In D 16 the Buddha tells Ven. Ananda on his ‘deathbed’ that he authorizes the saṅgha to abolish the lesser and minor training rules if they so wish. Ven. Ananda tells the other 499 theras at the 1. Council in Rajagaha about this statement of the Buddha. Surprisingly, the theras cannot agree what these rules are but no major problem arises as they decide unanimously that they don’t want to give them up, as it may look bad with the lay people.
To ask the question what these lesser and minor rules actually are might be considered suspect for a monk as it could imply that the questioning monk might perhaps be willing to give them up. This is not an unreasonable criticism because in Pacittiya 72, saying: ‘Why bother with the lesser and minor rules, they are more trouble than they are worth’ is a Pacittiya offence (whether that is a lesser or minor offence or not).
The question arises however, why the Buddha made this statement, particularly at such a significant point in time. First of all, it has to be established that the Buddha is capable only of wholesome speech, speech that has a wholesome result. On the surface this statement doesn’t seem to be such. It creates doubt and disagreement in this most authoritative meeting of the Buddha’s most worthy disciples, many of whom he declared to be foremost in some aspect of Dhamma or Vinaya. Furthermore, all of them were fully awakened beings with long years standing in the order.
The ensuing discussion gives rise to an avalanche of accusations against Ven. Ananda which puts a serious question mark either behind his competence and/or that of the other theras and their processing of problems: Ven. Ananda is asked to confess a wrong doing (the one offence that all theras were in agreement was a lesser and minor one) for not asking the Buddha what the lesser and minor training rules were. In the immediately preceding paragraph the theras decided not to abolish any established rules and not to establish any new ones. But there is not only no rule for not asking a question of that sort, the only precedence of monks laying down a rule was criticized and nullified by the Buddha (origin story to NP15).
Nobody is mentioned to have protected Ven. Ananda. Ven. Ananda is depicted as a real gentlemen and good politician in that he states disagreement with the accusation, but confesses it out of respect for the theras. Unfortunately, the formula for confessing offences asks the offender: ‘Do you see?’ upon which the confessing monk answers ‘Yes, I see’. Since Ven. Ananda had just declared that he didn’t see the offence his confession seems to be dangerously close to false speech in full awareness (P 1) for which good intention is no excuse.
The commentary tries to get him out of this dilemma by saying that the accusation didn’t really mean that he had dukkata-offences but that it was merely dukkata kamma. The Pali however doesn’t sound like that to my knowledge. Anyway, the entire episode leaves the reader with an uneasy feeling about the competence, unanimity and friendship between those monks. On the surface all this seems to have been consequence of the Buddha’s statement, so it seems justified to examine whether it is possible to make some better sense of it.
Here I will try to forward some speculations and implications to three questions:
q Why did the theras not know what the lesser and minor training rules were?
q What were the lesser and minor training rules?
q What was the Buddha’s intention in giving the allowance?
So, why did the theras not know what the lesser and minor training rules were?
This question may justly be asked for several reasons.
1. The terms ‘lesser and minor training rules’ were recited every fortnight in front of all monks as part of the patimokkha recitation. The rule says (roughly rendered) that a monk who says: ‘Why bother with the lesser and minor training rules? They are more trouble than they are worth!’, commits and offence that must be confessed. A cursory understanding of the meaning of these rules was required to have been established after 2 or 3 hearings, a detailed one after a maximum of 5 years as a monk. Most of these monks however, had been ordained many decades and had consequently heard the chanting several hundred times.
2. Why did Ven. Upali, the monk pronounced foremost in his capacity to judge and decide Vinaya questions and reciter of the Vinaya Pitaka on the first council, either not decisively know what they were or, if he had an opinion on the matter, why didn’t the theras comply with it? We can probably establish safely from this fact that there is no such a thing as a paṭisambhida-ñāṇa attainment for Vinaya as there is for the Dhamma. The paṭisambhida-ñāṇa is direct knowledge of the precisely correct answer to Dhamma questions in the correct terminology. (Interestingly, in the end it was not Venerable Upali who suggested that they were not abolished but Ven. Mahākassapa.)
One solution could be that, being saints and highly dignified, the arahants in the council were very distant from problems whether playing in the water or tickling somebody was lesser or more serious in nature. As many of them were Vinaya experts and involved in training young monks though, this solution is not so good. It may perhaps be considered an influence on understanding the nature of their processing the problem, however.
