… When he decided to abide by the customs of
the noble ones, to follow the Vinaya, follow the dhutanga practices,
he got criticized by a lot of people—monks included—saying, “You’re
not following Thai customs. You’re not following Laotian customs.” His
response was, “Thai customs, Laotian customs, are the customs of
people with defilement. If you want to become a noble …
… Teachings of the Elders”—the only one of the early schools of Buddhism to have survived into the present; currently the dominant form of Buddhism in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Burma.
Vinaya: The monastic discipline, whose rules and traditions comprise six volumes in printed text.
English-Pāli
Although I have tried to be as consistent as possible in rendering Pāli terms into English, there …
… There are even rules in the Vinaya about your physical windows and
doors during the cold season and during the hot season. During the hot
season, you keep your doors and windows open during the night and
closed during the day. During the cold season, you keep your doors and
windows open during the day and closed at night. In other words, you
get …
… He teaches her eight principles for deciding
what is Dhamma and Vinaya, and what’s not.
Those principles can be applied in two directions: One, when you hear
somebody teach the Dhamma, you ask yourself, “What kind of behavior
would this Dhamma inspire inside me: in my actions, in my
relationships with other people, in my own practice, in terms of the
goal that …
… Yet even in that state of no obligation, he had the compassion to teach and to go through all that effort—walking all over northern India for forty-five years, teaching the Dharma, establishing the Vinaya, establishing his fourfold parisa: monks, nuns, lay-followers, male lay-followers, female lay-followers. That was a lot of work.
So think about that. Here’s someone who …
… Two passages, one from the Vinaya and one from a sutta, show what ek’agga means in the everyday context of listening to the Dhamma.
In Mv.II.3.4, the phrase, “we pay attention,” in the instructions for how to listen to the Pāṭimokkha, is defined as: “We listen with an ek’agga mind, an unscattered mind, an undistracted mind.” Even if ek …
… 1) dispute-issues (vivādādhikaraṇa) concerning Dhamma and Vinaya (see Sg 10), which the Community must deal with by declaring which side is right and which wrong;
2) accusation-issues (anuvādādhikaraṇa) concerning offenses (see Sg 8 & 9; Ay 1 & 2), which the Community must deal with by judging them true or false;
3) offense-issues (āpattādhikaraṇa), in other words, the commission of offenses, which are …
… This is why we have all those rules in the Vinaya. You see the
many times that people report this monk did that, that nun did this.
You can imagine the Buddha saying to himself, “Why do we have to make
a rule against this? People should know.” But he had to make a rule.
Then they tried to find a way around the …
… For the monks, of course,
this means the precepts of the Patimokkha and all the other precepts
in the Vinaya. You make them the measure of what you’re going to do
and what you’re not going to do. For the lay people, this means the
five precepts and, on occasion, the eight. The five precepts are: not
killing, not stealing, not having …
… Eventually, of course, he became tormented by guilt and went to the resident Vinaya expert to admit a pārājika and disrobe.
The Vinaya expert, though, wouldn’t let him disrobe until he had found the owner of the cloth and inquired about it more fully. Eventually, after a long search, the bhikkhu was able to track down the original owner at a monastery back …
… Orphaned at an early age, he wants
to ordain, wants to get a little bit of merit, gets depressed on
seeing that the monastery where he’s living doesn’t really abide by
the Vinaya. When a forest monk comes through the area, he immediately
latches on to this opportunity. This is what the Dhamma means: There’s
something better, and here’s the …
… He speaks out of season, speaks what isn’t factual, what isn’t in accordance with the goal, the Dhamma, & the Vinaya, words that are not worth treasuring. This is how one is made impure in four ways by verbal action.…
“And how is one made pure in three ways by bodily action? There is the case where a certain person, abandoning the taking …
… There are the rules he laid down in the precepts and in the rules of
the Vinaya to give you some guidelines. But there’s an awful lot that
you have to learn how to observe on your own.
And the same applies to your breath. When you focus on different parts
of the body, you’ll find that you get different results. When …
… I’ve been alerted recently there are some people who say that the
traditions that hold to the Vinaya are suffering from pride and
conceit, which is a sign that they’re not awakened and therefore their
teachings are no good. But as the Buddha advised, you hold to the
precepts even more than you would hold to your life. Now, as long as …
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Novices
The word sāmaṇera—translated here as “novice”—literally means a young contemplative. When the Buddha discontinued the going-for-refuge as a method of admission into the Bhikkhu Saṅgha, he retained it as the method by which boys too young for Acceptance could go forth. Ven. Rāhula, the Buddha’s own son, was the first to receive the Going-forth …
… The Buddha says, “This is the
way for progress in the Vinaya of the noble ones: to recognize a
wrongdoing as a wrongdoing and to make a resolve not to repeat it in
the future.” So the king leaves. The Buddha then tells the monks, “If
the king hadn’t killed his father, he would have become a
stream-enterer listening to the talk …
… Which three?
“There is the case of the person who—regardless of whether he does or doesn’t get to see the Tathāgata {Buddha], regardless of whether he does or doesn’t get to hear the Dhamma & Vinaya [Discipline] proclaimed by the Tathāgata—will not alight on the lawfulness, the rightness of skillful qualities. There is the case of the person who—regardless of …
… They kept arguing, quarreling, & disputing, stabbing one another with weapons of the mouth: “You don’t understand this Dhamma-Vinaya. I understand this Dhamma-Vinaya. How could you understand this Dhamma-Vinaya? You practice wrongly. I practice rightly. I’m consistent. You’re inconsistent. What should be said first, you said last. What should be said last, you said first. What you cogitated so …
… This is one of the reasons why the origin stories for the rules in the
Vinaya often contain a lot of humor, so that you can recognize human
foibles. The human race has not changed that much in 2,500 years. You
can see the excuses that the monks give and the strange reasoning they
go through, and you can recognize that you’ve …
… A new Vinaya
guide had just come out, and in one of the additions tacked on the end
was a translation of some passages on ascetic practices, the
dhutanga practices. And although the scholarly monks in the city who
had found the text and translated it were occasionally practicing
these practices, Ajaan Sao took them really seriously. After all, the
Buddha said, “Go into …
Glossary | The Wings to Awakening
… Teachings of the Elders”—the only one of the early schools of Buddhism to have survived into the present; currently the dominant form of Buddhism in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Burma. Vinaya: The monastic discipline, whose rules and traditions comprise six volumes in printed text. English-Pāli Although I have tried to be as consistent as possible in rendering Pāli terms into English, there …
DN 33 Saṅgīti Sutta | The Discourse for Reciting Together
… They kept arguing, quarreling, & disputing, stabbing one another with weapons of the mouth: “You don’t understand this Dhamma-Vinaya. I understand this Dhamma-Vinaya. How could you understand this Dhamma-Vinaya? You practice wrongly. I practice rightly. I’m consistent. You’re inconsistent. What should be said first, you said last. What should be said last, you said first. What you cogitated so …
