260505 Habits & Practices \ \ Thanissaro Bhikkhu \ \ Dhamma Talk

Añadido: 2026-05-13

[00:00:04]Something we chant every day.

[00:00:07]The Buddhist formula for comprehending suffering.

[00:00:10]The five clinging aggregates.

[00:00:14]But it tends to go right past us even if we read the translation.

[00:00:18]The form clinging aggregate, the feeling clinging aggregate, perception, fabrications, consciousness clinging aggregate.

[00:00:31]That's because we're not familiar with it. Our clinging on this level.

[00:00:36]It's easier to relate to the different clings that the Buddha says get applied to these five aggregates.

[00:00:45]In fact, that's what the whole issue of comprehension is.

[00:00:48]First, getting familiar with how you experience clinging.

[00:00:52]And then to realize that what you thought you were clinging to was actually just these very temporary ephemeral aggregates.

[00:01:02]Altogether, there are four types of clinging the Buddha talks about.

[00:01:05]Clinging to sensuality, clinging to views, clinging to habits and practices, clinging to views about the self, doctrines about the self, what you are.

[00:01:18]Of those four, the one that we tend to miss the most is the one about clinging to habits and practices.

[00:01:25]Part of the problem may be that for a long time the phrase is translated as clinging to rites and rituals.

[00:01:31]And most of us nowadays don't have many rites and rituals, especially religious ones.

[00:01:36]But that's what not what the term means.

[00:01:40]It's good to think of the Thai word for ritual, piti, which comes from the word vitti, which means method or procedure.

[00:01:51]In other words, people who believe in a particular way of doing things see it as a method, a procedure that has to be followed for a good reason.

[00:01:59]People who are disabused of it tend to see it as a ritual or rite.

[00:02:09]So that should alert you.

[00:02:11]What you may see as your correct method for doing things or procedure for doing things may strike someone else as ritualistic in the sense that it's not connected with cause and effect.

[00:02:23]Or the effect seems to be more imaginary.

[00:02:27]Actually, the word silabbata is translated best, I think, as habits and practices.

[00:02:34]Sila, of course, is the word we use for virtue.

[00:02:37]But it also means a habit, something you normally do.

[00:02:42]In fact, the Thai Jains like to point out that that meaning of sila, normalcy.

[00:02:50]What is your normalcy? How do you behave on a regular basis?

[00:02:56]As for bata, it's related to vata, as in the Thai phrase kaw wat, the procedures for doing things, the protocols for doing things.

[00:03:09]You notice, of course, that our practice here revolves around sila and bata.

[00:03:18]So then what is doing as we practice is to give us good things to hold onto in terms of our habits, good things to hold onto in terms of our practices, learning how to develop the right view, right attitude toward them.

[00:03:33]I'll give you an example.

[00:03:34]A couple years back, I was invited to give a Dharma talk to a group of middle middle-level management people in a tech company.

[00:03:44]Gave a guided meditation, we talked a bit, and then fielded questions.

[00:03:48]And one of the managers was talking about a problem he had in his office, which he felt that the workers were not working up to his standards.

[00:03:55]And yet he was trying to get them to work to his standards, he was finding himself yelling at them all the time.

[00:04:00]It created a really bad atmosphere in the office.

[00:04:03]He asked my advice, expecting me to say, "Well, don't be so tough on your workers. Give them a little slack."

[00:04:10]That was not the advice I gave him.

[00:04:13]I said, "After all, the phone I use, the iPad I use, the computer I use are all made by your company.

[00:04:22]I want them to be really good.

[00:04:25]So I do want their work to be up to standard.

[00:04:28]The question is, how do you go about getting it up to standard?

[00:04:33]For you all the time, that's going to be the fact. You've got to find some other way of doing it."

[00:04:40]So in a case like that, the standards to which he held them were good standards.

[00:04:45]They should be held to.

[00:04:47]His method for getting them to meet those standards was not effective.