Another solution to the fact that they didn’t know what they were in spite their having heard them recited a lot, could be that P 72 was established very late, in other words, from their perspective ‘recently’. It seems, rules were laid down in the last year of the Buddha’s ministry but of most rules we don’t know when they were laid down. It would thus be possible that the rule was pronounced only a few months before the council was held.
The Buddha took the wording for that rule from the original offenders wording, with a seeming detachment that is characteristic for the laying down of many rules: Whatever happened about which some people complained: ‘Foolish man, don’t do such a thing - whoever should do it: it must be confessed.’ - The idea seeming to be that intelligent monks will work out details & implications according to exigency and circumstance.
This, of course, means that the original offenders should know what these lesser and minor rules were. The theras could have either asked them or investigated the minds of the offender directly but, from the origin story, it seems likely that the offending party had no clear idea what they were saying in some legally precise way but just wanted to kick up a stink.
The reason that Ven. Upali was not given the last word in the matter could have been that the different suggestions came from him as possible options to consider for the other monks. In other words, his job would be to present the legal foundations, as in an expert assessment of a court case.
Venerable Upali may even have been arguing deliberately against the sure establishment of any of the mentioned options so to pave the way for Ven. Mahakassapa’s solution, which the Sangha agreed upon unanimously without discussion. In other words, Venerable Upali would have been providing the ‘negative’ position ‘none of you have a totally solid case’ to support the ‘positive’ suggestion to leave the monastic rule as is.
What were the lesser and minor training rules?
First of all, it is noteworthy that the Buddha said that there is such a thing as a lesser and minor training rule. Zealous Vinaya masters have, probably always, liked to talk about dukkatas as leading to hell etc., for supposed didactical benefits. In that, they are like parents and the Buddha does what he can to enable them, it seems [fully aware of the challenging, thankless & onerous task they were pursuing one might add in their defense].
So, the Buddha said there were lesser and minor training rules and the Sangha could, if it wished to do so, abolish them.
In light of P 72 this is a bit odd because there, a monk who says: ‘Why bother with the lesser and minor training rules? They’re more trouble than they’re worth’ incurs a Pacittiya offence; but the allowance seems to say pretty much the same thing: If it seems they are more trouble than they’re worth, the Sangha may abolish them. - The rule is therfore really aimed at disrespect towards the established order, rather than necessarily to defend the ultimate value of those rules.
The theras of the 1st Council are said to have discussed a number of different options as to what could have been meant. Below their options, considered one by one, assuming that those were genuine positions actually held by specific monks and the passage is not merely intended to state that there were different positions by offering a list of options, autocompleted, as it were. Here the list of mentioned positions on the question which rules should be considered lesser & minor by first council arahants in light of the offer that the Buddha suggested that they be expendable if the saṅgha so chose after his passing:
1. All, except Pj. These monks I imagine to be mostly old school hermits, perhaps having been such before they were ordained. Their preference would be utter simplicity of regulation, total emphasis on mind state. This would amount to a monastic code like that of Buddhas from earlier eons, such as Buddhas Vipasssi, Sikki, or Vesabhu. Also in the early days of the sasana, some remarks suggest that flavor, for example the answer to the question of conduct in the Parayana Vagga of the Sutta Nipata as to conduct expected, which basically suggests to stay away from sensuality and don’t bother about the rest. The advantage would be that the Sangha has to deal very little with Vinaya questions.
2. All, except Pj and S. The monks who favoured this option took lesser and minor training rules to be the lahu appaties in contradistinction to garu appaties. Again, they would favour a highly essential Vinaya. This option give still room for the Sangha to intimidate corrupt monks and to help rehabilitate doubting or remorseful monks with transgressions of sex offences. Also, this option gives considerable weight to communal meetings and technical proficiency in Vinaya legislation, as that is what the purification of S transgression requires.
This would be likely what monks persuaded of the radical first option would want to avoid. One could perhaps paraphrase their concerns as: ‘The thread of the S transgressions engenders a lot of doubts and false positives while being only of very limited value in curbing transgressive characters. The purification is not only a burden on the saṅgha but will be likely impossible to carry out for many communities in dissipating or outlying Buddhism. Teaching the technical detail without a living Buddha as reference and maintaining the tradition will be asking too much and potentially set communities against each other.’ – Sophisticated technical or pedagogical positions aside, the second position’s monks defense would be easy, though: garu appaties cannot be ‘lesser and minor’.
