Who is dhamma and sangha

Feeling pleasure, his mind becomes concentrated. Quite withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful mental qualities, he enters and remains in the first jhana: rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed thought and evaluation.

He permeates and pervades, suffuses and fills this very body with the rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal. Just as if a skilled bathman or bathman's apprentice would pour bath powder into a brass basin and knead it together, sprinkling it again and again with water, so that his ball of bath powder — saturated, moisture-laden, permeated within and without — would nevertheless not drip; even so, the monk permeates There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture and pleasure born from withdrawal.

This is a reward of the contemplative life, visible here and now, more excellent than the previous ones and more sublime.

He permeates and pervades, suffuses and fills this very body with the rapture and pleasure born of composure. Just like a lake with spring-water welling up from within, having no inflow from the east, west, north, or south, and with the skies supplying abundant showers time and again, so that the cool fount of water welling up from within the lake would permeate and pervade, suffuse and fill it with cool waters, there being no part of the lake unpervaded by the cool waters; even so, the monk permeates There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture and pleasure born of composure.

This, too, is a reward of the contemplative life, visible here and now, more excellent than the previous ones and more sublime. Just as in a lotus pond, some of the lotuses, born and growing in the water, stay immersed in the water and flourish without standing up out of the water, so that they are permeated and pervaded, suffused and filled with cool water from their roots to their tips, and nothing of those lotuses would be unpervaded with cool water; even so, the monk permeates There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded with pleasure divested of rapture.

And furthermore, with the abandoning of pleasure and stress — as with the earlier disappearance of elation and distress — he enters and remains in the fourth jhana: purity of equanimity and mindfulness, neither-pleasure nor stress. He sits, permeating the body with a pure, bright awareness. Just as if a man were sitting covered from head to foot with a white cloth so that there would be no part of his body to which the white cloth did not extend; even so, the monk sits, permeating the body with a pure, bright awareness.

There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by pure, bright awareness. This, too, is a reward of the contemplative life, visible here and now, more excellent than the previous ones and more sublime With his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, he directs it to the knowledge of the ending of the mental fermentations. Just as if there were a pool of water in a mountain glen — clear, limpid, and unsullied — where a man with good eyesight standing on the bank could see shells, gravel, and pebbles, and also shoals of fish swimming about and resting, and it would occur to him, 'This pool of water is clear, limpid, and unsullied.

Here are these shells, gravel, and pebbles, and also these shoals of fish swimming about and resting. These are mental fermentations This is the origination of fermentations This is the cessation of fermentations This is the way leading to the cessation of fermentations. With release, there is the knowledge, 'Released. And as for another visible fruit of the contemplative life, higher and more sublime than this, there is none.

Assaji, arising early in the morning, taking his robe and bowl, entered Rajagaha for alms: gracious in the way he approached and departed, looked forward and behind, drew in and stretched out his arm; his eyes downcast, his every movement consummate. Sariputta the wanderer saw Ven. Assaji going for alms in Rajagaha: gracious On seeing him, the thought occurred to him: "Surely, of those in this world who are arahants or have entered the path to arahantship, this is one.

What if I were to approach him and question him: 'On whose account have you gone forth? Who is your teacher? Of whose Dhamma do you approve? But then the thought occurred to Sariputta the wanderer: "This is the wrong time to question him. He is going for alms in the town. What if I were to follow behind this monk who has found the path for those who seek it?

Assaji, having gone for alms in Rajagaha, left, taking the alms he had received. Sariputta the wanderer approached him and, on arrival, having exchanged friendly greetings and courtesies, stood to one side.

As he stood there he said, "Your faculties are bright, my friend, your complexion pure and clear. On whose account have you gone forth?

I have gone forth on account of that Blessed One. That Blessed One is my teacher. It is of that Blessed One's Dhamma that I approve. I cannot explain the doctrine in detail, but I can give you the gist in brief.

Then to Sariputta the Wanderer, as he heard this Dhamma exposition, there arose the dustless, stainless Dhamma eye: Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation.

