Search results for: vinaya

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  2. Ajaan Fuang’s Stories
     … Finally, the naga appears to Ajaan Mun and says, “I’ve been watching you, and unlike other monks, you’re actually hold by the Vinaya.” That’s why Ajaan Mun was then able to teach him. So have a sense that you’re being watched. Live frugally. Speak frugally. The more careful you are with your mouth, the more value your words will have … 
  3. The Art of Right Speech
     … Look at his teachings to the monks, especially in the Vinaya. Someone does something wrong and he calls him a “worthless person,” which is harsh, and then he gives that person a real dressing down. And in all of those cases, we notice, when the Buddha asked him, did you actually do this? The person will ‘fess up and say, “Yes, that’s something … 
  4. Page search result icon Nobility is the Best Policy
     … In the Vinaya, the monks’ rules, there’s a very large section devoted to medical care. The Buddha recognized that some illnesses respond to medicine and others don’t. When the medicines are available, use them. Think of that story about Ajaan Mun that Ajaan Fuang told. When there was a monk who was be sick, and there was no medicine, if the monk … 
  5. Intelligent Respect
     … But you have to remember the set of standards the Buddha taught his stepmother about how we can know what’s Dhamma and Vinaya. One of them is that it leads to dispassion; another is that it leads to being unburdensome. This is a case where dispassion trumps unburdensomeness. We do burden people sometimes by the fact that we can’t buy things. They … 
  6. If These Walls Could Talk
     … living in the forest, eating out of his bowl, being very strict about the Vinaya. But as he said, if you want to be a noble one, you have to practice by the customs of the noble ones, and not by the customs of any particular country, because every country’s customs are put together by people with defilements. The customs of the noble … 
  7. The Power of Truth
     … They stuck fast to what they knew of the Dhamma and the Vinaya, and even that they tested. This is a principle that Ajaan Mun trained in all of his students: one was the confidence that they could actually do the practice and figure out what was genuine Dhamma from what’s not, and two, that it depended on their own truthfulness, their own … 
  8. The Prison Break
     … to establish the Dhamma and Vinaya so that it’d last for a long time. That was a huge project. It took him 45 years. He let it go only on the night he was passing away. So, there’s nothing wrong with having a goal. The same with trying to get the mind into concentration: We read in the description of mindfulness about … 
  9. Inner Negotiating Skills
     … There’s the humor in the origin stories for the rules in the Vinaya, and there’s humor in some of the suttas and the tradition has been passed down. Ajaans of the forest tradition—even the really fierce, serious ones, like Ajaan Maha Boowa and Ajaan Mun—had very sharp senses of humor. Ajaan Maha Boowa apparently once gave a Dhamma talk on … 
  10. Refuge for All Beings
     … He wasn’t in a position where he could tell us what we have to do, aside from the monks who—once we become ordained—are committed to following the teachings, following the Vinaya. But otherwise, there’s no imposition. But he spoke as an expert: If you want true happiness, this is what you’ve got to do. We follow the path voluntarily … 
  11. Instructions for a New Monk
     … He set out the Dhamma, set out the Vinaya, the monastic rules, in such a way that his teaching has been able to survive up until now. When you look at his life, there are three qualities that stand out. The first is wisdom or discernment, his ability to realize what needed to be done, his ability to gauge what he had learned about … 
  12. Relationships
     … Look at the way the Buddha designed the Vinaya. When a monk ordains, he’s supposed to treat his preceptor as a father. The preceptor is supposed to treat the young monk as a son. And they’re supposed to hold to this relationship as long as they’re both alive, with the same sense of commitment that a father and son would have … 
  13. Horror Stories
     … We have the rules in the Vinaya to tell us the things that are really wrong and really right to do, but then there are the finer shades of things: What is the best way to clean out the sala, what is the best way to sweep, what’s the best way to mop, what’s the best way to wipe down a floor … 
  14. Comprehending Pain
     … You see a lot of these in the Vinaya, where they explain all the different factors that would be related to a particular offense and then combine all the factors in lists called wheels. It’s the same with the Buddha’s first sermon, his first Dhamma teaching. He talks about the four noble truths and how each of the noble truths has three … 
  15. Accepting the Way Out
     … In the Vinaya, he does lay down the law for the monks and nuns. Because they’ve given themselves to the practice, he demands a higher level of commitment from them. But he never tells anybody they have to do anything in any way. He says, if you want to find true happiness, this is how it’s done. If you want to learn … 
  16. The Taste Is Release
     … As I said, this is where the Vinaya is aimed. This is where the Dhamma is aimed. All the customs around what the monks should do, all the customs around how lay people are supposed to behave: They’re all aimed here. As the Buddha said, the flavor of the Dhamma, no matter what, if it’s genuine Dhamma, is like the ocean. The … 
  17. Dhamma Warrior
     … Still, they had to study from some books to begin with to know the Vinaya, to know the basic teachings of the Dhamma. If they didn’t pick these things up from books, they had to pick them up from Dhamma talks. So there’s an extent to which you have to learn the Dhamma in the books. But then there’s a skill … 
  18. Practicing for Dispassion
     … All the duties of the Buddha—finding the path, teaching the path, establishing the Dhamma and Vinaya—were done. His work was complete, and he entered nibbāna, as they say, “with no fuel remaining.” This image is of a fire going out. On the night of his awakening, he became a fire that had stopped burning but whose coals were still warm. In other … 
  19. Thinking Seriously about Happiness
     … But the Buddha also taught the Vinaya, which are the monk’s rules. They’re his expression of how you apply those principles to the nitty-gritty of daily life. One of his principles is that if there has been a split in the Sangha, the monastic order, you don’t just paper over it. You try to get to the root cause. If … 
  20. Open Are the Doors to the Deathless
     … He thought of the difficulty of setting up the Dhamma, setting up the Vinaya, setting up the Sangha. He thought of how subtle the Dhamma was that he’d discovered, and how it would be very difficult for people to understand. The commentaries get tied up in knots about this. Here he was: He works all that hard to become a teaching Buddha, and … 
  21. Make Yourself Small
     … His mind was so big that he was able not only to teach the Dhamma, but also formulate the Vinaya. He put together a community that’s lasted 2,500 years. Ajaan Lee goes on to say the Buddha’s large size came from the fact that he was first willing to make himself small. He cut himself off from his family, all of … 
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