Khanti - Wat Pah Nanachat

Faith plays an important role. In the Visuddhimagga 15 ,
some of the teachings, and some of the lists and categories in
particular, seem to me rather contrived, but there are some that
I find very useful. Going through the section on the four
‘parisuddhisila’, I particularly like Venerable Buddhagosa’s
list of the particular virtues or kusala dhammas 16 that you need
to develop those four kinds of sila. What would you think – of
all the kusala dhammas that are taught by the Buddha – which
is the one, which is singled out as the most important in
keeping the Vinaya? The answer is saddha, faith. Because the
Vinaya is not something that you can prove in a certain way. It
is something that you take on trust. You need the faith that
living within this form, following the procedures and
surrendering yourself to this is, in the long term, is preventing
the arising or the growth of unwholesome dhammas and at the
same time stimulating the creation and sustenance of many
wholesome dhammas.
Another central plank of our development of sila is the
practice of samana-sañña 17 , the recollection of ourselves as a
samana. As bhikkhus, reflecting on our conventional identity
as samanas, the implications and the responsibilities that it
entails in this way, far from detracting from the investigation of
anicca, dukkha, anatta 18 actively supports it, by keeping us on
track. There are certain ways that a samana acts, certain ways a
samana speaks, which are not the ways laypeople act, are not
15 Visuddhimagga: A standard commentarial work in Pali written by
Achariya Buddhagosa in Sri Lanka around a thousand years after the
time of the Buddha
16 kusala Dhammas: wholesome qualities or factors
17 samana-sañña: the perception of yourself as a samana (monastic,
renunciant, literally: a practitioner of peace)
18 anicca, dukkha, anatta: the principles of impermanence, suffering
and non-self, as an expression of the highest insights into Dhamma
16