The fifth Field of Zen Practice is living according to moral Precepts. The Buddhist precepts guide our ethical conduct, ensuring we minimize the harm we do to self and others. Such conduct is a prerequisite for the peace of mind we need for spiritual practice. The precepts also serve as valuable tools for studying the self; when we are tempted to break them, it alerts us to our self-attachment and reveals our persistent delusion of self as a separate and inherently-existing entity. Keeping the precepts familiarizes us with acting as if the self is empty of inherent existence. This episode is the first part of chapter five of my book-in-process, The Ten Fields of Zen: A Primer for Practitioners.
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Quicklinks to Article Content:
The Moral Precepts as the Lifeblood of the Buddhas
The Three Refuges as the First Three “Precepts”
The Three Pure Precepts: The Essence of Precept Practice
The Ten Grave Precepts: The Dharma of Everyday Life
Do not kill – cultivate and encourage life
Do not steal – honor the gift not yet given
The Moral Precepts as the Lifeblood of the Buddhas
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the moral precepts in Zen Buddhism. Honoring the precepts – trying to live by them, studying them, and holding them in common – is as essential to our practice as Zazen. The precepts are considered the lifeblood of the Buddhas, and have been carefully passed through the millennia, from teacher to student. This identification of the precepts with the essence of Zen can be seen in one of our formal documents from the Dharma Transmission ceremony, the Ketchimyaku. (See Episode 51 on Dharma Transmission for more.) A student hand-copies the names of every Dharma ancestor from Shakyamuni Buddha down to their own teacher (now over 85 names), connecting all the names with a red, flowing line. The line signifies an artery carrying blood, which in turn signifies the transmission of the Dharma as manifested in the precepts. The teacher then adds a verse saying the precepts have now been given to the student, who is then empowered to formally give them to others.
Like most religions, Zen sees ethical behavior as a prerequisite for peace of mind and spiritual growth. Except in rare, extenuating circumstances, killing a human being, stealing, and lying are incompatible with practice. There is no excuse for being self-centered and manipulative in human relationships or abusing intoxicants. You severely constrain your ability to practice by being selfish or careless in your speech, stingy with your resources, or reckless in expressing your anger. Unethical behavior agitates your mind, reinforces self-centered habits, and creates conflict and chaos in your life. Expecting to reap the rewards of spiritual practice while behaving unethically or carelessly is like hoping to cross an ocean while drilling holes in your boat.
The practical value of living by the Zen precepts is inestimable, but the goal of our practice is to want to live by them, and ultimately for our behavior to naturally be in accord with them. Our precepts describe the behavior of a Buddha – an awakened, liberated being. Such a being recognizes they are empty of enduring, inherent, independent self-nature. They recognize they arise interdependently with all existence. They are no longer caught in the self-centered drama that causes us to grasp, reject, manipulate, impose, or avoid. Generosity, good will, kindness, patience, acceptance, and compassion manifest simultaneously with awakening.
Don’t think, though, that trying to live by the precepts means you attempt to become a Buddha through sheer force of will. There is no utility in setting up an impossible ideal and then constantly judging yourself inadequate in comparison. Instead, you let the precepts inform and transform you by doing your best and then paying careful attention to when you break them – or are tempted to – while refraining from beating yourself up about it. The precepts then become a karmic mirror for you, showing you your remaining self-attachment.
As Dogen said, “to study Buddhism is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the self.”[i] Studying the self – your own direct experience, your life – is your entry gate to achieving some taste of what a Buddha awakens to. All the Buddhist teachings you study must be explored within your own experience for them to have the desired effect, and the precepts are an indispensable practice tool because they describe how the teachings manifest in your everyday life and relationships.
Therefore, the Zen moral precepts are practical guidelines for leading a life conducive to spiritual growth and an invaluable practice tool, but their merit doesn’t end there. In addition to the purposeful functions of trying to live by the precepts, there is also a goalless way to engage them. If the precepts describe the behavior of a Buddha, why would you not want to live by them as best you can, regardless of whether you end up consciously reaping any rewards from your practice? Over time, though, acting more like a Buddha changes you, whether or not you feel your behavior is sincere or comes naturally – once again proving that the purposeful and goalless aspects of our practice are not actually separate.
The Three Refuges as the First Three “Precepts”
We say there are 16 precepts in Zen, called the “Bodhisattva Precepts.” You might be surprised to find that the first three “precepts” are the Three Refuges[ii] – taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. “Buddha” means the historical Shakyamuni Buddha and other enlightened beings in the past, but also refers to your own Buddha-Nature and capacity to awaken. “Dharma” means the teachings of the Buddha and subsequent Buddhist masters, but also refers to the truth itself, however it manifests. “Sangha” means the community of Buddhists, but also all people and forms of life who support you in your practice.
