Why do Buddhists take vows?
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
Question for Geshe-la
Geshe Pema Tsering; Geshe-la's answer:
"Not only Buddhists take vows; followers of other religious traditions also take vows. They vow to restrain from misconduct. That's what 'taking vows' is, to restrain from bad actions, harmful activities, to restrain from non-virtue.
In Buddhism there are many different classes of vows; there are fully-ordained monks' and nuns' vows, novice vows, lay practitioners' vows.
Vows are taken not only to restrain from harmful actions, but also to accomplish their opposites - beneficial actions. And the reason we do so is because the result of harmful actions - non-virtues - is suffering, and the result of beneficial actions - virtuous actions - is happiness.
And, as Buddhists, we take vows from our Lamas, conceived as one with the Buddha, to quicken our realization of Enlightenment, so that we can best benefit sentient beings."
Source
http://www.buddhahouse.org/Teachings-Archive/why-do-buddhists-take-vows.html