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The Three Jewels
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro…
The Three Jewelshttps://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/refuge.html#goi
Refuge: "It's an act of submission in that one is committed to living in line with the principle that actions based on skillful intentions lead to happiness, while actions based on unskillful intentions lead to suffering; it's an act of claiming protection in that, by following the teaching, one hopes to avoid the misfortunes that bad karma engenders. To take refuge in this way ultimately means to take refuge in the quality of our own intentions, for that's where the essence of karma lies."
Buddha
"(...) not taking refuge in him as a person, but taking refuge in the fact of his Awakening: placing trust in the belief that he did awaken to the truth, that he did so by developing qualities that we too can develop, and that the truths to which he awoke provide the best perspective for the conduct of our life."
Dhamma
"The Dhamma, on the external level, refers to the path of practice the Buddha taught to this followers."
- the words of his teachings
- the act of putting those teachings into practice
- the attainment of Awakening as the result of that practice
"This three-way division of the word "Dhamma" acts as a map showing how to take the external refuges and make them internal: learning about the teachings, using them to develop the qualities that the Buddha himself used to attain Awakening, and then realizing the same release from danger that he found in the quality of Deathlessness that we can touch within."
Sangha
Ideal
In its ideal sense, the Sangha consists of all people, lay or ordained, who have practiced the Dhamma to the point of gaining at least a glimpse of the Deathless.
Conventional
In a conventional sense, Sangha denotes the communities of ordained monks and nuns.
"The two meanings overlap but are not necessarily identical. Some members of the ideal Sangha are not ordained; some monks and nuns have yet to touch the Deathless. All those who take refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha become members of the Buddha's four-fold assembly (parisa) of followers: monks, nuns, male lay devotees, and female lay devotees."
"Although there's a widespread belief that all Buddhist followers are members of the Sangha, this is not the case. Only those who are ordained are members of the conventional Sangha; only those who have glimpsed the Deathless are members of the ideal Sangha. Nevertheless, any followers who don't belong to the Sangha in either sense of the word still count as genuine Buddhists in that they are members of the Buddha's parisa."
"When taking refuge in the external Sangha, one takes refuge in both senses of the Sangha, but the two senses provide different levels of refuge."
"The conventional Sangha has helped keep the teaching alive for more than 2,500 years. Without them, we would never have learned what the Buddha taught."
"However, not all members of the conventional Sangha are reliable models of behavior. So when looking for guidance in the conduct of our lives, we must look to the living and recorded examples provided by the ideal Sangha. Without their example, we would not know (1) that Awakening is available to all, and not just to the Buddha; and (2) how Awakening expresses itself in real life."
A REFUGE IN SKILLFUL ACTION
"Is human action real or illusory? If real, is it effective? If it is effective, does one have a choice in what one does? If one has a choice, can one choose to act in a way that will lead to genuine happiness? If so, what is that way? These are questions that lie at the heart of the way we conduct our lives. The way we answer them will determine whether we look for happiness through our own abilities, seek happiness through outside help, or abandon the quest for a higher-than-ordinary happiness altogether."
The doctrine of karma
"This doctrine lies at the heart of his teaching, and forms the essence of the Triple Refuge. Put briefly, it states that action is real, effective, and the result of one's own choice. This doctrine lies at the heart of his teaching, and forms the essence of the Triple Refuge. Put briefly, it states that action is real, effective, and the result of one's own choice. If one chooses to act skillfully and works to develop that skill, one's actions can lead to happiness, not only on the ordinary sensory level, but also on a level that transcends all the dimensions of time and the present."
"The foremost science at that time was astronomy. New, precise observations of planetary movements, combined with new advances in mathematics, had led astronomers to conclude that time was measured in eons, incomprehensibly long cycles that repeat themselves endlessly. Philosophers of the time tried to work out the implications of this vast temporal frame for the drama of human life and the quest for ultimate happiness."
"These philosophers fell into two broad camps: those who conducted their speculations within the traditions of the Vedas, orthodox religious and ritual texts; and other, unorthodox groups, called the Samanas (contemplatives), who questioned the authority of the Vedas."
"By the time of Siddhattha Gotama, philosophers of the Vedic and Samana schools had developed widely differing views of the laws of nature and how they affected the pursuit of true happiness."
Their main points of disagreement were two:
"1) Personal identity. Most Vedic and Samana philosophers assumed that a person's identity extended beyond this lifetime, eons before birth back into the past, and after death on into the future. There was some disagreement, however, as to whether one's identity from life to life would change or remain the same. The Vedas had viewed rebirth in a positive light, but by the time of Prince Siddhattha the influence of the newly discovered astronomical cycles had led those who believed in rebirth to regard the cycles as pointless and confining, and release as the only possibility for true happiness. There was, however, a Samana school of hedonist materialists, called Lokayatans, who denied the existence of any identity beyond death and insisted that happiness could be found only by indulging in sensual pleasures here and now."
"2) Action and causality. The ancient Vedas had formulated a doctrine of kamma, or action, which stated that correctly performed actions played a causal role in providing for one's happiness in the life after death. The primary actions recognized by these texts, though, were ritualistic: ritually performed sacrifices, often involving the slaughter of animals, and gifts to brahmans. To be effective, the ritual actions had to be correctly performed. This concern for correct performance led the Vedists to compose ritual manuals prescribing in minute detail the proper things to do and say in the course of their rituals. They even included special chants and spells to compensate for any inadvertent mistakes in the course of a particular ritual, so great was their conviction that the quality of an act depends on its physical expression."
