668,
5A Main Road, 8th Cross HAL III Stage Bengaluru - 560075 Karnataka
India Ph: 91 (080) 25203792 Email: buddhasaid2us@gmail.com, 

Buddhasasana

Svaakkhato Bhagavataa Dhamma, sandditthiko, akaaliko,

ehipassiko, opanayiko, paccattam veditabbo vinnuhiti.

Namo tassa niyyaanikassa Dhammassa!

Ya ca Dhammaa atitaaca,

Ya ca Dhammaa anaagataa

Paccuppannaa ca ye Dhammaa,

Aham Vandaami sabbadaa

Natthi me saranam annam

Dhammo me saranam varam

Etena Saccavajjene,

Hoto me jayamangalam

Uttamangena Vandeham

Dhammanca tividham varam

Dhamme yo Khalito doso,

Dhammo khamatu tam mamam

Dhamam yaava nibbaanapariyantam

Saranam gacchaami

The Teaching is perfectly
enunciated by the Blessed One; it is verifiable here and now, and bears
immediate fruit; it invites all the test for themselves, leads one
onward to Nibbana and is to be experienced by the wise for himself.

Reverential salutation to the Noble Teaching, leading

onwards to deliverance.

The Noble Teachings of the past (Buddhas),

The Noble Teachings of the future (Buddhas),

The Noble Teachings of the Buddhas of present (aeon),

Humbly do I ever worship.

There is no other refuge for me.

The Noble Teaching is my Supreme Refuge,

By this avowal of Truth,

May joyous victory be mine!

With my brow do I worship the most exce;;ent threefold

Teaching

If the Teaching I have transgressed in any way,

May my error the mighty Dhamma deign forgive.

I go to sacred Teaching for refuge,

Till deliverance is attained.

Kindly visit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlQtxa0KHnA

http://www.buddhanet.net/audio-chant.htm

06-chant-06.mp3

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Dhamma Vandana - Homage to the Doctrine. http://www.geocities.com/ssdahampasala/

Dhamma sadhu, kiyam cu dhamme ti?
Apasinave, bahu kayane, daya, dane, sace, socaye.

Dhamma is good, but what constitutes Dhamma?
(It includes) little evil, much good, kindness,
generosity, truthfulness and purity.

King Asoka

Dhammam saranam gacchami:
I go to the Dhamma for refuge.

There are three levels to the Dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha —

A. Pariyatti: studying the words of the Buddha as recorded in the Canon — the Discipline, the Discourses, and the Abhidhamma.

B. Patipatti: following the practice of moral virtue, concentration, and discernment as derived from one’s study of the Canon.

C. Pativedha: Liberation.

A. The study of the Dhamma can be done in any of three ways —

1 Alagaddupama-pariyatti: studying like a water viper.

2 Nissaranattha-pariyatti: studying for the sake of emancipation.

3 Bhandagarika-pariyatti: studying to be a storehouse keeper.

Studying like a water viper
means to study the words of the Buddha without then putting them into
practice, having no sense of shame at doing evil, disobeying the
monastic code, making oneself like a poisonous snake-head, full of the
fires of greed, anger, and delusion.

Studying for the sake of
emancipation means to study the Buddha’s teachings out of a desire for
merit and wisdom, with a sense of conviction and high regard for their
worth — and then, once we have reached an understanding, bringing our
thoughts, words, and deeds into line with those teachings with a high
sense of reverence and respect. To try to bring the Buddha’s teachings
into line with ourselves is the wrong approach — because, for the most
part, we are full of defilements, cravings, views, and conceits. If we
act in this way we are bound to be more at fault than those who try to
bring themselves into line with the teachings: Such people are very hard
to find fault with.

Studying to be a storehouse
keeper refers to the education of people who no longer have to be
trained, i.e., of arahants, the highest level of the Noble Ones. Some
arahants, when they were still ordinary, run-of-the-mill people, heard
the Dhamma directly from the Buddha once or twice and were able
immediately to reach the highest attainment. This being the case, they
lacked a wide-ranging knowledge of worldly conventions and traditions;
and so, with an eye to the benefit of other Buddhists, they were willing
to undergo a certain amount of further education. This way of studying
the Dhamma is called ’sikkha-garavata’: respect for the training.

B. The practice of the Dhamma means to conduct oneself in line with the words of the Buddha as gathered under three headings:

— Virtue: proper behavior, free from vice and harm, in terms of one’s words and deeds.

— Concentration: intentness of mind, centered on one of the themes of meditation, such as the breath.

