People have been using a ceremony like the one we will perform today to take the precepts in the Japanese Zen Buddhist tradition for about 800 years. The precepts can’t really be given, by me or anyone else. But they can be taken. I wanted to say a few words about the meaning and use of the precepts so that as the ceremony proceeds it will be clear to everyone what is going on.

The precepts are tools. They are an instruction book for how to live. What to take up and what to set aside. What causes us happiness and what causes us to suffer. We can work with the precepts like we work with tools. We can get better at using them, with practice. We get better at noticing the condition of our minds, our speech and our action. We gain the ability to control our impulses. We gain the understanding, through intellect and experience, of why it is in our interest to uphold the precepts, not as a religious formula or a tradition, not as good advice from someone else, but as a practical matter of keeping our own life healthy and happy. As we do we gain the strength and skill to help others.

There are three groups within the 16 precepts that people will take today. The first three are the three refuges. This is the vow of renunciation, in a sense. The first three vows are vows to take refuge in the Buddha Dharma and Sangha. We need to take refuge as human beings, somewhere. We should take it where we can really find it, where we can find safety and real protection. If we take refuge in money, status, pleasures, and so on, we will always be anxious and inevitably be disappointed. And the end of our life will be an event of nothing but loss.

Where can we turn? To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. The three jewels. The Buddha jewel in which we take refuge does not refer to the historical Buddha who walked on earth and taught 2500 years ago. He can’t help us right now, he isn’t around. But the reality he discovered, the condition of his mind, is accessible to all of us. And realizing the truth of our own Buddha nature is a real refuge for us. We can become Buddhas.

The dharma jewel is the true nature of reality. The teachings of the Buddha - known as the dharma - the books, the scriptures, the words themselves, can’t provide us with refuge. We can learn from them and they are precious but when the chips are down those words and books will not protect us from suffering unless we realize the truth they are trying to convey in our own mindstream. Then the dharma jewel, the realizations, can provide us with real refuge.

Even the Sangha, the community of practitioners, cannot in a conventional sense, provide us with deep and lasting refuge. A group of fellow practitioners, sharing our energy, our aspiration, our lives together, is wonderful and beneficial for all of us. But real refuge will come from the realized Sangha, those few great beings here and now, visible or invisible, who are manifesting their realization in every breath, word, thought and action of their lives. We can learn from them, and we can attain, like them, insight into the truth, and so find real peace.

This is how we can see the first three precepts, the three refuges. Taking refuge in the Buddha, does not mean leaving God’s team and joining Buddha’s team, in a sectarian way. It means leaning on what will support you as you live.

The second group of three vows are called the three pure precepts. They point out what you need to do, to not only avoid suffering, but to become a mature human being, that is, a Buddha. To do good. To avoid evil. To do good for the sake of all beings. These sometimes sound prosaic, obvious, or neutral. That misses the point. If we understand how karma works - in essence that virtuous actions yield happiness and non-virtuous actions yield suffering - and if we understand that the nature of our own mind, of others, of the whole world, are not fixed and rigid, but are completely susceptible to the influence of virtuous and non-virtuous action, then we can see that our actions matter. Totally. That the quality of our lives, and the quality of the lives of everyone we come in contact with and those far beyond, are determined by the choices we make.

What it is to do good, to fulfill the first if the three pure precepts, is spelled out in the six perfections: to be generous, to conduct ourselves with self-discipline, to avoid getting angry, to be joyful in our efforts to save beings, to meditate deeply and to see directly into the nature of reality itself.

Those are the actions that are helpful to us. If we are aimed at enlightenment - freedom from a life of suffering - we can achieve it completely only with our actions toward others as a basis. This is the genius of the Mahayana view. We vow to turn our lives around, to not limit our actions to furthering our own limited personal agenda. We vow to turn our view around and to devote our efforts to aiding others. This becomes our mission. It is important to understand that we undertake this mission in a balanced way, within the boundaries of our own strength. It does not mean harming ourselves for some trivial reason, or giving away so much that we are then filled with regret. Rather it means that we will find our own real life when we cultivate our skill and strength so we can do more, in a healthy way, for ourselves and for all others.

In the second of the three pure precepts, we vow to avoid evil. What evil is - that which causes suffering, that which is to be avoided - is spelled out in the third group of the 16 vows we will take today: the ten prohibitions. The ten things we vow to avoid stand in for the 84,000 bad deeds or the 108 defilements - the nearly limitless mental disturbances, words and actions, which often form the basis for our action and perception, and which ruin our chance of happiness.

The ten prohibitions, the ten kinds of action of body, speech or mind from which we vow to refrain are:

1. Not killing or causing life to be taken
2. Not stealing or taking that which is not given
3. Not lying, except in rare occasions to protect life
4. Not using intoxicants
5. Not engaging in sexual misconduct
6. Not engaging in idle talk
7. Not engaging in harsh or divisive talk
8. Not withholding help, things, or dharma
9. Not harboring ill will
10. Not being ignorant about the true nature of reality.

That means deeply understanding the dharmas of karma and emptiness, which are the foundation of compassion and wisdom. This set of instructions is offered not just as good advice but as a set of vows. There is a great difference between vowed conduct and just being good. Even the exact same action undertaken under these two different conditions of mind have a very different significance. The karma that is expressed simply as good deeds, tends, like all karma, to dissipate, and eventually become exhausted. Vows work differently. They help habituate us to doing virtuous action. Vows strengthen our will, deepen our sense of purpose and our understanding as we act.

Vowed action creates karmic seeds that grow. We can easily see the difference between acting on an impulse, versus acting on the basis of an understanding of the results of our actions. We can see that as a result we develop a deep mental habit of tending to save all beings. That kind of karma grows and flowers, if the vows are undertaken seriously, and if they are used skillfully, every day.

The ceremony we will do today contains references to enlightened beings, to activities in Buddha heavens, and other references which to our ears can sound strange. They do not require simplistic credulity or a scholarly knowledge to appreciate them. We can easily take them in our own way, as cultural artifacts or as metaphors or as journalism.

We can be sure that the vows that people will take today can have a deep and far reaching effect. That the more skillfully and sincerely they are practiced, the more profound their effect will be. They are tools. We do not use them perfectly every moment. We try. We continue. We do better.

Please do not throw your great, wonderful tools away if you make a mistake. Just take your tools, your vows, up again and again and perfect your skills, perfect your wisdom, and practice your vows and your life will become a source of real peace, real happiness, for everyone.

In Gassho,

Jeffrey Brooks, Director, Northampton Dojo Northampton, Massachusetts, USA