A Field Guide to the Precepts

The Buddhist teacher Suzuki Roshi compared Sila (the Buddhist teachings on ethics and morality) to putting a snake in a tube. Ethics provide an external structure that help straighten out the wavier aspects of our character. As I began this journey of exploring the precepts I keep returning to this image. In some ways I identify with the snake and feel a bit indignant about the whole project. But as the days go by and I continue exploring the precepts I have found that practicing the precepts has enriched my mindfulness practice and helped me grow as a person.

In my experience people do not like to think of themselves as moral actors, and I am no exception. As a software developer I see this perhaps most clearly in the way that many people who build technology hate to be reminded that the things they build and the tools they use have ethical dimensions. I think part of this is an implicit understanding that when you live in a capitalist economy that is built on inequality, violence, and racism, ethics can seem to be a threat our livelihoods and leisure. Rather than take some measure of responsibility for our choices it can be easier to just relax into the default morality: one focused on consumption and meeting our own needs (real and perceived) first and foremost.

In the buddhist precepts we find a set of relatively straightforward rules for living a blameless life. They have been practiced in some form for over 2,500 years. These ethical teachings are more than just rules, but are presented as a set of teachings encouraging us to explore our motives, thoughts, speech, and actions in every moment. Unlike the sitting practice of meditation, precepts have a more religious dimension. They ask something from us and require a certain amount of faith.

I grew up in a relatively small town in Nebraska and was one of the few people not in regular attendance at one of the local mega-church’s youth groups. I think it was these early encounters with organized religion that led me to keep a distance from the more religious aspects of Buddhist practice. The chanting, the incense, the robes, and the ethics. I say kept in the past tense, because over time my discomfort with these forms has been replaced by a real enthusiasm. In fact, during these bleak COVID times I find more and more I need the religious stuff to keep my home practice healthy when I can’t go on retreat or visit a zen centre.

The daily act of reciting the precepts feels like it gives these ideas weight in my psyche that they wouldn’t have otherwise. Chanting feels like carving something into wood. When I feel tempted to have a drink or skirt around the truth in conversation I am more likely to pause and catch myself, gently and mindfully. In doing so, I am learning a lot about the emotional drivers behind seemingly innocuous behavior. I’ve found that the same energy that entices me to have a drink after a stressful day at work is also present when I feel drawn towards things like coffee, T.V, or video games.

By keeping the precepts I become more mindful through out the day. Traditionally, Sila (aka ethics) are the first step on the Buddhist path. The Thai teacher Ajahn Chah used the metaphor of a bridge. Ethics, embodied by the precepts, was the first post on which the bridge of Buddhist practice rested. The middle post of the bridge was meditation, and the last part was insight or Prajna. I didn’t realize it at the time, but by skipping over the ethical teachings of Buddhism I was cut off from a significant source of support on the path to awakening.

And this tracks for me. As I became more engaged with Sila, through the vehicle of the precepts, I have more time and energy for my sitting practice. I find myself spending more time in the evening writing, reading, and being creative, time I may have spent more reactively in the past. I’m by no means perfect in my practice and I’ve slipped up a fair amount. I think on some level I am still not entirely convinced. But as I go deeper in this practice I find that it resents for me. Things like lying, harming others and/or myself, misusing my sexual energy, intoxicating my mind, all of these behaviors contribute to confusion and stand in contrast to the clarity I find in my sitting practice.