How Lay Followers of the Buddha Became Noble Disciples
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- Опубликовано: 12 июн 2024
- The Buddha had many lay disciples who understood the Dhamma, often just by hearing a few discourses. But are practitioners today in the same position?
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Other talks that are referred to during the discussion:
↪ "Understanding the origin of attention" • Early Buddhism: Unders...
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The discourse with the Buddha's advice to Gotamī, mentioned at the end of the discussion, can be found here:
suttas.hillsidehermitage.org/...
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If you wish to support the monks of Samanadipa Hermitage, please visit www.samanadipa.org/support/do...
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Thank you Venerables -- great discussion!
This has inspired me to take a closer look at my habit of eating out of pleasure ... As a lay person I've previously told myself that I need more food because I work. But in my heart I know this habit is most often fueled by craving and not of mere 'practicality'.
Also the discussion on laypersons 'undecided' way of keeping precepts sparked some thoughts in me. We are doing ourselves a disservice by halfheartedly walking the path - cherrypicking this or that theme, technique, etc, only to do it when we feel like it, instead of embracing the whole of the path. You've also made clear that mere techniques, like breath meditation, cannot on its own be compared with what the Buddha was speaking about. We should keep the bar high as it should be 🙏
Thanks 🙏
Timestamping to highlight
36:40 Ven. Anīgha counted only 5 cases in the entire canon of the Buddha teaching meditation to laypeople, and in all five cases the laypeople in question were ariya-sāvakā.
Maybe the reason (or one of) the Buddha did not teach meditation nor any of the higher teachings to puthujjanas (lay or monastic) was to guard against them misrepresenting his teachings later on... Anyone without the Right View would inevitably do this if he decides to teach others. And it is indeed misrepresented today as is quite evident (mainstream teachings are highly at variance with the suttas), as puthujjanas did end up teaching something after his death.
Thank you for the insightful talk, Bhantes.
Thanks Bhantes, an important talk this one
Thank you, Venerables!
Hello Bhantes, a very interesting discussion. Thank you for uploading it.
I wonder though, if it is so that Human existence became so comfortable as to be an impediment for the practice.
Even though we, in Western societies, have less apparent suffering than our predecessors, we are experiencing a human existence. Whatever the external conditioning may be, we, as humans, will experience them according to our human minds and bodies. Did people in ancient India experience more pain, or were they just rougher and, therefore, experienced rougher conditions with the same amount of pain as we nowadays have?
We may have the same level of comfort as the kings of ancient times, but was being a king a bigger hindrance to the practice than being a servant?
Many of the noble disciples came indeed from the higher casts. Were the young generations of these rich families, enjoying health and abundance, less aware of the fragility of life than we are?
Particularly excellent talk overall venerable ones! :D
I really liked the TL;DR (I paraphrase): Worldly comfort is freedom from feelings, Enlightenment comfort is freedom from craving (in regard to any feeling). And the only thing that is really ever craved for or against is the feeling. The various things are just there in the world, ever unimportant and indifferent.
🙏🙏🙏
Say you smoke 2 packs a day. You likely think that you are overdoing it a little and that 1 pack a day would be moderate. But why 1, why not half a pack ? How exactly did you come to that number 1 ? Well, as someone who smokes 2 packs a day, if you went for less than 1 pack a day, you would really feel the lack, it would really hurt (the withdrawal symptoms). And since the Buddha said you shouldn't torture yourself, so then you shouldn't go for less than 1, right ? But, the only reason that 1 or 0 pack is pain is because you're addicted to smoking, so your state is not exactly comparable to what the Buddha is saying. With the "not too much pain, not too much pleasure" Middle Way, the Buddha assumes a very pure non-addicted, non-sensual state of being, which none of us satisfy. And you assume the mid point based on how it feels (from an addicted person's viewpoint too), which is completely misaligned with the Noble ones.
In the same way, the only reason 0 sex (celibacy) is pain, is because you are addicted to it. As most of us are almost by nature... And you've been addicted to it for so long it's not even up for questioning now... We get into it very early in life (in some form, subtle or gross), for biology reasons, since it's a global societal and cultural value, it is very alluring and sensual, etc. But it is still an addiction, regardless of how normal and justified it is. It uses the same neural circuitry and mechanisms as all the other addictions, and if you try going without it, you suffer withdrawal. Also, important to note is that the value of sex goes much much deeper than just the physical aspect, it carries a vast amount of subtle implications in our overall psyches.
So when you subject yourself to the pain of celibacy, just by that act alone, you are actually practicing the Middle Way to a large extent, because any pure being would not be in pain without sex ever. And that should be your standard.
Additional dust MOST DEFINITELY
Can someone explain to me the relationship this community has with hillside? Are they even related? Or is it just the same country? Thank you friends
Hillside Hermitage started in Sri Lanka but relocated to Slovenia about two years ago. Monks of both hermitages regularly meet and we support each other in various ways. In addition, all the monks of Samanadipa are quite familiar with - and have benefitted from - the teachings of the Hillside channel and some monks know Ajahn Nyanamoli and Ajahn Thaniyo from before Hillside was founded.
Do we basically weaken our ability to resist craving every time we give into it?
Yes, which is why craving needs to be _endured_ rather than resisted, for resistance is often a craving against something, which at the end of the day is still craving. For more on this topic, see the earlier discussion in this channel on patient endurance: ruclips.net/video/lkUfedC_6co/видео.html
Thank you for clarifying that. I will listen to the recommended video for further understanding 🙏
At 29:00 wouldn't giving up the **permanent** desire/value for sensuality make you a non-returner? So you're saying the Buddha took lay people with zero concentration skills and made them non-returners? Seems to contradict the suttas, as that only happened to the matted hair fire ascetics who had jhana, not lay people.
There’s a difference between the _fetter_ of sensuality, the _hindrance_ of sensuality, and what you get from concentration practices: the latter is a contrived suppression of thoughts related to the sense domain. Abandoning the hindrance of sensuality means completely abandoning the value of sensual perceptions in regard to the past, present, and future; at that moment, there is not only an absence of particular sense desires, but an _impossibility_ to have sensual desire even in the midst of sense pleasures. But this all-encompassing attainment (samādhi) is temporary: if solitude and the right context of dispassion that led to it are not sustained, it will deteriorate. But if one frequently abides in that, eventually the _fetter_ of sensuality will be destroyed.
What happened in the discourses where laypeople attained stream-entry is explained therein: they saw the danger in sensuality to the point where their minds became pliable on account of that, meaning that _at that moment_ , they were _as if_ free from sensuality, and that’s when the mind was able to “absorb” the Dhamma “like a clean white cloth”. Later on they fell from that establishment and went back to sense pleasures to a degree (the right view is irreversible however), but the point is: it was the thorough, all-pervasive sense of dispassion they had there and then which actually constituted samādhi (see suttas.hillsidehermitage.org/?q=an6.73 ), and one with samādhi sees clearly, as the Suttas say.
Right, so therefore neither sottapana magga nor phala attainers have *permanently* given up the desire for sensuality, only temporarily in the moment to attain phala. Unless I misunderstood you, it sounds like at 28:40 you're saying a *permanent* giving up of the desire for sensuality is required for attaining **stream entry**. Maybe semantics got lost in metaphors or something, and that's not what you meant to say. Anyway, not trying to argue, I appreciate your videos.
It’s a matter of point of view, not semantics. When those lay people became noble disciples, their minds were free from hindrances, which means that for them on that occasion, attraction towards sense pleasures of the present _and_ the future was entirely inconceivable. But if they lose the establishment they had at that time, which is bound to happen, they would discover that the desire for sensual pleasures shows it’s ugly head again, and only then would they experientially come to see the difference between hindrances and fetters (the distinctions of magga, phala, etc., are categorizations that came later; the concern of a sincere practitioner would’ve been to thoroughly develop dispassion to the greatest possible extent from within their point of view).
That’s literally not true. Safety & security is very compromised in most places across the world. Entire communities are put in danger.
With due respect, you all need to keep in touch with real politics to see how laymen are being exploited, their daily living made hugely difficult.
Also, in the Buddha’s times, Indian Kings took care of education, health care etc really well. Better than the US, Canada etc.
So, you are having a very important & relevant discussion, thank you for that, but please keep abreast of facts that pertain to it, thank you.
No, headaches & cuts didn’t make people helpless. Indians had Ayurveda. Please read about it. How it taught a lifestyle that would give good health & long life. Buddha’s teachings may not teach this or reference this but there was Hinduism (real name: Sanatana Dharma) that had elaborate knowledge in providing protection & security from other lands & in depth knowledge of health care that still does not exist in the West, even though they have developed other technological products.
@@lyt48 Good point, they probably weren't exactly helpless. And recently I have really come to question just how much better our modern medicine is compared to the old and almost lost ways... Sure, we can do much more advanced operations on people now with much higher succcess rates, but how unavoidable are they in the first place really... And most of our current ailments we have created by our own food, lifestyles, etc. Don't want to get into that topic now tho...
However, indians didn't exactly have ambulance vans and taxis on call 24/7, unnaturally efficient painkillers and proper doctors were far less in number than today, maybe even 1 per village. And there weren't exactly these high-tech imaging technologies which could show exactly what and where is causing the ailment. It was certainly a lot more uncertain, experimental and worrisome. Also, lots of illiterate people could only know as much as they were told by others, most of them could not read all the ancient texts on medicine.
All in all, I think both your sides have a point.