Then Mahapajapati Gotami [the first nun, and the Buddha's foster mother] approached the Blessed One and on arrival, having bowed down, stood to one side. As she was standing there, she said, "It would be good if the Blessed One would teach me the Dhamma in brief so that I, having heard the Dhamma, might dwell alone, secluded, heedful, ardent, and resolute.

Gotami, the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered and not to being fettered; to self-effacement and not to self-aggrandizement; to modesty and not to ambition; to contentment and not to discontent; to seclusion and not to entanglement; to the arousing of persistence and not to laziness; to being unburdensome and not to being burdensome': You may definitely hold, 'This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher's instruction.

The Buddha: "Punna, the Sunaparanta people are fierce. They are rough. If they insult and ridicule you, what will you think? I will think, 'These Sunaparanta people are civilized, very civilized, in that they don't hit me with their hands. I will think, 'These Sunaparanta people are civilized, very civilized, in that they don't hit me with a clod' I will think, 'These Sunaparanta people are civilized, very civilized, in that they don't hit me with a stick' I will think, 'These Sunaparanta people are civilized, very civilized, in that they don't hit me with a knife' I will think, 'These Sunaparanta people are civilized, very civilized, in that they don't take my life with a sharp knife' I will think, 'There are disciples of the Blessed One who — horrified, humiliated, and disgusted by the body and by life — have sought for an assassin, but here I have met my assassin without searching for him.

Possessing such calm and self-control you are fit to dwell among the Sunaparantans. Now it is time to do as you see fit. Punna, delighting and rejoicing in the Blessed One's words, rising from his seat, bowed down to the Blessed One and left, keeping him on his right side.

Setting his dwelling in order and taking his robe and bowl, he set out for the Sunaparanta country and, after wandering stage by stage, he arrived there. There he lived. During that Rains retreat he established male and female lay followers in the practice, while he realized the three knowledges.

Eventually, he attained total final Unbinding. The two crucial aspects of the Buddha's Awakening are the what and the how: what he awakened to and how he did it.

His Awakening is special in that the two aspects come together. He awakened to the fact that there is an undying happiness, and that it can be attained through human effort.

The human effort involved in this process ultimately focuses on the question of understanding the nature of human effort itself — in terms of skillful kamma and dependent co-arising — what its powers and limitations are, and what kind of right effort i.

As the Buddha described the Awakening experience in one of his discourses, first there is the knowledge of the regularity of the Dhamma — which in this context means dependent co-arising — then there is the knowledge of nibbana. In other passages, he describes the three stages that led to insight into dependent co-arising: knowledge of his own previous lifetimes, knowledge of the passing away and rebirth of all living beings, and finally insight into the four Noble Truths.

The first two forms of knowledge were not new with the Buddha. They have been reported by other seers throughout history, although the Buddha's insight into the second knowledge had a special twist: He saw that beings are reborn according to the ethical quality of their thoughts, words, and deeds, and that this quality is essentially a factor of the mind.

The quality of one's views and intentions determines the experienced result of one's actions. This insight had a double impact on his mind. On the one hand, it made him realize the futility of the round of rebirth — that even the best efforts aimed at winning pleasure and fulfillment within the round could have only temporary effects.

On the other hand, his realization of the importance of the mind in determining the round is what led him to focus directly on his own mind in the present to see how the processes in the mind that kept the round going could be disbanded.

This was how he gained insight into the four noble truths and dependent co-arising — seeing how the aggregates that made up his "person" were also the impelling factors in the experience of the world at large, and how the whole show could be brought to cessation. With its cessation, there remained the experience of the unconditioned, which he also termed nibbana Unbinding , consciousness without surface or feature, the Deathless.

When we address the question of how other "enlightenment" experiences recorded in world history relate to the Buddha's, we have to keep in mind the Buddha's own dictum: First there is the knowledge of dependent co-arising, then there is the knowledge of nibbana. Without the first — which includes not only an understanding of kamma, but also of how kamma leads to the understanding itself — no realization, no matter how calm or boundless, that doesn't result from these sorts of understanding can count as an Awakening in the Buddhist sense.

