Luang Por Liem: The Ways of the Peaceful - Wat Pah Nanachat

elies on nothing else but the human resources found within the
community of monks.
As a member of the religion (sasanapuggala), the individual
Buddhist plays a very important role. The religion depends on the
people within it to turn its teachings, the sasanadhamma, into
something that is of benefit. Taking up the obligation to transmit
and pass on the teachings, the individual followers of a religion
need to be possessed with certain spiritual qualities, for example
the spiritual realizations of the Noble Enlightened Beings 1 . This
doesn’t mean that the people that form the human resources of a
religion already need to be perfect in their spiritual qualities to
begin with, but it is necessary to gradually develop insights into
them by means of following the principles of the Dhamma-
Vinaya.
If a person’s spiritual values are not in line with the Dhamma-
Vinaya, this will give rise to incorrect practices that conflict with
the true values of the sangha. For this reason we need give those
that practice doing the duties of upholding the Buddhist religion –
the monks and novices – knowledge, advice and instruction. They
will then acquire good standards, and practice what is correct, and
in line with the principles of the Sangha. This is called “sikkha”,
the Buddhist training-path.
Sikkha means to educate oneself through being aware of one’s
conduct when performing the duties of a well-practiced person,
namely, keeping sila and vinaya. We have to give sila and vinaya
1 i.e. the ariya-sangha, the Noble Disciples that have attained one of the
stages of liberation. The ariya-sangha possesses nine qualities, for example: to
practise well (supatipanno) or to practice directly (ujupatipanno).
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