It's a challenge to explain the Buddhist Precepts as something other than the Buddhist Ten Commandments. I don't know about Asian cultures, but here in the West we're very much imprinted with the idea that rules are, well, rules. So how can something look like a rule and not be a rule?
Western culture presents moral rules as absolutes that draw a sharp, clear line between good and evil, right and wrong. Even if you aren't religious, even if you are the seventh son of the seventh son of a lineage of atheists, your ideas about morality are still influenced by the idea that morality is about following rules. So, very often when I try to explain how one works with the Precepts in Buddhism, the explanation is greeted by a knowing smirk and the accusation that we follow only the rules that we like.
For this reason, I'm always on the lookout for practical explanations of how one practices the Precepts. And I have found a couple of new ones.
One is from Soto Zen teacher Brad Warner's new book, Sex, Sin, and Zen. I hope to write a review of this book eventually. For now I'll just say that this is not the book for anyone who is old enough to remember watching Dave Garroway and J. Fred Muggs on the Today Show, or wearing white gloves to church or putting butch wax on his flat top. If none of that rings any bells, however, you might like it.
Anyway, at one point (Chapter 13, "Getting Naked") the sensei says, "... none of the Buddhist precepts is ever to be used as a means for judging the behavior of others, only for judging your own." Excellent point, I think. The precepts are for personal work, for the effort to wake up, not for imposing on everyone to make them behave.
Elsewhere, at the blog The Existential Buddhist, Zen practitioner Seth Segall has a thoughtful post on the First Buddhist Precept. I recommend the entire post, but I just want to quote the conclusion:
This is what Buddhism asks us to do. To investigate the circumstances of our lives. To live with difficult questions and address them as best we can in the moment. To see how far we can go to refrain from killing in our lives, knowing that the extent to which we are willing to go may change and evolve as we proceed along the path.
Rather than being absolutes, Buddhist training precepts are invitations to explore how our lives change as we take on certain ethical challenges.
Thoughts?
During my first stay in a monastery i signed up for spiritual counseling… i had no idea what that was…for the sake of brevity.. i was asked to try to keep the precepts to which i said “I have no problem with those things. I am and always have been a good person. I don’t lie, steal or any of that.” she asked if i was willing for the next 6 months to read the 10 precepts once a day. I agreed. Within a few months I called the monastary and she answered the phone … and i shared with her “I have come to realize I keep none of the precepts!” Maybe i wasn’t blatently lieing or stealing or killing but after some time of reading them i would find myself in the midst of a sentence and something would ‘niggle’ me inside and i’d know ‘if i keep going this way i will mislead this person’… a lie… an untruth. and i came to find that all are interspersed…breaking one usually devastates them all… and that sometimes I must break a precept … the old example “If you are in world war two germany and you are hiding a jew and they knock on the door and ask if you are hiding jews.. what do you do. to say yes and not lie leads to their death .. to say no leads to breaking the precept about truth. I met with a travelling monk a couple of weeks ago and asked the question “can we ever really keep the precepts….perfectly?” Both she and I concluded it’s doubtful.
When a sailor uses the North Star for navigation purposes, does s/he expect to actually one day arrive at the North Star? Does this mean that using the North Star for navigation purposes is without value?
[Buddhist Journalist, Maria de Fatima Machado, or whatever you're calling yourself this week -- Message deleted. Hateful disparagement of Zen or any other school of Buddhism is not permitted, and not something a genuine Buddhist would do.]
I’m usually not one to jump between religions but my neigbor was a buddhist and after seeing how he lived and his beliefs I converted to buddhism.
It’s a really peaceful religion and those monks can kick butt too!
Buddhist “five precepts” is not really Buddhist.
If somebody can challenge it is not Buddha’s teaching.
Hindus were protecting these five precepts even before The Buddha. Jains are at an extreme in this regard.
Brahmins who wrote Buddhism should definitely have replaced this with what The Buddha taught as his five precepts.
Buddha’s teaching was all about mind and transforming it to Nirvana. Whatever is done to make the body live can be classified as sin! Whatever is done to make the mind live is merit or wholesome!