3. All, except Pj, S and Ani. It is interesting that the Aniyata are treated here as rules. They are really more ‘regulation’ or ‘recommended guideline’ and a totally different type of policy from a breakable ‘rule’ with a fixed ‘penalty’. Perhaps the difference could be compared to the difference in soccer regulation by between a rule, such as ‘offside’ or ‘foul’ with a binding penalty to follow and use of the VAR by the referee, which is extensively regulated but cannot be genuinely violated or penalized and is really only concerns offence, offender and transgression in a secondary way, the primary one target being the community.
One difficulty, though not a major one, is that the Aniyatas include the option of transgressing a Pacittiya offence (P44/5). There would be either the possibility to preserve those two offences or to abandon the part of making the monks confess that offence. It would be largely an academic question, as it is merely a 30 sec. confession but suggests transgression, although not as substantial as had been necessary to consider. Perhaps one could consider typical usage to the court option of dismissing a charge/closing proceedings [German: ‘Verfahren einstellen’] and acquitting the defendant [German: ‘Freispruch’]. Whereas the former leaves out saying anything about guilt, the latter, i.e. ‘acquitting’ is pronouncing that the defendant is to be considered ‘free of guilt’ of the charged transgression and to be considered so.
The monks who found it important to preserve the Aniyatas presumably thought abandoning them would lead to problems in the future and it would be helpful to have this kind of guideline. These regulations are interesting in that the cases or the possibility for such accusations come up constantly but these procedures are never used; in practice they serve only as warning or reminder, much depending on by whom and how they are taught.
A further curiousity is that the Vibhanga interpretation (that a monk should be charged only to what he confesses, no matter what the lay woman saw and/or said) is opposite to what is stated in the rule, namely, that the monk should be dealt with according to what the woman says. If only by degree of nuance, the original is more a bro-code type statement, an assertion of assuming that a monk is honorable over the trusted lay woman’s suggestion; the latter, commentarial position, of following the lady’s reservations reflects more a concession to politcal exigency. In defence of that position it should be said that the influence of the lay people’s power on the order and the regulatory value of their mixed quality reservations is much used by the Buddha and sensitization to this reasoning is a, sometimes challenging part of every monks training. – For the purpose of the discussion at hand it may be considered if this type of weight on the saṅgha is as valuable without a living Buddha.
Nonetheless, if the recitation is understood, and particularly at such a prominent place after the Sanghadisesas and at the end of the recitation, these regulations have a powerful value-enforcing as well as potentially intimidating reminder effect.
The monks considering this position may also have considered sheer volume, a kind of cost/benefit analysis: Reciting these rules takes barely a minute, they require little in training and pose little potential to lead to conflict. – If such ‘real politik’ reasoning seems facetious, it should be noted that the venerable institution of patimokkha-recitation has been abolished by most monastic communities around the world due to the time it takes and more often than not, those many communities who wish to pay it token respect, will recite an abbreviated version that was actually reserved for genuine emergencies. The recitation is not too long if the process is considered the highlight of the monastic fortnight rhythm but it can be felt to be just an additional burden in a monastic life in large urban monasteries with very many large & small subsets of communities, mostly of little specialization in Vinaya or community life, in fact, like many urban administrative units, a resistance to absorption into community obligation, valuing anonymity and the possibility ‘to do one’s own thing.’
4. All, except Pj, S, Ani and NP. The monks who wanted to keep just this set of rules might have felt that the wrong acquisition and accumulation of things would have a serious effect on the future saṅgha. Also, perhaps, that regulation of requisites and the way they are acquired should extend into nuancing by exterminating regulation such as stealing or some hard, technical building regulation.
Indeed, some of these 30 offences are hard to classify as ‘lesser and minor’ training rules, for example all the money-, fund- and trading-rules come up here. A number of the rules are designed to protect lay people from shameless monks, always a concern of the Buddha. The monks may also have felt that a rule was serious when its transgression entailed something more than mere confession, i.e. that the additional procedure was the dividing line.
From this position, it is as far as one could drag the term if one took this mention of khudakaṃ to be indicative for a rule to be classified as lesser. But also, the term ‘lesser’ with respect to rules occurs at the end of both the monks’ and the nuns’ pacittiyas (khuddakaṃ samattaṃ and khuddakaṃ nitthitaṃ respectively). This is a strong technical point to include these types of pacittiyas in the lesser and minor training rules, in fact, it could be the most legalistic of arguments and it might well be that monks strong on faith [in literal, original Buddha-word] and learning may have espoused this position, independent of personal preference for or against existence of rules, essentially just saying ‘this is what it seems to say to me’.
