Handbook for the Relief of Suffering
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Three Essays
Teachings of Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo
by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo
(Phra Suddhidhammaransi Gambhiramedhacariya)
Translated from the Thai by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Content
Part I: For the Relief of Suffering
Part II : Human Values
Part III : The Buddhist Way
For free distribution only, as a gift of Dhamma
Introduction
Ajaan Lee composed the following three short essays when he was hospitalized in late 1959, shortly over a year before his death. The style of presentation — outlines that are just barely fleshed out — is typical of his later writings. He seems to have intended that the essays be given to hospital patients, as food for thought for them to ponder while undergoing treatment. Although the presentation is ecumenical, the basic points are straight Buddhism. The explanation of the two types of disease in the first essay follows one of the central insights of the Buddha”s Awakening: the realization that events in the present are conditioned both by past kamma (intentional actions) and by present kamma. The four principles of human values presented in the second essay correspond to the four agatis, or types of prejudice that the Buddha warned against: prejudice based on (1) likes and desires, (2) dislikes and anger, (3) delusion, and (4) fear.
The third essay, "The Buddhist Way," is a brief outline of the Buddha”s teachings based on the synopsis of the Ovada Patimokkha, a discourse the Buddha gave at the beginning of his career to 1,250 arahant disciples before sending them out to spread the teaching; and on an analysis of one of the basic Buddhist concepts, that of sankhara, which means force, fashioning, or compounded thing. In its form, the analysis of two types of sankharas — those on the level of the world and those on the level of the Dhamma — is original with Ajaan Lee and is based on a Thai reading of two Pali compounds: sankhara-loka and sankhara-dhamma. From the point of view of Pali grammar, sankhara- functions as the adjective in each of these compounds: the first compound refers to the world of compounded things, the second refers to compounded things as phenomena in and of themselves. The two compounds were taken over straight into Thai, but because Thai places its adjectives after the nouns they modify, Ajaan Lee has interpreted loka (world) and dhamma (phenomena) as adjectives modifying sankhara, and thus he arrives at his own novel interpretation of the terms. His understanding of the aggregate of consciousness, the fifth aggregate, is also interesting in that it differs from most scholarly interpretations. Otherwise, the content of his analysis is standard, and the points he makes form a convenient synopsis of Pali Buddhist teachings.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part I :
For the Relief of Suffering
There are two ways in which diseases can arise in our bodies:
1. Physical causes (dhatu-samutthana).
2. Kammic causes (kamma-samutthana).
1. Physical causes: Physically caused diseases are those that come about through disorders in the five physical properties (dhatu) —
a. Earth: the solid parts of the body, such as bones, muscles, skin, etc.
b. Water: the liquid parts, such as saliva, mucus, blood, etc.
c. Fire: the warmth in the body.
d. Wind: forces that move back and forth through the body, such as the breath.
e. Space: the empty spaces that lie throughout the body, through which the various elements of the body mingle and interact. These include such things as the ear canal, the nasal passages, the mouth, the pores of the sk…
《Handbook for the Relief of Suffering》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…