2 Chronicles 13:11 · World English Bible
and they burn to Yahweh every morning and every evening burnt offerings and sweet incense. They also set the show bread in order on the pure table; and the lamp stand of gold with its lamps, to burn every evening; for we keep the instruction of Yahweh our God, but you have forsaken him.
Vatta: Daily duty A vatta is the round of small chores kept up without anyone asking. Morning and evening someone lifts the bread onto the table, trims the wicks, sets the incense going, and does the same tomorrow.
From the Buddhism reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
BUDDHISM
Vatta: Daily duty A vatta is the round of small chores kept up without anyone asking. Morning and evening someone lifts the bread onto the table, trims the wicks, sets the incense going, and does the same tomorrow. Holiness here looks like housekeeping, and its whole strength is that nothing gets skipped on the days no one is watching.
Cāga: Relinquishment Cāga is opening the hand and leaving it open. A burnt offering is the plainest form of it: the incense and the animal go up as smoke and nothing comes back down to the one who brought them. Twice a day the giving is finished before the smoke clears, and the giver walks home with empty hands.
Appamāda: Heedfulness A lamp left alone goes out; no flame feeds itself. So the golden lampstand is lit every evening, never once for good, which is exactly appamāda, care that does not lapse. Darkness arrives daily and has to be met daily, and attention runs on the same schedule.
Sīlabbata-parāmāsa: Gripping rites as what saves Abijah stands on the hill with two armies drawn up below him, and the proof he offers for his side is bread, incense, and lamps. Holding a ritual to be the guarantee is the fetter, and the grip closes right there, when trimmed wicks become an argument about who will win. The lamps are still worth trimming; they simply do not decide a battle.
Māna: Conceit "We keep, you have forsaken" sorts the world into two columns and puts the speaker at the top of one. Māna is that measuring, and it arrives in the same breath as the account of faithful service, riding on it. Once an offering is used to settle a ranking, its object has quietly moved from God to the neighbor across the valley.
Buddhism lens
Is there something good you do that has quietly turned into a way of being better than someone?
Handle the great while it is still small, do the difficult while it is still easy, because everything large in the world began as something small. The daily unglamorous thing is the whole of it.
Epictetus said do not talk about your philosophy, embody it, the way sheep do not bring the shepherd grass to show how much they ate. The moment your practice becomes an argument about who is better, it has stopped being practice.
The sages warned against serving in order to receive a reward or a reputation, and against making your learning a crown to strut with. The same act, done for status, quietly changes who it is for.
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Buddhism