Vinaya

Helps get you past those defilements.

It's the principle you see in a lot of the origin stories in the Vinaya.

Like the one against drinking.

The story goes that Sakayatha, a monk, had lots of psychic power.

And so they ask the monks, what is it something that monks don't usually get? Well, they ask the wrong monks.

The group of six.

The instigators of a lot of trouble in the Vinaya.

And the group of six say, well, monks very rarely get hard liquor.

So naturally they looked somewhat similar.

It is mentioned in the Vinaya that Nanda was exceptionally tall and also otherwise a bit similar looking to the Buddha, to the extent when monks saw him coming far in the distance that they sometimes mistook him for the Buddha.

When the Buddha first returned to Kapilavatthu, his half-father Nanda was just about to get married to a very beautiful young Sakyan noble lady, noble woman, and the Buddha recognizing that he had potential to attain full liberation in this life.

managed to have him ordained before he even knew what's happening.

Mm.

Uh, Vinaya, Abhidhamma, and so on.

Mm.

So the, these s- and the s- sutras, these all kept changing.

Niyazapa, who had stable, constrational, and profound.

Tamapa, who upheld the whole connection of Vinaya.

To you, three lamps, support a region and make a quest.

To you, three lamps, support a region and make a quest.

We want our life to have some meaning or purpose.

Or our life, when we dedicate our life to meditation and Vinaya precepts and celibacy and meditation practice, we would like to know is, is it what's the meaning of it? What's the point of meditation? Sitting for an hour or whatever time you designate, just watching your breath go in and out.

So it's an interesting question because meaning and purpose are words that are created.

So words are impermanent and unsatisfactory.

And he was my vinyā teacher.

It was more like informal, but still quite formal, and he mostly taught me the Vinaya, that is the words of discipline.

Otherwise, my mainstay, my main teacher at that time was simply the suttas, and also these monks which I had met or would sometimes meet, but not regularly.

like particularly Venerable Jnana Vimala and Venerable Jnana Deepak, and to some extent also Bhikkhu Bodhi, more from the scholarly side.

[clears throat] So we naturally doubt that anyone can get beyond all of this.

Especially, um, when you read the suttas, the Vinaya, the Abhidhamma as well maybe, we have this sense that, oh, to practice the Dhamma and to become fully awakened takes great effort, requires great clarity and wisdom, [clears throat] and there's just no time, and then life is too complex and too much going on for us to really train our mind to, to know the Dhamma like the Buddha did.

But again, that's just a thought, thinking like that.

You know, oh, no one can get enlightened in this day and age.

You see it in the way offenses are judged in the Sangha.

This is one of those areas where it's good for everybody to know about the Vinaya because it teaches the right attitudes.

One of the principles is that a person cannot be punished for an action that he doesn't admit.

Now on the surface that sounds like it allows him to get away with something.