Nourishing The Roots

　　Essays on Buddhist Ethics

　　by

　　Bhikkhu Bodhi

　　© 1995

Contents

　　Nourishing the Roots

　　Mind and the Animate Order

　　Merit and Spiritual Growth

　　The Path of Understanding

　　About the Author

　　Nourishing the Roots

　　The course of spiritual training taught by the Buddha is a double process of self-transformation and self-transcendence issuing in complete emancipation from suffering. The process of self-transformation involves the elimination of unwholesome mental dispositions and their replacement by pure dispositions conducing to the benefit of oneself and others; the process of self-transcendence focuses on the abandoning of egocentric notions by seeing with direct insight the essenceless nature of the bodily and mental processes we normally take to be "I" and "mine." When this double process is brought to its culmination, suffering is extinguished, for with the awakening of wisdom the basic root of suffering — craving backed by blinding ignorance — falls away never to rise again.

　　Because the unwholesome tendencies and selfish clinging spring from seeds buried deep in the bottom-most strata of the mind, to eradicate these sources of affliction and nurture the growth of the liberating vision of reality the Buddha presents his teaching in the form of a gradual training. Buddhist discipline involves gradual practice and gradual attainment. It does not burst into completeness at a stroke, but like a tree or any other living organism, it unfolds organically, as a sequence of stages in which each stage rests upon its predecessor as its indispensable foundation and gives rise to its successor as its natural consequent. The principal stages of this gradual training are three: the training in sila or virtue, the training in samadhi or concentration, and the training in pañña or wisdom. If we follow through the comparison of the Buddhist discipline to a tree, faith (saddha) would be the seed, for it is faith that provides the initial impulse through which the training is taken up, and faith again that nourishes the training through every phase of its development. Virtue would be the roots, for it is virtue that gives grounding to our spiritual endeavors just as the roots give grounding to a tree. Concentration would be the trunk, the symbol of strength, non-vacillation, and stability. And wisdom would be the branches, which yield the flowers of enlightenment and the fruits of deliverance.

　　The vigour of the spiritual life, like the vigour of a tree, depends upon healthy roots. Just as a tree with weak and shallow roots cannot flourish but will grow up stunted, withered and barren, so a spiritual life devoid of strong roots will also have a stunted growth incapable of bearing fruit. To attempt to scale the higher stages of the path it is essential at the outset to nourish the proper roots of the path; otherwise the result will be frustration, disillusionment, and perhaps even danger. The roots of the path are the constituents of sila, the factors of moral virtue. These are the basis for meditation, the ground for all wisdom and higher achievement.

　　To say that sila is the precondition for success, however, does not mean, as is too often believed in conservative Buddhist circles, that one cannot begin to meditate until one”s sila is perfect. Such a stipulation would make it almost impossible to start meditation, since it is the mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom of the meditative process that bring about the gradual purification of virtue. But to say that virtue is the basis of practice does mean that the capacity for achievement in meditation hinges upon the purity of our sila. If our roots of virtue are weak, our meditation will likewise be weak. If our actions repeatedl…

《Nourishing The Roots - Essays on Buddhist Ethics》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…