“What, O Venerable One, is the reward and blessing of wholesome morality?” “Freedom from remorse, Ānanda.”
Active Dharma is a Buddhist spiritual practice for lay practitioners that uses the chaos of daily life as a vehicle for purification.
As practitioners of Active Dharma, we aim to achieve nobility through the heroic practice of the Buddhadharma.
Such training requires the cultivation of honesty about one’s condition and a constant abandonment of selfish impulses.
While there is a time and place for passive spiritual practice, Active Dharma, as the name implies, emphasizes Right Action.
Our method is based on the Threefold Training:
- Cultivation of wisdom (paññā)
- Virtue (sīla)
- Meditation (samādhi).
Through these three trainings, we establish the foundations of genuine selfless and heroic conduct based on the realization that the Ego is impossible to establish (anatta).
From our point of view, only then is one truly ready to benefit others.
Our path
The Buddha taught many routes to liberation, and we follow the path laid out in the Cetanākaraṇīyasutta:
- Virtue
- Blamelessness
- Joy
- Rapture
- Tranquility
- Bliss
- Samadhi
- Seeing and knowing reality
- Disenchantment
- Dispassion
- Freedom
Active Dharma strictly abides by the principle of conditionality (idappaccayata), which states: if this rises, that rises. If this ceases, that ceases.
Conditionality means that if virtue rises, blamelessness rises. If blamelessness rises, joy rises. If joy rises, rapture rises… If dispassion rises, freedom rises.
By the same principle, if virtue doesn’t rise, blamelessness also doesn’t rise, which results in the non-arising of freedom.
Through this understanding, we prevent skipping necessary steps for genuine spiritual development.
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