The relationship between the community of monk and the laity is also reciprocal. While the lay followers furnish the temporal needs of the monks, they in turn fulfill the spiritual needs of the laity. Moreover, they are entrusted with the task of educating them in order to widen their mental outlook.
There are eleven methods to be done by the monks and laity. It contains two parts clergy and laity.
The laity should minister to them by five factors. They are as follows
- Treading them with affection and act,
- Treading them with affection and speech,
- Treading them with affection in mind,
- Keeping their house open to them,
- Supplying their temporal needs.
The community of monks (clergy) has the obligation to care for the laity by six factors.
- Restraining them from evil,
- Exhorting them to do good,
- loving them with kindly thoughts,
- Teaching them what they have not heard before,
- Correcting and purifying what they have heard already,
- Revealing to them the way to a heavenly state.
The Buddha addressed to the monks to cultivate a sense of fraternity by practicing the virtues of loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and impartiality towards each other and to learn to develop the idea of identity with all others.
