Okay, tonight's talk I'm going to talk about a very basic
subject of Buddhism, because I like these basic subjects
myself. I'm going to talk about morality
tonight. And I was thinking about this
before I, a couple of days ago, what I was going to talk about
tonight. And I was thinking about this
subject of morality, and I felt really inspired.
Even though it's basic, it's very fundamental.
I felt inspired, and I think I felt inspired because I know
this very much relates to our everyday practice, to how we
have to, the things that we have to overcome, the things that we
have to do every single day, basically.
And it's true in the monastery, and it's probably even more true
in lay life, because you have much more interaction with other
people, and much more chances of slipping up when it comes to
morality and doing the right thing and the good thing.
And when I felt inspired by this, I was very inspired.
And by those thoughts, I thought, well, maybe people here
as well might feel inspired by this.
So I thought it might be a good thing to talk about.
Now, the thing about morality in Buddhism, and what I want to
start off with when it comes to morality, I want to talk about
some of those basic things in Buddhism that come prior to the
rules of morality that we often hear about.
We hear about the five precepts. We hear about the eight
precepts. And we hear about all these kind
of various rules that we have to keep.
But the beautiful thing in Buddhism is that there is
actually something prior to that.
There is actually a rule or a way to decide how and what is
moral in the first place. There is a way of looking at the
world to decide on moral rules. And, of course, this is
extremely useful, because if we don't know what to do in a
particular situation, if we then go back to this basic moral
rule, then we can actually find out what is moral in a
particular context. Go back to the basic foundation,
and you can decide for yourself what actually is moral and what
isn't. And there are two ways that the
Buddha talked about this. And the first way is he said
that there is such a thing as motivation or a basis on which
we do actions in life. And this basis can either be
wholesome or it can be unwholesome.
The unwholesome basis in life is, it's basically said there
are three or four things. It is greed, hatred, and
delusion. And sometimes he also added
fear. So these are the four bases in
life for unwholesome actions. On the other side, you also have
the bases or the roots of wholesome actions, which are the
exact opposites. So instead of greed, you have
non-greed or generosity. Instead of hatred, you have
loving kindness and compassion towards beings.
Instead of hatred, you have love and kindness and compassion
towards beings. Instead of delusion, you have
wisdom. So this is the opposite.
And it's often important to also talk about the opposite.
I was reading a book recently, and somebody was complaining
that in Buddhism, we always talk about the negative things, but
we actually forget to talk about the positive things.
And the thing is that the Buddha, when you read the
suttas, when you read his discourses, you realize that he
always talked about both sides of the coin, because it's
basically two sides of the same coin, the positive and the
negative. So morality has a negative
aspect in a sense. There are things you want to
avoid. It also has the positive
aspects, the things that you want to do.
The things that promote goodness, promote goodness in
yourself, and also happiness and goodness in others.
So this is a way, looking at this greed, hatred, and
delusion, is a way of knowing in the present moment whether you
are doing something good, something wholesome, or whether
you're doing something bad. What is your mind state like
when you do a particular act? Are you motivated by something
good, something positive, or are you motivated by these negative
tendencies of mind? And straight away, if you're
feeling irritated or angry or upset at something, you know
that whatever action is based on that is going to tend to be
unwholesome, is going to be bad. So straight away you know, okay,
here is a barrier. I should be careful here.
I should be very careful what happens, because my mind is
overcome by a negative state. Or if desire is very powerful in
the mind, desire is the same thing again.
You know it's very likely to lead to something unwholesome if
desire is a very powerful force in the mind at the time.
And you also know the opposite. If you have a sense of
compassion and loving kindness towards people around you, you
know that it can be at ease and you can do almost anything.
It's almost impossible to do anything wrong when you have
that beautiful mind state of compassion and loving kindness
towards others. And you will feel that yourself.
You will feel at ease with yourself.
And whatever you do is going to be good and wholesome.
And you will know that when you do it.
The last one, and this is the most difficult one, and that is
this factor of delusion in the mind.
And delusion is something, unfortunately, we cannot see
directly. Because delusion by its very
nature is a force in the mind which means that we cannot see
clearly. Because we cannot see clearly,
you cannot know that you are deluded at the time.
It's impossible to actually know that.
So it makes it very hard. In fact, it makes it so
difficult that you cannot actually know ever really fully
until you become fully enlightened whether your action
is fully wholesome or not. It's actually impossible to know
that because of this delusion aspect there.