In Buddhism, “refuge” means to entrust yourself – to commit yourself with the understanding that doing so will be beneficial and will give you something to rely on. The process of entrusting yourself to the Three Treasures begins with an acknowledgment that you aspire to live with greater wisdom, compassion, and skillfulness. This entails acknowledging your past mistakes and consciously taking responsibility for your behavior. We say this contrition verse:
All my past and harmful karma,
Born from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion,
Through body, speech, and mind,
I now fully avow.
Karma is the effect of your past actions, and we say it’s beginningless because it’s impossible to trace the chain of causes and effects – carried through time by body, speech, and mind – back to a point where you can finally lay the blame. Your own harmful behavior and delusions did not arise out of nowhere but were conditioned by the people who have impacted your life, by your society, and by the unfolding of history. Those who have harmed you or encouraged your delusions were likewise affected by forces outside themselves.
Even if you feel you are to blame for some of your past decisions, there is no inherent, enduring, independent self-nature within you to blame. Instead of assigning blame and thereby placing responsibility outside yourself (even if that “outside” person is a flawed “self” the judging “I” can objectify), you take responsibility for your actions from here on out. “Avow” mean to confess freely and openly, and when you do this, you essentially say, “Whatever came before, the buck stops here.”[iii]
Once you have taken responsibility for yourself and decided you’d like to do better, you are in an open and ready state to embark on the path of practice. Your Bodhicitta has arisen, and it’s advised that you entrust yourself to the Three Treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha:
I take refuge in the Buddha,
I take refuge in the Dharma,
I take refuge in the Sangha.
Taking refuge doesn’t have to be a dramatic or formal act of commitment, although at a certain point you may want to make such a vow. At first, you entrust yourself just a little bit at a time. You’re taking refuge simply by sitting zazen, studying some Dharma teachings, or exploring what it’s like to practice in Sangha. Buddhism never asks for a final, irrevocable commitment in any case; you are supposed to keep your eyes open all the way through your life of practice to make sure the path you are walking is, indeed, beneficial. Our practice is a lifelong process; we do not say the contrition verse and take refuge only once, we do it over and over, consciously and willingly.
The Three Pure Precepts: The Essence of Precept Practice
The next three Bodhisattva Precepts as follows:
Cease from harmful action – release all self-attachment.
Do only good – take selfless action.
Do good for others – embrace all things and conditions.
The Three “Pure” Precepts are called “pure” because they contain nothing extra. These bare-bones recommendations describe the essence of bodhisattva behavior, which involves not only refraining from harm but manifesting generosity and compassion.
The Three Pure Precepts beautifully encapsulate the process of behavior change. First, once you recognize something you are doing is causing harm to yourself or to others, you examine your behavior carefully. Inevitably, you will find some kind of self-attachment at the root of your motivation. The moment you manage to stop the action, to refrain from going along with your karmic momentum, you are also releasing the self-attachment driving it.
Ceasing from harmful action isn’t something you do once and for all, unfortunately. That’s not the nature of karma, or behavioral cause-and-effect. The ceasing and releasing can only happen in this moment, and then again and again as the opportunity arises. In fact, you are unlikely to be able to stop habitual behavior at first but will only recognize what happened after the fact – sometimes days later. After a time, you’ll notice right afterwards, and then while the harmful behavior is unfolding, or even right before your behavior begins, but you’ll still be unable to stop it. Fortunately, just the intention to follow the precepts and noticing your behavior will have an effect, and eventually you’ll have a moment of freedom before the negative habit unfolds. You can choose not to do the same thing over again.
Once you have the freedom of choice, it’s time to engage the second Pure Precept, “Do only good – take selfless action.” Cessation is not enough for a bodhisattva. How can you respond to life in a different way – a way that is not self-centered, a way that brings benefit to self and others? The answer to this question will depend on the situation and can only be arrived at through trial and error. Having discarded an old habit, it takes time to discern what is good and selfless.
The third Pure Precept encourages you to go out and engage with the world, to make a generous contribution of your life energy, to embrace all things and conditions. Cessation isn’t enough for a bodhisattva, and neither is simply knowing what would be good in a theoretical sense. Through practice, we form new, positive habits.
The Ten Grave Precepts: The Dharma of Everyday Life
The Three Pure Precepts contain nothing extra, but the Ten Grave (serious or weighty) Precepts get specific enough that they will arise in your mind frequently in your daily life.
Central to the precepts is the idea of intention. There is a karmic result of doing any of the behaviors covered by the precepts no matter your intention – after all, there are karmic results even if you accidentally kill someone, steal something, or say something untrue. However, the worst repercussions are generally from breaking a precept deliberately, followed by breaking it consciously while making lots of excuses for yourself. The negative results might be somewhat less if you break a precept because you are carried along by habit energy and can’t stop yourself, or out of ignorance, but these circumstances don’t mean you’re not responsible for your behavior. The only legitimate reason to break a precept is out of compassion – for example, killing to defend someone, or telling a “white” lie to spare someone’s feelings. You need to be extremely careful about such decisions, though, as there is often some self-interest being served through the action as well. Also, breaking precepts out of compassion still has karmic consequences, even if you decide those consequences are worth it.
