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The Five Precepts as Safeguards

Can you hear me okay? Wonderful. I guess we're adhering a little bit to our social distancing, but I like the number we have here; it's kind of cozy today. I wish we were all sitting closer together. I don't share that as an instruction to move, but rather to express my warmth and coziness that we're here together this way. Thank you for being here.

In order to feel a little bit of that connection, maybe we can go around the room and you can say your names with the mic.

"I'm Sage." "My name is Jim." "My name is Sveta." "I'm Nancy." "Sally." "Hi, my name is Abhishek." "Hi, I'm Jeff." "I'm Andre." "Hi, I'm Catherine." "I am Janis." "Hi, I'm April." "Hi, I'm Kathy." "I'm Malvika."

Thank you all very much. This is just a way of coming together and sharing our voices a little bit. Down through the centuries in religious circles, people would chant together or sing together. Through sharing voices, breathing, and sound, everything begins to meld, and something melts deep inside.

I think the same thing happens when people meditate together. Maybe it's not so quick or so obvious, but it is remarkable. The inner sensibility, the inner sharing of a certain purpose, a certain set of values, and a certain awareness is born in meditation. To do that together with other people nearby is a shared community experience, and a very valuable part of all this.

The Precepts as Protections

That serves as a good introduction to the theme of what I want to talk about today: some words about ethics in Buddhism, and particularly the Five Precepts^[1].

It feels much more natural to live an ethical way where we are careful about the impact we have on others, ensuring we don't hurt them. When we're in community, we share a life together. If you sit and meditate with people and share something intimate and close—where maybe you're touched by the opening, the relaxation, and the inner sense of connection—you may feel a little more calm and free. To share that with others is a remarkable thing. You probably don't want to just walk up to someone here and swear angrily at them. That would feel off. You wouldn't want to try to kill them or steal from them—even if they might have better shoes than you! [Laughter]

Many years ago, when we were in Palo Alto, a lot of people used to wear Birkenstocks. I had a pair. One evening, somehow three different pairs ended up on three different people's feet, and I ended up with better Birkenstocks! I tried to find the owner, but that never happened.

We tend to have a different feeling and relationship with each other in these spaces. Imagine if this sensibility of connectivity, sensitivity, and appreciation extended outward. With meditation, we sometimes tend to see people as beautiful. Imagine if we started seeing everyone in the world that way. That becomes your default for how you see and are with people, rather than a default of fear, hostility, or blaming others.

This idea of ethics doesn't come from a rule telling you how you should act. Rather, it comes because we are changing inside. There's a change of perception, a change of disposition, a change of sensitivity, and a change of values. That becomes something we want to protect, something we live by and care for.

The precepts, then, don't become rules to live by. Ethics can be seen as protections that keep us in that state. They are ways of living that protect us from falling back into the opposite way—where we might have hostility, where we might close up in anxiety, or where greed and desire predominate so much that we're no longer attuned to others or ourselves.

If it's about attunement, there is something here that is precious and valuable to protect. I don't know if you have this at home, but imagine a drawer full of electronic wires. I don't know how they end up this way, but they form a big, knotted mess of wires. It takes a while to sort them out, untangle them, and free them from each other so you can use them easily later on. Usually, after doing that work, you don't say, "Great, now they're easy to use," and then just throw them right back into the drawer in a messy clump. That would be silly.

We do all this work to untangle the wires in our hearts and minds—our complicated entanglements with people, ourselves, our history, our memories, our hurts, our vengeances, our hopes, and our aspirations. It's like that messy drawer in there. Then we sit and meditate and undo all those tangles. It's worthwhile not to lose that effort. It's worthwhile not to put it all back in the drawer—or worse, put it in the washing machine! [Laughter]

In this practice, after a while, we develop a matter-of-fact, practical sense: There's something really great going on here. This wonderful thing we're tapping into is worth protecting. From that point of view, these five ethical precepts are ways of protecting ourselves from losing something important. They're a way of protecting our community from losing our connection, our respect, and a deeper, more attuned way of living with each other.

The First Precept: Not Killing

The first precept is not killing. This is the cardinal precept in Buddhism, and it doesn't just mean not killing other human beings; it means living a non-harming life. Ideally, you wouldn't kill any animals, pests, or insects. You would be really careful with that.

Where is the line for what you feel you have to do to protect yourself? Some of us will take antibiotics, so can we kill those poor bacteria before they kill us? [Laughter] Where does that line go where we feel like, "I can't allow that to live because that crosses the line for me; it is too difficult."

What I've seen in meditation circles is that as people meditate, the line around what is "okay" to kill gets smaller and smaller. Some people will not only avoid killing insects or little animals, they'll go out of their way to protect them. I've known people who, when there are slugs on the sidewalk where cars or bicycles are passing, will go and help the slugs out of the road because they know otherwise they'll get squashed. Is that silly to do? It's not silly for the person who's doing it—they're feeling attuned to something very important. And it's certainly not silly for the slug who's going to survive!

