Search results for: vinaya

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  2. Page search result icon Surveying the World
     … You read the story of his life, even just the section in the Vinaya, and you see all the problems that the monks and nuns created for him—and those were the people who were supposedly his disciples. On top of that, he had to deal with sectarians of other kinds. Here he was, offering them a path to the end of suffering, and … 
  3. Surveying the World
     … You look at the remainder of his life and you can see that it was full of difficulties in trying to get the Dhamma and Vinaya established. Here he had been working so hard to find something of real value, and he was offering it for free, but there were a lot of people who wouldn’t take it. Not only that, they would … 
  4. The Brightness of Life
     … People saying, “Well, why don’t we change the Vinaya here, why don’t we change the Dhamma there, make it nicer?” That’s what’s going to kill the Dhamma. So while the true Dhamma is still alive, take advantage of it. It’s still available. It’s simply up to you to decide whether it’s important enough to focus all your … 
  5. Alone Together
     … This is one of the reasons why we have the Vinaya. The rules are there, not simply to look after the individual’s mind, but also to look after peace in the community, harmony in the community. So as we’re living together, it’s good to think about the principles—not only the rules, but also the larger principles of how we can … 
  6. You’re Doing Something Wrong
     … When you can admit your mistakes, that, the Buddha said, is a cause for growth in the Dhamma and Vinaya. The ability to admit mistakes starts from outside. When you have the attitude that you freely admit your mistakes, and try to make amends when you can—when you’re dealing with other people—then that attitude becomes an inner attitude as well. When … 
  7. A Quality of the Character
     … It’s always amazing to see throughout the Vinaya, when someone has misbehaved and they get called into the Buddha’s presence, the Buddha asks them, “Did you say this? Did you do this?” And there was something about being in the Buddha’s presence that people who may have been devious at other times weren’t devious with him. They admitted, yes, that … 
  8. Friendship Leading to Seclusion
     … He ordained them and he had them stay with their teachers for a while so that they could pick up the teacher’s habits, pick up the teacher’s way of looking at things, pick up some knowledge about the Buddha’s teachings, both the Dhamma and the Vinaya, to provide the student with good friends inside. So try to figure out who your … 
  9. In Tune
     … The monks all adhere to the Vinaya. The lay people all adhere to the precepts. If we don’t, there’s going to be trouble, there’s going to be disharmony in the group, and it becomes an unpleasant place to practice. But if we have these bases for harmony in terms of the precepts and right view, then the fact that we’re … 
  10. To Get Ourselves
     … that you take the Dhamma and the Vinaya as your guide, and you don’t let people’s opinions pull you away from that. This relates to a couple of themes that Ajaan Suwat said Ajaan Mun would talk about quite a lot. One was the theme of the customs of the noble ones. Ajaan Mun, as he was practicing out in the forest … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. The Intelligent Heart
     … He spent many, many years setting up the Dhamma and Vinaya so that people thousands of years later could still benefit from it. So we should respond to that kind of goodness, both with our heart and our mind—our heart of respect, our heart of gratitude, our heart of admiration. We’re not hoping that just loving him will be enough—that’s … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. Resolute Good Humor
     … Look at the Vinaya, the origin stories for the rules. They show the incidents that caused the Buddha to formulate a rule. Many times the stories are very humorous, the point being to see how foolish that behavior was that the Buddha was trying to rule against. Take the story of the monk who has psychic powers and gets carried away with his powers … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. Harmony, Right & Wrong
     … The Vinaya is really interesting on this point. It places a very strong emphasis on not getting into arguments, not creating a split in the Sangha. As the Buddha warned, anyone who intentionally creates a split in the Sangha, knowing that what they’re doing is wrong, and just doing it for the sake of the split: There’s a special place in hell … 
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