‘Nasana,’ a term found in the Vinaya scriptures, seeming to denote one of the most rigorous punishments of banishing a member of Buddhist communities (samgha), has generally been understood as a sanction to be given to those monks or nuns who do not have the conscience of guilt after having committed one of the capital crimes (parajika dhammas). However, this understanding, presupposing the two steps of procedure for applying this rule that a member of the Buddhist community first violates a parajika dhamma and then denies confessing the crime, is, in fact, not in harmony with the accounts in the Vinaya that expressly specify the kinds of offenders this rule should be applied to. They enumerate four sorts of cases: (1) those who have been ordained as full-fledged monks or nuns under false pretences of their state, concealing the fact that they had actually violated the rule of forming an impediment (antarayika-dhamma). (2) Those novices (samanera) who have broken one of the ten rules such as murder, theft, unchastity, dishonesty, drinking, slander against Buddha, Dhamma and Samgha, holding a false opinion, and committing sexual assault upon nuns. Noteworthy in this case is the fact that the novices who adhere to a false opinion are subject to this punishment. (3) Those nuns who abuse monks on no ground for committing sexual intercourse (methunadhamma). (4) Those bhikkhu, bhikkhuni, samanera, samaneri, and sikkhamana who commit the offence of methunadhamma. These accounts, defining the object to which the punishment of nasana is to be applied, clearly show that this rule has, in principle, little to do with the situation of violating the four parajika dhammas and lacking any conscious of guilt.
