… The Vinaya-mukha interprets the allowance in these instances as valid only if one’s health is in serious jeopardy.
Dangers to the holy life
If anyone tries to tempt a bhikkhu, offering him wealth or a wife (or to be his wife), or if he sees abandoned treasure, and in any of these cases he reflects, “The Blessed One says that the mind …
… They look at the Dhamma and Vinaya of the Buddha, and notice that it had many analogous marvelous qualities as well. So when your practice begins to flag, remind yourself that you’ve got a good road map here, the most reliable one there is. It’s been tested for more than two thousand years. It deals with the big issues in life, issues …
… Angulimala, Devadatta, Saccaka, and then all the
monks and nuns who created trouble in ways that forced him to
formulate the Vinaya. The Buddha went to great lengths to teach people
to talk to themselves in new ways. And of course, from the talking to
themselves in new ways, then they would learn to act in new ways,
too.
This is why meditation starts …
… You may categorically hold, ‘This is not the Dhamma,
this is not the Vinaya, this is not the Teacher’s
instruction.’
“As for the qualities of which you may know, ‘These qualities
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 …
… You can find them in the Buddha’s teaching to Gotami about the eight
basic principles for measuring what’s Dhamma and Vinaya what’s not.
The three are these: how you relate to yourself in the practice, what
goals you’ve set for the practice, and how your practice has an impact
on other people. For your practice to be good in a …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… There’s a story in the Vinaya of a group of monks who began the Rains retreat with a vow: “Okay, we’re not going to talk to each other. Each person just maintain silence throughout the Rains.” At the end of the retreat they went to see the Buddha, very proud of the fact that they had succeeded in not talking to each …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 sick and there was no medicine, if the monk asked …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
Rains-residence | The Buddhist Monastic Code, Volumes I & II
… The Vinaya-mukha interprets the allowance in these instances as valid only if one’s health is in serious jeopardy. Dangers to the holy life If anyone tries to tempt a bhikkhu, offering him wealth or a wife (or to be his wife), or if he sees abandoned treasure, and in any of these cases he reflects, “The Blessed One says that the mind …
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 …
