
  • Some Developments in Doctrine Related to the Two Transitions out of India and to the West
    • Dāna- Developments in the Ideology of Religious Giving 
    • to be continued... 
  • Schism, Harmony and Communion
    • Actual Further Sect Formation In Contemporary 'Theravāda'
  • The Future of Buddhism in the West