May 2024

The upcoming Keeping of the Ten Precepts retreat at the Priory finds me reflecting on the Precepts.1 Actually, they are never far from my mind and heart, although it was not always so.

Like many people when they first come to training, I was seeking relief from my mental and emotional suffering. These were sourced primarily in conditioned expectations that were not met, resulting in a great deal of inner confusion and turmoil. From what I had read, it seemed that meditation might help with this existential dilemma. And, by a serendipitous series of not-chance events, I found my way to our practice of Serene Reflection Meditation.

Most of the “Zen” books I read to that point never even mentioned precepts (and, sadly, many still do not). So, when I started attending the meditation group in Seattle, I was a little put-off by how much they were emphasized. I would dismissively think along the lines of, “yeah yeah yeah don’t kill don’t steal don’t lie blah blah blah.” I conflated them with the rigid moralism I had been indoctrinated with and, consequently, had a knee-jerk resistance to them.

In helping us understand the deeper meaning of the Precepts, it was emphasized that the Buddhist Precepts are not “commandments” in the sense we may have been taught but, rather, simply descriptions of how Buddhas conduct themselves. The true purpose of our training—of our very life—is to harmonize body-and-mind with the Eternal. The Precepts are spiritual touchstones we can use to test the spiritual quality of our acts of body, speech, and thought: are they causing or reducing suffering? Are our actions contributing to reharmonization, or putting us out of tune with It?

As time went on I continued to read the Kyojukaimon with Dogen’s and Rev. Master Jiyu’s commentaries. The Precepts in their outer form are quickly memorized, but unpacking their meaning and applying them to daily life is the work of a lifetime. The more I read them and reflected on them and internalized them, the more I began to experience their influence in my actions. If I was about to break the Precept against being angry, for example, that Precept would “light up” in me, warning “don’t do it, don’t go there…it’s just going to cause suffering…”. Of course, the habit energy of past karma is hard to break, and too often my ego would override the good counsel I was being given by my Buddha Nature and indulge the breakage of the Precept. But it became increasingly painful to do so. As I think of it now, breaking Precepts does not condemn you to eternal damnation, but it does hurt your heart.

I began to realize that there is no aspect of life that is outside the purview of the Precepts. Again, life is lived by acts of body, speech, and thought, so actions that violate the spirit of the Precepts cause suffering and block our harmonization with the Eternal, and actions that manifest their spirit bring us in tune with It. It really is as simple as that…and as hard as that to practice, given our humanity. But the more we cultivate mindfulness of the Precepts the more we learn to respond more wisely rather than impulsively react from self-centeredness. Rather than being restrictive and limiting, the Precepts work to liberate us from the tyranny of the selfish self.

At some point I discovered The Scripture of the Buddha’s Last Teachings, in which He says:

There can be no greater endorsement of the need for the Precepts than the Buddha Himself saying, whilst I abided in this world there were indeed none different from These for Me.

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¹The Precepts, together with commentaries by Great Master Dogen and Rev. Master Jiyu, are available by clicking here.