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← In the Buddha’s Words Summary, Notes and Highlights

In The Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discorces from the Pali Canon Chapter V. THE WAY TO A FORTUNATE REBIRTH

Author: Bhikkhu Bodhi Publisher: Wisdom Publications. Somerville, MA. Publish Date: 2005-6-28 Review Date: 2022-2-9 Type:📚

Annotations

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2581 According to the Buddha’s teaching, the cosmos, with its many realms of sentient existence, is governed at all levels by immutable laws, physical, biological, psychological, and ethical. The process by which sentient beings migrate from one state of existence to another is likewise lawful.

  • Highlight - Location 2583 It is regulated by a law that works in two principal ways: first, it connects our actions with a particular realm of rebirth that corresponds to our actions; and second, it determines the relations between our actions and the quality of our experience within the particular realm into which we have been reborn.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2585 The governing factor in this process, the factor that makes the entire process a lawful one, is a force called kamma

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2586 The word “kamma” literally means action, but technically it refers to volitional action. As the Buddha says: “It is volition (cetanā) that I call kamma; for having willed (cetayitvā), one acts by body, speech, and mind.”

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2589 Such volition may remain purely mental, generating mental kamma that occurs as thoughts, plans, and desires; or it may come to expression outwardly through manifest bodily and verbal actions.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2592 It may seem that our deeds, once performed, perish and vanish without leaving behind any traces apart from their visible impact on other people and our environment. However, according to the Buddha, all morally determinate volitional actions create a potential to bring forth results (vipāka) or fruits (phala) that correspond to the ethical quality of those actions. This capacity of our deeds to produce the morally appropriate results is what is meant by kamma. Our deeds generate kamma, a potential to produce fruits that correspond to their own intrinsic tendencies. Then, when internal and external conditions are suitable, the kamma ripens and produces the appropriate fruits.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2595 In ripening, the kamma rebounds upon us for good or for harm depending on the moral quality . This may happen either later in the same life in which the action was done, in the next life, or in some distant future life.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2625 The twin doctrines of kamma and rebirth enable us to see that the world in which we live is, in important respects, an external reflection of the internal cosmos of the mind. This does not mean that the external world can be reduced to a mental projection in the way proposed by certain types of philosophical idealism. However, taken in conjunction, these two doctrines do show that the conditions under which we live closely correspond to the karmic tendencies of our minds.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2628 The reason why a living being is reborn into a particular realm is because in a previous life that being has generated the kamma, or volitional action, that leads to rebirth into that realm. Thus, in the final analysis, all the realms of existence have been formed, fashioned, and sustained by the mental activity of living beings.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2631 “For beings obstructed by ignorance and hindered by craving, kamma is the field, consciousness the seed, and craving the moisture, for consciousness to be established in a new realm of existence—either inferior, middling, or superior” (AN 3:76; I 223)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2599 On the basis of its ethical quality, the Buddha distinguishes kamma into two major categories: the unwholesome (akusala) and the wholesome (kusala).

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2600 Unwholesome kamma is action that is spiritually detrimental to the agent, morally reprehensible, and potentially productive of an unfortunate rebirth and painful results.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2757 “And what, monks, is dark kamma with dark results? Here, monks, someone generates an afflictive volitional formation of body, speech, or mind. Having done so, he is reborn in an afflictive world. When he is reborn in an afflictive world, afflictive contacts touch him. Being touched by afflictive contacts, he experiences an afflictive feeling, extremely painful, as for example the beings in hell experience. (Four Kinds of Kamma - Location 2754, AN 4:232; II 230–32)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2602 The criterion for judging an action to be unwholesome is its underlying motives, the “roots” from which it springs. There are three unwholesome roots: greed, hatred, and delusion. From these there arises a wide variety of secondary defilements—states such as anger, hostility, envy, selfishness, arrogance, pride, presumption, and laziness—and from the root defilements and secondary defilements arise defiled actions.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2605 Wholesome kamma, on the other hand, is action that is spiritually beneficial and morally commendable; it is action that ripens in happiness and good fortune.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2761 “And what, monks, is bright kamma with bright results? Here, monks, someone generates a non-afflictive volitional formation of body, speech, or mind. Having done so, he is reborn in a non-afflictive world. Being touched by non-afflictive contacts, he experiences a non-afflictive feeling, extremely pleasant, as for example the devas of refulgent glory experience. (Four Kinds of Kamma - Location 2754, AN 4:232; II 230–32)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2606 Its underlying motives are the three wholesome roots: nongreed, nonhatred, and nondelusion, which may be expressed more positively as generosity, loving-kindness, and wisdom.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2607 Whereas actions springing from the unwholesome roots are necessarily bound to the world of repeated birth and death, actions springing from the wholesome roots may be of two kinds, mundane and world-transcending. The mundane (lokiya) wholesome actions have the potential to produce a fortunate rebirth and pleasant results within the round of rebirths. The world-transcending or supramundane (lokuttara) wholesome actions—namely, the kamma generated by developing the Noble Eightfold Path and the other aids to enlightenment—lead to enlightenment and to liberation from the round of rebirths. This is the kamma that dismantles the entire process of karmic causation.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2770 “And what, monks, is kamma that is neither dark nor bright, with neither dark nor bright results, which leads to the destruction of kamma? The volition to abandon this dark kamma with dark results, and to abandon the bright kamma with bright results, and to abandon the dark and bright kamma with dark and bright results (Four Kinds of Kamma - Location 2754, AN 4:232; II 230–32)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2633 The next selection, Text V,1(2), draws a finer distinction among the types of unwholesome and wholesome kamma. The text enumerates ten primary instances of each class. Here they are called respectively “unrighteous conduct, conduct not in accordance with the Dhamma” and “righteous conduct, conduct in accordance with the Dhamma”

