---
title: "Invitation and Recitation: the Saṅgha's Anti-Concealment Institutions — From the Abolition of Silence to the Fortnightly Threshold of Purity"
author: "釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing)"
series: "Six Practice Gates, Volume 3 — KṢAMĀ: Repentance, from the Vinaya's Disclosure to the Repentance of Non-Arising"
series_short: "KṢAMĀ"
volume: 3
paper_id: "KSAMA-P03"
paper_number: 3
part: "Part I · Pāli Roots"
part_number: 1
date: "2026-05"
version: "1.0"
license: "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0"
---

# Invitation and Recitation
***The Saṅgha's Anti-Concealment Institutions — from the Abolition of Silence to the Fortnightly Threshold of Purity***

*中文主題：自恣與布薩——請僧舉己過的反覆藏制度：從廢除緘默到半月的清淨門檻*

**Abstract**

The previous paper traced how the Saṅgha built a *cure* for the one who has already fallen and then hidden the fault — the *parivāsa* ladder that releases, stage by stage, the weight concealment adds, and restores the offender to purity. That was a crisis response, medicine applied after the disease has set in. This paper asks the inverse question: how does the Saṅgha keep concealment from arising at all? The answer is two *standing* institutions — *pavāraṇā* (invitation) and *uposatha* (the fortnightly recitation). **Invitation is annual**: on the day the rains-residence ends, each monk gives himself up before the assembly and asks the Saṅgha to call out his faults by way of what is *seen, heard, or suspected*. Its origin is precisely the abolition of silence — monks who had passed a rains in vowed mutual muteness were rebuked by the Buddha as "dwelling like enemies," practicing the "dumb rule" of the outsiders; invitation was instituted to replace it. The Vinaya states flatly that *to invite is to consent* — the act itself is a standing grant of permission to be accused — and bars the evasions of muttering or racing through the formula, so that disclosure cannot be hollowed out from within. **Recitation is fortnightly**: before the Pātimokkha is recited, a monk carrying an unconfessed offense "may not recite, may not listen," but must first disclose before all and declare a pure body of precepts; and the clause *one who conceals incurs a graver offense* lowers the previous paper's aggravation-logic into the rhythm of ordinary life. Phenomenal repentance (事懺) thus shows its institutional face: not a crisis measure, but a standing rhythm of self-surrender. The paper sets the mechanism beside three modern interlocutors — confession and avowal, restorative justice and reintegrative shaming, surveillance versus voluntary self-exposure — drawing in each case the line between *comparable* and *reducible*. It closes on a symmetry: **silence that invites accusation, not silence that hides one another** — the same fewness of speech, opposite in valence — and gestures forward to the next paper's question, the inner edge of remorse.

**Keywords:** *pavāraṇā* / invitation (自恣), *uposatha* / recitation (布薩), reciting the precepts (說戒), disclosure (發露), concealment (覆藏), seen-heard-suspected (見聞疑), anti-concealment institutions (反覆藏制度), *aṭṭhaṅga-uposatha* / eight-factor lay observance (八關齋戒), *pātimokkha* / *prātimokṣa*, *saṅghakamma* (羯磨), *pārisuddhi* / purity (清淨), phenomenal repentance (事懺)

---

## I. The Founder Gives Himself Up First

The Saṅgha's anti-concealment institutions do not begin with a rule. They begin with a gesture the Buddha performed in his own person.

The *Saṃyukta-āgama* records: "On the fifteenth-day *uposatha*, the World-Honored One arranged a seat before the great assembly, sat, and addressed the monks" — and in that circle of seated monks he did not first teach the Dhamma; he first asked others to call out *his* faults. If any here, he said, has seen in my conduct of body or speech anything blameworthy, *out of compassion let him tell me; and if I see it, I shall make amends as the Dhamma requires*.[^1] The Pāli transmission carries the same scene: in the *Pavāraṇā Sutta* of the *Saṃyutta Nikāya*, the Buddha says to five hundred monks, *handa dāni, bhikkhave, pavāremi vo* — "Come now, monks, I invite you" — and asks whether there is anything in his conduct of body or speech that they would reprove.[^2] Sāriputta then rises and returns the invitation: he finds nothing to reprove in the Teacher, and in turn asks the Buddha to call out his own faults.

