Sīla
March 2021, Bangkok
One of the hardest concepts to break through upon my first encounter with Buddhism were the aspects of morality and discipline and where those two intersect. Coming from a Christian background affected this, as I think the two respective religions treat the issues differently, at least as far as my personal upbringing is concerned. I’m not really interested in going through and comparing the two, but simply want to point out that it may take a while to meet Buddhism on its own terms, especially if your ideas have been formed from different cultural or familial practices. I still have a Christian friend who I talk to regularly and no matter how hard I try, I can’t convey to him just how my and his ideas of morality differ, stemming from our specific religious practices.
The Pali word Sīla usually gets translated as morals, rules, virtues, precepts etc., but the most accurate translation would be something simple like ‘acting appropriately.’ This I think takes away much of the baggage that comes with terms like ‘morality.’ When you see these listed ‘rules’ for how to act as ways to just ‘act appropriately’ for achieving a goal, venturing to follow them doesn’t come with as much pressure, as all you’re really doing is taking advice from a reliable source (the Buddha) who already had the experience of getting to where you want to go. It’s really as simple as ‘If you want to achieve this state, then act like this. This is how to get there. If you find that acting against these suggestions is more important to you, then don’t take this advice.”
One of the basic tenets in the idea of kamma (karma) is that our actions have consequences. Even the smallest actions have subtle influences that many disregard or are unaware of. The best way of observing this is to try to enforce a few restrictions on yourself and see what the results are, see how your daily life changes from not doing something you’re used to doing daily. If you decide to follow the basic five ‘precepts’ in Buddhism of not harming any living being, not stealing, not speaking falsely, not engaging in sexual misconduct, and not drinking alcohol it’s guaranteed that you will notice a huge difference in your life. Personally, I would say just an honest attempt at living under the five precepts would be enough to be considered a Buddhist, but others may disagree. It would involve a lot of reflection on times when you may have slipped up, as well as a genuine attempt to reform any outlying habits. It also requires a lot of personal research and interpretation, as the original explanation of the rules in the Vinaya leave some wiggle room. Some would say that sexual misconduct encompasses things like not getting consent from a girl’s father prior to ‘knowing her’ (in the Biblical sense), while my own personal interpretation would require not doing anything without someone’s personal consent, nor getting involved with someone who already has a spouse or is in a relationship, nor patronizing sex workers of any kind. Others would extend the ‘no alcohol’ to other drugs that might not necessarily fall under the original rule. What the Buddha didn’t like about alcohol was that it made one lazy towards discipline and made practitioners disrespectful towards people who should be respected. So any drug that makes you do those things should fall under this category.
Ultimately the goal of following these basic ‘precepts’ is meant to help you form good patterns of activity while abandoning negative patterns of activity, ones that result in negative consequences, negative kamma. On top of this, the fruits gained from living under these guidelines, developing useful habits, clears your mind tremendously and allows for extremely advanced states of concentration during meditation. If you don’t believe me, just try going to a ten day retreat where you follow these rules, plus a few more, and see just how much clearer you see the operations and impulses in your own mind. This discipline of developing healthy habits, I believe, is the primary seed for all actual Buddhist practice, and it all starts from being able to live within the boundaries of the five precepts. This is a massive part of the path, if not the entire path. In Thailand, when lay people (normal village people) go to big temple festivals, the monks provide the service of ‘giving’ people the five precepts. If people repeat the Pali formulas of these five precepts after the monks and actually ‘live’ them for as long as they can, a ton of merit is made (merit is a ‘positive kamma’ kind of concept). Not only is this merit made by the people who stay within the boundaries of these precepts, but also for the monks who pointed them in the right direction, and this in turn helps numerous other people because monks typically direct or dedicate any merit they receive to others. Living a lifestyle within the boundaries of the five precepts does immeasurable good for yourself and others in a kind of ripple effect. It is an act of focus and will that generates beneficial kamma, and I believe it is the best way to begin making any meaningful change in the world.
