When the temple was first being established, the Master Nun said: “Trust me — cleanliness and order. We will build this temple with 3,200 Baht, and it will succeed. Do not worry — it will certainly succeed.” Why would it succeed? Where did she draw this conviction — that cleanliness and order were the key?
It comes from this:
The Dhamma is the teaching concerning the principles of practice for purifying and brightening one’s own mind ever further.
The Vinaya is the teaching concerning the rules and methods of practice for regulating bodily and verbal conduct to be clean and orderly.
Beginning with:
1. Train in maintaining cleanliness of one’s own body, one’s belongings, and one’s surrounding environment — keeping them clean and orderly.
2. Train in regulating one’s bodily and verbal conduct to be orderly, causing no suffering, distress, or harm to anyone. The mind will naturally grow wiser of its own accord — once cleanliness and order have been established, the mind will naturally become pure.
The Lord Buddha instructed the monks to take the Dhamma and Vinaya as their teacher in his stead — that is, to conduct themselves in accordance with the rules he had laid down, so that body, speech, and mind may be clean and pure, free from falling into unwholesomeness, liberated from suffering, and able to attain true happiness — just as the Lord Buddha himself attained. Therefore, observe this well: such is the power of the Dhamma and Vinaya.
January 17th, 2018