This opening is the root of the whole institution because it inverts, at the very top, the direction in which accusation ordinarily runs. One imagines exposure as an act of power — the strong over the weak, the senior over the junior; the one accused is passive, caught. But here it is the founder, the highest in the Saṅgha, who *first* and *of his own motion* places himself where he may be reproved, and who begs the assembly not to fall silent out of deference — *out of compassion, tell me*. When the one who least needs to be accused is the first to invite accusation, the calling-out of faults is rewritten from an exercise of power into the mutual support of those who dwell together.

The question this paper pursues now stands clear. The previous paper, *Concealment and Rehabilitation*, treated the person who has already fallen and hidden the fault: for him the Saṅgha laid down a long road back from concealment to purity — probation, reset-to-day-one, the six nights of *mānatta*, rehabilitation amid a Saṅgha of twenty. That was medicine for a disease already present. But the Saṅgha was plainly not content to treat only the sick. It also asked: can concealment be made structurally hard to arise? Can "not concealing" be lifted out of the accident of private virtue and made a standing cost — something everyone must discharge on schedule, and without which one cannot go on dwelling in common?

This is exactly what invitation and recitation do. One is the annual *ask others to call me out*; the other is the fortnightly *be pure first, then recite*. The former abolishes silence and solicits reproof; the latter sets non-concealment as the threshold of entry into the fortnightly recitation. Together they form the Saṅgha's anti-concealment apparatus — and their source is that moment on the fifteenth-day *uposatha* when the Buddha first gave himself up.

## II. Invitation: How the Saṅgha Abolished Silence

### A Cautionary Tale About Silence

Invitation arose from a failed rains-residence. The Vinaya records: a group of monks passed a rains together and, seeking "harmony without dispute," vowed not to speak to one another for the whole season, signaling by gesture for food and daily needs, and at the season's end thought well of themselves. The Buddha, hearing of it, did not approve but sharply rebuked them: this is the outsiders' "dumb rule" (瘂法), this is "dwelling like enemies."[^3] He abolished the silent practice and instituted invitation in its place — the rains over, the assembly may not simply disperse in mutual silence; each must, before all, ask the Saṅgha to call out his faults.

This origin narrative is the hinge of the paper. It tells us: the opposite of invitation is not *committing an offense* but *silence*. Those monks had done no wrong; they had merely not spoken. Yet the danger the Buddha diagnosed lay precisely in that seemingly pure quiet — a whole season without a word exchanged, each guarding his own mind, all of them strangers to one another. This collective silence is concealment magnified into a way of group life. In the individual, concealment hides a single fault inside the heart; in the Saṅgha, it shows itself as a tacit understanding in which everyone keeps the peace by asking nothing of anyone. The Buddha named this understanding "dwelling like enemies" — harmonious on the surface, but with no one answerable for anyone else's purity. Invitation is the express abolition of that collective silence.

### Seen, Heard, Suspected: the Words of Invitation

At the core of invitation is a formula of address, and the four Chinese *Vinaya*s record it almost identically. The Dharmaguptaka *Vinaya* reads: "Venerable Saṅgha, today is the invitation; I, the monk so-and-so, also invite. If there is an offense seen, heard, or suspected, may the elders, out of compassion, tell me; and if I see the offense, I shall make amends as the Dhamma requires."[^4] The Mahīśāsaka *Vinaya* reads, "if you have seen my offense, if you have heard my offense, if you suspect my offense, out of compassion speak the invitation," to be said three times; the Mahāsāṃghika and Sarvāstivāda *Vinaya*s give the same triad of seen, heard, suspected.[^5] The Pāli wording corresponds exactly: *saṅghaṁ, āvuso, pavāremi diṭṭhena vā sutena vā parisaṅkāya vā* — "I invite the Saṅgha, friends, by what is seen, heard, or suspected" — and likewise begs the assembly to speak *out of compassion* (*anukampaṁ upādāya*).[^6]

What rewards a pause is the range these three words — *seen, heard, suspected* — mark out. What is given up to be called out is not only the offense already established (*seen*), but also what others have reported (*heard*), and even a mere sign that arouses reasonable doubt (*suspected*). In other words, the reproof that invitation solicits runs far wider than a courtroom's threshold of proof. An accusation not yet confirmed, resting only on suspicion, is *welcome* within the form of invitation. This excludes, from the design's first moment, the most common pretext for silence — "wait until the evidence is certain before speaking." The one invited cannot deflect with "but you did not see it," because *heard* and *suspected* are already on the list of what he has invited.

