pārājika-dharma

(Sanskrit). Group of four offences that are the first and most serious in the Buddhist monastic code of discipline (Prātimokṣa). The penalty for any of the four offences is lifelong expulsion from the monastic order (Saṃgha). The four offences are (1) sexual intercourse; (2) serious theft; (3) murder, and (4) falsely claiming to have attained supernatural powers. A monk who commits a pārājika offence is compared to ‘a person whose head is cut off, or a withered leaf dropped from the tree, or a stone slab split in two, or a Palm tree cut from the top’. Such a one has been ‘defeated’ (the traditional etymology of pārājika) and cannot be readmitted to the Order.