Here is today's podcast. It refers to Honen Shonin 法然 (1133-1212) the founder of Pureland Buddhism in Japan, and to the Ten Mahayana Precepts, see https://eleusis.ning.com/group/buddhism/forum/topics/ten-mahayana-precepts
Podcast
In the forthcoming Bodhi Retreat, there will be opportunity for individuals to take the Ten Mahayana Precepts. Also, there will be ceremonies at which persons becoming ordained will take various sets of ordination precepts. So, in this podcast I’d like to say something about the Amida Shu attitude and approach to precepts.
Honen Shonin was himself a monk who kept precepts and he held precept ceremonies, even giving the precepts to members of the Royal family on occasion.
So, how do we regard the precepts? Sometimes people are reluctant to take precepts because they can see that they will have difficulty keeping them perfectly. This is one extreme. The other extreme: there are people who go through the motions of taking the precepts, but don't make a serious effort to follow them. Neither of these approaches is really satisfactory. Buddhism is a middle way.
It is true that the precepts are such that you are unlikely to be able, even with your best efforts, to keep them perfectly. So, one undertakes to do so, but then repeatedly one fails. Such failure is important. If you don't try, you don't fail. I have never failed in my attempt to reach the summit of Mt Everest because I've never made any such resolution in the first place. Other people who have attempted to reach the summit and sometimes have succeeded and sometimes have failed. But all of them have had experiences that I have not had and learned things that I have not learned. So, the attempt is important.
So, in taking precepts, the attempt is important and we do not generally administer precepts unless it is clear that a person already, before even taking the precepts, is making a serious effort to live them, to conform to them. Nonetheless, the realities of life, the external conditions, the karmic background, all of this conspires to take us away.
The precepts are a description of the life of an enlightened being. It says in the Summary of Faith and Practice The Buddha body is delineated by the precepts. So, the precepts describe the Buddha. By taking the precepts one is not thinking that one immediately is going to be a Buddha who will naturally fulfil them.
A Buddha does naturally fulfil them, whether the Buddha has taken the precepts or not. You might have a precept to never indulge in hatred, well, the Buddha doesn’t indulge in hatred. It comes naturally to them not to do so. They can’t think of any reason why they would indulge in hatred. This is not because they’re following a rule, this is because it is in the nature of being a Buddha to be so.
So, this is one side: the precepts describe the state of the Buddha. The other side is the acceptance that we are not Buddhas, we are ordinary human beings, but we are doing our best. So, we take the precepts in order to commit to deepening our efforts to do our best. When we fail, we learn. We don’t just learn how to correct our behaviour, but we learn something about human nature.
Precepts, in our approach, are not about social control and they do not involve some sort of cosmic retribution if you fail to keep them. They are a learning process. So, each precept is a kind of koan. As you struggle with it, so you learn and you deepen and you find out a lot, especially about faith. A person who has complete faith, keeps the precepts naturally. When you notice you’re not keeping them, you know something about what is happening to your faith.
Precepts are very useful, and they help to deepen our faith in the Buddha and in the process that is going on as a result of the Dharma being with us.
Namo Amida Bu
Thank you very much
Dharmavidya
David
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