THE DUTY OF THE HOUSEHOLDER IN GIHISUTTA

Abstract

 This academic article presents to study the householders’ duties in Buddhism; 1) There are five duties of the householder in the time of the Buddha and at present: 1) sponsorship of monks; 2) maintaining Buddhism; 3) solving allegation and protecting dangers; 4) presentation and propagation of teachings; 5) helping society.Duties of the householder in the Gihi sutta found that 1) the duty of sponsoring the monks is the maintenance of support for the four requisites, including robes, alms offering, shelter and medicine needed for living. This is to support the maintenance of the monks in order to maintain Buddhism; 2) the duty to maintain Buddhism is to give the devotion in the Triple Gem without any doubt; 3) the duty to solve allegation and protect dangers: the duty to uphold the discipline, help to carry out and fix that will not damage the Buddhism; 4) the duty in spreading the teachings and 5) the duty in helping society, etc. From the analytical study, it can be seen that the duty of the householder in the sutta is not different from that in Buddhism. On this point, it is probably because the Gihi sutta is one of the Buddhist scriptures. Therefore there is no difference in explanation.