True Awakening necessarily involves both ethics and insight into causality. It means that what each of us does, says, and thinks does matter — this, in opposition to the sense of futility that can come from reading, say, world history, geology, or astronomy and realizing the fleeting nature of the entire human enterprise. The Awakening lets us see that the choices we make in each moment of our lives have consequences.

The fact that we are empowered also means that we are responsible for our experiences. We are not strangers in a strange land. We have formed and are continuing to form the world we experience. This helps us to face the events we encounter in life with greater equanimity, for we know that we had a hand in creating them, and yet at the same time we can avoid any debilitating sense of guilt because with each new choice we can always make a fresh start.

We may be free to design our lives, but we are not free to change the underlying rules that determine what good and bad actions are, and how the process of kamma works itself out. Thus cultural relativism — even though it may have paved the way for many of us to leave our earlier religious orientations and enter the Buddhist fold — has no place once we are within that fold.

There are certain ways of acting that are inherently unskillful, and we are fools if we insist on our right to behave in those ways. If we are willing to face the implications of this fact, we realize that the Buddha's Awakening is a challenge to our entire set of values.

The fact that the Unconditioned can be attained forces us to re-evaluate any other goals we may set for ourselves, any worlds we may want to create, in our lives. On an obvious level, it points out the spiritual poverty of a life devoted to wealth, status, or sensual pursuits; but it also forces us to take a hard look at other more "worthwhile" goals that our culture and its sub-cultures tend to exalt, such as social acceptance, meaningful relationships, stewardship of the planet, etc.

These, too, will inevitably lead to suffering. The interdependence of all things cannot be, for any truly sensitive mind, a source of security or comfort.

If the Unconditioned is available, and it's the only trustworthy happiness around, the most sensible course is to invest our efforts and whatever mental and spiritual resources we have in its direction. Again, this is a very different message from the one we pick up from the world telling us that in order to gain happiness we have to develop qualities we can't take any genuine pride in: aggressiveness, self-aggrandizement, dishonesty, etc.

Just this much can give an entirely new orientation to our lives and our ideas of what is worthwhile investment of our time and efforts. The news of the Buddha's Awakening sets the standards for judging the culture we were brought up in, and not the other way around. This is not a question of choosing Asian culture over American. The Buddha's Awakening challenged many of the presuppositions of Indian culture in his day; and even in so-called Buddhist countries, the true practice of the Buddha's teachings is always counter-cultural.

It's a question of evaluating our normal concerns — conditioned by time, space, and the limitations of aging, illness, and death — against the possibility of a timeless, spaceless, limitless happiness. All cultures are tied up in the limited, conditioned side of things, while the Buddha's Awakening points beyond all cultures. It offers the challenge of the Deathless that his contemporaries found liberating and that we, if we are willing to accept the challenge, may find liberating ourselves.

You've probably heard the rumor that Buddhism is pessimistic, that "Life is suffering" is the Buddha's first noble truth. It's a rumor with good credentials, spread by well-respected academics and meditation teachers alike, but a rumor nonetheless. The real truth about the noble truths is far more interesting. The Buddha taught four truths — not one — about life: There is suffering, there is a cause for suffering, there is an end of suffering, and there is a path of practice that puts an end to suffering.

These truths, taken as a whole, are far from pessimistic. They're a practical, problem-solving approach — the way a doctor approaches an illness, or a mechanic a faulty engine. You identify a problem and look for its cause. You then put an end to the problem by eliminating the cause.

What's special about the Buddha's approach is that the problem he attacks is the whole of human suffering, and the solution he offers is something human beings can do for themselves. Just as a doctor with a surefire cure for measles isn't afraid of measles, the Buddha isn't afraid of any aspect of human suffering.

And, having experienced a happiness that's totally unconditional, he's not afraid to point out the suffering and stress inherent in places where most of us would rather not see it — in the conditioned pleasures we cling to.

He teaches us not to deny that suffering and stress, or to run away from it, but to stand still and face up to it. To examine it carefully. That way — by understanding it — we can ferret out its cause and put an end to it. How confident can you get? A fair number of writers have pointed out the basic confidence inherent in the four noble truths, and yet the rumor of Buddhism's pessimism persists. I wonder why. One possible explanation is that, in coming to Buddhism, we sub-consciously expect it to address issues that have a long history in our own culture.

