I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. I'm trying to figure that out. Good morning. James Baldwin once wrote that it is a terrible, inexorable law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own. When I read this, it reminded me of something I had heard when I was high school age.

[01:01]

My Sunday school teacher had said, that you've seen people with hands or arms or legs missing. Whenever you hate anything, you are cutting off a part of yourself. Hello? Hello? Hello? And these ideas resonate with the Buddha's teaching of interconnectedness. When Shakyamuni Buddha realized enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, one of the truths that he realized was the truth of the interdependence of all beings and all things, that no one thing can stand by itself apart from causes and conditions.

[02:08]

Living beings are the result of a combination of many factors and conditions. Some of them are the presence of sperm and an egg, the condition of fertility, and a being who needs to take a form, who needs to reincarnate. And once a living being is created, there are other conditions that have to be met for its survival, such as sunshine, warmth, air, or the lack of these, and food and water. Many of the things in our world were once alive

[03:11]

and needed these same conditions for survival. For example, wood, tatami mats, paper, wool, cotton, and oil products. Excuse me. Even things like rocks and diamonds and the planet itself are the result of many complex conditions and factors that come together at the right time in the right way. And yet, because of our conditioning and our delusion, we are easily confused and distracted from our true relationship to all things. The nature of delusion is that it causes us to feel separate.

[04:17]

It creates the illusion of duality. Practicing the precepts or right conduct prepares us or cultivates us for meditation practice. Unwholesome conduct produces restlessness and agitated states, which make it hard for us to stop what we are doing and sit. It makes it difficult for us to be calm enough or stable enough to be still. Whereas wholesome conduct supports concentration. The roots of wholesome activity are generosity or non-attachment, friendliness or loving-kindness,

[05:20]

and wisdom. Their opposites—greed, hate, and delusion— are the roots of unwholesome activity. Practicing the precepts and meditation practice go hand-in-hand. They mutually support each other. Zazen helps us be able to slow down and get in touch with our habitual unconscious activity. Practicing the precepts is one way we extend our meditation practice into our everyday lives. Suzuki Roshi said, The way to receive the precepts is to just do Zazen. But if we treat the precepts as some rules

[06:23]

or some external teaching that's imposed upon us, that sets up duality between us and the precepts. And for Mahayana Buddhists, dualistic practice is a violation of practice. The first precept is, do not kill, or a disciple of the Buddha does not kill. When I hear this in the context of the Ten Commandments, for example, I'm fairly clear about what it means. Do not kill human beings. But in a Buddhist context, I'm less clear. Do not kill what? Animals? Cockroaches? Exactly what are we not to kill?

[07:27]

The precepts have been translated by a lot of different people, so there are slightly different versions or wordings for the precepts, which give them different meanings. Sometimes the first precept is translated as, refrain from taking life, or refrain from harming any living being. Or cherish all life, encourage all life. Harming or killing produces fear in others, and it destroys our seed of compassion. Philip Kaploroshi taught that to willfully take life means to disrupt and destroy our inherent wholeness

[08:34]

and to blunt our feelings of reverence and compassion arising from our Buddha nature. We cannot intentionally kill, intentionally cause harm to ourselves or to others without diminishing our capacity for compassion, which in turn is our capacity for wholeness. Akinroshi extends this precept a little bit further, and he says, there is fundamentally no birth and no death as we die and are born. When we kill the spirit that may realize this fact, we are violating this precept. We kill that spirit in ourselves and in others when we brutalize human potential,

[09:38]

animal potential, earth potential. Dogen taught that the first precept is do not kill because we cannot kill. When we look at the Buddha nature, when we look into the nature of birth and death, we see that we don't really have the power to create life force or to destroy it. By life force, I mean a karmic propensity or drive or energy that propels us into the next moment,

[10:43]

into the next thing, into the next realm of existence. Some of us are parents, and from the point of view of the mundane, we are responsible for creating our children's lives. If there had been no procreation, there would be no children. But from the position of the absolute, we actually cannot create life force or karmic propensity. This karmic propensity or life force is beginningless. In the full moon ceremony, we chant all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion.

[11:47]

We can't create karmic energy, or karmic energy doesn't begin at birth and end at death. It's beginningless and endless. So Dogen says, we cannot kill, therefore we must not kill. The precepts have been developing since Buddha's time as a way for people practicing together to live in harmony. And there are many different versions of the precepts. Some of them are directed toward the rather fine or subtle details of monastic living.

[12:51]

And some of these precepts that regulate monastic practice are similar to the forms that we use here, or our agreed-upon forms, such as taking off your shoes before entering the Zen Do and wearing clean clothes. Here at Zen Center, we have small altars outside the bathrooms. You may or may not have noticed. And one of our practices is to bow before entering the bathrooms, and then as we leave, to bow again. And this helps us acknowledge our activity. There are other forms or teachings that we can use both in the temple and outside in our daily lives.