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2787 it is by reason of unrighteous conduct, conduct not in accordance with the Dhamma, that some beings here, on the breakup of the body, after death, are reborn in a state of misery, in a bad destination, in the lower world, in hell. It is by reason of righteous conduct, conduct in accordance with the Dhamma, that some beings here, on the breakup of the body, after death, are reborn in a good destination, in a heavenly world.” (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2636 they are usually known as the ten pathways of unwholesome and wholesome kamma.5 The ten are subdivided by way of the three “doors of action”—body, speech, and mind.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2638 Taking the unwholesome first, there are three kinds of bodily misconduct: killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct;

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2797 there three kinds of unrighteous bodily conduct, (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2798 kills living beings; (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2798 takes what is not given; (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2799 sexual misconduct; (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2801 those already engaged. (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2802 there four kinds of unrighteous verbal conduct, (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2638 lying, malicious speech, harsh speech, and idle chatter (or gossip);

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2803 speaks falsehood; (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2806 speaks maliciously; (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2810 idle chatter; (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2639 three kinds of mental misconduct: covetousness, ill will, and wrong view.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2813 there three kinds of unrighteous mental conduct, (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2813 covetous; (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2814 ill will and intentions of hate (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2815 wrong view, distorted vision, (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2641 the ten types of unwholesome kamma are the reason that beings are reborn in the bad destinations after death; the ten types of wholesome kamma are the reason that beings are reborn in the good destinations after death.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2819 it is by reason of such unrighteous conduct, such conduct not in accordance with the Dhamma, that some beings here on the breakup of the body, after death, are reborn in a state of misery, in a bad destination, in the lower world, in hell. (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) it is by reason of such righteous conduct, such conduct in accordance with the Dhamma that some beings here, on the breakup of the body, after death, are reborn in a good destination, even in a heavenly world. (Why Beings Fare as They Do After Death - Location 2776, MN 41: Sāleyyaka Sutta; I 286–90)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2687 merit (puñña), wholesome kamma capable of yielding favorable results within the cycle of rebirths.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2688 Merit produces mundane benefits, such as a good rebirth, wealth, beauty, and success. It also serves as an enhancing condition for supramundane benefits, that is, for attaining the stages along the path to enlightenment. Hence, as seen in Text V,2(1), the Buddha urges his disciples to cultivate merit, referring to his own cultivation of merit over many previous lives as an example.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2690 The Nikāyas concisely organize the types of merit into three “bases of meritorious deeds” (puññakiriyavatthu): giving, moral discipline, and meditation.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2974 three ways of making merit. (Three Bases of Merit Location 2973, AN 8:33; IV 236–37)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2974 by giving, by moral discipline, and by the development of meditation. (Three Bases of Merit Location 2973, AN 8:33; IV 236–37)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3009
  1. GIVING

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2702 giving serves to break down the egocentric frame of mind on the basis of which we habitually interact with others.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3018 ‘By giving this gift, I shall be reborn in a good destination, in a heavenly world, after death’; or with the thought, ‘When giving this gift, my heart will be glad, and happiness and joy will arise in me’; or one gives because it ennobles and adorns the mind.” (Reasons for Giving Location 3015, AN 8:33; IV 236–37)

