Sammā Vāyāma – Right Effort

“Bhikkhus, for direct knowledge of lust, four things are to be developed. What four? Here, a bhikkhu generates desire for the non-arising of unarisen bad unwholesome states; he makes an effort, arouses energy, applies his mind, and strives. He generates desire for the abandoning of arisen bad unwholesome states; he makes an effort, arouses energy, applies his mind, and strives. He generates desire for the arising of unarisen wholesome states; he makes an effort, arouses energy, applies his mind, and strives. He generates desire for the maintenance of arisen wholesome states, for their non-decline, increase, expansion, and fulfillment by development; he makes an effort, arouses energy, applies his mind, and strives. For direct knowledge of lust, these four things are to be developed.” – AN 4.275

“Rāgassa, bhikkhave, abhiññāya cattāro dhammā bhāvetabbā. Katame cattāro? Idha, bhikkhave, bhikkhu anuppannānaṃ pāpakānaṃ akusalānaṃ dhammānaṃ anuppādāya chandaṃ janeti vāyamati vīriyaṃ ārabhati cittaṃ paggaṇhāti padahati; uppannānaṃ pāpakānaṃ akusalānaṃ dhammānaṃ pahānāya chandaṃ janeti vāyamati vīriyaṃ ārabhati cittaṃ paggaṇhāti padahati; anuppannānaṃ kusalānaṃ dhammānaṃ uppādāya chandaṃ janeti vāyamati vīriyaṃ ārabhati cittaṃ paggaṇhāti padahati; uppannānaṃ kusalānaṃ dhammānaṃ ṭhitiyā asammosāya bhiyyobhāvāya vepullāya bhāvanāya pāripūriyā chandaṃ janeti vāyamati vīriyaṃ ārabhati cittaṃ paggaṇhāti padahati. Rāgassa, bhikkhave, abhiññāya ime cattāro dhammā bhāvetabbā”ti.

ရဟန်းတို့ ရာဂကို ထူးသော ဉာဏ်ဖြင့် သိရန်တရားလေးမျိုးတို့ကို ပွါးများအပ်ကုန်၏။ အဘယ်လေးမျိုးတို့နည်းဟူမူ— ရဟန်းတို့ ဤသာသနာတော်၌ ရဟန်းသည် မဖြစ်ပေါ်သေးသော အကုသိုလ်တရားယုတ်တို့ကို မဖြစ်ပေါ်စေရန် ပြုလိုမှု ‘ဆန္ဒ’ကို ဖြစ်စေ၏၊ ကြိုးစား၏၊ လုံ့လထုတ်၏၊ စိတ်ကို တင်းထား၏၊ ဆောက်တည်ထား၏။ ဖြစ်ကုန်ပြီးသော အကုသိုလ်တရားယုတ်တို့ကို ပယ်ရန်။ပ။ မဖြစ်ပေါ်သေးသော ကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကို ဖြစ်ပေါ်စေရန်။ပ။ ဖြစ်ကုန်ပြီးသော ကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ တည်တံ့စေရန် မပျောက်ပျက်စေရန် လွန်စွာ ဖြစ်စေရန် ပြန့်ပြောစေရန် ပွါးများရန် ပြည့်စုံစေရန် ပြုလိုမှု ‘ဆန္ဒ’ ကို ဖြစ်စေ၏၊ ကြိုးစား၏၊ လုံ့လထုတ်၏၊ စိတ်ကို တင်းထား၏၊ ဆောက်တည်ထား၏။ ရဟန်းတို့ ရာဂကို ထူးသော ဉာဏ်ဖြင့် သိရန် ဤတရားလေးမျိုးတို့ကို ပွါးများအပ်ကုန်၏ဟု (မိန့်တော်မူ၏)။

“Ðể thắng tri tham, này các Tỷ-kheo, bốn pháp cần phải tu tập. Thế nào là bốn? Ở đây, này các Tỷ-kheo, Tỷ-kheo đối với các pháp ác bất thiện chưa sanh, khởi lên ý muốn cố gắng; tinh tấn, sách tâm, trì tâm không cho sanh khởi; đối với các pháp ác bất thiện đã sanh, khởi lên ý muốn cố gắng; tinh tấn, sách tâm, trì tâm khiến chúng đoạn tận; đối với các pháp thiện chưa sanh, khởi lên ý muốn cố gắng; tinh tấn, sách tâm, trì tâm khiến cho sanh khởi; đối với các pháp thiện đã sanh, khởi lên ý muốn cố gắng; tinh tấn, sách tâm, trì tâm khiến chúng được duy trì, không có lu mờ, được tăng trưởng, được quảng đại, được tu tập, được thỏa mãn. Này các Tỷ-kheo, để thắng tri tham, bốn pháp này cần phải tu tập.”

