Discussion Facilitator: Bruce Cantwell. Saturday, February 7, 2020.
Excerpts from Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel M. Ingram ("The Three Trainings Revisited")
"The three trainings provide a great framework for thinking about spiritual work, a framework that can help us maintain a clear and empowering way of thinking about what we are doing…
"The scope of the first training, morality, is the ordinary world, the conventional world, the world that we are all familiar with before we even consider more specialized topics such as meditation. The goal is to think, speak, and act in ways that are conducive to the reduction of suffering as well as the welfare of ourselves and others. The scope of the second training, concentration, is to focus on very specific and limited objects of meditation and thus attain specific altered states of consciousness that cultivate positive mental qualities and reduce negative ones. The scope of the third training, that of insight or wisdom, is to shift to perceiving reality at the level of individual sensations, perceive their three characteristics, and thus attain profound insights into the nature of reality and realize stages of awakening…
”I thought it would be fun to envision the three trainings as very cartoonish, westernized, postmodern characters who still have a pretty confused and conflicted conception of the Buddhist path and have them critique each other and then talk with each other about ways that they could reinforce each other. I will do this in the form of a very short play in one act. I have exaggerated and dichotomized their issues with each other for comic effect. Realize that the humorous aspects of the play arise from gross misunderstandings of the three trainings, misunderstandings that are very common as the teachings of the Buddha come into the West, and also persist to some degree in their countries of origin. Hopefully, you will see through the humor to the important points being illustrated.”
(For the fun stuff, scroll down to "The Play")
https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-i-the-fundamentals/8-the-three-trainings-revisited/