— Discernment: insight and
circumspection with regard to all fashioned things, i.e., physical
properties, aggregates, and sense media.

To conduct oneself in this
manner is termed practicing the Dhamma. By and large, though, Buddhists
tend to practice the Dhamma in a variety of ways that aren’t in line
with the true path of practice. If we were to classify their ways of
practice, there would be three:

1 Lokadhipateyya — putting the world first.
2 Attadhipateyya — putting the self first.
3 Dhammadhipateyya — putting the Dhamma first.

To put the world first means
to practice for the sake of such worldly rewards as prestige, material
gains, praise, and sensual pleasures. When we practice this way, we are
actually torturing ourselves, because undesirable things are bound to
occur: Having attained prestige, we can lose it. Having acquired
material gains, we can lose them. Having received praise, we can receive
censure. Having experienced pleasure, we can see it disintegrate. Far
from the paths, fruitions, and nibbana, we torture ourselves by clinging
to these things as our own.

To put the self first means to
practice in accordance with our own opinions, acting in line with
whatever those opinions may be. Most of us tend to side with ourselves,
getting stuck on our own views and conceits because our study of the
Dhamma hasn’t reached the truth of the Dhamma, and so we take as our
standard our own notions, composed of four forms of personal bias —

a Chandagati: doing whatever we feel like doing.

b Bhayagati: fearing
certain forms of power or authority, and thus not daring to practice the
Dhamma as we truly should. (We put certain individuals first.)

c Dosagati: acting under the power of anger, defilement, craving, conceits, and views.

d Mohagati: practicing
misguidedly, not studying or searching for what is truly good; assuming
that we’re already smart enough, or else that we’re too stupid to
learn; staying buried in our habits with no thought of extracting
ourselves from our sensual pleasures.

All of these ways of practice are called ‘putting the self first.’

To put the Dhamma first means to follow the Noble Eightfold Path —

a. Right View: seeing
that there really is good, there really is evil, there really is
stress, that stress has a cause, that it disbands, and that there is a
cause for its disbanding.

b. Right Resolve: thinking of
how to rid ourselves of whatever qualities we know to be wrong and
immoral, i.e., seeing the harm in sensual desires in that they bring on
suffering and stress.

c. Right Speech: speaking the
truth; not saying anything divisive or inciteful; not saying anything
coarse or vulgar in situations where such words would not be proper; not
saying anything useless. Even though what we say may be worthwhile, if
our listener isn’t interested then our words would still count as
useless.

d. Right Action: being true to our duties, not acting in ways that would be corrupt or bring harm to ourselves or others.

e. Right Livelihood: obtaining wealth in ways that are honest, searching for it in a moral way and using it in a moral way.

f. Right Effort: persisting
in ridding ourselves of all that is wrong and harmful in our thoughts,
words, and deeds; persisting in giving rise to what would be good and
useful to ourselves and others in our thoughts, words, and deeds,
without a thought for the difficulty or weariness involved; acting
persistently so as to be a mainstay to others (except in cases that are
beyond our control).

g. Right Mindfulness: being
mindful and deliberate, making sure not to act or speak through the
power of inattention or forgetfulness, making sure to be constantly
mindful in our thoughts (being mindful of the four frames of reference).

h. Right Concentration:
keeping the mind centered and resilient. No matter what we do or say, no
matter what moods may strike the heart, the heart keeps its poise, firm
and unflinching in the four levels of jhana.

These eight factors can be
reduced to three — virtue, concentration, and discernment — called the
middle way, the heart of the Buddha’s teachings. The ‘middleness’ of
virtue means to be pure in thought, word, and deed, acting out of
compassion, seeing that the life of others is like your own, that their
possessions are like your own, feeling benevolence, loving others as
much as yourself. When ‘you’ and ‘they’ are equal in this way, you are
bound to be upright in your behavior, like a well-balanced burden that,
when placed on your shoulders, doesn’t cause you to tip to one side or
the other. But even then you are still in a position of having to
shoulder a burden. So you are taught to focus the mind on a single
preoccupation: This can be called ‘holding in your hands’ — i.e.,
holding the mind in the middle — or concentration.

The middleness of
concentration means focusing on the present, not sending your thoughts
into the past or future, holding fast to a single preoccupation (anapanaka-jhana, absorption in the breath).

As for the middleness of
discernment: No matter what preoccupations may come passing by, you are
able to rid yourself of all feelings of liking or disliking, approval or
rejection. You don’t cling, even to the one preoccupation that has
arisen as a result of your own actions. You put down what you have been
holding in your hands; you don’t fasten onto the past, present or
future. This is release.