### "To Invite Is to Consent," and the Sealing of Concealment's Back Doors

The Dharmaguptaka *Vinaya* gives one extremely compressed verdict: *to invite is to consent* (自恣即是聽).[^7] These four characters are nearly the definition of the whole institution. They mean: the act of invitation is itself a *granting* — a granting that others may call out my faults. When a monk performs the invitation, he is not reporting a clean record already achieved; he is actively opening a door, declaring, "from this moment, speak to me." The institution is therefore not an occasional review but the casting of *a standing permission to be accused* into the fixed beat of Saṅgha life.

But wherever there is an institution there are those who evade it, and the Vinaya is candid about this. It records the scheming of the group-of-six monks: some calculated, "we shall invite in a mutter" — running the formula through low and indistinct so others cannot hear it clearly, the better to make it hard for them to bring an act against me or to obstruct my invitation; others calculated, "I shall invite in a rush" — getting it out at speed, before anyone can react, so that no one can stop me to lodge a charge.[^8] These are forms that complete the *shape* of invitation while remaining, in substance, concealment — a concealment-in-fact. The Buddha cut each one down and laid down the corrective: one must "invite clearly, so that others can hear" — speak distinctly, so that those present truly hear it — and "invite unhurriedly" — speak at an even pace, not using speed to shut the window for reproof.

Here we see the fineness of the design. Were invitation only a formula of address, it could still be hollowed out by techniques like muttering and racing — a monk could go on hiding inside the *form* of "I have already invited." So the discipline lays down not only "you must invite" but "how you must invite for it to count": audibly, unhurriedly, clearly enough for the assembly to hear. Concealment's back doors are sealed one by one. The abolition of silence thus reaches not only the open refusal to speak, but also the kind of speaking that amounts to having said nothing.

### Annual, and a Saṅgha Act

Two boundaries of invitation must be fixed, for they bear on the next section's division from recitation. First, invitation is *annual*, tied to the close of the rains-residence. The Dharmaguptaka *Vinaya*: "the rains over, let there be invitation"; "the rains over, having invited on the fifteenth, on the sixteenth take up robe and bowl" to set out wandering; the Mahīśāsaka *Vinaya* likewise specifies the invitation on "the last day of the three months of summer."[^9] The Pāli transmission also ties invitation to the monks "who have completed the rains" (*vassaṁvuṭṭhānaṁ*).[^10] In other words, invitation is not performed at will, nor fortnightly — it is the once-a-year, end-of-season reckoning.

Second, invitation is a *Saṅgha act* (*saṅghakamma*), a communal procedure performed by the ordained within a bounded *sīmā*. It requires the gathering of a pure assembly and the formal act of *kamma*. This may seem a small point, but it bears on a common misunderstanding addressed in the paper's last section — the laity have no invitation to perform. Two boundaries, then, set down here: invitation is annual, and it belongs to the Saṅgha alone.

## III. Recitation: Setting Non-Concealment as the Fortnightly Threshold of Entry

If invitation is the once-a-year reckoning, then recitation lowers the same anti-concealment logic into a fortnightly rhythm of ordinary life.

Recitation (*uposatha*), also called the reciting of the precepts, is the rite in which the Saṅgha gathers every fortnight to recite the Pātimokkha (the code of precepts). The Dharmaguptaka *Vinaya* sets out its period plainly: "the precepts are not to be recited day by day … recite on the *uposatha* day," distinguishing the *uposatha* days as "the fourteenth, the fifteenth, the first of the month," collectively "the fortnightly recitation"; the Sarvāstivāda *Vinaya* also gives "fortnight by fortnight the Pātimokkha is to be recited."[^11] The Pāli transmission likewise fixes the recitation on "the fourteenth or the fifteenth" (*cātuddase pannarase*).[^12] One recitation every fortnight — this is the beat of *uposatha*.

