A forum for beginners and members of other Buddhist traditions to ask questions about Theravāda (The Way of the Elders). Responses require moderator approval before they are visible in order to double-check alignment to Theravāda orthodoxy.
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
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He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form. John Stuart Mill
Digity wrote:Lay people can attain stream entry. Once you've attain stream entry you're guaranteed to attain enlightenment within seven lifetimes. So, don't look down on lay practice.
I apologize if I led anyone to believe I was looking down on lay practice. That was not my intent. I'm looking at how to become a layperson and how to best practice being one.
Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:It's probably stating the obvious, but sexual misconduct is possible within marriage too. Using force, threats of violence, or coercion also amounts to sexual misconduct.
It is obvious -to me- but it is also worth repeating. Thank you.
I must have misunderstood the 5 Precepts in Theravāda. Within monastic context, I thought the 3rd precept meant abstinence (I'm married)
Here's a more detailed explanation on the 3rd precept:
He does not get sexually involved with those who are protected by their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their sisters, their relatives, or their Dhamma; those with husbands, those who entail punishments, or even those crowned with flowers by another man.
They .. will not listen when discourses that are words of the Tathagata ..are being recited. They will not lend ear, will not set their hearts on knowing them, will not regard these teachings as worth grasping or mastering. But they will listen when discourses that are literary works — the works of poets, elegant in sound, elegant in rhetoric, the work of outsiders, words of disciples — are recited. ..Thus from corrupt Dhamma comes corrupt discipline; from corrupt discipline, corrupt Dhamma.
This, monks, is the fourth future danger .. work to get rid of it.