  • Highlight(pink) - location 2704 “giving” for Early Buddhism does not mean simply philanthropic charity directed toward the poor and disadvantaged. While it includes this, the practice of giving has a more context-specific

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2705 rooted in the social structure of Indian religiosity.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2709 Such homeless wanderers, known as samaṇas (“ascetics”) or paribbājakas (“wanderers”), did not perform any remunerative services but depended upon the charity of householders for their livelihood. The lay devotees provided them with their material requisites—robes, food, lodgings, and medicines—doing so in the confidence that such services were a source of merit that would help them advance a few steps farther in the direction of final emancipation.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3072
  1. MORAL DISCIPLINE

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2723 “moral discipline” (sīla),

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2724 five precepts, the training rules to abstain from taking life, stealing, sexual misconduct, false speech, and the use of intoxicants.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3083 a noble disciple gives up the destruction of life (Anguttara Nikaya 8:39; IV 245-47)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3087 a noble disciple gives up the taking of what is not given and abstains from it. (Anguttara Nikaya 8:39; IV 245-47)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3089 noble disciple gives up sexual misconduct and abstains from it. (Anguttara Nikaya 8:39; IV 245-47)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3091 noble disciple gives up false speech and abstains from it. (Anguttara Nikaya 8:39; IV 245-47)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3093 a noble disciple gives up wines, liquors, and intoxicants, (Anguttara Nikaya 8:39; IV 245-47)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3099 The Uposatha Observance

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2729 While the Buddha enjoins observance of the five precepts upon lay followers as a full-time obligation, he recommends a more stringent type of moral practice for the uposatha, the observance days determined by the lunar calendar: the full-moon day, the new-moon day, and the two half-moon days. (Of the four, in Buddhist countries today it is the full-moon day that is given priority.) On these occasions, devout lay Buddhists undertake eight precepts: the usual five, but with the third changed to complete sexual abstinence, augmented by three other precepts that emulate the training rules of a novice monk or nun.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3108 “‘As long as they live the arahants abandon sexual relations and observe celibacy, living apart, refraining from the coarse practice of sexual intercourse. (The Uposatha Observance Location 309, AN 8:41; IV 248–51)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3114 “‘As long as they live the arahants eat only one meal a day and refrain from eating at night, outside the proper time. (The Uposatha Observance Location 309, AN 8:41; IV 248–51)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3117 “‘As long as they live the arahants abstain from dancing, singing, instrumental music, and unsuitable shows, and from adorning themselves by wearing garlands and applying scents and ointments. (The Uposatha Observance Location 309, AN 8:41; IV 248–51)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3119 “‘As long as they live the arahants abandon the use of high and luxurious beds and seats and abstain from using them; they make use of low resting places, either small beds or straw mats. (The Uposatha Observance Location 309, AN 8:41; IV 248–51)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2733 The eight precepts, enumerated in Text V,4(2), augment the training in sīla as a moral observance with a training in self-restraint, simplicity, and contentment. In this respect they prepare the disciple for the training of the mind undertaken in the practice of meditation, the third base of merit.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2735 The practice of meditation is not only the heart of the path to liberation but a source of merit in its own right. Wholesome meditation practices, even those that do not directly lead to insight, help to purify the grosser levels of mental defilement and uncover deeper dimensions of the mind’s potential purity and radiance.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3156 The Four Divine Abodes

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2738 Text V,5(1) declares that the type of meditation that is most fruitful for the production of mundane merit is the development of loving-kindness (mettābhāvanā). The practice of loving-kindness, however, is only one among a set of four meditations called the “divine abodes” (brahmavih̄ra) or “immeasurable states” (appamaññ̄): the development of loving-kindness, compassion, altruistic joy, and equanimity, which are to be extended boundlessly to all sentient beings.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3114 “Monks, whatever grounds there are for making merit productive of a future birth, all these do not equal a sixteenth part of the liberation of mind by loving-kindness. (The Development of Loving-Kindness location 3143, It 27; 19–21)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2741 loving-kindness (mett̄) is the wish for the welfare and happiness of all beings;

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3171 loving-kindness (The Four Devine Abodes location 3156, MN 99: Subha Sutta; II 206–8)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2742 compassion (karuṇā), the feeling of empathy for all those afflicted with suffering;

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3177 compassion (The Four Devine Abodes location 3156, MN 99: Subha Sutta; II 206–8)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2742 altruistic joy (muditā), the feeling of happiness at the success and good fortune of others;

