… This normalcy of mind, which is maintained through the power of the discipline of mindfulness (sati-vinaya), forms the essence of virtue: firmness, steadiness, stability. And the resulting flavor or nourishment of virtue is a solitary sense of calm for the mind. When freedom of this sort arises within us, this is called the development of sīlānussati, the mindfulness of virtue. This is virtue …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… He was very strict about the Vinaya, with very clear standards about what was proper and what was not proper, which made it very easy to live with him. Once you got a sense of what his standards were, you could stick by them. There were times when I would be criticized by some of the lay people for holding to Ajaan Fuang’s …
… You may categorically hold, ‘This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher’s instruction.’”
[According to the commentaries, Mahapajapati Gotami gained arahantship soon after receiving this instruction.]
Cv X.5
Sister Sona on Aging
Ten children I bore
from this physical heap.
Then weak from that, aged,
I went to a nun.
She taught me the Dhamma:
aggregates, sense spheres …
… 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 …
… He speaks in season, speaks what is factual, what is in accordance with the goal, the Dhamma, & the Vinaya. He speaks words worth treasuring, seasonable, reasonable, circumscribed, connected with the goal.” — AN 10:99
“Abandoning sexual misconduct, he abstains from sexual misconduct. He doesn’t get sexually involved with those who are protected by their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their sisters, their relatives …
… I don’t know the Pali term for a sense of humor, but you see it throughout the texts, especially in the Vinaya: the ability to laugh at the foibles of human nature that led monks and nuns to do unskillful things. Many of the origin stories for the rules really are humorous. They teach you to laugh at that kind of behavior, but …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… As a result, they conclude that the passages asserting the categorical status of the four noble truths and right view found in the rest of the Canon—the Vinaya, the first four nikāyas, and other poetry in the fifth nikāya—are later interpolations.
From there, these scholars have further interpreted these passages from the Aṭṭhaka Vagga in line with traditional Western schools of thought …
… Go look in the Vinaya. A couple of the rules were actually formulated because some arahants made some mistakes. For instance, there’s the rule against monks eating stored-up food. Ven. Belatthasisa, who was an arahant, figured, “Well, I can just go for alms once a week, take the leftover rice, and dry it. That’s a nice frugal way of living, and …
… The teachings of the Dhamma, the rules of the Vinaya, are all in this context of the apprenticeship: picking up qualities of the heart, picking up a sense of values, from being around someone whose behavior is Dhamma. After all, the whole idea of putting an end to suffering is a very strong statement of values right there—that this is the important issue …
… The apologists then cite the Buddha as an authority in support of these considerations by quoting the passage from the Vinaya in which the Buddha first sent his arahant disciples out to spread the Dhamma to as many people as possible:
Then the Blessed One addressed the monks, “I am released, monks, from all snares, human & divine. You, too, monks, are also released from …
… 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 …
… They tell us his story in the Vinaya. It’s a long
story about how he was born the son of a courtesan. She found herself
pregnant, so she sent out word that she was sick for a while, and she
didn’t want to receive visitors. She figured that if she gave birth,
if it was a girl she’d keep it and …
… This term is sometimes wrongly translated as “slander.” However, slander usually entails falsehood, whereas examples given both in the discourses and the Vinaya show that this term denotes true statements meant to discredit one person in the eyes of another.
§ 28. I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Pāvā in Cunda the silversmith’s mango grove. Then Cunda …
… As in the Vinaya: There are lots of
wheels that go through the permutations of a particular rule. If you
do the action with a particular perception in mind, for example,
what’s the result in terms of the penalty? When you do it with other
perceptions, what are the results? The text goes through all the
different permutations. Those are wheels.
The important …
Virtue | Basic Themes
… This normalcy of mind, which is maintained through the power of the discipline of mindfulness (sati-vinaya), forms the essence of virtue: firmness, steadiness, stability. And the resulting flavor or nourishment of virtue is a solitary sense of calm for the mind. When freedom of this sort arises within us, this is called the development of sīlānussati, the mindfulness of virtue. This is virtue …
