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Dharma Milk: Nourishing a Pure Sangha
The Sangha is a mother carrying both monastic and lay babies within her body, providing nourishment through Dharma milk (pháp nhũ). Just as an expectant mother is mindful of what she eats, thinks, and watches to avoid feeding her baby toxins like violence or despair, the Sangha must practice self-purification. This process involves the Five Mindfulness Trainings to transform the self and society, ensuring that the next generation grows into instruments of the Dharma. Fathers also support this by treating the mother with gentleness and love, recognizing the baby as their own continuation.
Purification occurs in three realms:
- Thought
- Speech
-
Action
These three aspects constitute karma. To ensure these actions are pure, one must cultivate Right View, which serves as the foundation for the Noble Eightfold Path. The elements discussed include: - Right View (or Right Understanding)
- Right Thinking
- Right Speech
-
Right Action
Right View is rooted in the wisdom of impermanence and interbeing, removing the wrong perceptions of a separate self that lead to discrimination and cruelty. By practicing meditation, individuals and collective bodies like parliaments can remove wrong perceptions, replacing anger and fear with deep listening and compassionate communication.
A practical method for examining the purity of one’s mind is through the writing of letters. By observing which thoughts are censored and which are expressed, one can identify the roots of craving, jealousy, or ignorance. Every letter written in anger or love becomes an object of meditation to see if it aligns with the wisdom of non-discrimination. Mindfulness acts as the light that recognizes each thought, speech, and bodily movement, allowing for the gradual elimination of wrong views and the attainment of liberation from suffering, hatred, and despair.
Part of the following collection
Healing Family Suffering with the Four Noble Truths and the Five Mindfulness Trainings