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3177 altruistic joy (The Four Devine Abodes location 3156, MN 99: Subha Sutta; II 206–8)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2743 equanimity (upekkh̄), a balanced reaction to joy and misery, which protects one from emotional agitation.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3178 equanimity (The Four Devine Abodes location 3156, MN 99: Subha Sutta; II 206–8)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2744 These meditations are said to be the means to rebirth in the brahma world;

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2745 While the brahmins regarded the brahma world as the highest attainment, for the Buddha it was just one exalted sphere of rebirth.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2746 The concentration arisen from these meditations, however, can also be used as a basis for cultivating the wisdom of insight, and insight culminates in liberation.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2479 Then, at the very end, it declares that the most fruitful deed among them all is the perception of impermanence. The perception of impermanence, however, belongs to a different order. It is so fruitful not because it yields pleasant mundane results within the round of rebirths, but because it leads to the wisdom of insight that cuts the chains of bondage and brings the realization of complete emancipation, Nibbāna.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2692 In the Indian religious context, the practice of meritorious deeds revolves around faith in certain objects regarded as sacred and spiritually empowering, capable of serving as a support for the acquisition of merit. For followers of the Buddha’s teaching these are the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Saṅgha.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3075 “Here, monks, a noble disciple has gone for refuge to the Buddha. (The Five Precepts Location 3073, AN 8:39; IV 245–47)

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3078 “Further, a noble disciple has gone for refuge to the Dhamma.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 3079 “Further, a noble disciple has gone for refuge to the Saṅgha.

  • Highlight(pink) - Location 2695 the Buddha is supreme among persons, the Dhamma among teachings, and the Saṅgha among religious communities.

❗️

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2645 The Buddhist cosmos is divided into three broad realms—the sense-sphere realm (kāmadhātu), the form realm (rūpadh̄tu ), and the formless realm (arūpadhātu)—each comprising a range of subsidiary planes.

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2647 The sense-sphere realm, our realm, is so called because the beings reborn here are strongly driven by sensual desire.

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2648 The bad destinations or “states of misery” (apāya) are three in number: the hells, states of intense torment (see MN 129 and 130, not included in this anthology); the animal kingdom; and the sphere of spirits (pettivisaya ), beings afflicted with incessant hunger, thirst, and other sufferings.

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2652 The good destinations in the sense-sphere realm are the human world and the six sensual heavenly planes.

  • Highlights(blue) - Location 2653 The latter are: the devas in the heaven of the Four Great Kings, who are presided over by four powerful devas (namely, the Four Great Kings); the Tāvatiṃsa devas presided over by Sakka, a devotee of the Buddha who is faithful but prone to negligence (see the Sakkasaṃyutta, SN chapter 11); the Yāma devas; the devas of the Tusita heaven, the abode of a bodhisatta before his final birth; the Nimmānaratī devas (“the gods who delight in creating”); and the Paranimmitavasavattī devas (“the gods who control what is created by others”).

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2657 In the form realm the grosser types of material form are absent. Its denizens, known as brahmās, enjoy bliss, power, luminosity, and vitality far superior to the beings in the sense-sphere realm.

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2659 The form realm consists of sixteen planes. These are the objective counterparts of the four jhānas.

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2659 Attainment of the first jhāna leads to rebirth among Brahmā’s assembly, the ministers of Brahmā, and the Mahābrahmās, according to whether it is developed to an inferior, middling, or superior degree.

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2661 The second jhāna, attained in the same three degrees, leads respectively to rebirth among the devas of limited radiance, of measureless radiance, and of streaming radiance.

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2662 The third jhāna, attained in the same three degrees, leads respectively to rebirth among the devas of limited glory, of measureless glory, and of refulgent glory.

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2663 The fourth jhāna ordinarily leads to rebirth among the devas of great fruit, but if developed with a feeling of disgust for perception, it will conduce to rebirth among the “nonpercipient beings,” beings who lack perception.

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2665 The form realm also comprises five planes reserved exclusively for the rebirth of nonreturners

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2665 called the pure abodes: aviha, atappa, sudassa, sudassī, and akaniṭṭha. In each of the subtle form planes, the lifespan is said to be of enormous duration and to increase significantly with each higher plane.

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2665 In the third realm of existence, material form is nonexistent and bare mental processes exist; hence it is called the formless realm.

  • Highlight(blue) - Location 2669 This realm consists of four planes, which are the objective counterparts of the four formless meditative attainments, after which they are named: the base of the infinity of space, the base of the infinity of consciousness, the base of nothingness, and the base of neither-perception-nor-nonperception.

Notes

Total: 13

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