「比丘們!為了貪的證智,四法應該被修習,哪四個呢?比丘們!這裡,比丘為了未生起的惡不善法之不生起而生欲,努力、生起活力,發心、勤奮;為了已生起的惡不善法之捨斷, 努力、生起活力,發心、勤奮;為了未生起的善法之生起, 努力、生起活力,發心、勤奮;為了已生起的善法之存續、不消失、增加、擴大、圓滿修習而生欲,努力、生起活力,發心、勤奮,比丘們!為了貪的證智,這四法應該被修習。」

Image: Chùa Long Hưng front gate

Head on Fire

“Just as one whose clothes or head had caught fire would put forth extraordinary desire, effort, zeal, enthusiasm, indefatigability, mindfulness, and clear comprehension to extinguish the fire on his clothes or head, so too that bhikkhu should put forth extraordinary desire, effort, zeal, enthusiasm, indefatigability, mindfulness, and clear comprehension to abandon those same bad unwholesome qualities.” – AN 10.51

“Seyyathāpi, bhikkhave, ādittacelo vā ādittasīso vā. Tasseva celassa vā sīsassa vā nibbāpanāya adhimattaṁ chandañca vāyāmañca ussāhañca ussoḷhiñca appaṭivāniñca satiñca sampajaññañca kareyya. Evamevaṁ kho tena, bhikkhave, bhikkhunā tesaṁyeva pāpakānaṁ akusalānaṁ dhammānaṁ pahānāya adhimatto chando ca vāyāmo ca ussāho ca ussoḷhī ca appaṭivānī ca sati ca sampajaññañca karaṇīyaṁ.”

“ရဟန်းတို့ ဥပမာသော်ကား အဝတ်မီးလောင်သူသည်လည်းကောင်း၊ ဦးခေါင်းမီးလောင်သူသည် လည်းကောင်း၊ ထိုအဝတ်, ဦးခေါင်းကိုသာလျှင် ငြိမ်းစေရန် လွန်ကဲသော အလိုလုံ့လ အားထုတ်မှု အလွန် အားထုတ်မှု မဆုတ်နစ်မှု အောက်မေ့မှု ‘သတိ’ ဆင်ခြင်ဉာဏ် ‘သမ္ပဇဉ်’ ကို ပြုရာ၏၊ ရဟန်းတို့ ဤအတူပင် ထိုရဟန်းသည် ထိုယုတ်ညံ့သော အကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကိုသာလျှင် ပယ်ရန် လွန်ကဲသော အလို လုံ့လ အားထုတ်မှု အလွန် အားထုတ်မှု မဆုတ်နစ်မှု အောက်မေ့မှု ‘သတိ’ ဆင်ခြင်ဉာဏ် ‘သမ္ပဇဉ်’ ကို ပြုသင့်၏။”

“Ví như, này các Tỷ-kheo, khi khăn bị cháy, hay khi đầu bị cháy, cần phải quyết định, ước muốn, tinh tấn, nỗ lực, dõng mãnh, bất thối, chánh niệm, tỉnh giác để dập tắt khăn hay đầu bị cháy ấy. Cũng vậy này Tỷ kheo, Tỷ kheo ấy cần phải quyết định, ước muốn, tinh tấn, nỗ lực, dõng mãnh, bất thối, chánh niệm, tỉnh giác để đoạn tận các pháp bất thiện ấy.”

「比丘們!猶如衣服已被燒,或頭已被燒,就應該為那衣服或頭的熄滅作極度的意欲、精進、勇猛、努力、不畏縮、正念、正知。同樣的,比丘們!因為那樣,比丘應該為那些惡不善法的捨斷作極度的意欲、精進、勇猛、努力、不畏縮、正念、正知。」

Greater Coucal ©Ashin Sopāka 2017

Right Effort

“Now what, monks, is right effort? Here, monks, a monk regarding bad and unwholesome thoughts that have not yet arisen generates desire for their non-arising, (in this regard) he endeavours, instigates energy, exerts his mind, and makes an effort. Regarding bad and unwholesome things that have already arisen he generates desire for their abandonment, (in this regard) he endeavours, instigates energy, exerts his mind, and makes an effort. He generates desire for the arising of wholesome things that have not yet arisen, (in this regard) he endeavours, instigates energy, exerts his mind, and makes an effort. Regarding wholesome things that have arisen he generates desire for their endurance, persistence, multiplication, extension, development, and fulfilment, (in this regard) he endeavours, instigates energy, exerts his mind, and makes an effort.” – DN 21

