What to do a Vipassana Meditation Center (1)

(1)Pay devotional to the Triple Gem

The devotional offering to the Triple Gem means rites and rituals, chanting of Suttas and Parittas, offering of flowers and incense as well as offering of rice and robes. When we perform such good deeds, we do so with Saddha (in Pali). We perform with a belief in the Ti-Ratana (Triple Gem). We believe in the Buddha, the Dhamma (his teaching) and the Sangha (the Order of Buddhist Monk).

We hold the view that the Buddha had eradicated all defilements through his supreme enlightenment by his own effort. He became the Buddha not because he learned the Dhamma from any teacher, but through his personal experience of striving for salvation. We believe in the Buddha in this way

The Buddha taught us how to live happily and peacefully as well as the way leading to the cessation of all kinds of suffering. We believe that if we follow his teaching or his ways we will live happily and peacefully. We will also get rid of suffering. For this reason we believe in the Dhamma the teaching of the Buddha.

When we say Sangha, it mainly means the Ariya-Sangha, but also Sammutti-Sangha. Sammutti-Sangha here means the members of the Sangha who are on the way to the cessation of suffering, but who have not yet destroyed all defilement. These disciples study and practice the Dhamma and teach it to others. They set good examples in moral conduct and inspire us to do well. We believe and pay respect to the Sangha in this way.

Prologue to Buddhism 3

His enlightenment consisted of the most profound and all-embracing insight into the nature of the body, mind and all phenomena. This awakening was not a revelation from a divine being a discovery made by himself based on the deepest levels of meditation. It was an insight that liberated is mind from the roots of all suffering: selfish desire, anger and delusion. This experience eliminated all traces of inner conflict and discontent, revealing unshakeable peace. He has found the ultimate solution to life's problems that he'd sought, and the result was unparalleled, sublime, true happiness.

Having realized the goal of perfect enlightenment, the Buddha spent the next 45 years teaching a path of training and development which, when accurately and diligently followed, will lead anyone regardless of race, class or gender to the same awakening. These teaching are called the Dhamma, literally meaning the nature of all things or the underlying truths of existence. The following is a brief overview of the Buddha's teachings.

Prologue to Buddhism 2

By the age of 35 he realized that neither self-indulgence nor self-mortification were leading him to the answers that he was looking for. Then, on the full moon night of May, having turned away from these two extremes, he sat beneath the branches of what is now known as the Bothi Tree in a secluded grove by the banks of a river, and developed his mind in deep, luminous and tranquil states of meditation. With the extraordinary clarity and sharp penetrative power that is generated by inner stillness. He focused his attention on investigating the nature of existence, its causes and its cessation. Through this contemplation of the essence of reality, he attained the supreme awakening, the experience of enlightenment. From that point on he was known as he Buddha, the Awakened one.

Prologue to Buddhism

The man who was to be come the Buddha was born Siddhattha Gotama around 2,600 years ago as a prince of a small territory near what is now the Indian-Nepalese border. Though he was raised in splendid comfort, enjoying aristocratic status, no amount of material wealth and sensual pleasure could conceal life's imperfection from the unusually inquisitive young man. So at the age of 29 he left wealth and family behind for the remote forests and mountains of Northeast India to search for a lasting answer to life's problems. He studied under the wisest religious teachers and philosophers of his time, learning all they had to impart, but they could not provide the answers he was seeking. He then struggled on the path of self-mortification, taking that practice to the extremes of asceticism, but still to no avail.