This idea of not killing is not a punitive rule or a moralistic commandment. It arises out of a desire to stay true to something that's being born, something we've awakened to and tapped into. Of course you don't want to harm someone. If you find that you want to hurt someone or punch them out, the recommendation is to stop and take a good look at what's going on. If you take enough time to pause and check yourself out, you will probably find that you've lost that attunement. You've lost that connection to something very valuable.

In Buddhism, when we use the word wealth^[2], we're not referring to someone who has a lot of money. From the Buddhist point of view, some wealthy people are really poor because they don't have that attunement or disposition; they are living with anxiety. If you want to punch someone out or kill a pest because you think it's bothering you, stop and take a good look. Ask yourself: Are you still attuned? Are you still coming from the place that you want to live from? Getting lost in stress is getting lost in entanglement, where the wires are all messed up again, and sometimes it can take a while to do the untangling.

The Second Precept: Not Taking What is Not Given

All the other precepts are extensions of the first: not harming. The second precept is not to take what is not given. You probably know the reason it's worded this way rather than simply "don't steal" is because it sets a higher bar. You have to wait until something is given before you use it.

This cultivates real care about possession, generosity, exchange, friendship, and communication between people. You wouldn't take anything unless it's clearly been offered. Even if you think it's being offered, you wait and see.

For example, it's common that if you go to someone's house and there's a snack on the coffee table, the assumption is that it's being offered. Why else would it be there? But some Buddhist practitioners would simply not touch it until there is a clear, "Please, have some." Is that silly? Cultivating that kind of care conveys that you are a trustable person. You can be trusted with others' things.

At our retreat center some years ago, someone dropped their wallet on the Community Hall floor. They just put it next to the Buddha at the altar. They felt it was a safe place, that no one was going to take it. A few days later, the person who lost the wallet realized it and went looking for it, and there it was. It hadn't moved. Forty people were living together, and a wallet was sitting right in the center of the building for everyone to see. Everyone appreciated that this was a safe place. This was a community of people you can trust. Where in our society do you find forty people—especially strangers—where you have that level of trust?

The Third Precept: Avoiding Sexual Misconduct

The third precept is not harming others with sexuality, so not engaging in sexual misconduct. There is so much suffering in this world around sexuality. Sometimes, the suffering from one event can last a lifetime.

It isn't just sex itself that is so painful sometimes, but sex that conveys power, aggression, forcefulness, violence, objectification, self-gratification, and conceit. There are so many things that can happen that make it askew. Sexuality can be phenomenally selfish without being attuned to someone else, or it can be phenomenally selfless—a beautiful expression of care.

I've had to counsel people who were involved in causing harm with their sexuality. They insisted it was consensual. But what they didn't know—even if on the surface it appeared consensual—was that their partner had a very abusive history and couldn't say no. The impact of the sexuality touched deep places of wounding, hurt, and fear that were not visible on the surface. How do we stay attuned to not cause harm with our sexual energies?

Sometimes, people feel violated just by how others look at them, which makes society uncomfortable. I was horrified when I was eighteen by what it meant to be a woman in some societies. I had long blonde hair that went halfway down my torso. During a cross-country trip in another country in 1972, every car that passed me that had men in it turned to look at me, because long blonde hair on a man was very unusual there at the time. I thought, Is this what happens to women? Every man looks at them with that challenging energy?

Doesn't this fit a little bit into the third precept of not abusing sexuality? Aren't these behaviors going to cause some people to live in fear or distress, to shut down, or to hide away? It is such a sensitive thing. To be careful with this is an important part of protecting something valuable.

As we practice more deeply, we feel how fragile and vulnerable our inner disposition of openness, care, sensitivity, and freedom can be. We want to protect other people so they can have that as well. We don't want other people to have their hearts closed. I had my heart closed when I was a teenager a number of times, where I just felt like a door slammed shut because of what happened to me. It took years—and it took this practice—to finally have the trust to open up again.

The Fourth Precept: Not Lying

The same thing is true with the fourth precept: not to lie. To lie ruins trust and causes people to feel afraid. If people are betrayed by a lie, they will close up and say, "If I'm betrayed like that, I don't know who to trust, so I'll just keep to myself."

Lying causes a lot of harm, and it undermines the level of trust we can have in society and with each other. We must have a high sensitivity and a high care for being truthful—and to be truthful in caring ways. There are people who use truth as a weapon. That doesn't feel good. People use truth carelessly, thinking, "It's true, so it's okay to say it." That is why the first precept is so important: if you speak, you want to speak in ways that do not cause harm. The strict meaning of not killing can even be used metaphorically; something can die in other people if they are subjected to a powerful lie and feel betrayed.

More importantly for people who do mindfulness meditation, mindfulness is a practice of truth-telling to oneself. I like to think of mindfulness out loud as being honest about what's happening. If you lie, you're doing the very opposite of what we're trying to do in this practice. Even if you are mindfully lying, a part of you is going against the grain of clarity. If you're serious about this practice, why would you lie? You are trying to live a truthful life, even if it's only to yourself.