5. All, except Pj, S, Ani, NP and P. The monks in favour of this option may have had in mind that the pacittiyas contain many morally serious offences, e.g. P 1: lying, P 2: reviling a monk, P 51: drinking alcohol, P 61: killing an animal, P 74: hitting a monk in anger are all examples for offences that are hard to consider ‘lesser or minor’ by any standard.
The absence of purification protocol beyond formal confession of the transgression would also take the sting of ‘mere confession’ - as though it was nothing to confess a transgression to a fellow monk or the order - away from the term ‘confession’ by association with the phrase ‘lesser and minor’.
These rules also contain many of the so-called samana-standards which establish the boundary between monastic and lay life, such as the rules on food, contact with women or lay people in general, particularly in town or village. Such monks might also find the aid in training monks and consolidating communal values around established rules a trade-off worth the sacrifice of additional complication. Many of the theras who were training young monks must have felt the loss of these rules to be potentially disastrous.
6. All, except Pj, S, Ani, NP, P and Pd. The monks who wished to include also the patidesaniyas into the heavier rules probably wanted to minimize loss as far as possible and thought that the term lesser and minor training rules referred really to dukkatas and other minor regulations.
It is interesting that – as far as the record goes – all first council theras agreed that dukkatas and sekhiyas were, by virtue of them being assigned such class, lesser and minor training rules. None of them mentioned thullaccayas. In addition, from the inclusion of the aniyatas in the scheme above [i.e. because they are considered as rules of certain weight], one may deduce that the Sattadhikarana at the end of the Patimokkha were probably also considered lesser and minor training rules by the council.
Absent is consideration that the term might have referred to another classification of regulations. Such absence can be justified, as in the origin story to P 72, the monks complain that the lesser and minor training rules are recited (i.e. in the Patimokkha).
But as far as the spirit of the term goes, there might also have been room for different interpretations of the phrase ‘lesser & minor rules’, as used by the Buddha. Below a few ways for alternative ways to distinguish between serious and less serious training rules:
1. When the monks from Kosambi had their schisms settled by ‘covering over with grass’ (tina-vattharako), all offences which didn’t require rehabilitation or expulsion (Pj and S) or concerned the laity were considered expendable. What the offences concerning the laity were is probably a similarly difficult one to the problem at hand, about the lesser and minor training rules. In Kosambi, e.g. the lay people were utterly disgusted with the monks’ behaviour for something that was a strictly internal monastic matter. But likely this is more a problem for us, with distance of time to the events. Many of the monks of the 1st Council had been on the occasion of that settlement in Savatthi and must have remembered how offences were classified as having to do with the laity. – It could be suggested that this set would have to be considered to be not ‘lesser and minor’ but everything else just might be, for certain purposes.
2. In A 4.50 four obstructions are given because of which a monk does not shine forth, similar to the sun when obstructed in any way. The are: alcohol, sex, money and wrong livelihood. These things could be considered more serious than other rules and combined with the Pjs they could be used to select a body of more relevant rules.
3. Another text in A 4 [?] gives a differentiation between rules concerning the fundamentals of the holy life and other rules, to show that also a highly attained ariya is capable of infracting smaller rules. This could also be used as a standard for determining what was more serious and what were lesser and minor training rules.
4. The Ovada-Patimokkha [D 14] contains a reference to violence as the one serious transgression which decides whether someone can count as a samana. Curiously, it also contains a reference to keeping the Patimokkha, though it was recited at a time when the Patimokkha we know, a body of rules, had not yet been established (about nine months after the Buddha’s awakening). However, it must have meant something to those monks and referred most likely to some kind of samana-restraint in form of rules that was generally considered consensus-able at the time but was transgressed by some monks.
