An important component of Chan Buddhist practice is the practice of the Precepts. For lay practitioners the five lay precepts are the basis. There are several other formulations such as eight precepts, ten precepts, Bodhisattva precepts, and the monastic precepts which are counted in the hundreds. I shall leave those for another day and focus here on the basic five lay precepts of: not killing; not stealing; no sexual misconduct; no lying; and no use of alcohol or intoxicants. Behind these rather bald statements there is great subtlety and depth and this is to be explored.
Though precepts can sound somewhat similar to Christian commandments, it is important to understand that they are very different. In particular, these are not given by a god with the sanction of possibly going to hell as a sinner if they are broken. Instead, these are guidelines voluntarily and optionally adopted by practitioners because the practitioners themselves consider they may be helpful to their practice and to their lives. It is open to the practitioner to decide whether to take the precepts and how to interpret and make use of them.
There are two main aspects to the precepts. Firstly, and most obviously, they provide a behavioural code which will reduce the harm that you cause to yourself and others, leading to greater peace and harmony for yourself and for society. Also, adopting such a code may prompt you to reflect on your behaviour and your values and develop your own behavioural and moral code.
Secondly, the precepts act as a practice which helps in the cultivation of mindful awareness. Having taken a precept, you have a spur to be more mindful in order to notice whether you break it or are at risk of breaking it. Furthermore, having noticed yourself at risk of breaking it, you may be able to go a step further and observe the habitual tendencies in action, speech and thought, which lead in the direction of breaking the precept. You may go yet another step and see through the basis of these habits and be able to release them. This is potentially a deep practice, going beyond ‘mere’ good behaviour as it leads into a powerful investigation of mind and release of its fetters.
A key aspect of our practice is to cultivate both concentration and wisdom in all circumstances – the cultivation of Mahayana Samadhi. Attempting to maintain the precepts is an important support in this. Being motivated to be aware of our present thought and action improves our concentration. Seeing and releasing our habitual tendencies increases our wisdom.
We usually think of precepts as practices for our daily life, but they are also applicable during other practice such as on retreat and at any other time. Let’s look at each of them in turn.
1. The Precept of Not Killing
What are we not to not kill? Immediately we see that there is scope for personal interpretation in these precepts. Usually we consider that at the least it means not to kill humans, but is that all that it means? We could make it easy for ourselves by saying that we consider this precept to refer only to humans, and that we have never killed anyone, we don’t intend to do so, and we don’t consider there is any real likelihood of that changing. We might then regard the precept as ‘completed’ and tick the box and ignore it thereafter.
But what use is that? Your interpretation of the precept in this way has met the minimum requirements of society but has not achieved anything by way of stimulating your cultivation of mindful awareness, and has not revealed or challenged any of your habitual tendencies. Better to interpret the precept more deeply, so that it becomes more meaningful and challenges you.
What about not killing animals? If you interpret the precept in that way does that mean that you must become vegetarian or vegan, or do you consider it alright to use animal products where the animal has been killed by someone else? Some Buddhists interpret this one way and others another way.
And what do you understand as an animal? How about insects, bacteria, viruses? You kill insects when you walk around or drive, and you kill bacteria and viruses when you cook food. How about not killing plants, including vegetables? Will you eat only rocks? But then you would be starving and killing yourself, a human!
This precept is not so simple, unless you limit it to not killing humans which as explained above is not really helpful for you. How do you interpret it, what is meaningful and stretches you?
There is more. We can read it as including not killing hope, joy, etc. This can refer to the hope and joy both of others, and of yourself. Are you someone who is overcritical of yourself or others and in that way destroys hope, leading to hopelessness and giving up? Consider this in relation to your life and relationships in general, and also in relation to your practice. Do you tend to give up, feeling hopeless, when practice is difficult or seems not to be progressing? Do you commit and apply energy to practice, or do you zone out and opt out?
We can also express it positively: that you commit to supporting life, supporting the environment, being aware of your impact on the environment with the attendant risk of killing all life on the planet. Looking at it in all these extended ways gives the precept an edge to make it meaningful and useful for you.
Mindfulness
You can see how this (and other) precepts are wide open to deep and subtle interpretation and extension, and it is essential to do so because a tickbox approach is simply not helpful for your practice. Consider each precept and find an interpretation which is meaningful and significant for you, and which challenges you in some way so that you are stimulated to cultivate clearer awareness to support maintaining your precept.
It may seem difficult or even impossible to achieve your stated precept. But if it is significant for you then you will be motivated to at least try your best and this will require you to cultivate continuous mindfulness to minimise errors and lapses. How can you hope to keep a precept if you are not even aware of your activity both bodily and mentally?
Mindfulness is important to give you an opportunity to keep your precept. It enables you to witness, understand, and release your habitual tendencies which generate reactivity which may lead you to break your precept. For example you may discover a tendency to kill hope by being inappropriately negative, based on negative life experiences in the past, or to damage the environment through ignorance or selfishness by being careless about your consumption and waste disposal.
