In one of Suzuki Roshi ‘s Dharma talks he said, “When our everyday life is based on wisdom, we call it precepts.” This summer we’re exploring the precepts. We’re using their penetrative inquiry to guide our study of the self and our everyday life. Wisdom? We might define wisdom as seeing things as they are. So the practice of wisdom is the practice of studying our view. How we see.
Do you act from a narrow self-interest view? Or do you extend the field of concern beyond? We find ourselves working with our internal states, in response to infinite changing conditions in the world,. This can be confounding. Bikkhu Bodhi really captures the challenge. “The complexity of the human condition confronts us with circumstances in which moral obligations can run at crosscurrents.” It’s unavoidable, and if we are to be true to conditions and live with integrity, we cannot engage the precepts with unwavering obedience to them as formal rules. We employ them as fuel for awakening, to help us get more sensitive to cause and effect as it unfolds out in our life, and more sensitive to suffering that comes from a self-centered view, inattention, reactivity, and our shadow beliefs and habits.
Precepts remind us that we are not alone, not separate, there is always way more that we don’t know than that we do know. This means staying open, encouraging a habit of looking beyond what is apparent, kindling a warm heart in relation to what is acting on us and calls for a response. Sometimes, it’s quite clear what’s needed. But there is war, there is aggression, there is fear, and we share the planet with countless other living beings.
What is right? What is wrong? This way of this-or-that thinking doesn’t often help us be true to the complexities involved. What is the wisdom path? Committing to study and practice of precepts is one way. Acknowledging our own confusion, seeing into it. Grounding in this inquiry helps us to be more sensitive and clear in response to samsara. Doing the best that we can.