Each precept can be interpreted at several levels. The first level is quite literal, guiding your concrete, observable behaviors of body and speech. The fact that there are more subtle levels to each precept does not detract from the importance of following the precepts literally. The second level is mental, pointing toward the underlying attitude behind the precept – the “spirit” of the precept, you might say. You can easily refrain from breaking a precept literally while breaking the spirit of it in your own mind and heart. The third level of each precept is – for lack of a better word – spiritual, pointing toward the behavior of a Buddha. If you are awake to the Reality of Emptiness and Interdependence, the desire to break precepts doesn’t even arise… which means any resistance to a precept is a sign of lingering delusion or self-attachment. It’s best to try to feel grateful and curious about such information, rather than judgmental or frustrated, because noticing our limitations allows us to practice and grow.
For each of the Ten Grave Precepts,[iv] I will briefly offer a literal, mental, and spiritual interpretation:
Do not kill – cultivate and encourage life.
Literal Level: At the most basic, literal level, this precept means not to take human life. Certainly, to do this even indirectly or accidentally has severe karmic consequences on us and others. It is valuable to extend the circle of non-harming beyond human beings, though, because killing any being or thing usually encourages us to disidentify with it and devalue it, seeing our own needs and wants as more important than its continued life. Many Buddhists are vegetarian for this reason, though in Zen we generally regard this as a personal choice. In any case, you are encouraged to be thoughtful about and/or grateful to anything you choose to kill.
Mental Level: What does it mean to kill, or fail to cultivate and encourage life, at a mental level? Whenever you would like to wish someone or something out of existence – out in the world, or within you – you are breaking the spirit of the first Grave Precept. When you disdain treating someone or something with respect, you are breaking this precept. You can kill someone’s enthusiasm or starve your own creativity. You can commit inner violence as well, going to war with parts of yourself; this is never a sustainable answer and is incompatible with the spirit of practice.
Spiritual Level: A thought of unequivocal rejection or an inclination to withhold support for life reveals the persistence of your self-delusion at the most fundamental and primal level. This is very difficult to overcome, and to some extent we will all retain a measure of the self-protective urge as long as we are alive. However, with insight and practice you can significantly reduce the amount of killing in your life.
Do not steal – honor the gift not yet given.
Literal Level: Literally, this precept means not to steal things from other people. It might be read as preserving the status quo in terms of the allocation of society’s resources, but that’s not the intention. Instead, you are instructed not to steal because of the way it undermines human relationships and encourages you to place your own self-interests over the feelings and needs of others. Stealing encourages deception and other disruptive and disrespectful activities, and getting caught and punished for stealing will wreak havoc in your life – something very counterproductive when it comes to spiritual practice. In other words, you’re welcome to advocate for societal change, but in the meantime, follow the rules. If your need is so extreme that you must steal, then you are breaking the precept out of compassion. Most stealing, however, is not based on real need but on desire, or on a wish to demonstrate alienation or disrespect.
Mental Level: Mentally, you break the precept of not stealing when you push a situation to get what serves your self-interest, particularly when it compromises the interests or well-being of others. Of course, you may choose to take actions that are aimed at results you would like, or even feel you need. At what point does such action become pushing, or trying to obtain a gift that the universe doesn’t seem ready to give to you? There’s no hard and fast rule here, but you probably know the feeling when you have pitted your desire for something against whatever is happening around you. Chances are, caught up in your desire, you go ahead and do what seems necessary to get what you want, even if that means being irresponsible, rude, careless, obsessive, manipulative, or less-than-honest.
Spiritual Level: The inclination to steal springs from a sense of existential lack. No amount of material possessions, power, status, comfort, or exciting experiences is going to satiate that ultimate sense of fear that our lives are insufficient, or that we will end up painfully deprived. Fortunately, practice can completely change your orientation to the world – helping you feel unconditionally complete and allowing you to appreciate all the gifts that have already been given.
I’m going to leave off there for now, but I’ll release part two of this chapter in a few days. I hope you’ll tune in, thanks for listening!
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Endnotes
[i] In his fascicle “Genjokoan,” Okumura, Shohaku. Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010.
[ii] Why do we call the Three Refuges “precepts”? Just like the more obvious rule-type precepts governing behavior, the refuges are guidelines meant to help us live an ethical life and awaken.
[iii] “The buck stops here” is an Americanism that means you stop passing the responsibility on to someone else. It may have originated from the game of poker, where a buckskin knife might be passed to indicate when it was a player’s turn to be the card dealer, and could sometimes be passed along if the player didn’t want to deal. According to Mitford M. Mathews, ed., A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1951), I, pp. 198–99 (via Wikipedia).
[iv] These are versions of the precepts created by Kannon-Do Zen center called the “Clear Mind Precepts.”
