Search results for: vinaya

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  2. Discernment
     … We think of the Forest Tradition as being rough and ready and non-scholarly—and it is very much anti-scholarly in a lot of ways—but that doesn’t mean that the forest ajaans were not well read in the Dhamma or the Vinaya. They knew their Dhamma really well; they knew their Vinaya really well. It’s just that they realized that … 
  3. Listening to the True Dhamma
     … He gave her some principles for figuring out how to recognize what is Dhamma and Vinaya and what’s not. There are eight principles altogether, and they fall into three categories. The first category has to do with the goal of the practice: “Does this teaching, when I put into practice, lead to dispassion, does it lead to unfettering the mind?” If it does … 
  4. In the Details
     … the Vinaya for the monks, which is not just for the monks, as Ajaan Suwat once pointed out. When lay people live around monks who are observing the Vinaya, they get more sensitive, too. The whole purpose of the rules is to detect where there’s some slight greed, some slight anger, some slight lust. As you keep careful watch over your behavior, you … 
  5. Chronic Pain
     … After all, the Buddha himself used medicine, and the Vinaya, the collection of the monks’ rules, is full of information on different medicines for treating different illnesses. In fact, it was through the Vinaya that a lot of Indian ways of doing medicine spread throughout Asia. As he said, there are some illnesses that respond to medicine, others that will go away whether you … 
  6. Book search result icon Right Mindfulness Glossary
     … sensuality, to habits & practices, to views, and to theories about the self. Uposatha: Observance day, coinciding with the full moon, new moon, and half moons. Lay Buddhists often observe the eight precepts on this day. Monks recite the Pāṭimokkha, the monastic code, on the full moon and new moon uposathas. Vinaya: The monastic discipline, whose rules and traditions comprise six volumes in printed text.
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  7. The Kamma of Self & Not-Self
     … Again, the Buddha doesn’t use this term but there are lots of examples in the Canon, especially in the Vinaya, of the Buddha’s humor. And it’s interesting that they’re in the Vinaya. Because, after all, part of presenting the rules is to make you want to follow them. And if you can laugh at the behavior of the person who … 
  8. The Truth of Perceptions
     … When you read something like that, a good way to take a reality check is to look in the Vinaya, because that shows how the Buddha would deal with real life issues, not just abstractions. And it’s obvious from the Vinaya that your perceptions can either be objectively true or false. Many of the rules make allowances for cases where you perceive something … 
  9. Selfing & Not-selfing
     … We don’t think of the Pali Canon as a humorous document, but that’s because most of us don’t read the Vinaya. The Vinaya has lots of good stories about monks and nuns behaving in really silly ways, foolish ways, and they’re often very funny. And you can see why they have stories like that in the Vinaya—they’re trying … 
  10. Question Your Perceptions
    When you study the rules in the Vinaya, you see the huge role that perception plays in determining offenses. Say you see a little black spot on the sidewalk, you think it’s just a little black spot, and you step on it. You perceive it as just a black spot. If it turns out it was a bug, the fact that you didn … 
  11. The Freedom to Give
     … Sometimes we have a tendency to disregard the Vinaya, thinking well, it’s just a bunch of rules from old times that may or may not be applicable now. But a lot of the rules have to do with this: how to behave in an economy of gifts, in a culture of gifts. Because the principle of gift giving goes way back much earlier … 
  12. Honoring the Noble Ones
     … Ajaan Mun and Ajaan Sao were accused of not following Thai traditions, Thai customs as they were eating out of the bowl, living in the forest, being very strict about the Vinaya. But as Ajaan Mun would say, he wasn’t interested in following Thai customs or Lao customs or the customs of any country, any society, because those are the customs of people … 
  13. Help Others, Help Your Mind
     … When you’re living by the Vinaya, you have to be mindful of the rules. You have to analyze your mind states, because an important question in the Vinaya is often: What’s your intention? There are times when you break the rules unintentionally, and it doesn’t count as breaking the rules. Other times it does. Those are cases where you have to … 
  14. All-around Eye
     … When the Buddha gave instructions to Mahāpajāpati Gotami, he talked about eight ways in which you can test the Dhamma – what’s Dhamma and what’s not Dhamma, what’s Vinaya and what’s not Vinaya – and it’s an all-around way of looking at things. It’s a good way of protecting yourself on all sides. There are basically three categories. One … 
  15. Effective Self-Discipline
     … There’s a part of the Canon called the Vinaya, which is the monastic discipline. This is what we’re working on here—we’re disciplining ourselves. And each of the rules in the Vinaya has a story. The story is there to help you understand the rule—and you don’t obey the rules simply because the Buddha said so or somebody else … 
  16. Page search result icon The Graduated Discourse
     … It was that turn-around that got him interested in practicing, and why, when he finally ordained as a monk at age twenty, he was really upset when he discovered, after reading the Vinaya, that they weren’t observing the Vinaya very well where he was staying. And they certainly weren’t practicing meditation. Which is why he was so happy to find Ajaan … 
  17. Book search result icon Beyond Coping Teaching by Example
     … I will speak.” “Yes, lord,” Subhadda answered, and the Blessed One said, “In any Dhamma & Vinaya where the noble eightfold path is not found, no contemplative of the first ... second ... third ... fourth order [stream-winner, once-returner, non-returner, or arahant] is found. But in any Dhamma & Vinaya where the noble eightfold path is found, contemplatives of the first ... second ... third ... fourth order are … 
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  18. Discipline
    The Buddha’s name for his teachings wasn’t “Buddhism.” Sometimes he called it the Buddha’s message, buddha-sāsana, but more often he called it Dhamma-Vinaya. Dhamma, of course, means the truth. Vinaya means discipline. As you’re training on the teaching, it’s not simply a matter of agreeing with the truth of what Buddha had to say. You’re going … 
  19. The Strength to See
     … This is why we have the Vinaya. This is why we have the standards he set down for good human values for people who want to practice, who want to put an end to suffering. When you develop these two kinds of strength—the strength of concentration and the strength of integrity—you can see things a lot more clearly. You can comprehend the … 
  20. Book search result icon Straight from the Heart Glossary
     … nor pain. Vijjā: Clear knowledge; genuine awareness; science (specifically, the cognitive powers developed through the practice of concentration and discernment). Vimutti: Release; freedom from the fabrications and conventions of the mind. Vinaya: The disciplinary rules of the monastic order. Viññāṇa: Cognizance; consciousness; the act of taking note of sense data and ideas as they occur. * * * If anything in this translation is inaccurate or misleading … 
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  21. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … That’s why he was very strict in his observance of the Vinaya and the ascetic practices—and it caused a lot of controversy. I was recently reading a conversation between Ajaan Chah and some lay people. He talked about how Ajaan Mun and Ajaan Sao tended to create controversy wherever they went. The ecclesiastical head of that area had asked them to go … 
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