Vipassana Meditation : Lectures On Insight Meditation by Venerable

Chapter 3Seven Benefits Of Mindfulness MeditationSeven benefits of Mindfulness meditation as taught by the Buddha arerecorded in the Maha Satipatthána Sutta - the Discourse on the FourFoundations of Mindfulness. But before I deal with them, I want to explain toyou briefly the four aspects of Buddhism. These four aspects are1. Devotional aspect of Buddhism,2. Ethical aspect of Buddhism,3. Moral aspect of Buddhism,4. Practical aspect of Buddhism (including the experiential aspect).Devotional AspectThe devotional aspect of Buddhism means 'rites and rituals', chanting ofSuttas and parittas, offering of flowers and incense as well as offering of foodand robes. When we perform such good deeds, we do so with sraddha (inSanskrit) or saddha (in Pali).The word saddha is difficult to translate into English. There is no Englishequivalent for the Pali word 'saddha' If we translate saddha to be faith, theword 'faith' does not cover the real sense, and if we translate it as 'confidence',it also does not cover the real sense of 'saddha'. We cannot find a single wordin English, which can give a complete meaning of saddha to me; saddha can betaken to mean belief through right understanding of the Dhamma.When we perform religious ceremonies we do it with a belief in the TripleGem (Tiratana). We believe in the Buddha, the Dhamma (his teachings) andthe Sangha (the Order of Buddhist monks). We hold the view that the Buddhahas eradicated all defilements through his supreme enlightenment, so he isworthy of respect (an Arahant). He was Buddha because he had strived andwas enlightened by himself, not because he learned the Dhamma from anyteacher. We believe in the Buddha in this way. The Buddha taught us to livehappily and peacefully and he taught us the way leading to the cessation of allkinds of sufferings. We believe that if we follow his teaching or his way, we aresure to live happily and peacefully and to get rid of suffering. For this reason,we believe in the Dhamma. In the same way, we believe in the Sangha. Whenwe say Sangha, it mainly means the Ariya-sangha, the Noble Sangha who haveattained any one of the four stages of the Path (Magga). But in the generalsense, it also refers to the Sammuti sangha (those who are still striving toeradicate the defilements). Thus we pay homage to the Triple Gem (Tiratana) -the Buddha. Dhamma and Sangha. We also believe that by chanting Suttas and17