I vow to face the truth of the Dukakis' words. Morning. As you know, our study for this practice period is how to observe the precepts in our life and what is the meaning of precepts and how do we actually observe them.

[01:07]

in a real way. When I was looking through my material to study, I ran across some papers from the Vinaya Conference that we had at Green Gulch in 1990. There was an interesting paper by a scholar named John Strong, where he describes in three, gives three examples of precepts, or three examples of how precepts are observed, were observed in various ways, which all three are interesting and point up the ambiguous character of precepts, seemingly ambiguous, and the kind of non-substantial

[02:35]

character of taking things literally. Taking something literally will not work in real life. But, as you know, Whenever I talk about precepts, I always talk about the three aspects of precepts. One is the literal aspect, sometimes called Hinayana, but I don't like to use that term. It's an outdated, outmoded term and kind of derogatory term. I would just call them literal, which is actually what they are, to actually take the precepts literally. Don't kill, don't steal, and so forth.

[03:39]

So that literal aspect is necessary. And then there's the bodhisattva. attitude toward precepts, which is to act according to circumstances. And then there is the one mind aspect of precepts, which is that there's actually no breaking of precepts, because everything is totally one in a non-dualistic realm.

[04:52]

There's no keeping or breaking. And so we have to understand all three aspects, because whatever we do, all three are present in every action that we do. Sometimes I use killing as an example. We always use killing as an example. From the absolute perspective, Nothing can be killed. Life cannot be killed. No matter how much we divide something into little pieces, life itself cannot be killed. The life of that piece cannot be killed. So, in the sense of, in the absolute sense, there is no birth and no death.

[05:59]

But if we only stick to emptiness, it's a violation of precepts. So the balance of that understanding is don't kill. Don't take life. It's the same attitude as even though There are no sentient beings to be saved. We vow to save them all. And in between those two extremes is where our life takes place and where our actions take place. Realizing that there is no birth and death in an absolute sense and realizing that in a relative sense it definitely is birth and death and pain and suffering and right and wrong.

[07:18]

So how do we conduct our life given these two extremes? That's Bodhisattva precepts. So, John Strong gives one example of when he was in Sri Lanka. He was on a bus, and on the bus was a monk, and he was standing in the aisle talking to some other monks, and he was kind of blocking the aisle. And in the back of the bus was a woman. And she wanted to get off the bus. But because the monk was blocking the aisle, she was kind of hesitating to get off. But now you know that, strictly speaking, in the Vinaya, according to the rules, monks aren't supposed to touch women and women aren't supposed to touch monks.

[08:29]

And the bus was swaying kind of like this. And he was kind of swayed. And every once in a while, there was a little opening. And she was kind of watching for that opening to see if she could get by him without touching him. And he wasn't aware of what was happening with her. So, she was waiting and waiting, and the opening was never quite enough, kind of like when you're doing jump rope, you know, and you're waiting for just the right swing. So, finally, the bus driver saw what was happening through the mirror, and he tapped the muck, and he said,

[09:32]

The lady wants to get by. So the monk stepped aside and the lady dashed by. But if the monk, if the bus driver hadn't seen it, the lady would still be on the bus. But actually, it wouldn't have mattered because according to the rules, if you touch, if the monk and the lady touched by accident, it wouldn't have made any difference. But it's kind of an interesting example of strictly following rules and how you actually act in life. And with the woman, you know, she was, because of their culture and their attitude toward monks, she was put in this position where she couldn't move.

[10:41]

Given some other... If the bus driver hadn't said something, what could she have done? So this is kind of an example of people's minds being kind of frozen in their positions. How do you actually act in a realistic way, given the rules? She could have maybe walked up to him and said, excuse me, I'd like to get by. She could have done that, but somehow It was the bus driver who was the Bodhisattva in this case. He didn't hesitate to talk to the monk. He didn't care. He was exercising Bodhisattva precepts.

