Lzh Mg Bu Pm Sk 15Lowered Eyes (2nd)
Pāli / Sanskrit:Dutiyaokkhittacakkhu
Save your scripture progress
Create a free account to save scriptures, track progress, and continue your daily learning path.
Lowered Eyes (2nd) — Commentary
Background
The Dutiyaokkhittacakkhu Sutta (Lowered Eyes, Second Occurrence) belongs to the Vinaya Piṭaka of the Pāli Canon, an important part of Theravāda Buddhist teaching. This sutta is presented within the context of the training rules of the Sangha — the community of Buddhist monks and nuns.
The Vinaya Piṭaka does not consist of rigid prohibitions, but rather practical guidelines intended to nurture a pure and luminous mind. Each training rule (sikkhāpada) arose from a specific event in the history of the Sangha, and was established by the Buddha and his disciples to preserve the practice of the Dharma and maintain harmony within the community of practitioners.
The Lowered Eyes Sutta (2nd) concerns the practice of sense restraint, particularly with regard to visual observation. This is one of the fundamental steps in practice for developing mindfulness and alleviating mental defilements such as sensual desire, ignorance, and mental dullness.
Main Content
This sutta teaches that the governing of the eyes and visual perception is not a matter of rigid correctness or arbitrary imposition, but rather a conscious cultivation. When a practitioner trains, one must pay careful attention to the manner of one's looking. "Lowering the eyes" (okkhittacakkhu) does not mean one must constantly cast one's gaze to the ground as a merely symbolic gesture, but rather refers to the mental discipline associated with the act of seeing.
According to the Theravāda tradition, when a monk or nun perceives an object, the mind gives rise to automatic reactions. If left unchecked, these reactions lead to sensual passion, greed, or erroneous mental proliferation. Through "lowering the eyes" (indriyasamvara — restraint of the sense faculties), the practitioner learns to observe the world without being swept away into streams of afflictive thought.
The Dutiyaokkhittacakkhu Sutta earnestly emphasizes that this is the second training pertaining to this theme, suggesting that there are multiple levels of learning with respect to the restraint of visual perception. Each level calls for greater diligence, ardent effort (viriya), and deeper mindfulness (sati).
🌏 The Buddhist canon is vast — some sūtras (such as comparative Vinaya across schools, or untranslated Tibetan-canon texts) have to this day NEVER been translated into Vietnamese or English by anyone, scholars included. Rather than leave it blank, Inti AI offers a FAITHFUL summary grounded in the tradition — from the sūtra's title, origin and essence — so you can still reach this rare part of the treasury. Whenever an original translation exists, the app shows the original first.
Translations belong to the translator/source credited above. The bilingual compilation, presentation, and AI translations compiled by Inti are © Inti Foundation. Please attribute when quoting; do not bulk-copy or use commercially without permission.