Precepts of Peace in the Gradual Training - Part 1
At the beginning of one of the most sweeping narratives in the ancient Pāli texts, the Mahāparinibbānasutta [1], we encounter King Ajātasattu who is intent on invading neighboring territory, that of the Vajjis. He has a retainer report this plan to the Buddha and instructs, "Remember well how the Buddha answers and tell it to me. For Realized Ones say nothing that is not so."
Presumably to dissuade King Ajātasattu, the Buddha responds to this announcement by sharing seven qualities leading to non-decline, all of which the Vajjis possess. That is, so long as the Vajjis do these seven things, they can be expected to prosper, not to decline. In brief, a selection: they meet frequently; they meet in harmony, leave in harmony, and carry on business in harmony; they undertake their ancient Vajjian traditions that have been decreed; and they honor, respect, esteem, and venerate Vajjian elders and shrines.
These qualities can be understood as an example of this principle: there is a way of being together, of regarding one another, that tends toward prospering, not toward decline.
After the retainer departs, the Buddha was inspired to call the monastics for instruction. He taught the monks several lists of principles of non-decline, some identical, some different. For the purpose of the prosperity of the Sangha, the Buddha encouraged the monastics to meet frequently, to meet in harmony, to respect senior monastics. Now a difference: they can be expected to prosper, not to decline if they establish mindfulness, and importantly, if they do not abandon the training rules, i.e., they continue to follow the training precepts.
Following this example, we can regard the precepts as precepts tending toward prosperity, precepts of harmony, precepts of peace.
More Than Meditation
There are so many ways someone comes into contact with Buddhist practice. Many of us become acquainted with Dharma via meditation. What is sometimes missed is the rich array of practices that constitute a supportive path.
For some years, I led a 20s and 30s Zen group in San Francisco. So many of them found their way to practice through meditation apps. Some others found their way to Dharma through MBSR, through recovery programs, popular media, or through the practice being their last best hope. For me, about twenty years ago, I entered the path of meditation through the emphatic words of a friend. He slapped a meditation book into my chest and declared, "Do it!" There are many ways to enter the path, and we can't see the whole path through any one threshold.
In teachings on mindfulness practice, we might hear things like, "Everything is included, nothing left out," or "Bring your whole self to the cushion," or "Your whole life finds its way into your meditation." True! It's also true that meditation isn't our only tool. It's remarkably effective. But how do we meditate when the deep challenges and crises come? Or when the doubts come: "What's the point of all this navel gazing?”
For those who practice mindfulness meditation, it can be illuminating and encouraging to discover that meditation has a broader context, and that a comprehensive Dharma practice is actually full of rich tools, guidance, instruction, history, exemplars, and precepts of peace. This can support us in ways that meditation alone cannot.
The Gradual Training
One important illustration of the array of available tools, presented as an arc of practice from its very beginning to liberation, is called "The Gradual Training." The Gradual Training is a teaching that shows up over and over in the Pāli discourses, but doesn't get so much air time. Canonically, the Gradual Training describes the journey of practice for a monastic. However, because our modern lives don’t fit neatly into the Ancient Indian categories of monastic and lay, we can take judicious guidance from these instructions offered to ancient monastics.
The Gradual Training shows the practice as a journey that unfolds over time, which is so true to our experience. Our hearts are freed gradually. There can be sudden moments of vast opening, or long stretches in "the dry place" when practice becomes a bore, other times of profound challenge, or a simple and delightful carrying on. The Buddha taught that the practice proceeds like an ocean floor: a gradual shelf, a gradual slope, with a drop off only after a long period. [2] It's certainly worth the work, and it may take a while.
For this discussion, I would like to re-parse the Gradual Training, as expressed in The Shorter Discourse on the Simile of the Elephant’s Footprint, [3] into nine stages: (1) a Buddha arises; (2) one hears the Dharma; (3) initial faith and commitment arise; (4) ethical training, i.e., precepts; (5) contentment; (6) sense restraint; (7) mindfulness and full awareness in everyday activity; (8) meditation; and (9) liberation. Clearly, this training is not only meditation. Here we have a whole set of wholesome practices and qualities, including the precepts.
The Buddha, Dharma, and Initial Confidence
The gradual training begins even before we are in the picture. What's the first step? A Buddha arises in the world. This is the watershed moment when a living person realized his mind was freed from greed, hatred, and delusion. In short, he had ended the cycles of suffering. He would be peace in this world. What an example: someone did an extraordinary amount of work, over a long time, to refine their character and free their heart, to the extent that he could rightly be called “blessed” and “awakened.”