[11:53]

This is the practical thing to do. Even though there are rules, this is the right thing to do. how to figure out what is the right thing to do is precepts. Precepts, even though there are rules, precepts come from inside and not from outside. So rules are something that help us to guide our lives. But the real precepts have to come up from inside moment after moment. So precepts are a living code of ethics rather than

[12:59]

a dead code of ethics which just bind us. Precepts should give us our freedom rather than bind us in some way. But we need both control and freedom. How do we control ourselves so that we actually have freedom? How do we take responsibility so that we have freedom? This is what I used to come up against all the time with my son. He would want all kinds of freedom. And I'd say, well, you can have freedom as long as you have responsibility. The more responsibility you take on, the more freedom you have.

[14:03]

It's proportional. So, I think actually of precepts more as responsibility, taking responsibility rather than rigid rules. And the more responsibility we do take, the more freedom we have, and the more we're able to move freely, actually. This other example he gives, which is from the Madhyaminikaya, and I think it appears in other sutras, of these monks who were living in a village, in a town, in India, in Buddha's time. And these monks were kind of isolated from the main body of monks, I guess. being in a village.

[15:06]

And they were... Instead of being aloof, which monks tend to be, or can tend to be, they were more outgoing toward the laity. And living amongst the laity, they were... I'll read you his description, because he writes very nicely. So he said, this may be found in the Pali Vinaya. In the case of the bhikkhus, these bhikkhus, a group of six monks, also notorious for their frequent violations of the Vinaya rules. The most famous of these monks, and the only one I'll consider here, were Asaji and Punabhasu.

[16:19]

Together with their followers, they resided at Kittagiri on the road from Varanasi to Srivasti, where Buddha transversed those roads. In the Pali Vinaya, Asaji and Punabhasu are repeatedly lambasted for a host of practices. They plant flowering bushes and use the blossoms to make garlands and other ornaments, which they then give to the respectable women and girls of the area. They eat from one dish with these women, and they drink from the same jar, sit on the same mat, share a single couch, a single mat with them. Then they take their meals in the evening as well as in the morning and at noon, because monks are only supposed to eat at one time a day. They sometimes drink some intoxicants, and they wear garlands of perfumes. They dance and sing and play musical instruments. Moreover, they engage Moreover, they engage in all sorts of games.

[17:25]

Dice, checkers, a type of hopscotch, a kind of pick-up sticks, tip cap, whatever that is, ball, somersaults, they blow on trumpets made of leaves, they make toy windmills, toy carts, toy bows and arrows, and they guess at letters that others trace on their backs. And they play a game of mimicking deformities. They train in various sports including horse and elephant handling, archery and swordsmanship. They whistle, they snap their fingers, they wrestle, they box, they spread out their upper robes on the ground and invite dancing girls to dance on them. Again, all these things that are generally, if not specifically condemned, is not befitting Buddhist monks.

[18:31]

But here, the actual situation is presented as being somewhat more complex. For it is apparent that these acts are perceived by the people of Kittagiri as positive things, as evidence of their bhikkhus' wholehearted involvement in down-to-earth participation in community affairs. Indeed, Asaji and Poonnabasu are locally very popular figures. And when a wandering bhikkhu of more strict demeanor comes to town on his begging round, the laypeople refuse to give him alms. Because they find him haughty, supercilious, uncommunicative, an idiot. Our masters Asaji and Poonavasu, they declare, are polite, genial, pleasant of speech, beaming with smiles, saying, come, you are welcome. They are not supercilious, they are easily accessible, and they are the first to speak.