[00:04:54]In this case, he was clinging to his old only known ways of doing things, which is to yell at people.

[00:05:00]He had to open his mind. There might be other ways of doing it.

[00:05:07]But as for the standards, hold to them.

[00:05:13]And this is the attitude we should take as we're practicing toward habits and practices.

[00:05:18]The Buddha is recommending that as our habits, we should follow the precepts.

[00:05:24]Because we learn from them.

[00:05:25]Because they're good precepts to follow.

[00:05:32]As for practices, our protocols, there are protocols for the monks.

[00:05:37]The whole chapter in the Cullavagga and the Vinaya is devoted to them.

[00:05:41]And it's interesting that the protocols and the precepts are slightly different in their in their practice.

[00:05:52]With the precepts, the Buddha said you hold to them across the board.

[00:05:57]He even extols monks who are willing to put their life on the line in order to maintain the precepts.

[00:06:01]As for the protocols, there is some leeway.

[00:06:07]If you have some good reason for not following a particular protocol, say around how you clean your hut, as long as you have a good reason, you're not breaking the protocol out of disrespect, then it's okay.

[00:06:22]So the Buddha wants you to get a clear sense of which things you really hold to regardless.

[00:06:28]And other things which you depend on time and place.

[00:06:34]The ones you really hold to and the ones that you are expected to hold to if there are no other extenuating circumstances, are there because they teach you a lot about your mind.

[00:06:46]Especially the precepts.

[00:06:51]You break a precept only if you do it intentionally.

[00:06:56]There are a few rules for the monks where they can break something unintentionally. But it's they're areas where they should be very mindful.

[00:07:09]Either way, you're going to learn a lot about your mind as you hold to the precept. Anything that in you that goes against the precept, you have to question, you have to examine.

[00:07:21]Why would you want to break the precept?

[00:07:23]What is your motivation?

[00:07:25]There are whole schools of Buddhism which are devoted to the idea that you can break a precept anytime you feel it. By doing so, you can be compassionate to somebody else, be compassionate to yourself.

[00:07:38]But that kind of precept you don't learn anything from.

[00:07:40]All you do is give in to your defilements.

[00:07:46]Here we're calling your defilements into question.

[00:07:49]So these are good precepts, good habits to follow.

[00:07:54]They're necessary part of the path.

[00:07:59]Cuz they make you more sensitive to your actions.

[00:08:01]As you get more sensitive to your actions and intentions, then it gets easier to get the mind into concentration. After all, to hold the precept, you have to be one, mindful to keep it in mind.

[00:08:12]That's what mindfulness means.

[00:08:14]Two, you have to be alert to watch what you're actually doing.

[00:08:17]And three, you have to be ardent.

[00:08:21]You have to put out effort.

[00:08:23]These are the three qualities that go into establishing mindfulness.

[00:08:28]When mindfulness is well established, it takes you into concentration.

[00:08:32]So these are the precepts that prepare you for concentration practice.

[00:08:37]Getting you sensitive to your intentions.

[00:08:39]Concentration practice, of course, gets you even more sensitive to your intentions as you try to maintain one intention against whatever else may come to bump into it.

[00:08:50]And it's precisely there that you're going to gain your discernment.

[00:08:55]So these are precepts for a reason.

[00:08:57]They're habits for a reason. You're holding onto them not blindly, not grasping at them.

[00:09:04]You're holding onto them as training wheels.

[00:09:07]Keys to understanding your mind, how it's causing itself suffering, how it doesn't have to.

[00:09:16]Now as the path progresses, you're going to have to have a sense that you are responsible for observing these. This is what the Buddha talks about, the self as its mainstay.

[00:09:28]The self as a governing principle.

[00:09:30]But giving you good reasons to take with the path.

[00:09:37]And you have a strong sense of you as being responsible.

