What is the offense of causing a schism in the Sangha?

Breaking the Saṅgha includes destroying a saṅgha community and also the saṅgha members outside of a saṅgha community. A group composed of four or more monastics is called a saṅgha community, and these four monastics must all be monks who have received full ordination and possess the monastic precept substance. If strife is stirred up within a saṅgha community until only three monks remain, it no longer constitutes a saṅgha community, and thus the saṅgha community is dissolved. One who fights to break up a saṅgha community commits the offense of the Avīci hell, and at the end of life will undergo the retribution of the Avīci hell.

Monastics numbering three or fewer, although they cannot be called a saṅgha community, are still called the saṅgha assembly. If one also stirs up conflicts among them, sowing discord and division, this is called disrupting the saṅgha assembly, and the offense is likewise an offense leading to hell. When a monastic leads a group of disciples, although they cannot form a saṅgha community, if the role they play in Buddhism is also quite significant, then sowing discord between the master and the disciples, splitting apart the teacher-student relationship, constitutes an extremely grave offense. If this monastic holds a particularly special status, has a pivotal influence on the future and development of Buddhism, and also has great power to gather and guide sentient beings, and someone slanders such a monastic and splits apart their disciples, then the offense is extremely, extremely grave—greater than the offense of destroying other saṅgha communities, and certainly it is an offense of the Avīci hell.