“Katamo ca, bhikkhave, sammāvāyāmo? Idha, bhikkhave, bhikkhu anuppannānaṁ pāpakānaṁ akusalānaṁ dhammānaṁ anuppādāya chandaṁ janeti vāyamati vīriyaṁ ārabhati cittaṁ paggaṇhāti padahati; uppannānaṁ pāpakānaṁ akusalānaṁ dhammānaṁ pahānāya chandaṁ janeti vāyamati vīriyaṁ ārabhati cittaṁ paggaṇhāti padahati; anuppannānaṁ kusalānaṁ dhammānaṁ uppādāya chandaṁ janeti vāyamati vīriyaṁ ārabhati cittaṁ paggaṇhāti padahati; uppannānaṁ kusalānaṁ dhammānaṁ ṭhitiyā asammosāya bhiyyobhāvāya vepullāya bhāvanāya pāripūriyā chandaṁ janeti vāyamati vīriyaṁ ārabhati cittaṁ paggaṇhāti padahati.”

ရဟန်းတို့ သမ္မာဝါယာမသည် အဘယ်နည်း။ ရဟန်းတို့ ဤသာသနာတော်၌ ရဟန်းသည် မဖြစ်သေးသော ယုတ်မာသော အကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကိုမဖြစ်ပေါ်စေရန် ဆန္ဒကို ဖြစ်စေ၏၊ အားထုတ်၏၊ လုံ့လပြု၏၊ စိတ်ကို ချီးမြှောက်၏၊ ဆောက်တည်၏။ ဖြစ်ပြီးသော ယုတ်မာသော အကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကို ပယ်ရန် ဆန္ဒကို ဖြစ်စေ၏၊ အားထုတ်၏၊ လုံ့လပြု၏၊ စိတ်ကို ချီးမြှောက်၏၊ ဆောက်တည်၏။ မဖြစ်သေးသော ကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကို ဖြစ်စေရန် ဆန္ဒကိုဖြစ်စေ၏၊ အားထုတ်၏၊ လုံ့လပြု၏၊ စိတ်ကို ချီးမြှောက်၏၊ ဆောက်တည်၏။ ဖြစ်ပြီးသော ကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကို တည်မြဲစေရန် မပျောက်ပျက်စေရန် တိုးတက်ဖြစ်ပွါးစေရန် ပြန့်ပြောစေရန် ပွါးများမှု ပြည့်စုံစေရန် ဆန္ဒကို ဖြစ်စေ၏၊ အားထုတ်၏၊ လုံ့လပြု၏၊ စိတ်ကို ချီးမြှောက်၏၊ ဆောက်တည်၏။

“Này các Tỷ kheo, và thế nào là Chánh tinh tấn? Này các Tỷ kheo, ở đây Tỷ kheo, đối với các ác, bất thiện pháp chưa sanh, khởi lên ý muốn không cho sanh khởi; vị này nỗ lực, tinh tấn, quyết tâm, trì chí. Ðối với các ác, bất thiện pháp đã sanh, khởi lên ý muốn trừ diệt, vị này nỗ lực, tinh tấn, quyết tâm, trì chí. Ðối với các thiện pháp chưa sanh, khởi lên ý muốn khiến cho sanh khởi; vị này nỗ lực, tinh tấn, quyết tâm, trì chí. Ðối với các thiện pháp đã sanh, khởi lên ý muốn khiến cho an trú, không cho băng hoại, khiến cho tăng trưởng, phát triển, viên mãn. Vị này nỗ lực, tinh tấn, quyết tâm, trì chí.”

「而,比丘們!什麼是正精進?比丘們!這裡,比丘為了未生起的惡不善法之不生起而生欲、努力、生起活力、發心、勤奮;為了已生起的惡不善法之捨斷而生欲、努力、生起活力、發心、勤奮;為了未生起的善法之生起而生欲、努力、生起活力、發心、勤奮;為了已生起的善法之存續、不消失、增加、擴大、圓滿修習而生欲、努力、生起活力、發心、勤奮,比丘們!」