What makes recitation pertinent to this paper lies entirely in the threshold of purity standing before the recitation. The Dharmaguptaka *Vinaya* records it with great clarity:

> 世尊制戒，犯者不得說戒、不得聞戒、不得向犯戒者懺悔……今向諸大德發露，不敢覆藏；覆藏者得增上罪……願長老憶我清淨戒身具足清淨布薩。[^13]

*The World-Honored One laid down the precept: an offender may not recite the precepts, may not listen to the recitation, may not make amends toward another offender … Now, before the venerable ones, I disclose, and do not dare to conceal; one who conceals incurs a graver offense … May the elders bear witness that, my pure body of precepts being complete, I keep the pure* uposatha.

This passage must be read clause by clause, for it compresses the whole logic of the previous paper into one fortnightly, ordinary gathering.

First, the offender "may not recite, may not listen." A monk with an undisclosed offense upon him has no standing to recite alongside the assembly, nor even to sit and listen to the recitation. The reciting of the code is a matter among the pure; one who bears an undisclosed offense is set outside that community. Recitation is therefore not a routine that anyone may attend, but a *sieve* of purity — if you are not clean, you do not get in.

Second, to get in, the one road is to "disclose, and not dare to conceal." Before the recitation, a monk must give up his offense before all, declaring plainly that he does not hide it. And the clause that immediately follows — *one who conceals incurs a graver offense* — is the most direct seam between this paper and the last. What the previous paper established was precisely the principle that *concealment aggravates the offense*: hide it a day, a day's probation; concealment is not some minor matter outside the offense but a further offense that accumulates layer upon layer. Recitation here carries that same principle out of the crisis-handling of grave offenses and sets it at the ordinary fortnightly doorway. Every fortnight, every monk must face the principle once more: you may choose to hide, but the hiding is itself a graver offense, and it will bar you from the line of those who recite. *Not concealing* thus becomes a standing cost of entry, paid on schedule.

Third, disclosure done, the monk declares "my pure body of precepts is complete," and only then may he keep the "pure *uposatha*" with the assembly and listen to the recitation. Worth noting is disclosure's function here — it is not to expose the monk to punishment but to let him back in. Be pure first, then recite with the rest; give up what was hidden first, then return to the ranks of the pure. In this letting-go and taking-back is the concrete working of phenomenal repentance's *purification-and-reintegration* face.

Recitation has two further details worth recording. First, the recitation is internal to the Saṅgha; the Vinaya states expressly that "one should not perform the act of reciting the precepts before those not fully ordained" — the not-yet-fully-ordained (including lay people in white) may not be present to hear the precepts.[^14] This is consistent with invitation as a Saṅgha act that does not extend to the laity. Second, consent within the recitation is expressed by *silence*: "let those who consent be silent; let any who do not consent speak … the Saṅgha consents, by its silence; thus is this matter held."[^15] This silence is the exact opposite of the "dumb rule" silence of §II — it is not evasion, but the settled assent that follows after disclosure, after purification. The Pāli transmission confirms it: before the recitation one must first declare purity (*pārisuddhiṁ … ārocetha*), and one with an offense should not listen (*na sāpattikena pātimokkhaṁ sotabbaṁ*); and the *Aṅguttara Nikāya* records one episode further — when one impure person sat in the assembly, the Buddha would not recite at all, until Moggallāna had the impure one removed, whereupon the Buddha said it was *impossible* that a recitation be made to an impure assembly.[^16] Even the Buddha would not recite the code facing an assembly harboring a hidden stain. Here purity-as-the-precondition-of-recitation reaches its strictest expression.

## IV. Three Modern Interlocutors

To a modern self, grounded in individualism, invitation is counterintuitive: each person must of his own motion ask a community to enumerate his faults. It is neither private unburdening nor coerced confession. It is public, peer-witnessed, voluntary, outward-turning solicitation. To throw its character into sharper relief, we may set three modern interlocutors beside it — but the section's governing principle must be stated first: *comparable, not reducible*. Invitation is not some other thing wearing a monastic robe.