And it's the same thing also to some extent if you are feeling
having a lot of desire in the mind or a lot of irritation,
anger in the mind. Because of those, those aspects
in the mind, it tends to distort the way we look at the world.
It tends to distort things. We see things in a different
way. And you know what it often can
be like if you feel upset at something.
You feel, I really need to say this.
I really need to do this. And you do it.
And later on when the upset has disappeared, you think, why on
earth did I do that? And you know the reason.
And you know in retrospect what happened there.
What happened was the mind was distorted because of that
negativity in the mind. So because of this, because of
delusion, and because of the danger of greed and also of
anger, there is another way that the Buddha taught by which we
can make moral decisions. And I'm sure you all know about
this already. And this is maybe a more
practical way of deciding whether something is moral or
not. And this is by asking yourself
whether a particular action of body, speech, or mind is going
to be to your own benefit or to your own benefit. or to your own
benefit. Or to your own disadvantage.
Is it going to be other people's benefit or to other people's
disadvantage? Is it going to be the benefit or
the disadvantage of both others and yourself?
And you know that an action is good, is wholesome, when it is
for the benefit of both, or at least for the benefit of either
yourself or others. And the reverse is going to be
unwholesome if it is either for somebody else's disadvantage,
your own disadvantage, or the disadvantage of both.
And this is a very, very useful, in my opinion at least, way of
finding out whether something is moral or something is immoral.
And some of the most difficult questions in life, some of the
most difficult moral dilemmas that we are faced with
sometimes, things like abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research,
and all these things, if you look, if you use this simple
technique and ask yourself, who is it hurting?
Is it hurting anybody? You can actually come very close
to deciding for yourself whether this is going to be a moral act
or an immoral act, whether it's going to be bad karma or good
karma. There is more to it than just
this. There are also other fundamental
principles in Buddhism you can use to decide whether something
is moral or immoral. But this is the most basic one
and the most important one. So just starting from this
point, you can actually come to a lot of conclusions about some
of the most difficult moral dilemmas in life.
So in this way, it's very useful.
It's a great guide that you can use in everyday life to decide
whether things are good, bad, or maybe neither.
So having said that, I'm now going to actually talk about
some specific moral questions. They're going to be very
standard and very basic Buddhist moral questions, because I think
these things are very important. But first of all, you might ask,
well, why, if we think about it, if we have this basic rule that
if you do something good for yourself and it's good for
others, then you know it's moral, and it's immoral if it's
bad for yourself and others, why isn't this enough?
Why do we need these five precepts?
What's the point of having all these rules and regulations when
this basic idea is really sufficient?
And basically, you can summarize the good life or the good
Buddhist life with kindness. If you can be a kind and a good
person, then basically, you have basically done it.
That's it. That's what it's all about.
But the reason why we actually need rules and why guidelines
like the five precepts or the eight precepts or something I'm
going to talk about afterwards which is called the ten courses
of action, this is the most detailed description of virtue
that the Buddha taught, the reason we need these things is
because we get deluded and because we get overcome by
anger, desires, which distort our perceptions and views like I
just talked about a few minutes ago.
Because of that, suddenly, you become so overwhelmed by
something that you cannot see straight anymore.
You can't see what is good, what is beneficial and what isn't.
But then you remember, ah, the five precepts, this is what I
should be doing. And there, when your mind is
really not functioning normally anymore, it's gone being
distorted and you can't see straight, then these rules come
in very, very handy because they keep you on the straight and
narrow, so to speak. So that is why we have rules in
Buddhism, in my opinion. But if you are fully
enlightened, you don't actually need these rules anymore because
then morality comes naturally. So I'm going to talk about
something the Buddha called the ten courses of action.
These ten courses of action are divided into bodily action,
verbal action and mental action. And this is a classification of
morality that the Buddha used quite frequently, quite often in
the suttas, in his discourses. And it's very broad because
we're talking about ten aspects here of morality.
And they overlap largely with the five precepts, except that
you don't find the alcohol drinking in these ten courses of
action. So I'm going to bring in alcohol
as well as I go through this. The first of these, so the first
classification here is bad bodily action.
And the first one of bad bodily action is of course not killing
living beings or injuring living beings.
And the opposite, the wholesome thing of course, is to support
living beings, to help life, to be compassionate, to have loving
kindness, and to support beings in distress and that have
difficulty. Support life basically.
