householders Vinaya_3 – A Householder's Vinaya

Despite doing more formal practice than usual, a Home Retreat is still based in everyday life. The ambiguities and variables of everyday life create the perfect testing ground in real time to explore and test our understanding, compassion for self and others and to learn new patterns that assist us in the development of the skills necessary for navigating a life based in virtue, concentration and wisdom.

It is understood from a meditation perspective that virtue trains intentions. It is not a situation in which, if rules are broken, you fail, or have sinned or are a bad person. Virtue is a training. Training is a process. It takes time and careful attention to perfect any training. It is also helpful to understand that the total uprooting of unwholesome actions and unwholesome mind activity won’t happen until deep Wisdom has taken root which might take a lifetime of practice to realize. So, give yourself some latitude, exercise patience and learn to enjoy the challenge while never losing sight that the perfection of virtue is both the cause and the fruit of all spiritual Wisdom.

Understanding that we are in training allows a yogi the room to accept the Precepts as tools and not just rules. Acknowledging that the Precepts are not rules, while at the same time holding moral absolute authority may provide inspiration to strive to perfect this aspect of life by trying again and again when we fail to meet our highest understanding.

The Precepts are forgiving yet remain firm in the understanding of what is universal wholesomeness. A yogi can use them like a child learning to ride a bicycle. One often falls and takes the falling as a method to learn and then gets up and tries again. There is no rule about falling except if you want to learn to ride you get back on the bicycle and try again.

Despite doing more formal practice than usual, a Home Retreat is still based in everyday life. The ambiguities and variables of everyday life create the perfect testing ground in real time to explore and test our understanding, compassion for self and others and to learn new patterns that assist us in the development of the skills necessary for navigating a life based in virtue, concentration and wisdom.

It is understood from a meditation perspective that virtue trains intentions. It is not a situation in which, if rules are broken, you fail, or have sinned or are a bad person. Virtue is a training. Training is a process. It takes time and careful attention to perfect any training. It is also helpful to understand that the total uprooting of unwholesome actions and unwholesome mind activity won’t happen until deep Wisdom has taken root which might take a lifetime of practice to realize. So, give yourself some latitude, exercise patience and learn to enjoy the challenge while never losing sight that the perfection of virtue is both the cause and the fruit of all spiritual Wisdom.

Understanding that we are in training allows a yogi the room to accept the Precepts as tools and not just rules. Acknowledging that the Precepts are not rules, while at the same time holding moral absolute authority may provide inspiration to strive to perfect this aspect of life by trying again and again when we fail to meet our highest understanding. the Precepts as tools and not just rules. The Precepts are forgiving yet remain firm in the understanding of what is universal wholesomeness. A yogi can use them like a child learning to ride a bicycle. One often falls and takes the falling as a method to learn and then gets up and tries again. There is no rule about falling except if you want to learn to ride you get back on the bicycle and try again.

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Glossary

Virtue, Morality (sīla): Is a mode of mind and volition manifested in speech or bodily actions. Karma. It is the foundation of the whole Buddhist practice, and therewith the first of the Three kinds of Training that forms the 3-fold division of the 8-fold path, i.e., morality, concentration, and wisdom. Buddhist Dictionary, Nyanatiloka.

Wisdom (pañña): ‘Understanding, Knowledge, Wisdom, Insight,’ comprise a very wide field. The specific Buddhist Knowledge or wisdom, however, as part of the Noble Eightfold Path to deliverance is Insight, i.e., that intuitive knowledge which brings about the four stages of Holiness and the realization of Nibbānna, and which consists of the penetration of the Impermanency, Misery, and Impersonality of all forms of existence. Buddhist Dictionary, Nyanatiloka.

Papañca: Complication; proliferation, objectification: The tendency of the mind to proliferate issues.

Right Intention (sammā-sankappa): The Noble Eightfold Path. Bhikkhu Bodhi. Chapter Three.

Abbreviations in footnotes: AN: Aṅguttara Nikāya, DN: Dingha Nikāya, MN: Majjhima Nikāya, SN: Saṃyutta Nikāya