**First, confession and avowal.** In the Western context, what most readily comes to mind alongside "stating one's faults before all" is sacramental confession; and modern critical accounts of confession and avowal treat the demand to "speak the truth about oneself" (*aveu*) as a power-technique deeply rooted in the West — a person is required to utter the truth of himself, and in that utterance is produced as a certain kind of confessing subject.⟨verify: Foucault's account of avowal — assert no specific book/year/page⟩ One may grant a real likeness: both ritualize first-person self-disclosure, and both make "speaking the truth" a *structural* obligation rather than a fit of spontaneous unburdening. But the lines of difference are just as sharp. First, invitation contains no absolving authority — no priest, no mediator who can pronounce pardon in the place of a god; the hearers are only fellow dwellers and the Dhamma one faces. Second, invitation is *initiated by the one repenting* and runs *outward* — it is *I ask others to speak of me*, not power reaching inward to extract my private truth; this is the very inverse of an inward self-scrutiny pressed out of one by power. Third, invitation's *telos* is communal purity and return to the assembly, not the production of a "confessing subject." Comparable, not reducible.

**Second, restorative justice and reintegrative shaming.** This is the truest-ringing of the three comparisons, and deserves to be received warmly. Restorative justice holds that the handling of a wrongdoer should center not on retribution and expulsion but on his re-melting into the community; and the account of *reintegrative shaming* distinguishes two kinds of shame — one that nails a person under stigma and pushes him outside the group, and one that, while expressing disapproval, keeps a road home open for the wrongdoer throughout.⟨verify: reintegrative-shaming attribution — name only at field level⟩ Invitation and recitation do resonate deeply with this: the offender is called out, provisionally barred from the recitation, but all of it points toward "a pure rains, a return to dwelling in common" — keeping the person, not discarding him; the witness of peers, not anonymous judgment. This resonance is to be cherished. But precisely because the resonance is so true, one must guard against over-assimilation. First, invitation's aim is the path and purity, not social repair in the secular sense. Second — and this is the redline carried from the previous paper — phenomenal repentance is not therapy, and invitation is not an accountability circle for processing emotion; what it seeks is a pure body of precepts, not psychological relief. Third, there is here no individual "victim" awaiting repair in the restorative-justice sense; what is harmed is the shared purity itself. One may say this is reintegration rather than retribution; but it remains comparable, not reducible. (A line must be added: so far as the present writer is aware, no scholar has formally applied the framework of restorative justice to the Vinaya; what is said here is only that one could extend such a framework in this direction, not a citation of any existing argument.)

**Third, surveillance and voluntary self-exposure.** This comparison is the cleanest, and the best at showing the *shape* of "concealment's inverse." The transparency familiar to modern society is mostly imposed from without: it is surveillance, coerced disclosure, audit and trace — the gaze comes from outside and falls upon the watched, who is passive. Invitation is exactly the reverse: it is voluntary disclosure originating from within. No one erects a panoptic tower to watch the monks; the monks themselves rise and ask the assembly to look, to speak. The direction of the gaze is inverted — it is not the watcher seizing the watched, but the watched inviting the watcher to come and reprove. If concealment is hiding oneself in the dark, then invitation is the reverse: walking out into the light oneself and saying, *look at me*. This is perhaps the cleanest single image of "the structural inverse of concealment."

## V. Three Middle-Way Corrections

Three corrections must be set down here, lest the reader draw the paper's argument too tight or push it too wide.

**First, invitation and recitation are akin but must not be conflated.** The Mahīśāsaka *Vinaya* does itself gloss "the formal act of invitation is also called *uposatha*."[^17] In their shared function of *rendering the assembly pure*, the two are of one origin, and the Vinaya does not hide this kinship. But it must be remembered: the schools point out this kinship precisely in order to *preserve* the distinction even while granting the common source. The two differ in time-base — invitation is annual (the rains over), recitation is fortnightly; and they differ in act — invitation is *asking others to call out my offense*, recitation is *reciting the code, having purified the assembly to recite*. To read "also called *uposatha*" as "invitation equals *uposatha*" is to read away a distinction that was carefully preserved.

