I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen Sunrise Sit on Wednesday, September 25, 2024. I recording follows.

I thought we’d reflect on the Five Remembrances briefly this morning:

This verse, the Five Remembrances, is part of a discourse attributed to the Buddha that’s titled “Subjects of Contemplation.” The Buddha wanted us to actively contemplate old age, illness, death, and loss.

I must admit I found this verse rather stark and arresting the first time I chanted it. Pow! Well, there it is. It seems Buddhism doesn’t sugar coat things.

This verse made Buddhism seem so very different than other religions and wisdom traditions. Why this strong emphasis on human fragility and contingency?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Siddhartha Gautama was a prince whose father apparently went to great lengths to make his life extra pleasant—to the point of insulating him as much as possible from the realities of old age, illness, and death.

As some of you have heard me say recently, Buddhism begins with overprotective parenting. I wonder whether Buddhism even would exist if it weren’t for the Siddhartha’s father’s well intended but overreaching efforts to insulate his son from life’s harsh realities. It seems that left Siddhartha even more haunted by them.

Most of us have existential questions. Most of us experience angst about old age, sickness, and death as we become aware of them. There are modest efforts to deflect our attention from them in our culture—certainly more so than in some others—but nothing like what Siddhartha is said to have experienced. I remember attending open casket wakes and funerals growing up as a Catholic. More and more people today seek hospice care at home, breathing their last breath with loved ones who will continue to inhabit one’s place of departure.

And yet many of us still divert our attention from the realities of old age, illness, and death much of the time. No tradition other than Buddhism seems quite so determined to remind us of them.

In the sutra that contains the Five Remembrances, the Buddha explains why he offered them. He recognized that life is change and that unrealistic attachment to youth, health, the things and people dear to us, and life itself produces suffering. He hoped to help us shed those attachments.

But why include the fifth remembrance about our deeds being the ground on which we stand? Well, our suffering isn’t just about losing youth, health, life, and what and who is dear to us. It’s also about how being overly identified with conditions we especiaqlly like diminishes our appreciation of life and contentment when those conditions aren’t present. 

How are we thinking about and responding to whatever is arising? Are we grasping for what seems attractive and pushing away what’s not? How we think, speak, and act in response to our contingent experience determines the quality of our own life and affects the quality of others’ experience.

The Buddha likened himself to a lion and his teachings to a lion’s roar on those rare occasions when he spoke of himself in relation to other teachers of his era and to their teachings. As you’ll know if you’ve ever seen one in the wild, a lion’s presence pacifies all other beings across vast space.

Here’s what the contemporary Buddhist teacher Tara Brach says about all this:

“We typically think of our happiness as dependent on certain good things happening. In the Buddhist tradition, the word sukha is used to describe the deepest type of happiness that is independent of what is happening. It has to do with a kind of faith, a kind of trust that our heart can be with whatever comes our way. It gives us a confidence that is sometimes described as the lion’s roar. It’s the confidence that allows us to say, `No matter what life presents me, I can work with it.’ When that confidence is there, we take incredible joy in the moments of our lives. We are free to live life fully rather than resist and back off from a threat we perceive to be around the corner.”

Experiencing that “deepest type of happiness” is what Buddhism’s constant reminders of our vulnerability, and of how much our orientation and response to it matters, is all about.

I gave this talk at our Sunrise Sit on June 28, 2024. A recording follows the text.

These are the first two of Bodhidharma’s Pure Mind Precepts as translated by Taizan Maezumi Roshi and reprinted in Nancy Mujo Baker Roshi’s book on the Zen Precepts, Opening to Oneness:

Non-killing

Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the everlasting Dharma, not giving rise to the idea of killing is called the Precept of Non-killing.

Non-stealing

Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the unattainable Dharma, not arousing the thought of gain is called the Precept of Non-stealing.

This list goes on, as you know. There are ten so-called Grave Precepts.

In Zen we approach our Bodhisattva Precepts from three distinct perspectives: the literal (or fundamental) perspective, the relational perspective, and the intrinsic perspective.

The literal perspective means just don’t do it. Don’t kill.

The relational perspective is about considering context. The time, place, people, and purposes this moment presents and suggests. The relational perspective recognizes that a situation sometimes presents a confrontation among multiple right values. We must make a hard decision or even a tragic tradeoff, in which we deeply regret some expected outcomes of our actions even as we act to produce expected outcomes we hope will be beneficial.

These two perspectives are universal in the realm of ethics. We find them in ethical traditions throughout the world. As Baker Roshi explains, both the literal and relational perspectives are what we call relative perspectives in Zen, because, on their own, they’re dualistic. On their own, they take separateness as a given, even as they may try to promote greater cohesion.

The intrinsic perspective is unique to Zen, or at least it was first and is most developed within Zen. It’s why Bodhidharma and Dogen express the Ten Grave Precepts as non-killing, non-stealing, and so on, rather than not killing, not stealing, and so forth.

The intrinsic perspective is not relative in the Zen sense; separateness is not its starting point. It’s the view from the Absolute. There can be no killing from the intrinsic perspective because both birth and death are Life, however death may occur. There can be no stealing because, throughout space and time, there is no loss or gain.

But how do we make the intrinsic perspective more than an abstract idea? What could it mean as a matter of experience and as a guide to action? Practically speaking, we can approach moral decisions through the intrinsic perspective in at least two ways.

Let me make that concrete with an example. I recently had an extended conversation with a close friend. At one point this friend veered in the direction of critiquing the conduct of someone else we know. I felt a tug to affirm what I’d just heard, and I did so, even amplifying it a bit. This exchange didn’t last long. We didn’t pile on the absent party. But we clearly were praising our view and conduct and criticizing the other person’s view and conduct.

From a literal perspective some might say we had violated the precept of non-blaming others and elevating oneself. How might viewing a situation like this from an intrinsic perspective inform one’s response when a conversation partner begins to lead one in this direction?

I find it helpful to do the following two things:

First, to remind myself about the intrinsic perspective. The literal and relational perspectives are more familiar. I don’t know about you, but they often spring to mind readily, and in that order, when I sense a drift into murky ethical waters. Almost at once, discomfort arises or the thought “Don’t” flashes. That’s followed by a weighing of contextual considerations; by analysis from the relational pespective.

Sometimes we can get stuck there, paralyzed or maybe just treading water. I often find it helpful when this happens to remind myself that, intrinsically, from the perspective of the Absolute, no one and nothing is ever elevated; nothing in the Universe is higher or lower. Doing this, it’s easier just to witness what’s arising in and around me, to be spacious and curious about it, including the tug I feel to participate in the critique my friend has invited.

Second, as Baker Roshi recommends, I look at the side of me that does want to elevate itself; to boast, sometimes at others’ expense. I accept that part of myself as non-judgmentally as I can. As I do this, underlying basic human needs often become apparent. The need to be liked and loved by others. To be connected. The need for self-esteem. Even the need for self-actualization, in part by living my highest values. The need to clarify for myself and others what right conduct looks like and doesn’t look like.

Doing these two things helps cast the view from the other two perspectives in a new light.

The view from the intrinsic perspective helps me hold the literal perspective with a lighter touch. If we only view a situation from the literal perspective, our judgments and/or the ways they’re expressed through our words and actions may be too harsh. When I can see the killer, the stealer, and the boaster in myself, it becomes harder to relate and respond to others’ conduct in a polarized way, because I can see how it also may be directed toward the satisfaction of basic human needs—needs I share and am trying to satisfy in my own way. I may see another’s actions as misdirected—but misdirected toward satisfaction of some legitimate need. From the intrinsic perspective, I know I’m not above it all, because there is no above. I’m in the stew with others.

The intrinsic perspective also helps me judge myself less harshly when, in retrospect, some decision I’ve made in good faith from the relational perspective, or even from the literal perspective, doesn’t look so good in retrospect. I may have considered the choice as best I could in the moment, but, in retrospect, not made the best choice I could have made. Viewing this from an intrinsic perspective, I can trust that I won’t be ejected from the Universe. And being gentler on myself in this way may make it easier to apologize and make amends and may help me be easier on others more generally.

Let me hasten to add that the intrinsic perspective can’t be separated from the literal and relational perspectives either. If we think we’re approaching a moral question from the intrinsic perspective, but if we are merely doing so intellectually, in our heads, we get anything-goes moral relativism. If we think we’re approaching a moral question based upon the supposed profundity of our personal insight—if we are overly-assured about the depth of our realization and its integration—we may well be acting out of deluded grandiosity and cause harm.

The Absolute and relative, the intrinsic perspective on the precepts and the two relative perspectives on them, are one, after all.

I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen evening sit on Thursday, June 7th. A recording follows the text.

We’ll begin a study group on the Zen Boddhisattva Precepts later this month, so I thought I’d talk tonight about the precepts and how we think about and practice them. 

The 16 precepts we chanted earlier this evening evolved from the Vinaya, the oldest and smallest of the three sections of the Pali Canon, which are the early Buddhist scriptures.  Dōgen crafted the version we chanted tonight.  Our Zen Boddhisattva Precepts derive, in part, from the Vinaya and the much longer sets of vows based upon the Vinaya that Buddhist monastics in traditions other than Zen are required to make.  Depending upon what part of the Buddhist world you are in; whether you are, say, a Theravadan or Tibetan Buddhist; and whether you are male or female, you will make somewhere between about 225 and nearly 360 vows as a Buddhist monastic in traditions other than Zen.

Each of these long sets of monastic vows used in other Buddhist traditions includes familiar prohibitions of things humans throughout space and time have regarded as serious moral lapses, like murder and stealing.  Each also includes many things that, today, we would consider to be a matter of personal choice, like eating meat, even if most of us would acknowledge there are weighty moral issues attending that choice. 

As you might expect with such long lists of vows, each contains some prohibitions many of us today would see as antiquated, or needlessly formalistic, or perhaps too wrapped up in a rigid purity ethic, maybe even performative virtue signaling.  There’s a prohibition on touching money in the monastic vows of other Buddhist traditions that some of us might see that way.

There’s a whole lot of lore about how the Vinaya developed.  As with many things about early Buddhism, it’s a bit hard to separate myth from history.  According to the lore, the sangha—which meant the community of Shakyamuni Buddha’s followers who “left home” to take up a celibate, monastic life with him—functioned quite well without rules for over a decade.   As the community grew larger, more diverse, and more dispersed, however, challenges and conflicts arose.  The Buddha apparently decided it was necessary to begin formulating norms that would help guide and regulate personal conduct and communal life.

It’s said Jesus didn’t start Christianity, and I suppose something like that can be said about Shakyamuni Buddha and Buddhism.  Shakyamuni didn’t use the term Buddhism for the religion he’s said to have founded.  He called it Dhamma-Vinaya.  That’s Dhamma-hyphen-Vinaya; one word.  Dhamma can be translated as truth, and Vinaya as discipline.  The Buddha seems to have been saying the truth he wanted people to know is realized and manifested through the Vinaya, or moral discipline.

The Buddha did indeed speak of a higher truth, or a deeper reality, and he encouraged a practice, meditation, that could help us know it as more than an idea.  But it seems he also came to regard a set of moral principles and practices, or disciplines, as the truest, embodied expression of this higher truth, this deeper reality.  He seems to have increasingly come to regard the Buddhist path as fundamentally about character development; about development of both the character of the individual practitioner and the character of the community. 

A line in the Vinaya reads, “Though the Buddha’s discourses (sutra) and advanced doctrines (abhidharma) may be forgotten so long as the vinaya still exists the Buddha’s teachings yet endure.”  Sutras, doctrines, and Vinaya are the three categories of teachings in the Pali Canon, so this passage is telling us that the moral virtues and principles attributed to the Buddha are the heart of his teaching.

So why do we only have 16 precepts in Zen when other streams of Buddhism have hundreds?  The first of our Precepts are the Three Treasures, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.  If we don’t count them, we’re left with only 13 precepts.  Three of those 13 are the so-called Pure Precepts, which are very general:  I vow to cease from evil.  I vow to practice good.  I vow to save all beings.  This leaves only 10 very specific precepts, like not lying and not misusing sex.  These 10 are known as the Grave Precepts.

There’s a longer story here, but I think it’s fair to say Zen has only 16 precepts because of changing times and life patterns.  Even in Dōgen’s day, there was an increasing number of people who couldn’t or didn’t want to live as monastics but who did want to live an intentional way of life.  And, even in Dōgen’s day, there were questions about whether certain formalisms really added anything meaningful to monastic life.  There had been a lot of questioning of all this in Japan around the time Dōgen lived, within streams of Buddhism that arrived and developed there before he brought the precursor to Soto Zen from China.  Dōgen himself had a hard time finding monasteries in China that would accept him, because he hadn’t taken the long list of vows most monks there took.

It does seem like there’s a purity ethic and needless formalism in many of the ancient monastic vows.  But I’m conscious of the fact that I’m reading them from a 21st century, Western cultural perspective.  Life was very different for people throughout Asia long ago, and it’s still very different than our lives in many parts of the world for some people who seek refuge in Buddhism.

What’s clear, however, is that the vows Buddhists take, whether many or few, are about cultivating a good life, individually and together.  The Vinaya was developed because early Buddhists were concerned their community was disintegrating.  We could say the precepts developed to resist the force of entropy operating in individual psyches and in the early Buddhist community.  They continue to serve this function today.

The precepts are one of our most cherished forms.  And they’re a form that is very much about personal and collective formation.  When we bake a cake, we don’t pour the batter onto a borderless cookie sheet and let it harden into a random blob.  We pour it into a mold that gives it a satisfying shape.  The Zen Boddhisattva Precepts developed over centuries as our ancestors learned from experience and were able to articulate a spare set of principles that help give our lives a satisfying shape.

But the precepts and our relationship to them are more dynamic than this metaphor suggests.  When we use the word “form” in Zen, it almost immediately evokes the word “emptiness.”  It’s too easy to thingify the words form and emptiness and regard them as binaries, even if we also say that form and emptiness are one. 

But what does it really mean to say form and emptiness are one?  It means they’re not things and they don’t create a binary.  It means yin and yang are always co-creating and interpenetrating each other; always dancing. 

So let’s not think of a precept as a static form and embrace it only in a strict, literal sense.  That is one essential way to relate to the precepts, as we’ll discuss in our study group.  Yet Zen also approaches the precepts from other, more nuanced perspectives, as we’ll see.  The deepest meaning of the precepts is realized as we live with, through, and as them in the ever newly unfolding experiences of our lives.