5. Now, 2500 years after the 1st Council, many rules have become obsolete and in all likelihood have been so for a long time. Some rules seem to have a kind of ‘built in obsolescence’, others may have been designed as showcases for principles from start, as they are practically impossible to implement [e.g. all Saṅghadisesas which require triple admonition, especially S 11 and S 12]. Certainly, many monks on the 1st Council had powers to see developments such as impending obsolescence, where even just commonsense could not have established that. It also seems that something in this vein may have been the Buddha’s intention, namely that some of the rules, which were useful during his ministry and in the historical context of northern India at that time, would later become more trouble than they were worth. Even if not troublesome but simply obsolete, they might be considered taking away from the relevance of more significant rules. The reason, for example, the pacittiyas can be considered lesser and minor training rules in spite of the above-mentioned heavy transgressions is that they contain many such obsolete rules. Were the pacittiyas only a short list of extremely morally reprehensible behavior, nobody would suggest they are ‘lesser & minor’. Much of Vinaya study deals with questions with little or no bearing on the monks’ life – i.e. deciding his action of body & speech. They are more serving as examples for regulation within a value system and provide factors that were given as reasons for laying down rules and deciding their gravity. – While Vinaya-aficionados may find them to contribute to the excellence of the Vinaya, informing practical application may offer a distinction to decide between ‘lesser and minor’ and more serious.
6. Another possibility could have been that the Buddha meant to give permission for a group of monks, rather than the whole of Buddhist monasticism, for example, to suspend, even temporarily, rules that were impractical to keep because of external conditions. This possibility would leave the body of the rules intact and would establish an abolishment only for a particular place or even time, offering a way to determine something as ‘lesser and minor’ ad hoc, by a community, for a certain purpose. There are a number of echoes of such approaches within extant ruling of the Buddha and, in fact, the very words spoken by the Buddha to venerable Ananda under discussion here carry that sentiment.
All we can reasonably sure of at this point in time is that the theras at the first council are not mentioned to have considered these options. One reason could be that the most practical and easy way to determine the scope of the rules in question would be to use the Patimokkha classification and P 72 also suggests it.
We can also not exclude the possibility that the passage was systematized without excessive concern for what was literally said, to say ‘there were a number of different positions’. It is rather clear to the reader that the main point that the editors wanted to make by including the passage is to state that the theras decided unanimously [and by extension bindingly] not to abandon any rules. This decision is supported by a strong point from the beginning of D 16, the account of the Buddha’s last days that the instruction to venerable Ananda also hails from, where the strength of a nation is said to rest on their conscientious maintenance of ancient customs - without them being specified - many of which were probably later abandoned for good reasons, not rarely though to the peril of that society due to unforeseen implications. Such developments are not minor. Quite the contrary. They provide the core principle of cosmic degeneration, devolution and downgrading of the human species. Extensive records of the Buddha’s vision of this are detailed in D 27; other samples are scattered throughout the canonical record of the word of the Buddha.
What was the intention of the Buddha?
This is a pertinent issue to consider, as the casual reading of the passage in D 16 and its complicated aftermath in Cv 11 may leave a somewhat disorganized impression. As long as translations were not abundant, this would rarely pose problems since the monks who were in a position to read this material would typically only differ to degrees in options which would all have in common the assumption that the Buddha would naturally chose the best way to communicate a pertinent matter to the saṅgha. Since academically oriented lay people have taken to translate and examine buddhist records this has changed. They tend to publish a lot of ideas and formulate authoritatively, albeit their affiliations with buddhism are often sketchy at best; regularly their affiliation is not made known or considered and potential conflicts of interest are not made clear, nor are areas of uncertainty they may personally have. Core assumptions lacking, they create a sense of ambiguity and confusion around issues which leave trained monks flustered as to what the fuss may be about. One result is that issues which undermine the impression of one solid, dependable source and system behind countless recorded individual interactions of the Buddha is weakening and a sense of ambiguity about the Buddha and his teachings, let alone the order, has become normative and infected even parts of the saṅgha.
The commentary says that the Buddha’s intention was to give the theras a chance to show their loyalty to those regulations. We may add that the Buddha also showed his confidence to his Sangha by letting them decide such a point (he didn’t order the Sangha to abandon them). An additional point the Buddha may have had in mind could have been to discourage dissension in the Sangha over minor matters of Vinaya. This had already happened in Kosambi where not even the Blessed One himself could bring the monks to their senses when they caused a genuine schism over a question of a little bit of water left in a rinsing dish in the toilet, a dukkata offence. There were several occasions when the Buddha discouraged obsession with hardly perceptible traces of forbidden matter. Glorious Ven. Revata the Doubter and his disciples didn’t use sugar that had admixtures of starch and rejected the use of a product as harmless as kidney beans, since he had seen them grow after having passed through the body and thus (correctly) deduced that they were alive at the time of being eaten whereas they strictly speaking should have been dead at that point in legislation (Mv 6.16). More dangerous however was and is the righteousness (and arrogance) of Vinaya masters that most monks from Vinaya monasteries are familiar with from their own Vinaya experts. It seems an unthinkable to conceive of two Vinaya masters as being friends (as they are usually outspoken about what they consider the others misunderstandings) and yet these monks are usually very influential in their respective spheres. It is perhaps with this in mind that the Buddha wanted to dis-inflate debates about Vinaya questions. In M 104 the Buddha makes a statement that could be seen similar in meaning to the above. Ven. Ananda who foresaw such quarreling about Vinaya and livelihood after the Buddha’s passing away expressed his concern about this but the Buddha says to him: ‘A dispute about livelihood or about the Patimokkha would be trifling, Ananda.’ Perhaps this was meant, like the above teaching, as a message to the Vinaya masters to come.