Orange Bellied Flowerpecker ©Ashin Sopāka 2017

Right Effort

Plain Prinia 28 Jun 16“And what, bhikkhus, is right effort? Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu generates desire for the nonarising of unarisen evil unwholesome states; he makes an effort, arouses energy, applies his mind, and strives. He generates desire for the abandoning of arisen evil unwholesome states…. He generates desire for the arising of unarisen wholesome states…. He generates desire for the maintenance of arisen wholesome states, for their nondecay, increase, expansion, and fulfilment by development; he makes an effort, arouses energy, applies his mind, and strives. This is called right effort.” – SN 45.8

“Katamo ca, bhikkhave, sammāvāyāmo? Idha, bhikkhave, bhikkhu anuppannānaṁ pāpakānaṁ akusalānaṁ dhammānaṁ anuppādāya chandaṁ janeti vāyamati vīriyaṁ ārabhati cittaṁ paggaṇhāti padahati, uppannānaṁ pāpakānaṁ akusalānaṁ dhammānaṁ pahānāya chandaṁ janeti … pe … anuppannānaṁ kusalānaṁ dhammānaṁ uppādāya chandaṁ janeti … pe … uppannānaṁ kusalānaṁ dhammānaṁ ṭhitiyā asammosāya bhiyyobhāvāya vepullāya bhāvanāya pāripūriyā chandaṁ janeti vāyamati vīriyaṁ ārabhati cittaṁ paggaṇhāti padahati—ayaṁ vuccati, bhikkhave, sammāvāyāmo.”

Plain Prinia 25 Jun 16“ရဟန်းတို့ မှန်ကန်သောအားထုတ်မှု ‘သမ္မာဝါယာမ’ဟူသည် အဘယ်နည်း၊ ရဟန်းတို့ ဤသာသနာတော်၌ ရဟန်းသည် မဖြစ်ကုန်သေးသော ယုတ်ညံ့သောအကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကို မဖြစ်စေရန်ဆန္ဒကို ဖြစ်စေ၏၊ အားထုတ်၏၊ လုံ့လပြု၏၊ စိတ်ကို ချီမြှောက်၏၊ ဆောက်တည်၏။ ဖြစ်ပြီးကုန်သောယုတ်ညံ့သောအကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကို ပယ်ရန် ဆန္ဒကို ဖြစ်စေ၏။ပ။ မဖြစ်ကုန်သေးသော ကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကို ဖြစ်စေရန် ဆန္ဒကို ဖြစ်စေ၏။ပ။ ဖြစ်ပြီးကုန်သော ကုသိုလ်တရားတို့ကို တည်မြဲစေရန်၊ မပျောက်ပျက်စေရန်၊ တိုးတက်ဖြစ်ပွားစေရန်၊ ပြန့်ပြောစေရန်၊ ပွားများမှု ပြည့်စုံစေရန် ဆန္ဒကို ဖြစ်စေ၏၊ အားထုတ်၏၊ လုံ့လပြု၏၊ စိတ်ကို ချီမြှောက်၏၊ ဆောက်တည်၏။ ရဟန်းတို့ ဤသည်ကို မှန်ကန်သောအား ထုတ်မှု ‘သမ္မာဝါယာမ’ဟု ဆိုအပ်၏။”

“Và này các Tỷ-kheo, thế nào là chánh tinh tấn? Ở đây, này các Tỷ-kheo, với mục đích khiến cho các ác, bất thiện pháp từ trước chưa sanh không cho sanh khởi, khởi lên ý muốn, cố gắng, tinh tấn, sách tấn, trì tâm; với mục đích khiến cho các ác, bất thiện pháp đã sanh được trừ diệt, khởi lên ý muốn, cố gắng, tinh tấn, sách tấn, trì tâm; với mục đích khiến cho các thiện pháp từ trước chưa sanh nay được sanh khởi, khởi lên ý muốn, cố gắng, tinh tấn, sách tấn, trì tâm; với mục đích khiến cho các thiện pháp đã được sanh có thể duy trì, không có lu mờ, được tăng trưởng, được quảng đại, được tu tập, được viên mãn, khởi lên ý muốn, cố gắng, tinh tấn, sách tấn, trì tâm. Này các Tỷ-kheo, đây gọi là chánh tinh tấn.”

「而,比丘們!什麼是正精進?比丘們!這裡,比丘為了未生起的惡不善法之不生起而生欲、努力、生起活力、發心、勤奮;為了已生起的惡不善法之捨斷而生欲、……(中略)為了未生起的善法之生起而生欲、……(中略)為了已生起的善法之存續、不消失、增加、擴大、圓滿修習而生欲、努力、生起活力、發心、勤奮,比丘們!這被稱為正精進。」

Plain Prinia ©Ashin Sopāka 2016