🚀 go-pugleaf

X-Orig-MsgId: <386DFF02.9F94D8DD@bu.edu>



Theravad wrote:

Tang quoting sutra: <<"Dwell like the moon, monks,>>

Theravad: <<Tang, are you testing monks?  You really must stop making yourself look
follish by applying teachings directed at monks to a layman.  It isn't that one is
any better than the other but that training methods are not the same for both.>>

Total, absolute junk.

It is a frontal affront to lay people to consider them unworthy of what the Buddha
teaches to monks and nuns. The mode of living differs, of course, but the training
methods (dharma) are exactly the same for both. Would you expect them to end up
with different awakenings?

Many lay people live a stricter life than many monks and nuns do, and put more of
themselves into practice than many monks and nuns do. Many monks and nuns take
Buddhism in general and their own membership in the sangha as a job, and are bored
to tears with them because they can't relate to them and find no meaning in them.
Many lay people pine away at their own salvation, because of self-interest -- it is
a case of self-interest aimed at going beyond the self and doing away with the
self.

Many of them, because of their low social status, know that nobody cares for them
(as opposed to the self-assuming arrogance of better-off people), and only they can
do anything for themselves, and bring that proactive attitude into their dealing
with the Law.

If you go into Chinese and Vietnamese temples, even in the US, you'll see bent-over
little old ladies who have the Buddhist equivalent of the Christian God-fearing
attitude, and who practice as if their life depended on it -- which it does. They
don't know much about theory, but if they are taught mindfulness, they practice it
like mad (even Buddha-recitation is mindfulness if done right), and easily blow
monks and nuns away in their steadfast mindfulness and resolution (New Year stuff,
eh?, except that they carry it on all year). And they've done away with their self
quite well, though nobody notices it (which confirms that they have well done away
with their self).

I see no method in Buddhism where there *can* be a difference between lay people
and monks and nuns, except for the Vinaya, which is more a set of rules for
cohesion of the sangha and for the sangha to deal with the world (including lay
people) than strict Dharma. The Vinaya is adapted for social circumstances, while
the Law is not. The Law does away with all conditioning, social and genetic, and
there is no difference in something when that something does away with all
conditioning.

Tang Huyen