When our virtue,
concentration, and discernment are all in the middle this way, we’re
safe. Just as a boat going down the middle of a channel, or a car that
doesn’t run off the side of the road, can reach its destination without
beaching or running into a tree; so too, people who practice in this way
are bound to reach the qualities they aspire to, culminating in the
paths and fruitions leading to nibbana, which is the main point of the
Buddha’s teachings.

So in short, putting the Dhamma first means to search solely for purity of mind.

C.
The attainment of the Dhamma refers to the attainment of the highest
quality, nibbana. If we refer to the people who reach this attainment,
there are four sorts —

1 Sukha-vipassako:
those who develop just enough tranquillity and discernment to act as a
basis for advancing to liberating insight and who thus attain nibbana
having mastered only asavakkhaya-ñana, the knowledge that does away with the fermentation of defilement.

2 Tevijjo: those who attain the three skills.

3 Chalabhiñño: those who attain the six intuitive powers.

4 Catuppatisambhidappatto: those who attain the four forms of acumen.

To explain sukha-vipassako (those who develop insight more than tranquillity): Vipassana (liberating insight) and asavakkhaya-ñana
(the awareness that does away with the fermentation of defilement)
differ only in name. In actuality they refer to the same thing, the only
difference being that vipassana refers to the beginning stage of insight, and asavakkhaya-ñana to the final stage: clear and true comprehension of the four Noble Truths.

To explain tevijjo: The three skills are —

a Pubbenivasanussati-ñana:
the ability to remember past lives — one, two, three, four, five, ten,
one hundred, one thousand, depending on one’s powers of intuition. (This
is a basis for proving whether death is followed by rebirth or
annihilation.)

b Cutupapata-ñana: knowledge of where living beings are reborn — on refined levels or base — after they die.

c Asavakkhaya-ñana: the awareness that enables one to do away with the fermentations in one’s character (sensuality, states of being, ignorance).

To explain chalabhiñño: The six intuitive powers are —

a Iddhividhi:
the ability to display miracles — becoming invisible, walking on a dry
path through a body of water, levitating, going through rain without
getting wet, going through fire without getting hot, making a crowd of
people appear to be only a few, making a few to appear many, making
oneself appear young or old as one likes, being able to use the power of
the mind to influence events in various ways.

b Dibbasota: clairaudience; the ability to hear far distant sounds, beyond ordinary human powers.

c Cetopariya-ñana: the ability to know the thoughts of others.

d Pubbenivasanussati-ñana: the ability to remember previous lives.

e Dibba-cakkhu:
clairvoyance; the ability to see far distant objects, beyond ordinary
human powers. Some people can even see other levels of being with their
clairvoyant powers (one way of proving whether death is followed by
rebirth or annihilation, and whether or not there really are other
levels of being).

f Asavakkhaya-ñana: the awareness that does away with the fermentation of defilement.

To explain catuppatisambhidappatto: The four forms of acumen are —

a Attha-patisambhida:
acumen with regard to the sense of the Doctrine and of matters in
general, knowing how to explain various points in line with their proper
meaning.

b Dhamma-patisambhida: acumen with regard to all mental qualities.

c Nirutti-patisambhida: acumen with regard to linguistic conventions. (This can include the ability to know the languages of living beings in general.)

d Patibhana-patisambhida:
acumen in speaking on the spur of the moment, knowing how to answer any
question so as to clear up the doubts of the person asking (like the
Venerable Nagasena).

This ends the discussion of
the virtues of the four classes of people — called arahants — who have
reached the ultimate quality, nibbana. As for the essence of what it
means to be an arahant, though, there is only one point — freedom from
defilement: This is what it means to attain the Dhamma, the other
virtues being simply adornment.

The three levels of Dhamma we
have discussed are, like the Buddha, compared to jewels: There are many
kinds of jewels to choose from, depending on how much wealth —
discernment — we have.

All of the qualities we have
mentioned so far, to put them briefly so as to be of use, come down to
this: Practice so as to give rise to virtue, concentration, and
discernment within yourself. Otherwise, you won’t have a refuge or
shelter. A person without the qualities that provide refuge and shelter
is like a person without a home — a delinquent or a vagrant — who is
bound to wander shiftlessly about. Such people are hollow inside, like a
clock without any workings: Even though it has a face and hands, it
can’t tell anyone where it is, what time it is, or whether it’s morning,
noon, or night (i.e., such people forget that they are going to die).

