Mobile VersionBlessing Sixteen:
Dhamma Practice
A. INTRODUCTION
A.1 Purification in Buddhism
On our path of self-development via the Manual of Peace there are many reasons on many levels of description why to purify oneself is attractive.
• On a personal level: it would be a rare person who isn’t proud of the many strengths they consider they have in their character — purification can be the way in which one builds and improves the strengths already in one’s character. At the same time, if one knows oneself to have certain weaknesses of character, by purification, one can overcome these weaknesses.
• On an interpersonal level: by purifying ourselves of weaknesses and building on our strengths we can become the sort of person who others feel privileged to consider as a friend
• On a social level: purifying oneself can contribute to overcoming the weaknesses and inequalities that are often so obvious in our modern society by being one less person who is prone to corruption, nepotism and fraud, while displaying the sort of compassion which makes our society a more pleasant place to live.
In Buddhism, according to the Law of Karma, we must receive the retribution of the good and bad actions that we do. (Usually) the only way in which karmic retribution becomes defunct is by giving its fruit. However, rather than just sitting and waiting for one’s karma to run out, the Buddha suggested two ways to purify oneself:
• dilution of old bad karma with large quantities of new good karma: Supposing you compare the negative things in our past to a spoonful of salt and you compare the positive things in life to a container of water. Supposing you put the spoonful of salt in a glass of water — if you taste the water it will still have the salty taste. If you put the same amount of salt in a bucket of water you will find that the water still tastes salty but less so. But what if you put a spoonful of salt in a huge water tank? Now even if you taste the water, you will no longer be able to detect the salty taste — even though the salt is still there. In the same way although we may have things we have done in the past which we regret, we can start afresh in our lives by doing so many positive things in our life that the old negative things become insignificant.
• direct uprooting of the old bad karma through meditation: This method is described in the higher blessings of “Austerity” (31) and “Chastity” (32).
In this blessing we consider pure living at the level of the householder — leaving purification at the more intense monastic level to later blessings.
A.2 Buddhist Purification compared to that of other religions
In its approach to purification, Buddhism is rather unique when compared to other religions. In Christianity (esp. Catholicism), if a Christian breaks a commandment, he will go to confession with a priest in church. In that way, he can absolve his sins. Although confession has an important role in Buddhism too (primarily monastic) from the point of view of declaring one’s intention to renew one’s effort to overcome evil deeds after having broken a precept — it is not seen as a way of overcoming the consequences of the evil done. Supposing Mr. A punches Mr. B in the street and subsequently confesses it to someone he respects, Buddhists would see this as helping Mr. A to feel better about it, and to avoid repeating his behaviour — but it doesn’t help Mr. B. feel any better about his swollen nose! — i.e. the consequences, even on a superficial level, do not go away because of the confession.
In Hinduism, there is also a way of purification — bathing in the River Ganges on full-moon days. Hindus believe they can rinse away their sins with river water. If sin were really washable, then presumably it is a sort of bodily dirt, rather like dried sweat?
The Buddha however, concentrated on the residue of evil deeds left as defilements in the mind. He said that you can wash your mouth out a hundred times a day, but it doesn’t get rid of the evil effects of the bad speech that comes from your mouth. You can wash yourself in the river a hundred times per day, but it doesn’t get rid of the effects of the evil bodily acts which you have done. This blessing deals with the Buddhist approach to mind purification — specifically by the technique of “dilution”.
A.3 Definition: Practising Dhamma
The Pali word we use for Dhamma Practice is “dhammacariya”. This word is the compound of two words — ‘dhamma’ and ‘cariya’. ‘Dhamma’ is a word which has anything up to forty different meanings, but for our purposes in the study of Buddhism it means ‘correctness’, ‘goodness’, ‘purity’ or ‘what the Buddha taught’. Sometimes ’dhamma’ means ‘phenomena’ — which is a neutral term applied to positive and negative things — for example, aging, sickness and death are all ‘dhammas’. In English we capitalize Dhamma when it is meaning goodness, purity or the Teaching of the Buddha and leave it with a small ‘d’ when it refers just to phenomena or mental phenomena. The word ‘cariya’ means ‘conduct’ — therefore, ‘Dhammacariya’ means the ‘practice of good deeds’ or ‘correct practice’. The sort of deeds that are good or correct are described in more detail below — however, to give practical principles for the purposes of this blessing, we can say that it is that the sort of deeds and conduct which comply with this blessing are those which promote our sense of responsibility for human dignity on three levels:
• the personal level
• the interpersonal level
• the level of society and the economy
In this particular blessing we will concentrate mainly on the first two levels of description — not because the social level is irrelevant, but because we will deal with it in more detail in Blessing Eighteen (Blameless Work) and Blessing Nineteen on not consuming the things that lead to economic unfairness.
The Dhamma Practice of this achieves two goals:
• protecting yourself from the effects of the evil we have done in our past (= practice for purity)
• furthering our good deeds (= pure practice)
A.4 Dhamma Practice in the Sequence of the Blessings
The Buddha chose to put “Dhamma Practice” as the sixteenth blessing (i.e. before “Looking after one’s extended family” [17] and “Blameless Work” [18] because looking after one’s extended family and harmless work, both of which concern our dealings with a wider society (the members of which have a wide variety of dispositions) are possible minefields of conflict. Without particular caution in our dealings, we run the risk of spoiling our good intentions or coming into conflict through our own partiality. Thus, before embarking on works of “social value” we have to prepare ourselves by studying the right approach to our worldly and spiritual work so as not to bring harm inadvertently to ourselves or others.
http://goo.gl/UpHcl
พิมพ์บทความนี้