The mind continuously rolls to five aggregates in its effort to maintain the body through taking “food” through each of five senses. This results in continuous accumulation of sin (Karma) and extending Samsara.
Stopping the mind from rolling is possible only when it is detached from the body. When stopped there is no rolling to five aggregates and no Karma!
Buddha’s five precepts was to stop the five aggregates! It was to stop mind from attachment. This is done during the practice of practical NEP only. When one analyse how the mind takes “food” through five senses and rolls to five aggregates it can be easily seen the present day five precepts are a wrong explanation of Buddha’s teaching and even they are in a wrong order!
You can kick your mother without breaching any of the present day five precepts!
When to protect five precepts is also not given. They think its for whole day whole year.
Buddha’s five precepts are to be protected only when one practice the NEP. This slowly takes him to capability of maintaining detachment of mind for any desired time.
We started walking by first standing for few seconds as babies. Such little efforts made us capable of standing and walking hours and hours now.
Original teaching of The Buddha is not Buddhism of any form found today.
For readers: Keerthi writes, “This is done during the practice of practical NEP only.” NEP = Noble Eightfold Path. In most schools, keeping the Precepts is part of Right Action, the fourth aspect of the Path. Also, in most schools of Buddhism, nobody is trying to “detach” mind. Rather, we cultivate non-attachment, which is entirely different. And kicking your mother, or any other act of violent hostility to another living creature, runs afoul of most of the NEP.
The only way to perfectly keep the Precepts is full Enlightenment itself, the perfection of Bodhicitta. Until then we keep an approximation of them as best as we can. I find the Precepts to be refreshing, to the degree that I can keep them. I walk on the concrete to avoid smushing the bugs in the grass, but when a horrible single cockroach showed up on our kitchen counter I ushered him down the sink drain followed by a stream of water from the faucet. I prayed for him while doing this. I guess this is better than waiting for an infestation and setting out boatloads of traps. On the human level I have endured harm without harming back. I do draw a distinction between humans, who I can’t harm at all, and cockroaches, who I try not to harm, but sometimes may, with a prayer.
Im happy to find your information so quickly
I started a new blog called active bodhichitta. its based upon patrul rinpoche’s instruction to practice the teachings.
I wanted to see what would happen if i actually followed the sage’s great advice. So i commited myself to a year of practice on the Bodhicharyavatara and its commentary Nectar of Manjushri’s Speech
Also i have made a new Guest Blog. Where my friends and those who are practicing similarly can write a essay and i’ll publish it under guest blogs with your name and a link that you would like backlinked.
A certain master of the Precepts School asked Bankei: “Doesn’t you Reverance observe precepts?”
The Master said: “Originally what people call the precepts were all for wicked monks who broke the rules; for the man who abides in the Unborn Buddha Mind, there’s no need for precepts. The precepts were taught to help sentient beings-they weren’t taught to help buddhas! What everyone has from his parents innately in the Unborn Buddha Mind alone, so abide in the Unborn Buddha Mind. When you abide in the Unborn Buddha Mind, your a living Buddha here today, and that living Buddha certainly isn’t going to concoct anything like taking precepts, so there aren’t any precepts for him to take. To concoct anything like taking the precepts is not what’s meant by the Unborn Buddha Mind. When you abide in the Unborn Buddha Mind, there is no way you can violate the precepts. From the standpoint of the Unborn, the precepts too are secondary, peripheral concerns, in the place of the Unborn, there’s really no such thing as precepts…..”
found at…http://books.google.com/books?id=DEuYPXTBlN8C&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=Bankei+precepts&source=bl&ots=LF-t_kcFPN&sig=vFAvm1wzuRetYMBN_VAzoBV-WSQ&hl=en&ei=AR2GTNWbM4P6lwe2vtHjDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Bankei%20precepts&f=false
Chana
I agree Chana. Of course, before realizing the Unborn Buddha Mind we must follow the precepts which are a semblance of the natural wisdom and compassion of Buddha. Only when we wake up do we realize the dream to be merely a dream.