[19:34]

This is an important point, for it seems to me that Vinaya texts written by monks often make assumptions about what kind of behavior laypersons want and expect from their bhikkhus. More often than not, the laity is portrayed as being rather strict, moralistic, worried about what people will say, and inclined to complain to the Buddha about perceived violations. In this story, however, the majority of the people are not complaining at all, but in fact are rather enthusiastic about their deviant bhikkhus. It is clear, then, that Asaji and Punabhasu's faults need to be viewed in perspective. Granted, they play games, they mix with lay men and women, they have a good time, but in one sense they are simply exhibiting an extreme that in more moderate forms might be acceptable behavior for village and town-dwelling monks. They befriend the laity and are appreciated for that. With this kind of support, however, and with the Kadagirians' concomitant lack of respect for more sober, disciplined monks, it is clear that the

[20:39]

is a serious one, and the Buddha, learning of the situation, decides to take action. Therefore, with the consent of the Sangha at Shravasti, he sends Shariputra and Moggallana, two of his leading disciples, to Khitagiri to carry out an act of banishment that would forbid the followers of Asaji and Punarabhasu from continuing to reside in their monastery. This move, however, is not altogether successful. For instead of dutifully obeying Sacchariputra and Moggallana, the monks of Kittagiri refused to receive them, curse, revile, and insult them. And instead of just leaving their own monastery, they decided to leave the order altogether. The whole episode gives us an interesting glimpse into the relationship between Vinaya and schism. The Sangha has established procedures for dealing with the rule of violations of individual monks, but it is more or less helpless in the face of organized groups of bhikkhus, especially when the latter see in their supposedly deviant actions a different lifestyle, a different type of relationship to the laity.

[21:52]

It's an interesting story, because these monks, according to the ways put down, are very extreme on one side. And then the strict bhikkhu is extreme on the other side. So these are two roads. And somewhere in between is where life actually takes place. The Japanese monks, you know, were expelled from the monasteries during the Meiji period. And then they were made to marry and have families and take up temples in the towns and then all the Japanese people were registered with the temples. This was a kind of government move to organize the people actually and to take power away from the Buddhists. So the monks became family men, family people and

[22:57]

became more involved with the laity. And when you go to Japan, you find that the priests of the temple, they smoke, and they drink sake, and they play games, and they do all these things that were just mentioned in one way or another. Not so extreme, but... And people love it. They appreciate that the monks are actually blending with the people in order to understand and to not be so different and so aloof. But the problem is, Many times they easily get caught, and then they start drinking too much, and smoking too much.

[24:04]

There has to be some dignity to the priest's actions. So there's always this tension between how to behave in a strict way and how to behave in an informal way. And this has to be done There are no rules for it. There are rules, but there are no rules. Within the rules, there are no rules. And the rule comes up in each situation. Like, what do you do in each situation? How do you actually act in each situation? Japanese Buddhists don't pay a lot of attention to precepts.

[25:06]

Saicho was a Tendai monk. who, a very well-known, famous monk who brought the Tendai, developed the Tendai school in Japan. And he developed the 16 precepts that we take. you know, monks in China and Japan and India take 250 precepts. And they still do that as a kind of token, you know, tokenism. They take 250 precepts, but they don't follow them. But they do take the 16 precepts which were developed by Saicho as a kind of condensation of all the precepts. There are still the 48 minor Bodhisattva precepts, but I don't want to talk about them now.

[26:26]

But these are the major precepts. But it's like everybody knows what the precepts are. So you don't talk about them much. You just act because it's like when you know something so well, you don't talk about it much. So the Japanese don't talk about precepts much. But they know them very well. They understand them very well. But they're not something that they talk about. And so it looks like Japanese don't follow the precepts. They follow them as much as anybody follows them. But they don't talk about them very much. Suzuki Roshi talked about them. He gave some lectures on them. He said, if you follow the precepts literally, that's heresy. So, it's simple to just follow precepts literally.

[27:38]

Then you just give up all creative, your creative life and stop thinking in terms of what's actually happening. If you just do things literally, it just doesn't work. So there's the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. And the letter is important, but the spirit is how we actually live, precept. So in our study of precepts, whenever we study each precept, we'll look at the precept from these three different points of view, so that we understand the meaning, true meaning of precepts, broad meaning of precepts.