Remember, you are not doing this for God or for Buddha, you are doing it because you have reflected on the precept and decided that you want to keep it to the best of your ability because you see the significance of it. This practice is a well trodden path, well tested by others, and applicable to you also.
2. The Precept of Not Stealing
Here is another with potential for a tickbox approach – I’m neither burglar, robber, nor shoplifter – tick! But maybe you can be greedy, taking more than you need and thereby denying it to someone else – this can apply locally or on a planetary level. Maybe you have a tendency to steal time, wasting the time of others. Maybe you steal the attention of others, diverting them from what is important for them, maybe even distracting them from their practice. Maybe you also steal from yourself, wasting your own opportunities.
On a retreat do you keep the rules strictly or do you break and bend them thereby disturbing others? Do you waste your own practice opportunities, delaying your own Bodhisattva cultivation, and thereby stealing from others as you leave the cushion less cultivated, less helpful and less open to others than might have been the case?
Also consider this precept in positive terms such as being generous, and giving of yourself in compassionate activity. Compassionate activity is an act of generosity to others, for example giving of your own time and attention, and is also a valuable practice for you as it highlights and confronts your self-concerned tendencies. Do you steal time by wasting your own time when it could be put to the service of others?
For most of us the self is treated as primary, with everything else taking second place or being at our service. How compassionate can you be, while sustaining a sense of self as primary? How much of yourself can you give, how do you set the limit? Even setting it at 100% doesn’t work – you need to look after yourself as well as others – so how do you determine your limits? Committing to a giving approach triggers you to reflect on such matters and to see how you relate to others.
3. The Precept of No Sexual Misconduct
This is a very individual precept, which is personal, culture specific, and context specific, as individual and cultural rules vary considerably. As a starting point most people would take it to mean to do no behaviour which harms self or others. It can also be expressed positively in terms of cultivating loving relationships, being respectful and honouring others. It can be extended to avoiding other forms of lust – for gadgets, possessions, trinkets, and self-stimulating acquisitiveness in general.
Of course this is a very important precept in our everyday life, but it is also relevant on retreat, where long meditation periods may be distracted by wandering thoughts in the form of erotic fantasies. It is natural that these may arise, but how do you respond? Do you let them go, or do you hold on to them and indulge them for enjoyment or for distraction from difficulties such as leg pain in sitting?
4. The Precept of Not Lying
On the face of it this might seem a straightforward precept, but of course there are gradations in lies hence the phrase “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. The gradations make this an interesting precept to explore and develop.
What about “white lies”, where you may tell an untruth in a situation where it does no harm and indeed may be beneficial in some way, such as protecting someone. If an assassin is seeking their victim and asks you where to find them, will you answer truthfully and be implicated in the death of their victim, or will you lie and divert the assassin?
This illustrates another interesting feature of practising with the precepts – they may conflict and situations can arise where you have to break one to keep another. The precepts are not absolute rules or commandments, they are guidelines. You could say that the purpose of the precepts is not to keep them but just to have them! Having the precept triggers you to monitor and reflect on your thoughts and behaviour and this is more important than adhering blindly to a rule. Still, we should know that like any other action breaking a precept has consequences and we may need to make recompense subsequently or untangle confusion that we have caused.
The correct response to any situation is not always obvious, and though we use our best judgement we are fallible and may fail to act appropriately. Doing other than what we consider to be most appropriate is even more likely to be wrong! Do what you honestly consider to be best and most appropriate, guided by the precepts, but have the humility to know that your actions and choices may still be imperfect. Continue to maintain attention so that you can act appropriately subsequently e.g. take corrective action.
Compassionate action is again an example we can consider. We could seek to excuse ourselves from compassionate activity on the grounds that we are not yet enlightened and so our actions will inevitably be distorted by self-concern. But we don’t opt out, we do our best knowing that it may not work out and so we maintain mindfulness and take further appropriate actions subsequently.
The positive approach to this precept would be to emphasise honesty, openness and truthfulness.
In regard to our practice, are we lying to ourselves? Perhaps we are, if we are using practice to hide from difficulties, seeking refuge in a dark quiet cave disconnected from the world. It is not uncommon that people misuse methods of practice, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes deliberately, overemphasising ‘calming the mind’ to shut down the mind or some corners of it and thereby overlook and deny various issues. This precept points to the need to confront ourselves in our practice, to open ourselves up to the unresolved issues that lead to distortions in our thought and behaviour. How can we keep precepts and be aware of our effect on the world if our prime concern is in acquiring and preserving a quiet mind by the method of restricting our awareness? How can we be said to be serious practitioners if we misuse practice to avoid confronting our habitual tendencies and do not investigate mind so as to penetrate to the nature of our being - where is the truth in that?
Precepts can be challenging. That is their purpose, not a tickbox exercise. Use them to look deeply into your attitudes and behaviours, revealing your obstructions and giving you an opportunity to dissolve them. Confront your self with truth, openness and honesty, stop hiding and denying. Say yes, “I have done that”, “This happened to me”, or “I am experiencing this emotion”.
5. The Precept of No Use of Alcohol or Intoxicants
Though expressed negatively in terms of avoiding alcohol and intoxicants, more positively this precept is about cultivating and maintaining a clear mind. A clear mind supports deepening of practice but even a slightly clouded mind is less able to notice and release your more subtle habitual tendencies. The goal of a practitioner is a completely clear mind so why make it harder for yourself by chemically clouding the mind? Another aspect of this is that having a clouded mind makes it more likely that you will break the other precepts and do harm in other ways.
It is common that social and other pressures make this precept harder to uphold than the others. In social situations you may feel self-conscious and uncomfortable standing out as the only one refusing alcohol, and those with you may feel judged as their drinking is being highlighted by your abstinence. You may have become habituated to alcohol, perhaps using it to cope with some form of distress in your life, or it may be simply that you like the taste and drink it for enjoyment.
It is advised not to take a precept if not intending to keep it, because to take it and immediately disregard it devalues and weakens the whole system of precepts and may diminish your observance and respect for the other precepts. Acknowledging their intention to continue drinking alcohol, some people decide not to take the fifth precept.
Instead of the fifth Buddhist precept some take a ‘personal precept’ worded a little differently – for example not to ‘overuse’, or not to ‘abuse’ alcohol and intoxicants. For those who have a tendency to abuse/overuse this may be a useful halfway-house precept, encouraging them to monitor and modify their consumption. But for others it risks creating an easy tickbox, setting a ‘target’ which is already achieved, i.e. institutionalising the status quo. There is no challenge in this, no development, no incentive to observe one’s thoughts and actions and cultivate mindfulness, and meantime the mind is still being clouded by mild or moderate alcohol use – it is a dead precept.
However, some drinkers may go ahead and take the fifth precept, thereby expressing a commitment to reduce and stop their use of alcohol. They are not intending to break the precept, though they take it in full awareness that circumstances will likely arise when social or other pressures may lead them to break it, such as trying to avoid creating social discomfort for others. By taking the precept they are making themselves more acutely aware of their response to such pressures, and how they sometimes use these as excuses. In this way the precept is useful for them, in helping them to reduce their intake and improve their clarity of mind, as they realise that they do not need to drink so much or so often as they previously told themselves was the case.
If you take the precept, with the intention of keeping it but accepting there may be some failure along the way, this means that you will monitor yourself and at least minimise your intake. Master Sheng Yen used to say, “it is better to have a precept to break than to have no precept!” A precept taken into the mind is like a grain of sand placed in an oyster. It niggles away and is not easily ignored. An oyster may respond by producing a pearl. Perhaps in your case you may produce a Buddha!
We can also consider other forms of intoxicant – the mind can be intoxicated by entertainment media such as videogames, TV and films, obsession with acquiring possessions, and many other such things which take over and possess the mind. Sometimes we submit to these deliberately, with the intention of the mind being taken over as a form of escapism – but is this the action of a serious practitioner? I referred earlier to how some practitioners shut off their mind in quietistic states, either deliberately or as a result of misunderstanding the practice. Here we see the opposite, the practitioner making the mind busy with the intention of creating distraction. Whether busy or dull, these are examples of a clouded mind, a mind which does not see clearly.
One specific trap for practitioners is to lust after and become intoxicated by meditational experiences – chasing experiences, generating pride regarding experiences, holding on to memories of experiences. When in this state, remember Master Sheng Yen’s advice and say to yourself, “this is not what I am seeking”. Drop the attachment, clear the mind, and continue your practice.
Epilogue
We say that your practice is protected by precepts, and perhaps you can now see how this phrase fits. Your practice is also challenged by precepts, with no allowance for laziness, opting out, or slipshod and time-wasting practice.
Taking precepts seriously and with depth protects your practice. Most Buddhists observe at least the five precepts, and of course precepts are also open to non-Buddhists – behavioural guidance and aids to mindtraining are useful for all. They are optional, but useful.
Even considering a precept and then not taking it may have some effect! If you make a choice not to take a particular precept you may carry with you the memory of having chosen not to take it, reflecting on that decision as you go through the events of your life, noticing occasions when upholding the precept would have been more appropriate for you than you initially suspected.
As your cultivation of concentration and wisdom progresses, establishing your everyday Samadhi, you will find it jarring when you observe yourself contemplating or engaged in certain actions, or experiencing impulses to act in certain ways. Upholding of the precepts may become automatic and effortless, but until that process has matured, our lives and our practice can benefit from the support provided by consciously and deliberately practising the traditional Buddhist precepts.
