Discipline Is the Dharma Body

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Pháp Loa, as second patriarch of Trúc Lâm, systematized the monastic code for his generation of practitioners. In his teaching on discipline he said: 'People sometimes say: the patriarch Trần Nhân Tông taught spontaneity and ease. They use this to excuse carelessness. But the patriarch also lived by strict discipline from his youth until his final crossing. Spontaneity without discipline is only habit wearing the robe of freedom. True spontaneity — the kind that comes from realization — does not relax discipline. It fulfills discipline so completely that there is no effort left in it. Until that realization, keep the precepts as you would keep a lamp lit in a storm: carefully, consistently, as if everything depends on it — because it does.'

license: public_domain

Attribution

• Attributed To
  Pháp Loa

Lineage: Trúc Lâm

By Pháp Loa

• On Receiving the Successiondialogue

Sources

• contentCuong Tu Nguyen — medieval Vietnamese Buddhism scholarship

  Cuong Tu Nguyen

  Pháp Loa teaching records; Thiền Uyển Tập Anh, Pháp Loa section; after Cuong Tu Nguyen (1997), pp. 176–195, on Pháp Loa's systematization of the Trúc Lâm school

  Pháp Loa Recorded Teachings: Discipline Is the Dharma Body