[29:00]

There's one other story where he talks about Nagasena and King Malinda. You know, the questions of King Malinda is a very famous Abhidhamma text, where Nagasena, who was a Buddhist monk, is asked by King Malinda to explain Buddhism. And he keeps asking these questions, and then Nagasena answers his questions. And this is a very famous text. So in the Chinese version of the Questions of King Melinda, the so-called Sutra of the Bhikkhu Nagasena, we find a tale in which Nagasena, who is still a novice at the time, is sent out to beg for food by his master, an 80-year-old elder, fearing he will gregariously converse with householders on the way.

[30:31]

He's not supposed to talk. He's just supposed to beg for food and eat it or bring it back. The old monk tells him to take some water in his mouth and keep it there the whole time, neither swallowing it nor spitting it out. This, Nagasena undertakes to do. When he gets to the house of a particular layman, however, the latter is so impressed by his demeanor that he asks him to come in and preach a sermon. Nagasena is thus in a quandary. On the one hand, if he spits out the water so as to preach, he will be violating the direct order of his preceptor. On the other hand, he knows that were this layman to hear the Buddha's teaching, he might well attain to the path. After some hesitation, Nagasena resolves on the latter course. He spits and preaches. And indeed, the layman thereby becomes a stream-winner, as does Nagasena himself, who, interestingly, is here enlightened by the words of his own sermon.

[31:32]

Nevertheless, when he gets back to his monastery, Nagasena is condemned by his master for violating his orders. Summoning all the monks together, he declares that Nagasena must be expelled from the community. However, another prominent elder, Ashvagupta, protests. He argues that Nagasena should not be expelled because, although he violated his precepts, in doing so, he hit two targets with a single arrow. But Nagasena's old master is relentless, saying that it would not even matter even if he had hit a hundred targets. He disobeyed a direct order, and the fact that he thereby entered the stream and caused another to do so only makes it worse, for it will encourage others to follow his example. Nagasena, therefore, is expelled from the monastery. Be this as it may, it is nevertheless once again clear that in this community there are two camps. One represented by Naga Sena's crusty old preceptor, advocating aloofness from the laity and maintaining that the most important thing is the preservation of the Sangha's hierarchy and observation of the rules of the order.

[32:48]

The other, more liberal, represented by Ashwa Gupta and apparently endorsed by the text, and recognizing that the most important thing is the spreading of the truth of the Buddha's Dharma through whatever means. So... It's time for one question. It seems like Dagestani's preceptor and Chakravarti himself came up short in the skillful means department. Yeah. But that's all we know, right? That's all we know, yeah. That's right.

[33:49]

We don't know the ins and outs. Taking responsibility and using freedom? Yeah. Because freedom only works within limitations. And responsibility is to know, to take on the limitations of some task. And within that parameter, you have freedom. It looks the other way. It looks like if you want freedom, you take away all the limitations. of taking responsibility and... Well, if you come to practice and...

[35:11]

and you sit in Zazen. Zazen is the most strict kind of limitation that you can have. And within that strict limitation is ultimate freedom. So you have to take responsibility for maintaining that strictness. And when you take responsibility for maintaining what I call the form, the form of Zazen, which is to not move no matter what happens.

[36:49]

Then you find your freedom. But it takes responsibility. It's taking on that responsibility. Personal responsibility. But it's just a paper that was submitted. All right. When you move out from the literal, is there a way of telling whether it's really something that's going to help or it's your delusion? That's why you have to not abandon the literal.

[37:55]

Even though you move, you know, it takes all three to be, all three of those aspects have to be present at the same time. So you're not abandoning, not killing. How is this not killing when you chop the head off a cabbage, or chop a head of cabbage off a stalk, how is this not killing? So, it's a great koan. I think it works in the other direction too, that if you use the freedom, you have to take the responsibility for the consequences.

[39:49]

That's right, yeah. She said if you use the freedom, you have to take responsibility for the consequences. That's exactly right. But we don't have any more time. Means are numberless.

[40:05]

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