This is the opposite. So you always think of these
things as two sides of the same coin.
And this one interesting principle, which I maybe should
mention straight away, you will see that the Buddha always
taught this first. This comes at the very top of
the list. And you also know for the five
precepts, you know the first of the five precepts is always not
to kill, not to harm living beings.
Now why is it that this comes at the top of the list?
Is it just random? Are the five precepts just a
random order? Or is there a significance to
the particular sequence here? And one of the things you will
find when you start to know the Buddha's teachings very well is
that the Buddha's teaching is always a gradual teaching.
He said that one of the difficult things about giving a
talk is always the talk should always be gradual.
It should start at an elementary level and then it should
actually rise up. So you will see typically in the
sutta, as you will see, when you start to deal with the most
basic things of virtue, all the enemies gradually move up to
full enlightenment. So everything the Buddha says
basically, there is a gradation there, and there is a reason for
that particular sequence. No sequence is random.
And the sequence that we are seeing here basically means that
the killing of living beings is the most serious kind of bad
bodily action that we can do. And the support of life and the
compassion towards living beings is therefore also the most
powerful of the good kamma and the goodness that we can do.
This is the importance here. So how can we increase our
compassion for living beings? How can we increase our ability
not to destroy life and not to harm life?
And I think for most of us, probably very few in here who
have ever killed anybody before, any person, so I'm not going to
talk too much about not killing human beings, but certainly when
it comes to animals, our society is full of killing of animals,
and it's very difficult to find anybody, even good Buddhists,
will sometimes get so irritated with a mosquito that they go
wham and they slam the mosquito, because this mosquito has only
come here to trouble me, to drink my blood, and they give me
an itch on top of that, so it's pretty bad news.
And of course the difficulty with a mosquito and the
difficulty with animals in general is that they are not
able to kill. It's difficult to see the human
qualities in these beings. The reason that it's quite easy
to be compassionate toward other humans is because we recognize
some of ourselves in those other humans.
But with animals it can be very difficult.
With some animals it's more easy, but with some animals it's
very hard. And I think a mosquito is a
classical case where it's difficult to really make any
kind of connection with a mosquito.
You can't really feel its suffering, you can't understand
that it's getting a hard time when you actually squash it on
your arm. So the important thing to try
with killing is to try to, use this word, anthropomorphize
other beings, living beings. Anthropomorphize means finding
the human qualities in animals, even in insects, even in
anything. And once you can see those human
qualities in there, once you can see that there's actually much
less distinction between us and animals, then you might think,
then of course compassion becomes so much more natural and
it becomes so much more difficult to kill that being
afterwards. So the trick here is to see the
qualities in this being, see that there is hurt, see that
there is suffering, and then when you see that, your
compassion will naturally by itself increase and you will be
able to keep this kind of precept much more deeply, much
more profoundly. So how do we do this?
And the first thing, one of the things that we do and one thing
which I have always looked, some things I like to look at, is
like scientific evolution in recent years.
And it's very fascinating to see what science has found out about
animals over the last few decades.
And I have recently read articles about, take for example
the great apes. It used to be the case that we
thought that animals can just be slaughtered, animals are
completely distinct from humans, have nothing to do with us.
But of course now we realize that there is a lot of animals
who are very, very close to humans.
I think scientists have found out that chimpanzees, for
example, they have organized structures in social units in
their societies. They use tools.
It used to be thought that what made humans humans was that we
could use tools and no other animals could use tools.
Then it was discovered that chimpanzees could use tools.
And of course once we start to see these things, we see that
there is a lot in common here with human society and
chimpanzees. And I also heard of the great
apes who were found to be very intelligent.
In fact so intelligent that they scored higher than some human
beings. And this is remarkable, isn't
it? You can certainly see here that
actually this gorilla or whatever is actually in one
sense more human than this other human being that we have to deal
with. More intelligent, more bright,
more capable of understanding what's happening around it and
what's going on there. And certainly the barriers
really are there. They really, really start to
break down. And of course then you also
understand that there are other animals who are almost as
intelligent, almost as human as the great apes.
You have animals like elephants and maybe even further down the
scale maybe pigs and maybe some of the pets that we have can be
quite intelligent. And pets is also a great way of
seeing the humanity or seeing the emotions in animals.
Because I'm sure that all of you who have pets will realize that
animals have emotions very, very much like human beings.
Not so long ago we had a cat that died in a monastery.