I agree with your interpretation of the precepts, but, by the way, some of us about to enter the seventh decade of this time around Samsara don’t have any problem appreciating Warner. I do remember Garroway, but I never wore white gloves to church and never had a flat-top!
JonJ — I usually don’t have trouble appreciating Warner, but sexuality as described in this book is way outside my experience. I don’t want to judge, but for me it’s a bit like reading about some exotic foreign place I have never visited myself (and don’t especially care to visit). For example, the interview with the Zen practicing porn star, which some reviewers thought was the best part of the book, was just alienating to me. I’m way outside Warner’s marketing niche, I’m afraid.
Of course, before realizing the Unborn Buddha Mind we must follow the precepts which are a semblance of the natural wisdom and compassion of Buddha.
So, in a sense, there are aspects of the path that lean heavily on something like a “fake it until you make it” strategy: of acting (with body, mind & speech) as though one already were Buddha.
This kind of skillful means might easily be confused with hypocrisy or insincerity — as though it were somehow dishonest to act in a way that isn’t a completely natural/spontaneous representation of how we’re, say, “really feeling.” But until I’m manifesting fully my Buddha Nature, the “me” who I think/feel is the “real me” is actually a distortion of my True Nature.
The thoughts, words and actions indicated by the Precepts — as I currently understand it — establish a kind of bodymind fengshui, an alignment which allows the nondual, impersonal energy of Buddha to more easily flow through. Once the portal is open, the alignment is more-or-less Self-sustaining.
So while the “faked” thoughts, words and actions that we employ as skillful means (in relation to the Precepts) are not, in and of themselves, Buddha — they can indeed prepare the ground for the emergence of that realization.
I believe that Buddhist is mind work, and everything that one does on the dharma path is most effective if accompanied by an understanding of the effect it will have on the mind.
The precepts, if adopted and followed, serve to reduce agitation, doubt, confusion and noise in the mind. Living by the precepts means that so much “should I or shouldn’t I” drama is eliminated — once simply doesn’t, and as time goes on the temptations lessen and cease. Hence mind remains calmer, clearer, and more focused.
I also believe that one needs to look at the precepts not only as what they tell us not to do, but at the flip side as well. Not killing means respecting and nurturing life, not lying means being honest, and so on.
Happy days to all! — Mark
Not killing
Not stealing
Not misusing sex
Not lying
Not abusing intoxicants
Wow, I don’t know how it got so complicated. These are known simply as “the five precepts”. I read the entire first page of the article and found these later. In old school (Theravada) Buddhism, the idea of anything being Buddhist without including these, isn’t really Buddhism. Period. The four noble truths, the eightfold path, and the five precepts as used with compassion for all beings is Buddhism.
The Five Precepts of Theravadin Buddhism are listed and briefly explained on the first and only page of the Precepts article, beginning with the eighth paragraph. The expanded Mahayana Precepts are listed and explained after that.
I like this article as what I call religion in my life has evolved through the years. There are some who say I wander and do not stick to what they think I should be because I was once there. They proudly proclaim that they remain the same. The xn song Faith of Our Fathers is a captivating prison for the inner soul that yearns to grow.
As to the rules I try to live by, no other can live by them, except me. It took years to understand this much.
Thank you,
Mila- I agree with the gist of what you are saying. By “semblance” I’m referring to “alignment”. I am a Brahmcharya layman, and follow the five precepts plus celibacy, and any compassionate way associated with wisdom. They don’t feel fake at all, and clear the clouds to allow Buddhanature to shine through. As a simple-living layman I don’t have the 250 or so rules and decorum of an ordained monk, and for that I am glad. For me, that would feel fake and onerous.
I’m not sure we need formal precepts or rules … a sincere trainee sitting will find the rising of compassion and understand the relatedness of all things and thus killing, lieing, etc all become harder to actually do … the precepts manifest themselves whether we are taught about them or not… from my experience someone with pure (or mostly pure) intent will find the way… and the way is compassion, love, wisdom manifested in daily activity.