People who aren’t acquainted
with the Dhamma within themselves are like people blind from birth: Even
though they are born in the world of human beings, they don’t know the
light of the sun and moon that enables human beings to see. They get no
benefit from the light of the sun and moon or the light of fire; and
being blind, they then go about proclaiming to those who can see, that
there is no sun, no moon, and no brightness to the world. As a result,
they mislead those whose eyes are already a little bleary. In other
words, some groups say that the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha don’t exist,
that they were invented to fool the gullible.

Now, the Dhamma is something subtle and fine, like the fire-potential (tejas)
that exists in the air or in various elements and that, if we have
enough common sense, can be drawn out and put to use. But if we’re
fools, we can sit staring at a bamboo tube [a device for starting fire
that works on the same principle as the diesel engine] from dawn to dusk
without ever seeing fire at all. Anyone who believes that there is no
Buddha, Dhamma, or Sangha, no series of paths or fruitions leading to
nibbana, no consciousness that experiences death and rebirth, is like
the fool sitting and staring at the bamboo tube.

Here I would like to tell a
story as an allegory of those who aren’t acquainted with the Dhamma.
There once was a man living in the woods who, with his five sons,
started growing crops in a clearing about a mile from their home
village. He built a small shack at the clearing and would often take his
sons to stay there. One morning he started a fire in the shack and told
his sons to look after the fire, for he was going out to hunt for food
in the forest. ‘If the fire goes out,’ he told them, ‘get some fire from
my bamboo tube and start it up again.’ Then he set out to search for
food for his sons.

After he had left, his sons
got so wrapped up in their play that when they finally took a look at
the fire, they found that it was completely out. So they had the first
son go get some fire to start it up again. The first son walked over and
tried knocking on the bamboo tube but didn’t see any fire. So they had
the second son get some fire from the tube: He opened it up but didn’t
see any fire inside. All he saw were two bamboo chips but he didn’t know
what to do with them. So the third son came over for a look and, since
he didn’t see any fire, he took a knife to cut the tube in half but
still didn’t see any fire. The fourth son went over and, seeing the two
halves lying there, shaved them down into thin strips to find the fire
in them but didn’t see any fire at all.

Finally the fifth son went
over to look for fire, but before he went he said to his brothers,
‘What’s the matter with you guys that you can’t get any fire from the
bamboo tube? What a bunch of fools you are! I’ll go get it myself.’ With
that, he went to look at the bamboo tube and found it split into strips
lying in pile. Realizing what his brothers had done, and thinking,
‘What a bunch of hare-brains,’ he reached for a mortar and pestle and
ground up the bamboo strips to find the fire in them. By the time he ran
out of strength, he had ground them into a powder, but he still hadn’t
found any fire. So he snuck off to play by himself.

Eventually, toward noon, the
father returned from the forest and found that the fire had gone out. So
he asked his sons about it, and they told him how they had looked for
fire in the bamboo tube without finding any. ‘Idiots,’ he thought,
‘they’ve taken my fire-starter and pounded it to bits. For that, I won’t
fix them any food. Let ‘em starve!’ As a result, the boys didn’t get
anything to eat the entire day.

Those of us who aren’t acquainted with the brightness of the Dhamma — ‘Dhammo padipo’
— lying within us, who don’t believe that the Dhamma has value for
ourselves and others, are lacking in discernment, like the boys looking
for fire in the bamboo tube. Thus we bring about our own ruin in various
ways, wasting our lives: born in darkness, living in darkness, dying in
darkness, and then reborn in more darkness all over again. Even though
the Dhamma lies within us, we can’t get any use from it and thus will
suffer for a long time to come, like the boys who ruined their father’s
fire-starter and so had to go without food.

The Dhamma lies within us, but
we don’t look for it. If we hope for goodness, whether on a low or a
high level, we’ll have to look here, inside, if we are to find what is
truly good. But before we can know ourselves in this way, we first have
to know — through study and practice — the principles taught by the
Buddha.

Recorded Dhamma (pariyatti dhamma)
is simply one of the symbols of the Buddha’s teachings. The important
point is to actualize the Dhamma through the complete practice of
virtue, concentration, and discernment. This is an essential part of the
religion, the part that forms the inner symbol of all those who
practice rightly and well. Whether the religion will be good or bad,
whether it will prosper or decline, depends on our practice, not on the
recorded doctrine, because the recorded doctrine is merely a symbol. So
if we aim at goodness, we should focus on developing our inner quality
through the Dhamma of practice (patipatti dhamma). As for the main point of Buddhism, that’s the Dhamma of attainment (pativedha dhamma), the transcendent quality: nibbana.