We usually had three cats in a monastery.
One of the cats died. And it was obvious that the
other cat, one of the other cats, became very sad.
You could see it didn't really want to eat anymore.
It looked kind of depressed, sort of walking around with its
head hanging a bit. There was no kind of jump in it
anymore. And it was obviously sad.
Obviously grieving the loss of its companion.
And you can see there the human emotions.
You can see it in the kangaroos in the monastery.
I see it all the time. First of all, you can see the
desire is in kangaroos. I usually throw out food to
them. Whatever is left in my bowl
after the meal, I throw it out to the kangaroos.
And you can see the desire to come from afar to get this human
food. When you're used to just eating
grass, human food is, wow, there's something really nice,
even if it's just rice. It's amazing.
So they come from afar. You can see the desire there,
the craving, just like we have for good food.
You can see the ill will when they start fighting over the
food. You can see sometimes the love
and the empathy that, for example, the mother kangaroo has
towards her joey. You can see how they stroke each
other, how they lick each other, how they look after each other.
And you can see there are beautiful emotions there and bad
emotions, just like in human beings.
So think about it. So thinking like this, you start
to see that the difference between animals and humans isn't
that great. It's a matter of degree,
certainly not a matter of absolute.
There isn't like an absolute barrier there.
It's like a continuous spectrum starting from high going down.
But when it gets more difficult is when you get to small animals
like insects, when you get to things like fish.
I remember myself when I was a teenager, I would fish.
And when I think back, I was wondering sometimes, how could I
actually fish in those days? What was it that drove me to
fishing? And I realize now that the
reason that I was able to fish was because I didn't have any
connection with this fish. It was like a cold animal.
You look it in the eye, and it's very different looking a fish in
the eye, looking a kangaroo in the eye.
Fish, there's not really a sense there that this being has any
emotions or anything. And I think that was the reason
why I could fish, because I could make absolutely no
connection, or at least very small connection, with this
fish. This animal.
But of course, when I think back, if I had been a little bit
wiser, I would have been able to see that this animal is
obviously suffering. It is wriggling on the hook.
It's trying to get off. Obviously, it doesn't like this.
It's very, very clear. And it doesn't take that much
insight to understand that you're actually causing
suffering for this animal. And I know that also recently
there have been animal experiments on fish which show
that there actually is real pain suffered by this fish.
When they get a hook hooked in their mouth.
And then you can start again to empathize with them.
You see that there is more similarity there than you might
at first think. And then you come to the
mosquito. What about the mosquito?
What does the mosquito do? To us, it looks like there's an
irritant. Somebody come to drink our
blood. We'd like to have our blood for
ourselves, thank you very much. But here comes somebody who
actually wants to take your blood.
But of course, for the mosquito, it's just a matter of I need
something to propagate myself. Apparently, it's mostly female
mosquitoes who drink blood so that they can actually have
offspring afterwards. And for them, it's just a matter
of nature. They don't realize that we are
creatures who actually are hurting or at least scratching
because of this. They just do their little thing.
And this is just nature for them.
And they need this blood to keep themselves going.
For them, it's just like a meal. And of course, we also realize
that even mosquitoes don't like to die.
If you try to squeeze a mosquito, squeeze its leg, or
you try to do something with it, it runs away.
It starts to fly. It flies off.
And there's obviously there a reaction just like us.
Like all beings, even the mosquito actually wants to live.
And you will see that even with the tiniest insects.
They run for their life if you try to do something bad with
them. So this way, we can
anthropomorphize. We can actually make, put these
human qualities onto the most, what we think are the most
unpleasant creatures and make and look at them in a new light.
And then we can actually get compassion going even for these
creatures. And there comes a point when you
don't want to squash the mosquito anymore.
There comes even a point when you're quite happy to just allow
that mosquito maybe to drink your blood and say, okay, maybe
itch a little bit. Not such a big deal.
There's always a few things happening in the monastery.
We have lots of kangaroos in the monastery.
And one thing which I remember very well to this day is one day
I was sitting on my walking path.
We have these nice walking paths outside our huts in the
monastery for those of you who have been there and seen it.
And I was sitting outside eating my daily meal.
And as I'm sitting there, this kangaroo comes in on the other
side of the walking path. And I said, I'm going to walk
this way. And it sort of starts walking
towards me. This path is about 18 meters
long. So it comes in about 18 meters
from me. And it starts walking towards
me. And it seems very determined,
like a very, very direct line towards my bowl, in fact.