He did this with the help of many others, surely, but he had to find the end of the path on his own, as there was no Buddha to show him the way to the end of suffering. That the training begins when a Buddha arises in the world indicates that our practice is social from the beginning. As my fellow monastics and I used to hear often at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, "Nobody can do it for you, and you can't do it alone." No Buddha, no teaching, no practice.
Next, one encounters the Dharma, the teaching. Note that the Buddha recognized that the Dhamma was subtle, so he was initially disinclined to teach. Thankfully, he was nudged, [4] and his compassion responded such that the teaching was set rolling. For me to encounter the teaching, it had to survive for over two thousand years, in memories and then on papyrus, find its way into books, then into my hands. That's nothing short of amazing. Then, when I started practicing with others, I came to see how the Dharma was not abstract: it was made real in the people around me, their words, actions, and minds.
Third in the Gradual Training, one comes to enough confidence in what one is hearing to think, "Yes, I'm confident enough to try this out." Decisions vary, depending, for example, on how and when one encounters the practice. For me, an initial confidence came through a very simple observation: on days I meditated, I was more at ease, and importantly, more kind. It takes just enough confidence in the practice to say, "Ok, I'm going to give this a fair try. I don't fully understand the teaching yet, really, but I think there is something here." For some, their eyes or ears are open to the Dharma because of some challenge. For others, just enough confidence comes as a clear message from the body. Not a few people have described an experience of feeling surprisingly "at home" when they first started meditating or meditating with others.
With just enough confidence, there arises an initial commitment to the practice. In the texts we see this commitment expressed as "going for refuge," i.e., an initial expression of faith, an orientation toward the possibility of awakening, the effectiveness of the teaching, and the support of the community. Going for refuge includes the next step of the gradual training: the ethical training. Here we arrive at the precepts.
Sīla: Precepts of Peace
"Precepts" is a common, abbreviated translation of a term from the ancient Pāli language, a term that is closer to "training rules." [5] With that in mind, the precepts make sense. This ethical training isn’t an abstract set of five rules without a context. Rather, the precepts are commitments for a purpose, commitments that arise out of our own wish for peace. They are precepts toward peace. To commit to the precepts is to receive "the practitioner's way of life."
How do they function? We begin training the mind by training the body, i.e., refraining from the gross level of harmful action. This approach works because of a simple principle. That is, if we don't feed hatred, for example, by indulging it, hatred weakens. If we don’t feed greed by indulging it, greed weakens. Thus, we train with restraint of our conduct. Over time, ethical training becomes more and more subtle, including at the level of impulse and intention.
These precepts protect peace. As they diminish greed, hatred, and delusion, they protect others. When we take on this training, all beings are protected. Consider: is one more likely to steal if the mind is possessed by greed, or without greed? Is one more likely to harm or even kill if the mind is possessed by hatred, or without hatred? Consider this from the other direction: when the mind is oriented toward peace, how might it feel out of alignment to misuse sexuality, for example? Or to cloud the mind?
After making a commitment to the precepts, there is still a great deal of inner work to do to protect peace for those around us, to eliminate the roots of greed, hatred, and delusion. Yet, we don't have to wait to enjoy the peaceful benefit of the precepts. Precepts give peace at the moment we commit, or recommit, to them. And, they lead onward to wholesome Dharmic pleasures. As the Buddha taught, virtuous behavior naturally leads to non-regret, which gives rise to gladness, which conditions joy, then tranquility, pleasure, and a concentrated mind. [6]
In the second half of this essay, we will briefly treat the traditional way of committing or recommitting to the precepts in recitation. Then we will touch on the remaining practices in the Gradual Training: contentment, sense restraint, mindfulness in activity, meditation, and liberation.
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Notes:
[1] Dīgha Nikāya 16
[2] Pahārāda Sutta (Aṇguttara Nikāya 8.19)
[3] Cūḷahatthipadopamasutta (Majjhima Nikāya 27)
[4] Brahmāyācanasutta (Saṃyutta Nikāya 6.1)
[5] sikkhāpada (e.g., Khuddakapāṭha 2, as the ten precepts rather than the five precepts discussed here)
[6] Kimatthiyasutta (Aṇguttara Nikāya 11.1)