[00:09:43]When the Buddha was teaching Rahula, very beginning of the practice, he said, "When you plan to do something, ask yourself, this action that I plan to do, what are the results going to be?

[00:09:56]While you're doing something, this action that I am doing, what are the results?

[00:10:02]When the action is done, you ask yourself, this action that I have done, notice the I I I.

[00:10:09]The people will tell you that you have to practice the path without any sense of I or I am.

[00:10:14]And if you have a sense of I am, you're on the wrong path. Well, tell that to the Buddha.

[00:10:20]He wants you to develop a very responsible sense of I.

[00:10:29]Otherwise, who's going to do the practice? Who's going to do the path?

[00:10:32]There's a lot of I's in your mind who have a lot of other ideas what they would like to do.

[00:10:38]Do you have to strengthen the I that says no.

[00:10:40]I'm going to stick with the path.

[00:10:45]Notice the path comes together and you reach the first level of awakening.

[00:10:50]One of the things you let go of as a result of reaching the deathless is the fetter of grasping at habits and practices.

[00:10:58]Now, this doesn't mean that you just give up on the practices, give up on your precepts.

[00:11:06]As Buddha defines it, you are still virtuous, but you're not made of virtue.

[00:11:14]In other words, your behavior still holds to the precepts, but you no longer have to identify yourself around the precepts.

[00:11:21]You don't need the pride, you don't need a strong sense of I in order to maintain them.

[00:11:26]Cuz you've seen the value of skillful behavior.

[00:11:30]You realized it was your unskillful behavior that prevented you from seeing the deathless before that.

[00:11:38]So, there's no reason to break the precepts again.

[00:11:44]So, at that point, you don't need the sense of I to protect your precepts.

[00:11:47]Up until then, though, maintain your sense of I. Hold to these precepts and practices cuz they're good for you.

[00:11:54]And from this perspective, you've learned to look at other precepts and practices, other habits and practices you've picked up over who knows how many lifetimes, and question them.

[00:12:06]See if from the Buddhist point of view they are rites and rituals.

[00:12:12]In other words, ways of doing things that don't get the right results.

[00:12:18]Or that I'm being held onto things that do get the right results, that do open up your mind to itself so you can see can see yourself clearly.

[00:12:32]There will come a point where you let these things go.

[00:12:36]And to letting them go, you will see that your ideas about what should be done, how things should be done, are made up of perceptions, thought fabrications, acts of consciousness, feelings.

[00:12:56]They're made up of those aggregates.

[00:12:59]It's like finally seeing that water is made up of molecules of hydrogen and oxygen.

[00:13:09]At that point, you see through these things entirely.

[00:13:12]But before you reach there, you've got to learn how to hold onto them well.

[00:13:15]Get really familiar with them.

[00:13:21]That's the solid road to comprehension.

[00:13:24]You don't just erase your sense of I am right from the beginning. If you do, you're just floundering around.

[00:13:29]All of a sudden, it's just you are as a part of nature, nature is doing the path.

[00:13:34]Nature is a system that self-corrects and you just get out of the way.

[00:13:38]Which is all of which is wrong view.

[00:13:40]You've got to do this.

[00:13:43]You've got to take responsibility cuz you have to clean out a lot of the unskillful you's in your mind.

[00:13:50]It's going to require strengthening of the skillful ones.

[00:13:56]The path doesn't happen on its own.

[00:14:00]It has to be willed.

[00:14:04]So, for that reason, you hold onto these habits and practices that the Buddha recommends.

[00:14:14]Use them to take yourself across the flood.

[00:14:19]Think of that dimension, the raft.

[00:14:21]The flood is composed of these ways of clinging, unskillful ways of clinging.

[00:14:30]That's what carries you off.

[00:14:32]But the raft itself is composed of skillful ways of clinging.

[00:14:38]When you get to the other side, then you can let it go.

[00:14:41]Meanwhile, hold on tight cuz there's a lot to push you off if you're not careful.