Mystical systems
Dhutanga
Direct answer
Dhutanga: The dhutangas are thirteen voluntary austerities open to Theravada Buddhist monks, covering robes, food and lodging, which the Buddha permitted but declined to make compulsory.
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At a glance
- Also called
- thirteen ascetic practices, tudong, buddhist austerities
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Asceticism, Tapas, Vigil, Sadhu
The dhutangas are thirteen voluntary austerities open to Theravada Buddhist monks, covering robes, food and lodging, which the Buddha permitted but declined to make compulsory.
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What does dhutanga mean?
Dhutanga is a Pali word usually explained as a means of shaking off, that is, of shaking off the defilements. The thirteen practices tighten the ordinary monastic rule in three areas. For robes: wearing only cast-off rags, and owning only three robes. For food: eating only what is given on the alms round, going to every house without choosing, eating once a day, from one bowl, and refusing second helpings. For lodging: living in the forest, at the foot of a tree, in the open air or in a cremation ground, accepting any bed offered, and never lying down.
A monk may take up one or several for a period and lay them down again. The Buddha had tried extreme self-starvation before his awakening and rejected it, and the dhutangas sit inside his middle way: they simplify life without aiming to hurt the body.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Fasting and discipline.
What sets Dhutanga apart
The dhutangas are austerities with an off switch. Each is taken up by a spoken resolve and can be set down in the same way, and the commentary grades every one as strict, medium or mild so that a monk can choose a level. None involves pain as such; they remove choice and comfort, not health. The hardest, the sitter's practice, forbids lying down but allows sleep upright. The texts add a telling warning that a monk may keep all thirteen from vanity and gain nothing.
- Word: Pali dhutanga; Thai tudong
- Number: thirteen in Theravada; twelve in Mahayana lists
- Three groups: two on robes, five on food, six on lodging
- Chief source: Visuddhimagga of Buddhaghosa, chapter two, fifth century
- Model monk: Mahakassapa, named foremost in the ascetic practices
- Modern revival: the Thai forest tradition of Ajahn Mun, who died in 1949
Often mistaken for something else: Tapas in the Hindu epics is hardship pressed as far as the body can bear to store up power; the dhutangas are fixed, moderate simplifications a monk may take up and put down.
The story behind Dhutanga
The Pali canon tells how the monk Devadatta asked the Buddha to make five such practices binding on all monks, and was refused. The elder Mahakassapa is named as foremost among those who kept them. The full list of thirteen is explained in the second chapter of the Visuddhimagga, written by Buddhaghosa in Sri Lanka in the fifth century. In the twentieth century the Thai forest tradition of Ajahn Mun revived them, and Thai monks call walking austerity tudong.
Why Dhutanga matters
The list shows exactly how far Buddhist austerity is allowed to go, and where the Buddha drew the line against self-torment.
How to read Dhutanga
Monks adopt the practices by private resolve for a season; writers use the term to describe the forest traditions of Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka.
Dhutanga in practice: an example
A forest monk on tudong walks from village to village with a bowl, an umbrella tent and three robes, and sleeps under trees.
Where readings of Dhutanga go wrong
They are a discipline for ordained monks living under a teacher, and the texts warn against keeping them for praise.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- dhutangas, thirteen ascetic practices, tudong, dhutanga practices, buddhist austerities
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What does dhutanga mean?
It is Pali for a factor of shaking off, meaning a practice that shakes off craving and other defilements. The Thai form of the word, tudong, is used for a monk's wandering on foot.
How many dhutangas are there?
The Theravada tradition counts thirteen: two about robes, five about food and six about where and how a monk lodges. Mahayana texts give a similar list of twelve.
Did the Buddha require the ascetic practices?
No. He allowed them to monks who found them helpful and refused a request to make some of them compulsory. His own teaching is described as a middle way between indulgence and self-mortification.