[13:55]

One teaching is to complete each action. So, for example, if you take a break, when you finish your coffee or tea, complete the action by returning your cup to the kitchen and washing it, rather than abandoning it wherever you are with your last swallow. Another form is that when we walk to the Zen Do, or when we're leaving the Zen Do, we put our hands in this position. And this helps us collect or gather our energy and bring it, I don't know, to our front, to our presence, so that we actually begin preparing for meditation before we sit down.

[14:56]

And if we're bringing our own Zafu to the meditation hall, a formal way to carry it is with both hands in front of us, so that we combine the Zafu with our presence. We make it part of our present activity, rather than carrying it off to the side, dangling down, as if carrying the Zafu didn't really have anything to do with what we're doing with our present. Of course, if we're carrying four or five Zafus down to the Zen Do or up to the Buddha Hall, that's a different kind of activity. But these kinds of forms are both practical and they help foster the development of mindfulness, so we make use of them. But generally, when we talk about precepts or refer to precepts,

[16:02]

we're referring to the Ten Prohibitory Precepts, which are more fundamental. Practicing with these precepts leads to concentration, and concentration leads to insight. It's a traditional view of practice. However, these precepts, at the same time, include concentration and insight. So, practicing with the precepts is fundamentally a discipline of the mind. It creates mindfulness. Bringing your attention to the present activity of your body, speech, and mind is practice of the precepts. Just trying to follow some rules or obey

[17:06]

the traditional commandments of not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to lie, is not sufficient for the development of concentration and insight. The way we practice with the precepts embraces awakening. The essence or function of the Prohibitory Precepts is non-harming. One way to practice with them is to look at what you're doing. In this moment, are your actions encouraging life? Or, before you do something, look at your motive or your intention.

[18:09]

Is it wholesome or unwholesome? And if it's unwholesome, don't continue its activity into further expression. This doesn't mean to stop and think before each thing you do. It means to be aware of your intention before you act on it. The Sanskrit word for precepts is shila. And the root of this word shila means to practice or to exercise. So, here at Zen Center anyway, when we receive the precepts, usually we don't receive them just once. We receive them in the full moon ceremony and at other ordinations. And we don't practice them once

[19:10]

and get it over with. It's something that we do over and over again. It's like a maintenance job, like house cleaning or trash collection. We may not notice how much we depend upon or appreciate the trash collectors until they stop coming. And likewise, we may not be aware of our effort to maintain the precepts until there's a breakdown somewhere in the system, until a mess is created. In the ordination ceremony, after ordinees have received the precepts, they are asked, will you maintain them well? Or will you continuously observe them?

[20:12]

How can we continuously observe the precepts? Francis Cook, who wrote How to Raise an Ox, has said that the work of a Zen practitioner is to fully engage in the present. And when we don't, we are killing the present, the only realm where we can actually live our lives. The past is only a memory and the future is a plan or some idea of a plan. There are two ways that we kill the present. One is by inattentiveness, by letting our activity become habitual or performing our actions

[21:18]

unconsciously. When we do this, we let consciousness die. The other way we kill the present is to want to be somewhere else than where we are and want to be doing something else than what we're doing. When we want to be some other place, we are killing this place. And when we want to be doing something else, we are killing our present activity, which is the only activity we can practice with. The problem is that we kill so much of our lives with the expectation that things are going to be better someplace else. By neglecting

[22:20]

our present body and mind, we are neglecting our realm of practice. Through attention to the details of our daily life and through single-minded effort, we can engage in the actuality of our lives. By bringing the light of awareness to our activity, we enlighten our activity. Suzuki Roshi said, If you think, I have to observe the ten precepts one by one, that is wrong practice. The foundation of precepts

[23:20]

is based on the various ways of understanding the one reality, which is always with us. This reality is not divisible into three refuges or sixteen bodhisattva precepts or ten prohibitory precepts. Tentatively, we divide the precepts into ten and we explain them from various angles, but those are just words. Real precepts are beyond words. So if you think the meaning of precepts is just to observe various rules, your understanding is far from true understanding of real precepts. So the first of the precepts is one reality which cannot be divided. Without understanding this precept,

[24:21]

our precepts don't make any sense. Understanding and practicing the precepts is not as simple as following a list of rules. In Mahayana Buddhism, the precepts are very wide and encompass much of Buddhist teaching. So the first step in practicing the precepts is to examine them over and over again in your life. Until you find out for yourself what the precepts mean. Suzuki Roshi said,

[25:23]

Do not kill means do. Do realize your true nature. Thank you.

[25:35]

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