The Relationship Between Morality and the Body in Monastic Training According to the Shikshasamuccaya.(Buddhism)(dissertation summary)

Where do we locate the effects of monastic training? Are these located primarily in the interior of a person's psyche or on the exterior of the body? This thesis argues that according to the Shikshasamuccaya, a Sanskrit Buddhist compendium of monastic discipline, virtue is as much a feature of the body as it is an inner quality--a perception which has wide resonance in the Buddhist literature of many schools. Morality is persistently associated with the body in this text. Beings are adorned or perfumed with virtue; likewise they are disfigured by sin or reek with the stench of their immoral conduct.

Chapters one and two demonstrate that monastic training concerns the …