And it keeps walking and walking and walking until it's standing
completely next to me. And then it starts looking into
my bowl. At this point I'm getting a bit
concerned. And then it starts to lower its
head down. And quickly I put my arms over
my bowl. Because I'm not yet prepared to
actually share my lunch with a kangaroo.
And I thought this would surely deter the kangaroo.
When I put my arms in the way, surely this is enough.
But it wasn't enough. At this point the kangaroo takes
out this little forearm, these little small arms, places it on
my hands, and tries to pull my hands apart.
Can you believe that? At this point I was absolutely
flabbergasted. I couldn't believe a kangaroo
would ever do such a thing. So I decide that there's only
one thing to do. And it is to get up.
And I actually get up. And I literally have to push
this kangaroo off my walking path.
And then when it's finally off the walking path, I can sit down
again and have my meal. So in retrospect, I sometimes
think, maybe I should actually let the kangaroo have a meal
with me. Maybe I should actually allow it
to eat from my bowl. But I'm not daring enough to do
that sort of thing. But maybe that would be a nice
thing to do. But anyway, it shows you what
sometimes compassion can do, and what kindness can do.
Because in a monastery we always treat the kangaroos very nicely.
We always give them the scraps left over from our bowls.
There's no reason why we shouldn't.
It's left over anyway. And we treat them well.
And sometimes they become this friendly when you treat them
really well. And in one sense, even though I
was a little bit surprised that it was so greedy for the food, I
was actually very happy that it happened.
Because it showed a level of trust in a wild animal, which I
had never thought of. I never thought possible in my
entire life. So I was quite happy about this.
And I felt a kind of sense of joy that this actually occurred.
And I remember another story I read not so long ago.
And this was a story from a zoo. And there was an enclosure where
all the chimpanzees were in. And there was a pond there.
And one of these chimpanzees, for some reason, fell into the
pond. And there was all this human
being standing around, looking down to the pond.
And apparently, I don't know if it's true for all chimpanzees,
but this particular chimpanzee could not swim.
And this man was looking at this chimpanzee.
And this chimpanzee was looking at the man.
And the man said afterwards that, I could see this look in
these eyes of the chimpanzee, but isn't anybody going to help
me? I'm sinking.
I'm dying here. Isn't somebody going to do
something? And of course, the man straight
away felt this contact with the chimpanzee, this emotional
contact. So he dove into the pond.
He dug into the dam, grabbed hold of the chimpanzee, and
pulled it out of the lake, out of this little pond.
So he rescued this animal, which he had never met before.
It was just a stranger in this zoo.
Pulled it out of the mud, out of certain death.
And this, of course, is so beautiful.
And this is the kind of action, wholesome action, wholesome
bodily action, where we actually save animals and save life,
rather than do the opposite. So that is really all I think I
want to say about the first course of action here.
So this is the action of looking after life and not destroying or
damaging life. The second of these courses of
action is stealing, and the opposite is generosity.
I'm not going to talk about that today, because that's also a
very big topic. The third one of the bodily
actions is sexual misconduct. And this is actually an
important one. This is actually a very
interesting one. So I want to talk a little bit
about this today. One of the things which is
fascinating about this rule of abstaining from sexual
misconduct is that it is one of those rules which is quite
relative. It depends on what sort of
society you live in, how this rule should be applied.
And I will give you a very obvious example.
At the time of the Buddha, society was quite different from
what it is today. And particularly women had a
very different position in society.
And that reflects itself in this particular rule of sexual
misconduct. When you read about this rule in
the suttas, what the Buddha taught about this, it says that
it is only sexual misconduct if a man has a sexual relationship
with the wife of another man. In other words, if he has a
relationship with another woman who is not the wife of another
man, but he is unfaithful to his own wife, that seems to have
been no problem at the time of the Buddha.
And you can see why. Because in those days, you had
polygamy, men would have many wives, and it was just a very
different social situation. So a woman was, in a sense, used
to the idea that a man was not supposed to be faithful.
So in that circumstance, it was considered that there wasn't so
much suffering to that woman, presumably.
That was a rule laid down against adultery.
But, of course, in today's society, things have changed
dramatically. And today, we certainly wouldn't
see any difference between adultery, whether it's by a man
or a woman. It doesn't make any difference
anymore. And today, so today, the hurt
both ways is basically the same. So for that reason, we go back
to the basic principle, we started off with the beginning,
and we ask ourselves, is it going to hurt anybody?