**Second, the word "concealment" does not appear, on its face, in the texts of invitation.** Examine closely the invitation passages of the four *Vinaya*s, and the words *disclosure* and *concealment* are, on their face, nowhere to be found. The bridge between invitation and the previous paper's theme of concealment is *thematic and structural* — silence as the collective form of covering; *to invite is to consent* as a standing permission to be accused — not *lexical*. The plain words *do not dare to conceal* and *one who conceals incurs a graver offense* occur only in the recitation material (as cited in §III). So in treating invitation this paper never claims that the Vinaya there uses the word "concealment"; that lexical bridge is built only on the recitation side.

**Third, the laity have no invitation.** This must be clarified with care, because "may a lay disciple of the five precepts perform invitation every fortnight" is a circulating doubt — and it folds two things, each true on its own, into one thing that is false. First, invitation is annual (the rains over); what is performed fortnightly is recitation, not invitation; to say "invitation every fortnight" has already misplaced the period. Second, invitation is a Saṅgha act, and a search of the Vinaya turns up no warrant whatever for lay invitation — a lay person in white may not even sit and listen to the recitation of the precepts, let alone perform this Saṅgha act. Does the laity, then, have no periodic self-purification at all? Not so — but that is another matter: the laity's periodic purification is the *aṭṭhaṅga-uposatha*, the eight-factor observance (八關齋戒). The *Sūtra on the Fast* states plainly that on the six fast-days of the month a disciple "takes the eight precepts," keeping them for a day and a night "like an arhat"; the *Madhyama-āgama* Fasting Sūtra calls it the "noble eight-factored fast."[^18] The six fast-days are the eighth, fourteenth, fifteenth, twenty-third, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth of the month. But this must be seen clearly: that is "taking the fast-precepts for a day and a night" — a matter belonging to the precept-taking, *uposatha* face, not the *asking-others-to-call-out-my-offense* of invitation. "Lay invitation every fortnight" is wrong precisely because it splices two true things — "the laity take the eight precepts on the six monthly fast-days" and "the Saṅgha performs invitation at the close of the rains" — into one false thing.

## VI. Conclusion: Raising Non-Concealment into a Rhythm

Return to the opening — the Buddha's gesture of giving himself up — and its weight is now clearer.

The previous paper, *Concealment and Rehabilitation*, told us the Saṅgha treats the disease of concealment: for a hidden offense, there is a road back to purity. What this paper adds is the Saṅgha's other hand — it not only treats the disease but makes the disease hard to arise. Its method is to take "not concealing," a thing once left to private virtue, and cast it into two institutions everyone must discharge on schedule. Invitation, annually, abolishes silence and solicits reproof, and with "invite clearly, so that others can hear" seals the back doors of muttering and racing; recitation, fortnightly, sets "disclose first, do not dare to conceal, only then recite" as a standing cost of entry, and with the clause *one who conceals incurs a graver offense* lowers the previous paper's aggravation-principle into ordinary life.

So we see the institutional face of phenomenal repentance: not a crisis measure, but a standing rhythm of soliciting exposure. Silence is abolished, solicitation is instituted, the one bearing an undisclosed offense stands outside the line of recitation — and thus the Saṅgha raises "not concealing" from one person's accidental virtue into a beat of communal life, paid on schedule. *Silence that invites accusation, not silence that hides one another*: both are a fewness of speech, yet the silence that follows invitation is the settled rest of purity, while the "dumb rule" silence of mutual muteness is concealment under another name. A single word of difference — and it all turns on whether, beforehand, one first gave oneself up.

And all of this is still only the *gate* of phenomenal repentance, not its summit. Invitation and recitation govern the outward, structural question of *how institutions make non-concealment routine*. But behind the act of disclosure stands something subtler — the feeling that drives a person to disclose, and that may also crush him: remorse. The inverse of concealment is disclosure; what, then, is the inner lining of disclosure? Is remorse a force that helps one toward purity, or another hindrance? That question is left to the next paper — *Remorse in the Āgamas*.