One of the benefits, at least from the Thai Forest Tradition perspective, is that following precepts has a protective element about it. Ajahn Mun, the head figure from this tradition ardently believed that he was able to survive so well in the forest while plenty of other monks died in the same locations where he stayed because he actually stuck to the precepts he was supposed to follow, whereas the others didn’t. In one location where he stayed, a previous monk who stayed there died because, as Ajahn Mun would claim, he cut down a tree to make himself some shelter. Cutting down a tree goes against the Vinaya, and the belief is that Devas (sort of celestial spirits that can interact with mankind) live in trees, and can either protect people living in the woods, cause them trouble, or simply look the other way. They allegedly tend to respond positively to Buddhist practitioners that follow the precepts arduously and genuinely, and negatively to ones who don’t and tend to carry a shitty attitude around with them. In a way, when you follow these precepts to the best of your ability, you can enter into the chaos that is nature and fit into it in a way that protects you from the dangers it may present. From my own experience, I can attest to this. The last time I went to stay in a hut in the woods, on the first night I got no sleep simply because it was a new environment and my mind wouldn’t stop spinning on this venture I was embarking on that could last an indeterminate amount of time. So the next day I was tending toward being exceptionally lazy and I wanted to skip my evening meditation. I went to bed very early and didn’t adhere to my own standards of what I thought was correct Buddhist practice. That night, in the middle of the night, I woke up because I heard something crawling on the wooden floor (I’m a light sleeper). I got my flashlight and saw that there was a giant centipede trying to crawl into my mosquito net. When I told my teacher about this the next day, the first thing he asked was, “What did you do after we finished the evening chanting?” and I was honest and said I went to sleep right away. He smiled and said, “It’s the devas trying to cheer you on. You didn’t do meditation before sleeping and they are sending you a sign, telling you stay true to your principles, to do the work you came here to do.” I never missed another night of meditation after that, and I made sure to follow the precepts that I aimed to follow (in this case, I was under 8 precepts, which included sleeping on the floor, no makeup, jewelry, powder, etc., and no music, mindless entertainment, etc., plus a harsher enforcement of other various rules, ie one meal a day, no physical contact with women, sitting when eating or drinking, etc.) I would still encounter various dangerous animals on a daily basis, but never felt threatened in the entire three months. If you feel like you’re being watched in the woods, or anywhere else, it’s best to just assume you are and act accordingly. It could help you.
It should go without saying that if you want to make any progress in Buddhism, or in many other ventures, you need a strong sense of discipline to be at all successful. If you feel drawn to the Buddhist path, I wouldn’t even know where else to start except the five precepts. These five precepts are for lay people—people who consider themselves Buddhists, but just aren’t capable enough, for whatever reason, to fully become monks. But as this is a path, this is a good starting point, even if you aren’t planning on being a monk in this lifetime. It’s still a very beneficial way to live and it will generate good habits and good patterns of living that will legitimately protect you, give you good kamma in the future, and in turn benefit all those around you and those you believe deserving of respect and merit. Following the lifestyle patterns of those you find to be noble puts you in league with them. The same holds true for the opposite end of the spectrum at the level of degenerates. Your actions determine who you are grouped with, and who you will have access to in the future: valuable, beneficial people, or negative, destructive people.
I’ll finish with one anecdote from my teacher. One morning I asked him what would happen in a doomsday scenario for monks, seeing as they aren’t allowed to get their own food, even from nature. They can’t pick fruit from trees or bushes and can’t dig into the ground or farm, or anything like that. He told me that if a monk follows the precepts absolutely, he will be provided for. He cited numerous examples from the Pali Cannon about devas in the guise of a person donating food to monks even in the deepest, most remote reaches of the woods or any other uninhabited environment. Your kamma and your sīla protect you, especially when, like my teacher, you’ve experienced the benefits of holding true to them so much that it’s not even faith in them at that point. It’s common sense; it’s a law of nature; it’s dhamma.