3. Can the Dhamma as
proclaimed by the Buddha be called a religious doctrine, or a
philosophy, or is it a spiritual path i.e., a way of life that each
seeker should adhere to at all times? If you think it is a way of life
to be lead every day, how have you tried doing it yourself? It would be
good to share your experience with others.

Daily training myself to practice of the Dhamma  to conduct myself in line with the words of the Buddha to be Virtuous with proper behavior, free from vice and harm, in terms of my words and deeds.

To train my mind for Concentration: intentness of mind, centered on one of the themes of meditation, such as the breath.

To train my mind for
Discernment: insight and circumspection with regard to all fashioned
things, i.e., physical properties, aggregates, and sense media.

To conduct myself in this manner I feel is termed practicing the Dhamma by putting the Dhamma first.

To put the Dhamma first means to follow the Noble Eightfold Path —

a. Right View: seeing
that there really is good, there really is evil, there really is
stress, that stress has a cause, that it disbands, and that there is a
cause for its disbanding.

b. Right Resolve: thinking of
how to rid ourselves of whatever qualities we know to be wrong and
immoral, i.e., seeing the harm in sensual desires in that they bring on
suffering and stress.

c. Right Speech: speaking the
truth; not saying anything divisive or inciteful; not saying anything
coarse or vulgar in situations where such words would not be proper; not
saying anything useless. Even though what we say may be worthwhile, if
our listener isn’t interested then our words would still count as
useless.

d. Right Action: being true to our duties, not acting in ways that would be corrupt or bring harm to ourselves or others.

e. Right Livelihood: obtaining wealth in ways that are honest, searching for it in a moral way and using it in a moral way.

f. Right Effort: persisting
in ridding ourselves of all that is wrong and harmful in our thoughts,
words, and deeds; persisting in giving rise to what would be good and
useful to ourselves and others in our thoughts, words, and deeds,
without a thought for the difficulty or weariness involved; acting
persistently so as to be a mainstay to others (except in cases that are
beyond our control).

g. Right Mindfulness: being
mindful and deliberate, making sure not to act or speak through the
power of inattention or forgetfulness, making sure to be constantly
mindful in our thoughts (being mindful of the four frames of reference).

h. Right Concentration:
keeping the mind centered and resilient. No matter what we do or say, no
matter what moods may strike the heart, the heart keeps its poise, firm
and unflinching in the four levels of jhana.

These eight factors can be
reduced to three — virtue, concentration, and discernment — called the
middle way, the heart of the Buddha’s teachings. The ‘middleness’ of
virtue means to be pure in thought, word, and deed, acting out of
compassion, seeing that the life of others is like your own, that their
possessions are like your own, feeling benevolence, loving others as
much as yourself. When ‘you’ and ‘they’ are equal in this way, you are
bound to be upright in your behavior, like a well-balanced burden that,
when placed on your shoulders, doesn’t cause you to tip to one side or
the other. But even then you are still in a position of having to
shoulder a burden. So you are taught to focus the mind on a single
preoccupation: This can be called ‘holding in your hands’ — i.e.,
holding the mind in the middle — or concentration.

The middleness of
concentration means focusing on the present, not sending your thoughts
into the past or future, holding fast to a single preoccupation (anapanaka-jhana, absorption in the breath).

As for the middleness of
discernment: No matter what preoccupations may come passing by, you are
able to rid yourself of all feelings of liking or disliking, approval or
rejection. You don’t cling, even to the one preoccupation that has
arisen as a result of your own actions. You put down what you have been
holding in your hands; you don’t fasten onto the past, present or
future. This is release.

When our virtue,
concentration, and discernment are all in the middle this way, we’re
safe. Just as a boat going down the middle of a channel, or a car that
doesn’t run off the side of the road, can reach its destination without
beaching or running into a tree; so too, people who practice in this way
are bound to reach the qualities they aspire to, culminating in the
paths and fruitions leading to nibbana, which is the main point of the
Buddha’s teachings.

So in short, putting the Dhamma first means to search solely for purity of mind.

668,
5A Main Road, 8th Cross HAL III Stage Bengaluru - 560075 Karnataka
India Ph: 91 (080) 25203792 Email: buddhasaid2us@gmail.com, 

Buddhasasana