---

## Footnotes

[^1]: *Saṃyukta-āgama*, fascicle 45, SĀ 1212, Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 2, no. 0099. The Buddha, on the fifteenth-day *uposatha*, asks the assembly to call out any blameworthy conduct of his body or speech.

[^2]: SN 8.7 *Pavāraṇā Sutta* (《自恣經》), SuttaCentral, Mahāsaṅgīti edition (CC0). The Buddha invites five hundred monks to reprove his conduct of body and speech; Sāriputta rises and returns the invitation.

[^3]: *Sarvāstivāda Vinaya* (《十誦律》), fascicle 23, Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 23, no. 1435. Monks who vowed mutual silence through a rains-residence are rebuked by the Buddha as practicing the outsiders' "dumb rule" (瘂法) and "dwelling like enemies"; the practice is abolished and invitation instituted in its place.

[^4]: *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya* （《四分律》）， Invitation *khandhaka*, fascicle 37, Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 22, no. 1428.

[^5]: *Mahīśāsaka Vinaya* (《五分律》), fascicle 19, Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 22, no. 1421 ("if you have seen my offense, if you have heard my offense, if you suspect my offense, out of compassion speak the invitation," said three times); *Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya* (《摩訶僧祇律》), fascicle 27, no. 1425 ("offense seen, heard, suspected … out of compassion"); *Sarvāstivāda Vinaya* (《十誦律》), fascicle 23, no. 1435 ("by three matters one asks another to speak the invitation: offense seen, heard, or suspected").

[^6]: Mv IV *Pavāraṇākkhandhaka*, SuttaCentral `pli-tv-kd4:1.14`, Mahāsaṅgīti edition (CC0) / Brahmali English translation (CC0). The Pāli falls at approximately Vin i 155–177 (PTS range; to be verified).

[^7]: *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya*, Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 22, no. 1428 ("to invite is to consent. There are two kinds of invitation by monks: by act, and by spoken word").

[^8]: *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya*, fascicle 37, Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 22, no. 1428. "Inviting in a mutter" and "inviting in a rush" are the evasive schemes of the group-of-six monks; the Buddha cut them down, requiring that one "invite clearly, so that others can hear" and "invite unhurriedly."

[^9]: *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya*, no. 1428 ("the rains over, let there be invitation"; "the rains over, having invited on the fifteenth, on the sixteenth take up robe and bowl"); *Mahīśāsaka Vinaya*, fascicle 19, no. 1421 (invitation on "the last day of the three months of summer").

[^10]: Mv IV, SuttaCentral `pli-tv-kd4:1.13` (*vassaṁvuṭṭhānaṁ bhikkhūnaṁ* — monks who have completed the rains invite by the three matters).

[^11]: *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya*, fascicles 35 and 58, no. 1428 ("recite on the *uposatha* day"; "the fourteenth, the fifteenth, the first of the month"; "the fortnightly recitation"); *Sarvāstivāda Vinaya*, fascicle 35, no. 1435 ("fortnight by fortnight the Pātimokkha is to be recited").

[^12]: Mv II *Uposathakkhandhaka*, SuttaCentral `pli-tv-kd2`; the Pāli falls at approximately Vin i 101–136 (PTS range; to be verified).

[^13]: *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya*, fascicle 36, Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 22, no. 1428.

[^14]: *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya*, fascicle 36, no. 1428 ("one should not perform the act of reciting the precepts before those not fully ordained").

[^15]: *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya*, fascicle 35, no. 1428 ("let those who consent be silent; let any who do not consent speak … the Saṅgha consents, by its silence; thus is this matter held").

[^16]: For declaring purity first and the offender not listening, see Mv II, SuttaCentral `pli-tv-kd2` (*pārisuddhiṁ ārocetha*; *na sāpattikena pātimokkhaṁ sotabbaṁ*); for the assembly being impure, the Buddha not reciting, and Moggallāna removing the impure one, see AN 8.20, SuttaCentral `an8.20`, Mahāsaṅgīti edition (CC0).

[^17]: *Mahīśāsaka Vinaya* （《五分律》）， fascicle 19, no. 1421 ("the formal act of invitation is also called *uposatha*").

