2025 Year-End Review: A 38 Highest Blessings Brief - What Is Your ”Vihāra-Dhamma”? | Ajahn Kovilo

Namasa
arhat sama sambasa
So, I hope everybody had a good week.
Hope you had a nice winter solstice.
Hope you had a great Hanukkah. and a
great Christmas and a great first day of
Quanza and whatever Boxing Day is. I
hope you had a hope you had a great
Boxing Day as well.
Um it's interesting to reflect, you
know, all of the the scenes from each
one of these other major religious
traditions. Um so much of the the
imagery are ones of of home. You see
images of
uh fireplace and a family gathered
around the the fireplace and different
religious iconography.
Ajanisbo and I were in a Zoom meeting
yesterday. It's a poly study with one of
our our monk brothers and Ajanispo put
on a background behind him on Zoom of
one of these very homey Christmas
scenes. So had a Christmas tree behind
him and Christmas lights and very very
homey. very homey. And I love this suta
that we all chanted today, the the
highest blessings on page 46. And feel
free to uh refer to it at any point
while I'm talking to you. Almost
certainly it will say anything that I'm
going to say better than I would. And uh
yeah, it's a great suta to memorize.
It's one of the first ones that we
memorize once we move to a monastery,
once you start living closer to a
monastery in poly or in English. uh but
it's it's fascinating and it points to
an interesting kind of paradox or
dynamism of Buddhism in that the first
half of the the discourse
overall it's about 38 typically somebody
in the history of Buddhism counted 38
different highest blessings in this this
discourse and the first half are very
much home centric virtues that apply
to everybody, to anybody. Uh, providing
for mother and father support and
cherishing family and ways of work that
harm no being, generosity and a
righteous life, offering help to
relatives and kin, avoiding those of
foolish ways. This is just an amazing
checklist for a beautiful life. And as
it is, as I mentioned, this is the the
final Saturday of the year. You can take
this as a checklist to look back on your
2025.
Look back at all these different realms,
all these spheres of a human life and
how did you do? How did how did the the
habits that you have in each of these
domains? How did they go for you? And
going forward into 2026, are there any
changes that you'd like to make? Any new
habits that you'd like to take on? Each
one of these really could uh be their
each could you know fully um yeah take
you a long way in practice and uh a lot
of skillful means to be had in each one
of those.
So all these other major religious
traditions um
thinking specifically of Judaism and
Christianity and Islam don't really well
Christianity to some extent but um not
so much in America is but most of these
don't have a monastic tradition. So the
home ccentric the family centric
languaging and virtues are what are
foregrounded and that hearth around
which the whole family surrounds that's
really the virtues which are are spoken
to and Buddhism has those we see them in
this suta they're praised and they're
they're beautiful and people can see the
the beauty in them and we have all of
these other virtues basically the second
half of the suta which are talking about
ways of not uh ways of stepping out or
of finding a refuge that's not
dependent. Finding a refuge that not
that's not dependent. Part of our uh
ordination ceremony is called the pabaja
which literally means going forth going
forth from the home life into
homelessness.
And we do that and we're called
anagaraka or those who do not have a
home. And some of the definitions the
definition one of them for nibbana is
unalia an alalo. Alia means home. So
himalayas are the alia the home of hea
which is snow. The home of snow is the
himalayas. And nibbana is the analio,
that which is homeless, that which is
unattached, that which is not uh
connected, that which is independent. So
in Buddhism, what we want to try to do,
whether we're uh whether we have a
family or whether we we don't have a
family, is to be able to do both. be
able to honor the relationships that we
have with the people in our life, with
our family, honoring mother and father,
honoring family, and finding a place in
the heart, this home of the heart which
uh isn't dependent, which can step out
of that. And there's a really uh cool
phrase uh which I'm going to say it and
I'm going to ask how many people know
this this phrase. So the phrase is
vihara dama. Who here knows that phrase?
Vihara dama.
Okay, we have one little timid Thai hand
in the front. But it it's yeahharatam.
It's something which is yeah talked
about in Thai circles, but it hasn't
really made its way into uh English
parliament yet. But vihara does mean
home or it's also a name for a Buddhist
monastery. The Indian province of Bihar
is basically the location the home of
the people who live in Bihar which is
from Vihara. It's the second half of
Brahma Viharas. Brahma being divine
divinity. Vihara the divine abodess
these mature mind states of loving
kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and
equinimity mature emotions. This is
where gods abide. They abide in these
mature emotions. So this abidance, this
home of of the heart and dhamma here
dhamma can mean many things but here it
means just vihara dhamama. It's like a a
thing or a tool or a technique or a
technology
for dwelling. So how it's used in a Thai
context or a Buddhist context is the
Buddha would suggest that we all find a
viharadama in our own lives, find a a
place of dwellingness, find a home in
our hearts.
And when you can do this, you become
much less dependent on externalities.
You realize that you don't have to feed
off of the people around you.
Codependencies
drop away when you realize that you can
stand on your own two feet, that you're
balanced, upright, and you don't need to
lean into and feed off all the
relationships, whether material,
relational, societal, whatever it is.
You've got more interior uprightness,
and you're dwelling with that. And so
would suggest that all of you give some
time to thinking about this. What is
your vihara dhama? What is your tool for
living? Your inner refuge, an inner home
could be the breath. Learning when you
learn to befriend the breath, then it
really can become a place that you want
to return to. When you learn how to
develop friendliness internally, it
becomes a place of refuge that you can
return to. So what is your vihara
dhamma? What is your vihara dharma?
So I think that's all I'm going to say
and you can all reflect on that. Uh
because what we're going to do for the
rest of the time is invite our board to
come up because in addition to vihara
meaning home, both the external home of
a being, it's the internal home and it
is the traditional name for a monastery,
a vihara. And that's kind of the the big
news. Our our week was centered around
this homing in on a piece of property
and we've actually put in a purchase of
sale agreement on two parcels out in
Northbend. And so just want to invite
our our board. So, Steve and Jotic,
Carara, Kim and Allison,
and it's Nicole is sick, so she can't be
here, but would invite our board to come
up and we've actually got a slideshow
that we're going to put on to describe a
bit more of this vihara creation. So at
our ordinations, our preceptor says to
us, he says
that your going forth depends
is unreliance on the root of trees. You
should strive for the rest of your lives
at this. You should strive to be able to
practice at the root of trees. That's
the foundation. But he also allowed a
vihara, a place where monastics can
stay, a place where people can come and
practice and share in this this home
that we're hopefully going to be
creating. So with that, I think we'll
pass off to Steve.