A further question may be raised why the Buddha didn’t tell the Sangha as a whole about this point and perhaps even a little bit earlier. That Ven. Ananda got in trouble for not asking the Buddha what these rules were, could really be seen as a criticism of the Buddha. There is no prohibition for the Buddha to use a more commonly understood term or explain what he meant. Ven. Ananda could, for example, have done the right thing in not asking the question if he had assumed that Ven. Upali would certainly know such a thing; consequently he wouldn’t ask so not to waste the last minutes of the Buddha’s ministry to ask what kind of ear-diggers should be allowed in the future. Superficially looking, one could get the impression from the passages, that the Buddha had kind of forgotten about this point and told Ven. Ananda at the last minute, an assumption that would of course be both respectless and ignorant of a Buddha’s mind. There must have been an important advantage to the theras discussing this point and coming to a conclusion on their own.
This advantage could perhaps be that future generations of lax monks could not claim that the Buddha said to abandon, for example, the pacittiyas. No matter what the 1st Council had decided, if the Buddha had declared a particular body of rules superfluous they would have never flourished in popularity. Being as it is, a monk who wants to even attempt a judgment of the question has to study the rules quiet thoroughly for a long time. In that time he will always learn that even the lesser rules were laid down from intelligent common sense and that a monk who didn’t want to keep them would usually be a shameless one. If he still prefers to operate crookedly it is unlikely that he will make a lot of noise to show that he is justified in doing so. It is this noise which would certainly make for pointless dissension.
We could make some room for the theras criticism of Ven. Ananda’s omission of asking by showing to future generations what proper procedure is. If a point is not clear: ask! As they and Ven. Ananda were completely cool they didn’t have to be careful of stepping on each others toes with their speech. If such a reasoning was in their mind, Ven. Ananda’s defense would not only be quiet irrelevant for the accusation but it may have been even supporting it by saying that it was only a limited excuse. This attempt at explaining those accusations runs kind of parallel to the more obvious benefit from that exchange, that of Ven. Ananda’a humility in confessing these points out of respect for the theras. This has certainly greatly influenced countless disagreements between younger and older monks since that time.
An important point is that Ven. Maha Kassapa had his impulse to hold the Council when he came with a large group of disciples towards Kusinara and heard on the way that the Blessed One had already passed away. A large number of unenlightened monks were very distressed of hearing the news to the point of crying. But one later ordained monk, ven. Subadda said to them that he thought they were well rid of the Blessed One as he always was on their case with all these minor rules. Ven. Maha Kassapa didn’t say anything to the monk but there and then decided to hold the Council and establish what actually is the Teaching, soon, before the bad monks would be too strong and the good ones in the minority.
In other words, the whole idea of this Council originated in a highly blasphemic insult of the Tathagata’s help in the form of minor rules and the implication was that, once he, the Blessed One had passed away, as a matter of course, all these rules would be abandoned by his Sangha which was oppressed by them, like children whose bedtime and TV hours are regulated by their parents.
This allowance for the Sangha to abandon the lesser & minor rules can be seen as a direct response to this view, a direct disarment of the position. The Buddha releases the Sangha from his control, and even officially allows them to fulfill alajji monks like Ven. Subadda’s hope, however, not for each monk as he pleases but as a Sangha decision. The Sangha, i.e. all monks, after controversial consideration of the matter J, rejects the offer, which could almost look as though they are going against the Blessed Ones suggestion, and so-to-speak re-installs these rules on its own authority.
This is a piece-de-resistance of didactics: what looks like an unconditional allowance is actually a way to reinforce those rules. Seeing it in this way it seems that this crème de la crème of arahants who had attained everything attainable in a Buddha Sasana, who had spent decades in the vicinity of the Blessed One, was in no confusion on the matter at any time.