In accordance with the Vinaya, the Buddhist Monastic Order in India adopted a policy of exclusion that barred lay people from living inside or loitering around the monasteries and nunneries and making use of their facilities, except for those who provided services to the clerics in the establishments. Female visitors were not welcome at the monasteries, and vice versa. Besides, Buddhist institutes were to be decorated in simplicity.
In China, on the other hand，the Monastic Order adopted a policy of secularization. This policy is reflected in the following phenomena as recorded in both the Buddhist and secular histories：(1)The Chinese Buddhist，clerics or laymen，decorated their religious establishments ostentatiously. (2)The Monastic Order opened their monasteries and nunneries to the society as a place of amusement, provides musical，dancing and acrobatic performances in order to entertain the laity，and allowed them to hold drinking parties in the monastic gardens. (3) The authorities of the monasteries accepted poor intellectuals as tenants and sometimes even provided them with free meals, no matter whether these intellectuals were Buddhist converts or not. (4)The authorities of monasteries allowed lay females to come in and saunter about，or vice versa. (5)The authorities of Buddhist establishments allowed lay people to take bath with hot water supplied in the clerics'bathing hall. (6)The authorities of the establishments allowed the laity to hold funeral in their institutes and even to bury the dead in the monastic ground.
All of the above-mentioned phenomena are infact breaches of the Buddhist Vinaya, therefore, Disciplinarian `Tao-hsuan` (道宣)，the nineth patriarch of the Disciplinary School，condemned these practices very strongly.
Why did the Chinese Monastic Order strayed from the Vinaya to ingratiate themselves with the secular society? As my research reveals, the Order adopted such a policy for the following reasons：Firstly, the `Meng-tzu` (孟子) or 'Work of Mancius'，one of the Confucian cannons read by everybody，highly extols King `Wen` (文王) of the Chou (周) Dynasty, who，recognizing that his royal park was built with the cash and labour of his subjects, decided to share it with them. Influenced by this story，the Chinese laymen would argue that without their donations no Buddhist establishment would have been established. They would also think that they should have the same right to the monasteries and nunneries as the Chou people had to the royal park. As King Wen allowed his people to hunt and fish in his park, the Chinese laymen would think that there was nothing wrong in their using of the monastic facilities (such as the bathing hall) occasionally. Secondly，as the poor intellectuals might one day become high-ranking officials once they passed the public Examination，the monks extended to them their hospitality in anticipation of receiving their patronage in future. Besides, keeping an intellectual in a Buddhist enviroment would be a good way of courting a man to lean to Buddhism. Thirdly，according to historical records, lay females trusted monds more then the nuns, and preferred to come to the monasteries in order to pour out their m