By starting out with suffering as his first truth, the Buddha seems to be offering his position on a question with a long history in the West: is the world basically good or bad? According to Genesis, this was the first question that occurred to God after he had finished his creation: had he done a good job? So he looked at the world and saw that it was good. Ever since then, people in the West have sided with or against God on his answer, but in doing so they have affirmed that the question was worth asking to begin with.

When Theravada — the only form of Buddhism to take on Christianity when Europe colonized Asia — was looking for ways to head off what it saw as the missionary menace, Buddhists who had received their education from the missionaries assumed that the question was valid and pressed the first noble truth into service as a refutation of the Christian God: look at how miserable life is, they said, and it's hard to accept God's verdict on his handiwork.

This debating strategy may have scored a few points at the time, and it's easy to find Buddhist apologists who — still living in the colonial past — keep trying to score the same points. The real issue, though, is whether the Buddha intended for his first noble truth to be an answer to God's question in the first place and — more importantly — whether we're getting the most out of the first noble truth if we see it in that light.

It's hard to imagine what you could accomplish by saying that life is suffering. You'd have to spend your time arguing with people who see more than just suffering in life.

The Buddha himself says as much in one of his discourses. A brahman named Long-nails Dighanakha comes to him and announces that he doesn't approve of anything. This would have been a perfect time for the Buddha, if he had wanted, to chime in with the truth that life is suffering.

Instead, he attacks the whole notion of taking a stand on whether life is worthy of approval. There are three possible answers to this question: 1 nothing is worthy of approval, 2 everything is, and 3 some things are and some things aren't.

If you take any of these three positions, you end up arguing with the people who take either of the other two positions. And where does that get you? The Buddha then teaches Long-nails to look at his body and feelings as instances of the first noble truth: they're stressful, inconstant, and don't deserve to be clung to as self. Long-nails follows the Buddha's instructions and, in letting go of his attachment to body and feelings, gains his first glimpse of the Deathless, of what it's like to be totally free from suffering.

The point of this story is that trying to answer God's question, passing judgment on the world, is a waste of time. And it offers a better use for the first noble truth: looking at things, not in terms of "world" or "life," but simply identifying suffering so that you can comprehend it, let it go, and attain release. Rather than asking us to make a blanket judgment — which, in effect, would be asking us to be blind partisans — the first noble truth asks us to look and see precisely where the problem of suffering lies.

Other discourses make the point that the problem isn't with body and feelings in and of themselves. They themselves aren't suffering. The suffering lies in clinging to them. In his definition of the first noble truth, the Buddha summarizes all types of suffering under the phrase, "the five aggregates of clinging": clinging to physical form including the body , feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness. However, when the five aggregates are free from clinging, he tells us, they lead to long-term benefit and happiness.

Of course, by "happiness" he isn't here referring to the arts, food, travel, sports, family life, or any of the other sections of the Sunday newspaper. He's talking about the solid well-being that comes when we treat the aggregates as factors in the path to the Deathless.

The aggregates in themselves are neutral. The role they play in leading to true happiness or suffering lies in whether or not we cling.

So the first noble truth, simply put, is that clinging is suffering. It's because of clinging that physical pain becomes mental pain. It's because of clinging that aging, illness, and death cause mental distress. How do we cling? The texts list four ways: the clinging of sensual passion, the clinging of views, the clinging of precepts and practices, and the clinging of doctrines of the self. It's rare that a moment passes in the ordinary mind without some form of clinging.

Even when we abandon a particular form of clinging, it's usually because it gets in the way of another form. We may abandon a puritanical view because it interferes with sensual pleasure; or a sensual pleasure because it conflicts with a view about what we should do to stay healthy. Our views of who we are may expand and contract depending on which of our many senses of "I" is feeling the most pain, expanding into a sense of cosmic oneness when we feel confined by the limitations of our small mind-body complex, shrinking into a small shell when we feel wounded from identifying with a cosmos so filled with cruelty, thoughtlessness, and waste.

