Until now, those definitions and relationships have always been provided by the robed Sangha. The word Sangha, for the last two and a half millennia has referred to the Buddhist monastic clergy. The first Sangha members received their instructions from Shakyamuni Buddha himself. Since that time, in the fifth century B.C.E., monks and nuns have been using the Buddha's designation Sangha, to refer to their brother and sisterhood of precept-holding, homeless individuals. To become a Sangha member from that day until the present, one had to renounce the householders' life, take up vows of radical poverty, renunciation, chastity, and obedience.
Sangha members live by a code of over three hundred moral precepts.
They sustain their lives on donors' charity, and cultivate the Way full-time. Six Harmonies of the Sangha In the Buddhist monastic context that gave birth to the term, Sangha refers to men and women who merited the name-harmoniously united assembly because they give their lives to communal sharing in harmony. The word Sangha has two meanings, to reflect both world transcending and mundane levels of truth at work in the Dharma. Their mouths are in harmony because they don't quarrel. Their minds are in harmony because they enjoy the same things.