Is it going to hurt myself or somebody else?
And we know straight away that because the hurt is basically
the same, this rule applies in today's society in the same way
for men and women. And adultery in any way comes
under this rule. So this rule is, again, is one
of the rules, one of the few rules, which is correct.
It's socially conditioned, and it depends on the society that
you are in. Another example of this, I was
asked some time ago by somebody about, what about premarital
sex? Is that acceptable in Buddhism?
And I think the answer there, again, is it depends on the
society that you live in. There are some societies when it
is looked down upon as something terrible, something incredibly
wrong, and your family will be really ashamed and feel terrible
if you did such a thing. And because of the amount of
suffering that you are inducing into your family in these
societies, I would say yes, in these cases it is immoral, it is
wrong to have premarital sexual relationships.
It is not right. But in a society where it is
generally accepted that when you reach a certain age, what
exactly that age is, is obviously up for debate.
But say that when you are 25 or something, generally at least,
you are expected to be able to be your own boss.
And you basically decide, and everybody accepts that, that you
are their own boss. And because of that, I would say
that in those cases, no, it is not wrong to have premarital
sexual relationships, as long as you feel confident that you are
not really hurting anybody else. So again, it comes back to this
thing, who are we hurting? Are we hurting ourselves?
Or are we hurting somebody else? And you can also apply this to,
this rule of this basic kind of moral principle, you can apply
it to all kinds of sexual activity.
I mean, sometimes we hear about people who do all kinds of
sexual activities, which most people don't.
And sometimes people disapprove of those things.
And the question is, are these things immoral?
I don't think there is any point in going into details.
But are what one might call different sexual preferences, is
it wrong? And the answer is, again, you go
back to the same principle. Are we hurting anybody?
Are we hurting myself? Are we hurting somebody else?
And that is how you decide in these cases.
And very often you will find that nobody is hurting anybody,
in which case it is acceptable. It is okay.
It may not be absolutely perfect, but it's not bad enough
to really have a clear-cut rule against it, at the very least.
So that is a bit on this idea of sexual morality, which is the
last of the courses of unwholesome action in the
threefold scheme I'm talking about here, the ten courses of
action. And before I move on to speech,
I'm going to talk a little bit about alcohol, because alcohol
is another interesting area, I find.
And as I said before, these lists that the Buddha gave of
the five precepts, they are not random.
And because they are not random, there is a significance to the
fact that alcohol comes at the bottom of this list.
The significance is, of course, that alcohol in its own right is
not that morally reprehensible compared to the other four
precepts. That's why it comes last.
But of course, the problem with alcohol is that when you are
under its influence, it's very easy to do things which are
immoral, and that's precisely why it is a part of the five
precepts. But there is more to alcohol
than that. And there are a few things in
the suttas and the discourses of the Buddha that he said about
alcohol, which I found very fascinating when I first read
it. And one of those important
things about alcohol, which I found, was that he said that
alcohol is something you can never have enough of.
There is no... There is no satiation point with
alcohol. There is no final satisfaction.
You always want more and more and more.
And so you create a habit, maybe, of drinking, maybe just a
glass of wine a day, and you think, well, what can be wrong
with drinking a glass of wine a day?
And indeed, it's not really going to have any effect on your
moral conduct, or at least very, very small effect.
But the point is, you are creating a habit, and that habit
is going to increase, and generally speaking, will tend to
lead to more and more drinking over time.
And when I say over time here, of course, from a Buddhist point
of view, it doesn't just mean this lifetime.
We're talking about many lifetimes.
And that is what makes it so much more powerful.
So you can actually create a habit which goes on from one
life. You will bring a habit that you
create very strongly in this life, you will bring it into
future lives as well. So this habit that you make of
drinking alcohol, which may seem very insignificant and small
now, you can actually become, in life after life, it can become
worse and worse. And slowly and slowly, you can
actually become very serious after a while.
So habits are dangerous, because habits are precisely the things
that we carry from one life to the next.
And this is one reason why alcohol is dangerous.
The lack of satisfaction, the fact that we always will tend to
drink a little bit more the day after compared to the day
before, and the fact that we bring the habits across with us
from life after life. And the other thing, on top of
this, which the Buddha said, which makes it so dangerous, is
that the karmic effect of drinking, the Buddha said, is
ultimately madness. It is some distortions of the
mind, basically. And of course, this is not going
to happen at the very early stages of drinking, but
certainly when it begins and it becomes a very serious habit,
that's when madness comes into its place.