The Fifth Precept: Avoiding Intoxication

The fifth precept is to avoid intoxication. This one is a little bit more ambiguous. In the Buddhist tradition, it stands out as an anomaly compared to the other four. In the ancient languages, the first four are referred to as being a kind of corruption or impurity, but they never say that about the fifth one.

I think the reason for this is that it's possible to intoxicate oneself alone without it having a direct impact on anyone else. Sometimes it's actually an attempt to care for oneself; something inside us is trying to protect ourselves from despair, anger, and pain, trying to escape the difficulties in life. There is also the reality of taking small medicinal dosages that don't actually intoxicate. For example, Buddhist monastics are allowed to have alcohol in food provided that they can't taste it, and only if someone offers the food to them.

However, there is an astounding amount of suffering that happens in our societies because of intoxication. Every day, people are dying from overdosing on drugs or from alcoholism. It destroys families and impacts children. I hear stories of people growing up with raging alcoholic parents, and the impact that has on children is dramatic and can last for a lifetime if they don't find a way to heal.

Safeguarding Our Awakening

If we live this meditative life, we become concerned with the impact our life has on the world and on ourselves. The deleterious impact of breaking the five precepts destroys the very inner life that we're cultivating and awakening through this practice.

What we're cultivating here—the awakening—is in fact worth protecting. It is worth safeguarding. A powerful way of safeguarding it is to live by these five precepts, to have a very high commitment to them, and to be very careful.

What you'll find if you do this is that you become more and more sensitive to nuances you never thought about before. For example: exaggeration. Is that a kind of lie? Why am I exaggerating? Sometimes it's not something to be proud of. We exaggerate to build ourselves up, to show people what a wonderful person we are.

It isn't a requirement to abruptly force yourself to stop exaggerating. Instead, it asks: What is the request or inspiration that comes out of the inner life born from meditation? If we ask our hearts after meditation, "How should I live?", I doubt the heart is going to say, "Go out and kill," or "Break the precepts." The heart's request is to live a good life, a life that lets the heart sing, be happy, safe, and contented.

At various times in our practice, we discover something has been awakened in us that becomes a treasure. That treasure is something we want to care for. We don't want to cling to it—though there are a lot worse things to cling to than honesty! We don't want to use the precepts to measure ourselves, leading to anger or disappointment if we don't live up to our standards. Rather, there is an art to using the precepts. We live with the idea: I'm going to try to do better. I didn't do as well as I hoped, I can feel the impact on me, and I am committed to starting over again today. I'll wake up tomorrow morning and see what I can do to do better. That is much better than waking up and being ground down by self-criticism.

The more this beautiful, awakened sensibility occurs within us, the more treasure we have. We gain a reference point that guides us in how we want to live our lives. It's not just a way to feel during meditation; it's a way to live. This commitment to practicing with the ethical precepts is a significant way of letting mindfulness touch all the difficult places in our hearts and minds. It reveals where mindfulness should go so we can understand ourselves better and work through things. It's a fantastic thing.

Reflections and Q&A

We have something to safeguard when we do this practice. That's the main point I wanted to make today. I was wondering if some of you would maybe be willing to share some words if you have discovered something worth safeguarding coming from this practice.

Student 1: I can't imagine not safeguarding all of them in some way or another, but I will say it's complicated. It can be just so complicated.

Gil Fronsdal: But is there some reference point inside you?

Student 1: I feel like I have a barometer in my body. My shoulders rise, my flywheel goes faster... my body speaks to me when I'm crossing a line.

Gil Fronsdal: Great, thank you. That was nice to hear.

Student 2: I know for me, before I started this practice, I just think back and it's quite a transformation from just five or six years ago. I have become much more sensitive to causing harm. I'm just so grateful to have this practice because the more I practice, the more I want to live ethically by the precepts and be careful with my actions.

Student 3: There's somebody who caused me a lot of pain a few years ago. I spent a long time working through it. I just decided that I don't want to, and I can't, live this life with any hate in my heart for anyone. I feel like I don't have hate in my heart for this person anymore. Not to say that it wasn't there once. I can't really explain how that happened, but I think it's because of the practice.

Gil Fronsdal: Very nice, thank you.

Student 4: I'm noticing that I'm becoming very sensitive to concealing the truth—the fourth precept. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm hiding exactly, but I have this inner barometer where I feel something is there. Also, I'm noticing something completely different: a sensitivity to buying food that has a lot of plastic wrapping. I just feel more and more uncomfortable.

Gil Fronsdal: Part of what grows is not just inner beauty and treasures, but inner discomfort. And that's valuable, too. That discomfort can be a treasure; it protects us from doing something that we don't want to do. Thank you. Those are wonderful comments.

If some of you are new to this and it seems kind of strange, know that the practice does bear wonderful fruits. One of the wonderful fruits is a strong interest, even a commitment, to living an ethical life—not because you're supposed to, but because it's the heart's request.

May your heart guide you. Thank you.