What Is Kathina? Its Origin and the Kathina Robe

Kathina = merit?

Attano santānaṃ pureti sodhetīti = puññaṃ

Whatever cleanses the continuum of one’s being, making it spotlessly clean of the defilements of lust, aversion and delusion, is called “merit” (puñña).

So what can clear away the defilements must be wholesome qualities (kusala dhamma), such as faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom, or intention that goes with the wholesome, that is, a will bound up with the wholesome, which brings about a state of mind without fault, a mind without sickness, a mind with nothing spoiled in it. Such a state of mind is merit.

We need a skillful means to come in and cleanse, so the Buddha taught the bases of meritorious action (puññakiriyavatthu): giving, virtue and cultivation (dāna, sīla, bhāvanā). Expanded, they become the ten bases of meritorious action.

If lust, aversion or infatuated delusion arises in the mind, at that moment the mind is no longer merit. But since merit is what cleanses, try watching yourself: at that moment, does a state of openness, clarity and lightness arise in your mind? If openness, clarity and lightness have arisen, that shows merit has come in to cleanse it.

The ten bases of meritorious action

Giving means giving, relinquishing and sharing, such as putting food in the monks’ alms bowls, making an offering to the Saṅgha (saṅghadāna, the Saṅgha being the community of monks), or coming to make kathina merit. This is called dānamaya, merit made through giving. Having given, we can also direct the merit that has arisen and spread it to others, and so gain pattidānamaya, merit made by sharing merit. And when we see someone who has done good and cultivated the wholesome, we rejoice with them, admire them and express our appreciation to them: this is pattānumodanāmaya, merit made by rejoicing in the merit of others.

Virtue (sīla) is what keeps one’s bodily conduct, speech and livelihood clean, pure and bright. It removes immorality, so that body, speech and mind grow cleaner; one has shame at evil and fear of doing evil, with firm faith as its proximate cause. This is sīlamaya, merit made through virtue. Conduct that shows humility toward those who have been good to us, such as our father and mother, grandparents, teachers or monks, developing until we are humble toward the Triple Gem, is apacāyanamaya, merit made through respect. And putting effort into helping with these various proper tasks is veyyāvaccamaya, merit made through service.

The level of cultivation (bhāvanā) means developing the wholesome further and further: from virtue to concentration, from concentration to wisdom, until virtue, concentration and wisdom at the worldly level (lokiya) become virtue, concentration and wisdom at the world-transcending level (lokuttara). This is bhāvanāmaya, merit made through cultivation. When we listen to the true Dhamma, the Dhamma of the good person (the Perfectly Self-Awakened Buddha), to develop our knowledge and understanding and to have a map for living rightly, this is dhammassavanamaya, merit made by listening to the Dhamma. Telling, proclaiming, passing on knowledge or teaching the Dhamma of the Perfectly Self-Awakened Buddha is dhammadesanāmaya, merit made by teaching the Dhamma. Adjusting one’s views to accord with how things truly are is called diṭṭhujukamma, straightening one’s views, as we are doing now in coming to understand the kathina, which is part of the Dhamma and Discipline laid down by the Buddha. This straightens our views to accord with reality.

In short: giving, virtue and cultivation.

The origin of the kathina

Back in the Buddha’s time, a group of monks were wandering from place to place to come and see the Teacher. But wandering in the rainy season was not at all convenient, and they would walk across fields and rice paddies, damaging the villagers’ crops, and the villagers suffered. So the Teacher gave permission for monks to stay in one place for the rains retreat (vassa) through the whole three months of the rainy season.

Thirty monks from Pāṭheyya (Pāṭhā) wished to go and see the Blessed One. But when they had traveled as far as the town of Sāketa (6 yojana, or 96 kilometers, from Sāvatthī, where the Buddha was staying), the time to enter the rains retreat came first, so they had to spend the rains in Sāketa. Missing the Buddha, as soon as the rains retreat was over the group hurried off to see him. But because it was still the season of heavy rain, the journey was hard: the ground and the paths they walked were flooded with water and mud, so their bodies, their triple robes and their other requisites were all soaked through and stained.

When they arrived at the Jetavana monastery and came into the Blessed One’s presence, he greeted them warmly and asked how they had been and about the hardships of their journey, and they told him truthfully. Having heard, the Buddha wished that monks should not have to struggle with travel (since it was still raining heavily) nor struggle to find robes. So he laid down the spreading of the kathina for monks, saying: “Monks, I allow monks who have completed the rains retreat to spread the kathina.” (Vin. 5/306/146) “A monk who has spread the kathina gains five benefits: traveling without taking leave, not having to carry all three robes, being able to eat group meals, keeping cloth beyond the triple robe as needed, and having a right to the robes that donors offer to the Saṅgha in that monastery.” This was so that monks could spend the month after the rains retreat looking for cloth, without having to hurry off anywhere.

Making the kathina robe

In ancient times cloth was hard to come by. When the monks got scraps of cloth, gathered from corpses, from charnel grounds, or cloth that people had thrown away, the monks of the whole monastery had to join their strength and hearts in making that cloth correctly according to the Dhamma and Discipline: how to cut the cloth, how to sew it and how to dye it so that it accorded with the Dhamma and Discipline.

Literally, the word kathina means mai sadueng, the wooden frame used as a pattern for cutting and sewing robes.

The kathina cloth is any one of the robes, because the word cīvara means cloth, and trai means three: the triple robe (ticīvara) means three robes.

The cloth worn around the waist is called the antaravāsaka, or what we know as the sabong.

The cloth worn over the body is called the uttarāsaṅga; we mostly call this piece the chiwon, the robe.

The cloth worn doubled over it in the cold season is called the saṅghāṭi (in Thailand it is worn folded over the shoulder).

But all three pieces are robes, so together they are called the triple robe. The kathina cloth is simply any one of these three pieces.