And we all know that. We all know that if somebody is
a very, very serious drinker of alcohol, if they try to stop,
they will have all kinds of hallucinations, all kinds of
things happening to them, to the point where they actually go
insane. So here, again, you see this
danger of slowly increasing your abuse, slowly getting worse,
until it can actually lead to something as traumatic as this.
And I think it is a fair reason to suppose that many of those
people who have serious mental illnesses in our society, like
schizophrenia, or maybe even manic depression, these sort of
things, may actually be the result of alcohol abuse or drug
abuse, serious drug abuse, from a past life.
Because it tends, if you get too much of it, it can lead to this
sense of madness. Okay, so that is the five
precepts, basically. And the bodily actions, the
three bodily actions. And now we come on to speech.
And speech is another fascinating area.
I'm going to talk a bit more briefly about this.
There is four types of speech conduct taught by the Buddha.
These four, in brief, are lying, they are divisive, harsh speech,
and idle gossip. These are the four areas which
the Buddha focused on. These are the four wrong areas.
And the opposite, of course, is the truth-telling, speech which
creates harmony, speech which is gentle, and speech which is
meaningful, rather than idle gossip.
I'm going to skip lying, and I'm going to go straight on to this
idea of divisive speech, or harmonious speech.
And what the Buddha said here is that the Buddha said that the
Buddha said that the Buddha said that the Buddha said that the
Buddha said that Allah said, Thețama conversations, the
Buddha said, thebaythingmother مما شalous jeuxใช CRA are filled
with evil. They Tae laugh They remember the
Buddha students we are essentially creating divisions
we are creating negativity because we are planting a seed
there it always has an influence on somebody when we say
something negative about somebody people always listen to
these things and even though they may not take you 100%
seriously it always has some effect so there is always a
sense of divisiveness there we divide people apart and that is
why this is such an important principle of speech not to speak
divisively not to talk about others' bad sides certainly not
at the wrong time and certainly not from the wrong intentions of
ill will or irritation or whatever it may be and the
opposite of the divisive speech is speech which creates harmony
when we talk about the positive qualities of somebody else when
we go to say to somebody you know this person said something
very nice about you and we tell them what the other person said
about them and this creates a goodwill because these people
will then tend to bond together because there is a sense of
mutual appreciation there a sense of mutual that they have
an understanding and appreciation for each other so
whatever you say something which is positive that creates harmony
that creates bonds between people this is good karma this
is a good way of speaking and it is actually very highly praised
by the Buddha again you can use this hierarchy I'm talking about
false speech is the worst one but the second worst one of
speech is divisive speech so it is quite a bad quite a serious
way of speaking and of course this is how we can create bonds
and this is how a place like the Buddhist society of course also
becomes stronger this is how groups bond together and the
Buddhist society being a group it is how we bond together in
the Buddhist society when we see the positive things in each
other and we see the positive things in each other and we talk
about those positive things to each other then the bonds are
created the second the third aspect of speech here is harsh
speech and harsh speech is of course speech which is painful
which is tough which is kind of doesn't resonate with us it's
not nice it's not necessarily divisive but it is like speech
we all know what harsh speech is basically and we talk about
those positive things to each other and the opposite of harsh
speech is speech which is gentle which is soft and it says in the
Sutta speech which goes to the heart which is pleasing to the
ear and which is pleasing to the ordinary people whenever an
ordinary person hears this speech they will feel delighted
by it they will feel happy by it and an important aspect of this
beautiful speech called gentle speech and nice speech is that
it leads to a sense of happiness leads to good meditation harsh
speech it is said in the Suttas leads in the opposite way it
leads away from Samadhi away from meditation so harsh speech
is going to take you away if you are a keen meditator whereas a
gentle speech is going to move you towards meditation towards
something positive in that area so that is quite interesting I
find because obviously if we are serious about meditation this
sort of thing is an important piece or information to motivate
us to keep this particular precept if you like and I also
notice very often that the sort of person who is often popular
the sort of person who people want to listen to in life who
maybe sometimes even become the center of attention is not
necessarily somebody who is interesting or who has a good
story a good story is of course important as well but very often
it is a person who is gentle and says things in a nice way so
that people actually feel comfortable around them this is
often a very attractive character trait in people and we
can see how people flock around people who have that particular
character trait there is actually there is an interesting
place in the Suttas which talks about something called the
grounds for kindness or the grounds for almost like the