When the insignificance of our finite self becomes oppressive again, we may jump at the idea that we have no self, but then that becomes oppressive.

So our minds jump from clinging to clinging like a bird trapped in a cage. And when we realize we're captive, we naturally search for a way out. This is where it's so important that the first noble truth not say that "Life is suffering," for if life were suffering, where would we look for an end to suffering?

We'd be left with nothing but death and annihilation. But when the actual truth is that clinging is suffering, we simply have to look to see precisely where clinging is and learn not to cling. This is where we encounter the Buddha's great skill as a strategist: He tells us to take the clingings we'll have to abandon and transform them into the path to their abandoning.

We'll need a certain amount of sensory pleasure — in terms of adequate food, clothing, and shelter — to find the strength to go beyond sensual passion. We'll need right view — seeing all things, including views, in terms of the four noble truths — to undermine our clinging to views. And we'll need a regimen of the five ethical precepts and the practice of meditation to put the mind in a solid position where it can drop its clinging to precepts and practices.

Underlying all this, we'll need a strong sense of self-responsibility and self-discipline to master the practices leading to the insight that cuts through our clinging to doctrines of the self. So we start the path to the end of suffering, not by trying to drop our clingings immediately, but by learning to cling more strategically. In other words, we start where we are and make the best use of the habits we've already got. We progress along the path by finding better and better things to cling to, and more skillful ways to cling, in the same way you climb a ladder to the top of a roof: grab hold of a higher rung so that you can let go of a lower rung, and then grab onto a rung still higher.

As the rungs get further off the ground, you find that the mind grows clearer and can see precisely where its clingings are. It gets a sharper sense of which parts of experience belong to which noble truth and what should be done with them: the parts that are suffering should be comprehended, the parts that cause of suffering — craving and ignorance — should be abandoned; the parts that form the path to the end of suffering should be developed; and the parts that belong to the end of suffering should be verified.

This helps you get higher and higher on the ladder until you find yourself securely on the roof. That's when you can finally let go of the ladder and be totally free.

So the real question we face isn't God's question, passing judgment on how skillfully he created life or the world. It's our question: how skillfully are we handling the raw stuff of life? Are we clinging in ways that serve only to continue the round of suffering, or are we learning to cling in ways that will reduce suffering so that ultimately we can grow up and won't have to cling. If we negotiate life armed with all four noble truths, realizing that life contains both suffering and an end to suffering, there's hope: hope that we'll be able to sort out which parts of life belong to which truth; hope that someday, in this life, we'll come to the point where we agree with the Buddha, "Oh.

This is the end of suffering and stress. One of the first stumbling blocks that Westerners often encounter when they learn about Buddhism is the teaching on anatta, often translated as no-self. This teaching is a stumbling block for two reasons. First, the idea of there being no self doesn't fit well with other Buddhist teachings, such as the doctrine of kamma and rebirth: If there's no self, what experiences the results of kamma and takes rebirth?

Second, it doesn't fit well with our own Judeo-Christian background, which assumes the existence of an eternal soul or self as a basic presupposition: If there's no self, what's the purpose of a spiritual life?

Many books try to answer these questions, but if you look at the Pali canon — the earliest extant record of the Buddha's teachings — you won't find them addressed at all.

In fact, the one place where the Buddha was asked point-blank whether or not there was a self, he refused to answer. When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible.

Thus the question should be put aside. To understand what his silence on this question says about the meaning of anatta, we first have to look at his teachings on how questions should be asked and answered, and how to interpret his answers.

The Buddha divided all questions into four classes: those that deserve a categorical straight yes or no answer; those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question; those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner's court; and those that deserve to be put aside.

The last class of question consists of those that don't lead to the end of suffering and stress. The first duty of a teacher, when asked a question, is to figure out which class the question belongs to, and then to respond in the appropriate way. You don't, for example, say yes or no to a question that should be put aside. If you are the person asking the question and you get an answer, you should then determine how far the answer should be interpreted.

The Buddha said that there are two types of people who misrepresent him: those who draw inferences from statements that shouldn't have inferences drawn from them, and those who don't draw inferences from those that should. These are the basic ground rules for interpreting the Buddha's teachings, but if we look at the way most writers treat the anatta doctrine, we find these ground rules ignored.

Some writers try to qualify the no-self interpretation by saying that the Buddha denied the existence of an eternal self or a separate self, but this is to give an analytical answer to a question that the Buddha showed should be put aside.

Others try to draw inferences from the few statements in the discourse that seem to imply that there is no self, but it seems safe to assume that if one forces those statements to give an answer to a question that should be put aside, one is drawing inferences where they shouldn't be drawn. So, instead of answering "no" to the question of whether or not there is a self — interconnected or separate, eternal or not — the Buddha felt that the question was misguided to begin with.

No matter how you define the line between "self" and "other," the notion of self involves an element of self-identification and clinging, and thus suffering and stress. This holds as much for an interconnected self, which recognizes no "other," as it does for a separate self. If one identifies with all of nature, one is pained by every felled tree. It also holds for an entirely "other" universe, in which the sense of alienation and futility would become so debilitating as to make the quest for happiness — one's own or that of others — impossible.

For these reasons, the Buddha advised paying no attention to such questions as "Do I exist? To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of "self" and "other," he offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. Rather than viewing these truths as pertaining to self or other, he said, one should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each.

Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed. These duties form the context in which the anatta doctrine is best understood. If you develop the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment to a state of calm well-being and use that calm state to look at experience in terms of the Noble Truths, the questions that occur to the mind are not "Is there a self?

What is my self? Is it really me, myself, or mine? If it's stressful but not really me or mine, why hold on? In this sense, the anatta teaching is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of its cause, leading to the highest, undying happiness.

At that point, questions of self, no-self, and not-self fall aside. They first appeared in written form in the Pali canon , also known as the Tipitaka.

Other teachings followed, including the Mahayana Sutras. The Dhamma reveals truths as taught by the Buddha. It also gives people a way to live life that can lead them towards achieving enlightenment. They have shouldered the task of following the disciplinary rules and studying the Buddha's Teachings. They are free to leave the Bhikkhuhood and thus become lay disciples whenever they want to. Realization of the Triple Gem literally from the vernacular to approach or go to the Triple Gem as Refuge is what is expected of Buddhists and can be done in the following manners :.

Back to Content Next Topic. It is invaluable in that it bestows an immeasurable benefit upon the aspirants who realise its nature. Such a benefit is incomparable to any worldly treasure or wealth, however vast, which is but temporary and always beset with untold suffering.

Thus realization of the Triple Gem yields a steadily progressive benefit and happiness, steering the aspirants away from all ills.

The external monastery means a place where monks live as a community under religious vows and lay people go to attend a sermon or religious practice. If one tries to make his or her mind clean, calm and clear with morality, concentration, and wisdom, one may also be considered as regularly going to the monastery.

Buddhists should aim at both external and internal monasteries in accordance with the appropriate occasion. Is it compulsory for lay Buddhists to go to the monastery regularly? There are no strict rules or regulations for lay Buddhists to go to the monastery regularly. If spiritual progress is needed it is suggested that Buddhists should go to the internal monastery see question and answer No. In Buddhism, can women attain enlightenment? The Buddha was the first religious leader to accept equal spiritual potentiality of men and women.

The nature of enlightenment transcends gender difference, which otherwise tends to limit women in their social contexts. Some of them were individually praised by the Buddha, such as Bhikkhuni Patacara who was foremost in Vinaya, and Bhikkhuni Khema who was foremost in wisdom. Among laywomen, Visakha was foremost in offering dana and Samavati was foremost in loving-kindness. In brief, women showed equal capability in practicing and propagating Buddhism in early Buddhist history.

Even now both men and women who practise the Buddhist teachings can undoubtedly attain enlightenment. Is it true that in some countries women can be ordained? The Buddha allowed women full ordination in his time. They were called Bhikkhuni Bhikshuni in Sanskrit.