[^18]: *Sūtra on the Fast* (《佛說齋經》, trans. Zhi Qian, Wu period), Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 1, no. 0087 ("a disciple of the Way, on the six fast-days of the month, takes the eight precepts … keeping them for a full day and night, the mind like a true man" — "true man" being Zhi Qian's archaic rendering of "arhat"); *Madhyama-āgama*, Fasting Sūtra (《中阿含經·持齋經》), fascicle 55, no. 0026 ("the noble eight-factored fast").

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## Sūtra & Vinaya Index

| Abbrev. | Full title | Fascicle / Locus | Taishō | Used in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya* | 四分律 (full Vinaya) | fasc. 35–36 (recitation *khandhaka*) · fasc. 37–38 (invitation *khandhaka*) · fasc. 58 (Vinaya-uttara) | T1428 (vol. 22) | §II / §III main mechanism of invitation and recitation |
| *Mahīśāsaka Vinaya* | 彌沙塞部和醯五分律 | fasc. 19 (invitation) | T1421 (vol. 22) | §II seen-heard-suspected formula · §V "invitation is also called *uposatha*" |
| *Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya* | 摩訶僧祇律 | fasc. 27 (invitation) | T1425 (vol. 22) | §II the triad seen-heard-suspected |
| *Sarvāstivāda Vinaya* | 十誦律 | fasc. 23 (invitation · dumb rule) · fasc. 35 (fortnightly recitation) | T1435 (vol. 23) | §II origin of the dumb rule · §III fortnightly recitation |
| *Saṃyukta-āgama* | 雜阿含經 | fasc. 45, SĀ 1212 (Invitation Sūtra) | T0099 (vol. 2) | §I the Buddha's own invitation |
| *Sūtra on the Fast* | 佛說齋經 (trans. Zhi Qian, Wu) | fasc. 1 | T0087 (vol. 1) | §V lay six-day, eight-precept fast |
| *Madhyama-āgama* | 中阿含經·持齋經 | fasc. 55 (noble eight-factored fast) | T0026 (vol. 1) | §V lay eight-factored fast |
| Theravāda *Vinaya, Mahāvagga* | 銅鍱律·大品 | Pavāraṇā-khandhaka (IV) · Uposatha-khandhaka (II) | Mahāsaṅgīti edition (CC0); PTS Vin i ≈ 101–177 (range, to be verified) | §II / §III Pāli parallels — invitation and recitation |
| *Saṃyutta Nikāya* | 相應部 | SN 8.7 *Pavāraṇā Sutta* | Mahāsaṅgīti edition (CC0) | §I the Buddha's own invitation (Pāli) |
| *Aṅguttara Nikāya* | 增支部 | AN 8.20 *Uposatha Sutta* | Mahāsaṅgīti edition (CC0) | §III the impure assembly, the Buddha not reciting |

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*Paper:* KSAMA-P03 · *Invitation and Recitation* · **KṢAMĀ · Part I · Pāli Roots · #3 · the phenomenal-repentance (事懺) floor**
*Author:* 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) · *Project:* 指月 / Pointing-at-the-Moon · *Series:* The Six Practice Gates （六行門） · KṢAMĀ · Part I · #3
*License:* CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
*CBETA collation:* Citations from the *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya* (T1428 fasc. 35–36 recitation khandhaka / fasc. 37–38 pavāraṇā khandhaka / fasc. 58 Vinaya-uttara), the *Mahīśāsaka Vinaya* (T1421 fasc. 19), the *Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya* (T1425 fasc. 27), the *Sarvāstivāda Vinaya* (T1435 fasc. 23, 35), the *Saṃyukta-āgama* (T0099 fasc. 45, SĀ 1212), the *Sūtra on the Fast* (T0087), and the *Madhyama-āgama* Fasting Sūtra (T0026 fasc. 55) verified against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka 2024 edition. Pāli follows the Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka (CC0) + Bhikkhu Brahmali / Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0): *Mahāvagga* Pavāraṇā-khandhaka (Mv IV, Kd 4) + Uposatha-khandhaka (Mv II, Kd 2), SN 8.7, AN 8.20, PTS Vin i ≈ 101–177 (range, to be verified).
*Repository:* https://github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates