Chapter 25

Bhikkhu Vagga
The Bhikkhu Or The Mendicant
(Text and Translation by Ven. Nàrada)



1. Cakkhunà samvaro sàdhu
sàdhu sotena samvaro
Ghàuena samvaro sàdhu
sàdhu jivhàya samvaro. 360.
2. Kàyena samvaro sàdhu
sàdhu vàcàya samvaro
Manasà samvaro sàdhu
sàdhu sabbattha samvaro
Sabbattha samvuto bhikkhu
sabbadukkhà pamuccati. 361.

GUARD THE SENSES

1. Good is restraint in the eye; good is restraint in the ear; good is restraint in the nose; good is restraint in the tongue. 360.

HE WHO GUARDS HIS SENSES IS RELEASED FROM SORROW

2. Good is restraint in deed; good is restraint in speech; good is restraint in mind; good is restraint in everything. The bhikkhu, 1 restrained at all points, 2 is freed from sorrow. 361.

Story

Five monks each of whom was guarding one of the senses inquired of the Buddha which sense was the most difficult to restrain. Instead of answering the question directly the Buddha related a story from one of their past births to show that they had come to destruction because their senses were not guarded, and then He uttered these verses.
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Manopubbangama dhamma
manosettha manomaya
manasa ce pasannena
bhasati va karoti va
tato nam sukha manveti
chayava anapayini.

All mental phenomena have mind as their forerunner; they have mind as their chief; they are mind-made. If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness (sukha) follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.

Dhammapada Verse 2 : Matthakundali Vatthu

3. Hatthasaññato pàdasaññato
vàcàya saññato saññatuttamo
Ajjhattarato samàhito
eko santusito tam àhu bhikkhum. 362.

THE FULLY CONTROLLED PERSON IS CALLED A BHIKKHU

3. He who is controlled in hand, in foot, in speech, and in the highest (i.e., the head); he who delights in meditation, 3 and is composed; he who is alone, and is contented - him they call a bhikkhu. 362.

Story

A monk killed a flying swan by hitting it in the eye with a stone. The Buddha, advising him, explained the state of a bhikkhu.
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Free Buddha dharma ebook

Kamma in Buddhism

BUDDHADASA BHIKKHU

“To be beyond kamma seems incredible to most people; they may consider it a deception or a huckster’s trick. Nonetheless, it really is possible if we take the Buddha as our True and Noble Friend. This will help us in practicing the complete set of ten aspects of rightness (sammatta): the noble eightfold path plus right insight knowledge and right liberation in accordance with the law of specific conditionality (idappaccayatā). In such practice, there is no foolish feeling that leads to desire for the various results of kamma (actions).”

Free download available:

https://www.suanmokkh.org/system/books/files/000/000/089/original/Buddhadas-Kamma-in-buddhism.pdf
===

Free Buddha dharma ebook

Kamma in Buddhism

BUDDHADASA BHIKKHU

“To be beyond kamma seems incredible to most people; they may consider it a deception or a huckster’s trick. Nonetheless, it really is possible if we take the Buddha as our True and Noble Friend. This will help us in practicing the complete set of ten aspects of rightness (sammatta): the noble eightfold path plus right insight knowledge and right liberation in accordance with the law of specific conditionality (idappaccayatā). In such practice, there is no foolish feeling that leads to desire for the various results of kamma (actions).”

Free download available:

https://www.suanmokkh.org/system/books/files/000/000/089/original/Buddhadas-Kamma-in-buddhism.pdf
===

Kammā Vācanā: Asking for Forgiveness

Kāyena vācā cittena, pamādena mayā kataṁ
Accayaṁ khama me bhante, Bhūri-pañña tathāgata

Kāyena vācā cittena, pamādena mayā kataṁ
Accayaṁ khama me dhamma, Sanditthika akālika.

Kāyena vācā cittena, pamādena mayā kataṁ
Accayaṁ khama me saṅgha, puññak-kettaṁ anuttara.

If, due to negligence, I have done some wrong, by body, speech, or mind,
Forgive me of that offense, O Bhante, perfect One of vast wisdom.

If, due to negligence, I have done some wrong, by body, speech, or mind,
Forgive me of that offense, O Dhamma, visible and unaffected by time.

If, due to negligence, I have done some wrong, by body, speech, or mind,
Forgive me of that offense, O Sangha, supreme field of merit.

I have heard that the Blessed One was staying near Savatthi. Then a certain devata went to the Blessed One. On arrival, having bowed down to him, she stood to one side. As she was standing there, she said to him, "Tell me, how you crossed over the flood."

"I crossed over the flood without pushing forward, without staying in place."

"But how, dear sir, did you cross over the flood without pushing forward, without staying in place?"

"When I pushed forward, I was whirled about. When I stayed in place, I sank. And so I crossed over the flood without pushing forward, without staying in place."

[The devata:]
At long last I see
a brahman, totally unbound,
who without pushing forward,
without staying in place,
has crossed over the entanglements of the world.

That is what the devata said. The Teacher approved. Realizing that "The Teacher has approved of me," she bowed down to him, circumambulated him — keeping him to her right — and then vanished right there.


Partial excerpts from SN 1.1 : Ogha-tarana Sutta

The Gift of Gratitude

Ajahn Sumedho recounts the joyful unfolding of a deep appreciation for his teacher and parents.
By Ajahn Sumedho

Part 1 of 3

Even if one should carry about one’s mother on one shoulder and one’s father on the other, and so doing should live a hundred years . . . moreover, if one should set them up as supreme rulers, having absolute rule over the wide earth abounding in the seven treasures—not even by this could one repay one’s parents. And why! Bhikkhus, parents do a lot for their children: they bring them up, provide them with food, introduce them to the world.

Yet, bhikkhus, whoever encourages their faithless parents, and settles and establishes them in faith; or whoever encourages their immoral parents and settles and establishes them in morality, or whoever encourages their stingy parents, and settles and establishes them in generosity, or whoever encourages their foolish parents, and settles and establishes them in wisdom—such a person, in this way repays, more than repays, what is due to their parents.

—the Buddha, Anguttara-nikaya 2.32

My father died about six years ago. He was then ninety years old, and he had never shown love or positive feelings toward me. So from early childhood I had this feeling that he did not like me. I carried this feeling through most of my life. I never had any kind of love, any kind of warm relationship with my father. It was always a perfunctory “Hello son, good to see you.” And he seemed to feel threatened by me. I remember whenever I came home as a Buddhist monk he would say, “Remember, this is my house, you’ve got to do as I say.” This was his greeting—and I was almost fifty years old at the time! I don’t know what he thought I was going to do.

My father was an aspiring artist before the Depression. Then in ’29 the crash came and he and my mother lost everything, so he had to take a job selling shoes to support us. Then the Second World War started, but my father was too old to enlist in the military. He wanted to support the war effort, so he became a ship fitter in Seattle. He didn’t like that job, but it was the best way he could help in the war. After the war he went back to his shoe business and became a manager of a retail store. He never really liked that work either, but he felt he was too old to find another profession. He had sacrificed his own preferences to support my mother, my sister, and me.

When I was at university in the 1950s, it was fashionable to study psychology. At that time the trend was to blame your mother for everything that went wrong in your life. The focus was on mothers and what they had done to cause us to suffer now. I didn’t realize then that suffering was natural. Of course my mother was not perfect, so naturally there were things she could have done better. But generally speaking, the dedication, commitment, love, and care were all there—and directed mainly to making the lives of my father, my sister, and me as good and as happy as could be. She asked very little for herself, and when I think back like this, katannu, Pali for gratitude, arises in my mind for my mother and father.

The Buddha encouraged us to think of the good things done for us by our parents, by our teachers, friends, whomever; and to do this intentionally, to cultivate it, rather than just letting it happen accidentally.

My students who have a lot of anger toward their parents ask me how they can develop gratitude toward them. Teaching lovingkindness, or metta, on too sentimental a basis can actually increase anger. I remember a woman on one of our retreats who, whenever it came to spreading metta to her parents, would go into a rage. Then she felt very guilty about it. Every time she thought about her mother, she felt only rage. This was because she used only her intellect; she wanted to do this practice of metta, but emotionally felt anything but lovingkindness.

It’s important to see this conflict between the intellectual and the emotional life. We know in our mind that we should be able to forgive our enemies and love our parents, but in the heart we feel “I can never forgive them for what they’ve done.” So then we either feel anger and resentment, or we begin to rationalize: “Because my parents were so bad, so unloving, so unkind, they made me suffer so much that I can’t forgive or forget.” Or: “There’s something wrong with me. I’m a terrible person because I can’t forgive.” When this happens, I’ve found it helpful to have metta for my own feelings. If we feel that our parents were unkind and unloving, we can have metta toward the feeling we have in our hearts; without judgment, we can see that this is how it feels, and to accept that feeling with patience.
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“Bhikkhus, there are these four streams of merit, streams of the wholesome, nutriments of happiness—heavenly, ripening in happiness, conducive to heaven—that lead to what is wished for, desired, and agreeable, to one’s welfare and happiness.
When a bhikkhu enters and dwells in a measureless concentration of mind while using a robe [alms food, lodgings, medicine] that one has given him, one acquires a measureless stream of merit, stream of the wholesome, a nutriment of happiness … that leads … to one’s welfare and happiness.

“Bhikkhus, just as it is not easy to measure the water in the great ocean thus... it is reckoned simply as an incalculable, immeasurable, great mass of water; so too, when a noble disciple possesses these four streams of merit … it is reckoned simply as an incalculable, immeasurable, great mass of merit.”

AN 4.51 : Pathamapunnabhisandasutta : Stream of Merit

Photo: Phra Phuttha Mahanawamintra Sakayamunee Sri Visejchaicharn, Big Buddha Wat Muang temple in Ang Thong Province, Thailand.

The Sound of Silence by Ajahn Sumedho

The Gift of Gratitude

Ajahn Sumedho recounts the joyful unfolding of a deep appreciation for his teacher and parents.
By Ajahn Sumedho

Part 2 of 3

Once I began to accept my negativity about my father rather than suppress it, I could resolve it. When we resolve something with mindfulness, we can let it go and free ourselves from its power. The resolution of such a conflict leads us to contemplate what life is about.

A life without gratitude is a joyless life. If life is just a continuous complaint about the injustices and unfairness we have received and we don’t remember anything good ever done to us, we fall into depression—not an uncommon problem these days. It is impossible to imagine ever being happy again: we think this misery is forever.

When I became a Buddhist monk in Thailand, I was very fortunate to meet a teacher, Luang Por Chah, known widely as Ajahn Chah, who became the catalyst for the gratitude in my life. At that time I was thirty-three or thirty-four years old, and I must say gratitude was not yet a part of my life’s experience. I was still very much obsessed with myself, what I wanted, what I thought. However, after training as a Buddhist monk for some years, in about the sixth year of monastic life, I had a heart-opening experience that was very much the experience of katannu katavedita, or gratitude to one’s parents.

A life without gratitude is a joyless life.

I had been a Buddhist for many years before I met Ajahn Chah. I had tremendous interest and faith in Buddhism, as well as an eagerness to study and practice it. But it was still coming from the sense of my doing it, my studying it, my trying to practice it. When I became a monk, there was still this tendency: “I want to get rid of suffering. I want to be enlightened.” I was not much concerned about other people, about my parents, or even about Ajahn Chah, with whom I was living at the time. I thought that it was very nice that he was helpful to me, but I did not feel a deep gratitude.

I had the idea that life owed all this to me—an unpleasant kind of conceit. When we are brought up in middle-class comfort as I had been, we take so much for granted. My parents worked hard to make my life comfortable, but I thought that they should have worked harder, and that I deserved more than what they gave me. Even though this was not a conscious thought, there was the underlying attitude that I deserved all I had: people should give me these things; my parents should make my life as good as possible, as I wanted it to be. So from that viewpoint, it was Ajahn Chah’s duty to teach and guide me!

In Thailand, I practiced with diligence and was determined in my monastic life. After participation in five rainy season retreats (vassas), a monk is no longer considered a novice and is free to leave the monastery. I felt that being with a teacher was fine, but I wanted to go away on my own. I left for central Thailand from the northeast. After the vassa I went on a pilgrimage to India. This was in about 1974, and I decided to go as a tudong-bhikkhu, wandering from place to place as part of an austere form of monastic practice. Somebody provided me with a ticket from Bangkok to Calcutta, and I found myself in Calcutta with my alms bowl, my robe, and, abiding by the rules of monkhood, no money. In Thailand it had been easy, but in India the prospect of wandering around with nothing more than an alms bowl seemed quite frightening at first. As it happened, the five months I spent in India were quite an adventure, and I have very pleasant memories of that time. The life of a mendicant worked in India. Of all countries, it should work there, where the Buddha lived and taught.

I began to think of Ajahn Chah and to recognize the kindness he had extended to me. He had accepted me as his disciple, looked after me, given me the teachings, and helped me in almost every way. And there was his own example. If you wanted to be a monk, you wanted to be like him.

He was a full human being, a man who inspired me, someone I wanted to emulate—and I must say there weren’t so many men that I had had that feeling toward. In the States, the role models for men were not very attractive to me—John Wayne or President Eisenhower or Richard Nixon were not my role models. Film stars and athletes were given great importance, but none of them inspired me.

But then in Thailand, I’d found this monk. He was very small; I towered above him. When we were together sometimes that surprised me, because he had such an enormous presence. There was this feeling about him that attracted people. So I found myself going over to see him in his hut in the evenings, or whenever it was possible; I wanted to take every opportunity I had to hang around. I asked him once what it was in him that drew people to him, and he said, “I call it my magnet.” He used his magnet to attract people so that he could teach them the dhamma. This is how he used the charismatic quality he had: not in the service of his ego, but to help people.
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Part 1 of 3:

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Part 2 of 3:

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Part 3 of 3

https://t.me/lorddivinebuddha/4946
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4. Yo mukhasaññato bhikkhu
mantabhàuã anuddhato
Attham dhammañ ca dãpeti
madhuram tassa bhàsitam. 363.

SWEET IS HIS SPEECH WHO CONTROLS HIS TONGUE

4. The bhikkhu who is controlled in tongue, who speaks wisely, 4 who is not puffed up, who explains the meaning and the text - sweet, indeed, is his speech. 363.

Story

The Buddha uttered this verse with reference to a monk who reviled the two Chief Disciples.
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In Buddhism, a stupa is a sacred structure that typically contains relics, such as the remains of the Buddha or other revered figures, as well as sacred texts or objects. It is an important symbol of enlightenment and a place of meditation and worship for practitioners.

The word "stupa" comes from the Sanskrit word meaning "heap" or "mound," reflecting its traditional dome-shaped structure. Stupas represent the Buddha’s mind and the path to enlightenment, symbolizing key elements of Buddhist cosmology, such as the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and space).

Practitioners often walk around a stupa in a clockwise direction, a practice known as circumambulation, as an act of devotion and to accumulate merit. Stupas vary in design and size across different Buddhist traditions, but they universally serve as focal points for spiritual inspiration.

“Jīvitam attabhāvo ca, sukhadukkhā ca kevalā;
Ekacittasamayuttā, lahuso vattate khaṇo.
Chinnāpi teva tiṭṭhanti, ye yuttā busasocanā;
Anāgatā na jāyanti, vartamānā nirujjhare.
Anāgatena na jātā, vartamānena jīvati;
Cittabhaṅgā mato loko, paññatti paramatthiyā.”


"Life, bodily existence, pleasure, and pain—all these
are joined together in a single mind-moment, and that moment passes swiftly.
Even those [states] that have vanished are gone entirely, and those who grieve over them are fools;
The unborn future states do not yet exist, and the present states are constantly dissolving.
One does not live by a future mind-moment, [but] lives solely in the present;
When the mind-moment breaks, the world is dead—this is the designation according to ultimate reality."


Partial excerpts from the Guhatthakasutta Niddesa

The Mind and The Way by Ajahn Sumedho

The Gift of Gratitude

Ajahn Sumedho recounts the joyful unfolding of a deep appreciation for his teacher and parents.
By Ajahn Sumedho

Part 3 of 3


The Lord Buddha, after his enlightenment, at first thought that the dhamma was too subtle, that no one would understand it, so there was no point in teaching it. Then, according to the legend, one of the gods came forth and said, “Please Lord, for the welfare of those who have little dust in their eyes, teach the dhamma.” The Buddha then contemplated with his powerful mind who might understand the dhamma teaching. He remembered his early teachers but through his powers realized that both of them had died. Then he remembered his five friends who had been practicing with him before, and who had deserted him. Out of compassion he went off to find these five friends, and expounded his brilliant teaching on the Four Noble Truths. This makes me feel katannu katavedita to the Lord Buddha. It’s marvelous: here I am—this guy, here, in this century—having an opportunity to listen to the dhamma, and to have this pure teaching still available.

Just having a living teacher like Ajahn Chah was not like worshiping a prophet who lived twenty-five hundred years ago, it was actually inheriting the lineage of the Lord Buddha himself. Perhaps because of visiting the Buddhist holy places, my gratitude began to become very strong. Then, thinking of Ajahn Chah in Thailand, I remembered how I had thought: “I’ve done my five years, now I’m going to leave. I’m going to have a few adventures, do what I want to do, be out from under the eye of the old man.” I realized then that I had actually run away.

When I felt this gratitude, all I wanted to do was get back to Thailand and offer myself to Ajahn Chah. How can you repay a teacher like that? I did not have any money, and that was not what he was interested in anyway. Then I thought that the only way I could make him happy was to be a good Buddhist monk and to go back and help him out. Whatever he wanted me to do, I would do it. With that intention, I went back after five months in India and gave myself to the teacher. It was a joyful offering, not a begrudging one, because it came out of this katannu, this gratitude for the good things I had received.

From that time on, I found that my meditation practice began to improve. That hard selfishness cracked in me: my trying to get something, my desire for harmony, my desire to practice and have a peaceful life, free of responsibility. When I gave up all that, things seemed to fall into place. What used to be difficult, like concentrating the mind, became easier, and I found that life had become joyful to me.

The last time I went to see my father, I decided that I would try to get some kind of warmth going between us before he died. In the last decade of my father’s life he was quite miserable and became very resentful. He had terrible arthritis and was in constant pain, and he had Parkinson’s disease. Eventually he had to be put in a nursing home. He was completely paralyzed. He could move his eyes and talk, but the rest of his body was rigid. He was resentful of what had happened to him because before he had been a strong, independent man.

When I saw him, his body needed to be stimulated, so I said, “Let me massage your leg.” “No, no, you don’t need to do that,” he said. “You’ll get bedsores, because you really have to have your skin massaged. I would really like to do it.” He still refused, but I could tell he was considering it. “I think it’ll be a good thing,” I told him. “So you’d really like to do it?” he asked me. “Yes.”

I started massaging his feet, his legs, his neck, shoulders, hands, and face; he really enjoyed the physical contact. It was the first time he had been touched like that. Physical contact is quite meaningful, it’s an expression of feeling. And I began to realize that my father really loved me, but didn’t know how to say it. I had this great sense of relief and immense gratitude.

Ajahn Chah on Parents: