What are the precepts good for? Or how I learned to love the precepts!

[Hoseki]

Hi everyone,

I hope no one minds the silly title, I'm a terribly silly man. I just wanted to put out a thought I had about the precepts (if this painfully obvious to others, please excuse my ignorance) that really made me thing of them in a new light. I know the precepts are not imperatives (commandments) and they are guides for our behaviour. I used to think of them as something like guard rails on a road. They keep you from straying into dangerous territory. But I think it's more like Bodhisattva training wheeIs. We integrate them into how we think and over time we begin to act in accordance with them without the linguistic component. E.g. If you continuously practice Dana (generosity) then eventually you do so as an automatic response. It's not like the raft we leave behind when we reach the other shore. It's more like we were learning to swim by staying close to the raft when we started to get tired. The precepts are just a formulation of how a bodhisattvas lives in and sees the world. So the precepts are there to help us develop the way of behaving and the way of seeing the world as a bodhisattva does. I sure I've read Jundo say many times that sometimes you have to fake it till you make it. I think this is what it's about.

Thoughts?


Gassho,
Hoseki
sattoday/lah

[MarkusF]

Thoughts? Thoughts:
Perhaps there are two ways. One is to fake it, to immitate to get near to a bodhissatva by following the precepts. To have our egoistic matters and behavours getting smaller and smaller. So on the one End of the road is our big big Ego and all the meanings we learned as true. On the other end to be a bodhissatva and so the precepts are a "normal" behavour according to the situation.

Gassho
Markus
lah

[Tokan]

Good thought Hoseki!

For my part, I have always borne in mind that the Precepts are not so different from the Eightfold Path, so one of four aspects of the path to awakening, but with that awesome consequence of being the path itself as well, so as soon as you are walking it, even if you feel like you're faking it, your on the path, and so it is Practice-Enlightenment right there and then, so no faking needed after all. Just my humble view, as always, I look forward to what Jundo will post here hehe!

Gassho, Tokan

satlah

[Jundo]

If you do not follow the Precepts precisely, you will be reborn in hell or, at least, as a hungry ghost, worm or mosquito.



In many corners of traditional Buddhism, that is the Teaching. They may not be "Commandments," but this system of justice and rebirth is hard wired into the structure of the universe. What goes around comes around, in this life or the next. Guaranteed.

It may be so (if it is ... well, you have been warned.)

That said, I (like many modern priests in the West and many in Japan too) tend to be a bit more "down to earth" and psychological about these things. So, yes, people who act with greed or hate tend to "go to hell" or "become hungry ghosts" or "act like worms" in their own heart, and suffer that way. I agree that they are like "guardrails" that point in healthy and balanced directions, freeing the heart (e.g., they point us toward ways freer of greed and hate.) And I also fully agree that, with time, they become part of us and natural more and more.

For Dogen, when we act like a Buddha or Bodhisattva, we bring the Buddha and Bodhisattvas to life with our body. We become more like them and, in turn, they become us.

So, I agree with all you wrote, Hoseki san. I also agree with Markus that there is a "fake it till ya make it" aspect to the Precepts (e.g., act like you are being less greedy until, down the road, you truly become less greedy.) Doing our best (and sometimes failing) is the path. And so, I agree with what Tokan says too.

I am just a very agreeable guy!

Gassho, Jundo