ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the extent to which the Pali Discourses provide a basis for poesis within the renunciate life, and how such a notion of poesis may contribute to a meaningful vision for a poesis of peace. The Pali term papa, commonly translated as 'evil', is the antonym of puñña, a good associated mainly with the accumulation of positive karmic merit necessary for auspicious rebirths. Householders accomplish puñña through the material support of the monastic community, and by keeping the five precepts. For homeleavers, puñña is expanded to include ten precepts as well as obedience to the monastic rules. Given the institutional structures of early Buddhist homeleaving, monks and nuns were not expected to develop the skills of farming, trade or craft. Their lives were formed to refrain from work of any kind, from both the production of crops or material goods. Instead, homeleavers were trained to make metta, to bring wholesome states like loving-kindness, into the world.
