From The Autobiography of Phra Ajaan Lee
“I've learned to reflect on the teachings that the Buddha
taught first to each newly-ordained monk. They're very thought-provoking. He
taught the Dhamma first, and then the Vinaya. He'd begin with the virtues of
the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, followed by the five basic objects of
meditation: hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, and skin. Then
he'd give a sermon with four major points^1:
a) Make a practice of going out for alms. Be an asker, but
not a beggar. Be content with whatever you are given.
b) Live in a quiet place, such as an abandoned house, under
a projecting cliff face, in a cave. People have asked if the Buddha had any
reasons for this teaching, but I've always been convinced that if there were no
benefits to be gained from these places, he wouldn't have recommended them.
Still, I wondered what the benefits were, which is why I've taken an interest
in this matter.
c) The Buddha taught monks to make robes from cloth that had
been thrown away—even to the point of wearing robes made from the cloth used to
wrap a corpse. This teaching made me reflect on death. What benefits could come
from wearing the cloth used to wrap a corpse? For a simple answer, think for a
moment about a corpse's things: They don't appeal to anyone. No one wants
them—and so they hold no dangers. In this point it's easy enough to see that
the Buddha taught us not to take pride in our possessions.
d) The Buddha taught that we should use medicines near at
hand, such as medicinal plants pickled in urine.
These teachings of the Buddha, when I first heard them,
sparked my curiosity. Whether or not I would benefit from following them, there
was one thing I was sure of:
That the Buddha was not the sort of person who would hold
blindly to anything, and that he would never teach anything without good
reason. So even if I wasn't totally convinced of his teachings, I should at
least respect them. Or if I didn't yet have confidence in my teacher's ability,
I owed it to him and to the traditions of the Sangha to give his teachings a
try.
I was reminded of the words of MahaKassapa, who asked to be
allowed to follow such ascetic practices as living in the forest, eating one
meal a day (going out for alms), and wearing robes made from thrown-away rags
all of his life.
The Buddha questioned him: ‘You've already eradicated your
defilements. What is there left for you to strive for?’
MahaKassapa answered, ‘I want to observe these practices,
not for my own sake, but for the sake of those yet to come. If I don't follow
these practices, who will they be able to take as an example? If a person
teaches by example, the students will learn easily, just as when a person
teaches students how to read: If he has pictures to go along with the text, the
students will learn much more quickly. My observing these practices is the same
sort of thing.’
When I thought of these words, I felt sympathy for
MahaKassapa, subjecting himself to all sorts of hardships. If you were to put
it in worldly terms, you could say that he was already a multimillionaire,
deserving a soft bed and fine food, but instead he slept and ate on the ground,
and had only coarse food to eat. Thinking of his example, I'd be ashamed to
look for nothing more than creature comforts.
All of these things have given me food for thought ever
since I was first ordained.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
From The Autobiography of Phra Ajaan Lee, translated by Ṭhānissaro
Bhikkhu. https://www.dhammatalks.org/ebook_index.html#autobiography
~~~
^1. The four basic requisites are easy to gain and
blameless. To be content with them is a factor of the…
No comments:
Post a Comment