"The Samana schools rejected the Vedic teachings on kamma, but for a variety of different reasons. One set of Samana schools, called the Ajivakas, asserted that an individual's actions were not in the least bit responsible for the course of his/her life."
"One branch of the Ajivakas taught that all action in the cosmos is illusory, as the only truly existing things are the unchanging substances of which the cosmos is made. Thus there is no such thing as right or wrong, good or evil, for in the ultimate sense there is no such thing as action."
"Another branch of the Ajivakas taught that action was real but totally subject to fate: deterministic causal laws that left no room for free will. Thus they insisted that release from the round of rebirth came only when the round worked itself out. Peace of mind could be found by accepting one's fate and patiently waiting for the cycle, like a ball of string unwinding, to come to its end."
Amoralism
"Although these two positions derived from two very different pictures of the cosmos, they both led to the same conclusion: good and evil were illusory social conventions, human beings were not responsible for their acts, and human action had no role in shaping one's experience of the cosmos."
"The Lokayatans came to a similar conclusion, but for different reasons. They agreed with the Vedists that physical action was real, but they maintained that it bore no results. There was no way to observe any invariable cause-effect relationship between events, they said; as a result, all events were spontaneous and self-caused. This meant that human actions had no consequences, and thus there were no such things as good and evil because no action could have a good or evil effect on anything else. They concluded that one could safely ignore moral rules in one's pursuit of sensual pleasure, and would be a fool to deny oneself immediate gratification of one's desires whenever the opportunity appeared."
"Another school, the Jains, accepted the Vedic premise that one's actions shaped one's experience of the cosmos, but they differed from the Vedas in the way they conceived of action. All action, according to them, was a form of violence. The more violent the act, the more it produced effluents, conceived as sticky substances that bound the soul to the round of rebirth. Thus they rejected the Vedic assertion that ritual sacrifice produced good kamma, for the violence involved in killing the sacrificial animals was actually a form of very sticky bad kamma. In their eyes, the only way to true happiness was to try to escape the round of kamma entirely. This was to be done by violence against themselves: various forms of self-torture that were supposed to burn away the effluents, the "heat" of pain being a sign that the effluents were burning. At the same time, they tried to create as little new kamma as possible. This practice would culminate in total abstinence from physical action, resulting in suicide by starvation, the theory being that if old kamma were completely burned away, and no new kamma created, there would be no more effluents to bind the soul to the cosmos. Thus the soul would be released."
"Despite the differences between the Vedic and Jain views of action, they shared some important similarities: Both believed that the physical performance of an action, rather than the mental attitude behind it, determined its kammic result. And, both saw kamma as acting under deterministic, linear laws. Kamma performed in the present would not bear fruit until the future, and the relationship between a particular action and its result was predictable and fixed."
"These divergent viewpoints on the nature of action formed the backdrop for the Bodhisatta's quest for ultimate happiness. On the one side stood the Ajivakas and Lokayatans, who insisted for various reasons that human action was ineffective: either non-existent, chaotic, or totally pre-determined. On the other side stood the Vedic and Jain thinkers, who taught that physical action was effective, but that it was subject to deterministic and linear laws, and could not lead to true happiness beyond the round of rebirth. The Buddha's position on kamma broke from both sides of the issue, largely because he approached the question from a radically new direction."
The principle of skillful action
"Instead of arguing from abstract science, the Bodhisatta focused directly on the level of immediate experience and explored the implications of truths that both sides overlooked. Instead of fixing on the content of the views expressed, he considered the actions of those who were expressing the views."
"The fact that each side insisted that the other used unskillful forms of observation and argumentation to advance its views implied that mental skills were crucial in determining the truth. Thus the Bodhisatta looked directly at skillful mental action in and of itself, followed its implications in developing knowledge itself as a skill — rather than as a body of facts — and found that those implications carried him all the way to release."
"The most basic lesson he learned was that mental skills can be developed. As one of the Pali discourses notes, he found that thoughts imbued with passion, aversion, and delusion were harmful; thoughts devoid of these qualities were not harmful; and he could shepherd his thoughts in such a way to avoid harm. The fact that he could develop this skill meant that mental action is not illusory, that it actually gives results. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as skill, for no actions would be more effective than others. The fact of skillfulness also implies that some results are preferable to others, for otherwise there would be no point in trying to develop skills. In addition, the fact that it is possible to learn from mistakes in the course of developing a skill — so that one's future actions may be more skillful — implies that the cycle of action, result, and reaction is not entirely deterministic. Acts of perception, attention, and intention can actually provide new input as the cycle goes through successive turns."
"The important element in this input is attention. Anyone who has mastered a skill will realize that the process of attaining mastery requires attention to three things:
conditions - actions - effects
- (1) to pre-existing conditions
- (2) to what one is doing in relation to those conditions, and
- (3) to the results that come from one's actions.
Attention allows the results of an action to feed back into future action, thus allowing for refinement in one's skill.