Not Stealing: On Accepting What Life Offers Us

In the Buddhist precepts, the second grave precept is the precept not stealing, and of accepting what is offered as a gift. It is such a basic rule of society, which we are taught when we are young, not to steal. You have to ask before you take something. You have to pay for things.

I remember being caught stealing candy from a store when I was 12 or 13. I had no money at the time, and it’s funny to think of being an age where the first thing I would think to take would be chocolate bars. But I guess it was about more than just acquiring sweets; it also became a thrill for me and my friend to go into a store, find ways to take things -- maybe by slipping it into the sleeve of a jacket or tucking it in to our pants, under our sweater -- and then make it out unobserved. It wasn’t about the thing so much as the taking of it.

I don’t steal from stores anymore, and when I’m not charged the right amount for something or I end up with something extra, I am honest about it, and send the thing back, or ensure that I have paid the right amount. I wasn’t always like that, and perhaps there are things I wouldn’t be like that about even today. I am ethical and honest up to a point, but desire and entitlement are powerful forces in my life. I’m still working on it.

Sometimes I want to watch a show or a movie and it’s not available on the streaming services I use, so I find a way to obtain it without paying. I don’t feel so bad about it, and if I were to think of it as stealing, it wouldn’t really be so clear who I would be stealing from. Movie stars? The company that releases the media? Some giant corporation? It’s easy to forgive this kind of theft, because it seems victimless.

But I guess even if no one notices or suffers directly from the theft, I am still a victim, every time I reduce myself to taking that which is not offered. Because I am telling myself I have to have something, and allowing myself to just take it. What is the effect of having this kind of relationship to anything? I need food when I am hungry and to sleep when I’m tired, but what will happen if I don’t get to listen to a new album I’m excited about, or buy the jeans I really want, or order the new book that just came out by an author I love? Even if I’m not stealing in these cases, I feel entitled to this enjoyment, and the desire consumes me. At least for a little while.

Desire isn’t evil, of course, and I do love clothes, books, music, film; these things bring meaning and pleasure to my life. But I also don’t want to need to have things. I would like to be able to acknowledge my desire for things, and also to be able to be patient with that desire, and have some distance from it. I know that I’m an addictive person, and it’s sometimes hard for me to remember that I will not die if I do not have everything I want. I know I am happier living a simple life.

In his essay on not stealing in his book on the precepts, The Mind of Clover, Robert Aitken writes that “‘Not Stealing’ is contentment, no thought of obtaining. This starts much deeper in the mind than deciding to do without luxuries.”

It is a helpful reminder to me that it is not just outright theft I need to concern myself with, but taking too much in general. I take so much more than I need, and give so little to others. Even with my pretensions to living a simple life, and in the context of the relative poverty of being a teacher, I still manage to take so much, to acquire so many little luxuries and indulgences -- rewards for making it through the day.

I don’t think being Buddhist has to mean total renunciation of pleasures and nice things -- this is the middle way, after all, and not asceticism (nor unrestrained indulgence). But I do hope that in my own material life it will mean gradually moving on from unnecessary and addictive things. Not denying myself, necessarily, or adopting a spartan lifestyle, but finding pleasure and beauty in simplicity: in occasionally doing without, in gently letting go.