Search results for: vinaya

  1. Page 9
  2. The Fool & the Wise Person
     … The basic code contains 227 rules, but then the Vinaya as a whole has far more many rules than that. In fact, I don’t think anybody’s ever sat down to count them all, there are so many. Many of them deal with very minor, minor things. You might wonder: How could such a broad-minded, enlightened person like the Buddha get caught … 
  3. Freedom through Restraint
     … The word vineyya, “subduing,” there relates to Vinaya, which is the discipline. We’re disciplining the mind when we practice right mindfulness and on into right concentration. This is a part of concentration some people don’t like. There’s that interpretation of mindfulness as being broad, open, and accepting, whereas concentration is narrow and restrictive. And in one sense it is, because you … 
  4. Sutta search result icon Introduction: The Authenticity of the Pāli Suttas
     … You may categorically hold, ‘This is not the Dhamma, this is not the Vinaya, this is not the Teacher’s instruction.’ “As for the dhammas of which you may know, ‘These dhammas lead to utter disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to unbinding’: You may categorically hold, ‘This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is … 
  5. The Psychology of Virtue
    Back in the early years of the last century, the monks in Bangkok came out with a series of Dhamma and Vinaya textbooks that became the standard all over Thailand, and still are today. In the Dhamma textbook for the first level of the exams that these books were designed for, they defined virtue as “restraint of body and speech.” Someone brought this to … 
  6. In the Land of Wrong View
     … 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 … 
  7. Rottweilers in the House
     … 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 … 
  8. Encouragement
     … 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 … 
  9. The Wisdom of Restraint
     … 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 … 
  10. A Meditator’s Environment
     … 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 … 
  11. You Can Do Better
     … 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 … 
  12. Delight
     … 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 … 
  13. Strength of Conviction: 2
     … 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 … 
  14. A Heart Set on Goodwill
     … 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 … 
  15. Book search result icon Karma Q & A Readings
     … 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 … 
  16. Discerning Actions
     … 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 … 
  17. In Heedfulness We Trust
     … 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 … 
  18. Who’s in Charge Here?
     … In the Canon, most of the humor is in the Vinaya, which is the section on disciplinary rules. You wouldn’t think with discipline that there’d be a lot of humor, but this is how they make discipline palatable. Like the story about the monk who gets so drunk that the Buddha was inspired to comment, “Back when he was sober, he could … 
  19. Admirable Friendship
     … If you want to get a sense of how patient the Buddha could be, read through the Vinaya: all those monks and nuns who were misbehaving, and he very patiently had to set out rules to stop this, stop that. He went through all that so that it would keep the religion going, keep his teaching alive. One of the stories tells of a … 
  20. How to Read the Dhamma
     … After all, Ajaan Sao and Ajaan Mun read books on the Vinaya and on the dhutanga or ascetic practices. That’s what inspired them to go out into the forest to begin with. In other words, they took what they read and let that direct them. Of course, they had to learn a lot of things that were not mentioned in the texts, and … 
  21. Perception
     … We see this often in the Vinaya. A lot of the offenses are defined by how you perceive the object you get involved with. For instance, if you touch a woman, you have lustful intent in doing it, and you perceive that she is a woman, then the offense is one thing. If you perceived her as something else—such as a man or … 
  22. Load next page...