grounds for forming groups and one of those grounds for forming
like a group a group of people a group of people around you is
precisely kindly speech it is one of those grounds the other
grounds for that is giving a helping hand when it is needed
generosity and equal treatment of people these are the four
things which are called these grounds for sympathy which
creates groups around you which makes you a popular person
almost if you have these grounds of sympathy yeah but anyway I am
getting a bit sidetracked now so harsh speech if you want to
meditate well is not advisable the last type of speech which
was not recommended by the Buddha is idle chatter in other
words speech which doesn't have any particular meaning where you
are not really talking about anything useful anything which
is going to lead to anything beneficial whether it is Dhamma
or whether it is beneficial in a more worldly sense so the
positive side of speech is speech which is meaningful which
is goes to make people happy which goes to preaching of the
Dhamma and very beautifully said in this particular sutta speech
which is worthy of being treasured speech which you can
heap up in your mind and store in your mind this is the sort of
speech that we should be uttering so of course this is
very idealistic and it is almost impossible to only talk about
Dhamma all the time people think you are nuts if you talk about
that all the time and particularly if you are if you
have people who are not Buddhist and they may think you are going
over the top so of course we shouldn't push that sort of
issue too far and there are times when we have to be
friendly and it is fascinating in the suttas that the Buddha
whenever he started off for example a conversation with
somebody particularly somebody he didn't know there was always
like cautious and amiable talk in the beginning always like an
exchange of kindness beforehand how are you?
I hope you are well I hope you are not suffering how are your
children? and how is your wife or husband?
I hope your new job the Buddha didn't go this far but this is
sort of things which are obviously positive I hope you
are enjoying your new job etc and so this is important so we
shouldn't become completely silent mute if we are not
talking about the Dhamma there is always a place for kindness
and friendliness there and of course a lot of things in the
life is about practicalities when we have a job etc or even
in the monastery we also have work you have to talk about
practicalities and these obviously are important things
but we also no doubt have times when we know that we are saying
things which really are not really very useful and are just
purely idle chatter without any kind of meaning whatsoever what
is the problem with all this idle chatter?
why does the Buddha say we should avoid this sort of thing?
and the first thing is simply that the more you talk the more
stuff comes out of your mouth the more likely you are to say
things which are also bad in other ways say things which are
maybe harsh which are divisive even lies can come out the more
you talk the less mindfulness you tend to have and the more
things come out which you wish shouldn't come out in the first
place and this is one reason why it is good to talk about this to
not talk too much not have too much idle chatter and the other
reason of course is that if you talk a lot on topics which are
not useful your mind becomes very active there is a lot of
stuff going on in there and of course again if you are serious
about your meditation practice this is the sort of thing you
really want to avoid because it activates the mind so these are
basically the reasons why idle chatter is something which has
to be avoided if one is going to be idle chatter if one is going
to be idle chatter if one is going to be idle chatter one
should be very serious about right speech in Buddhism so
these are the four aspects of right speech I talked about only
three of them and I think they are interesting because they are
not talked about all that often and they do actually have an
effect on our moral practice and the way we live our moral life
now the last factors of morality here is the morality of the mind
and now we are coming basically to morality which really only
affects ourselves and this is the case where we do these
things because we want to be kind to ourselves take anger for
example as long as you don't express that anger outwardly in
body or speech it's basically only you who get hurt by this
anger so in this case you shouldn't be angry because it
hurts yourself also you shouldn't be angry of course
because if you are angry sooner or later it will come out
through body or speech so this is the case I'm not going to
talk about anger today because I gave a talk a few weeks ago here
at length about overcoming anger but the second factor here is
greed greed is the second factor of mind which is to be avoided
as unwholesome and the opposite here is like being contented or
even being generous this is the opposite thing of greed here and
we all know what greed greed actually here in the Pali is a
word which means more like covetousness desiring things
which you don't already have and we all know what that can be
like you can go shopping for example you see all these things
in the shopping window that would be really nice that would
be incredibly nice to have now how can I get that I can't
really afford it maybe I can get hold of it somehow and then this
idea that we need something takes over the agenda completely
and becomes the focus of things not only that but it tends to
excite the mind if you're greedy if you really want something it
excites the mind it makes the mind very sort of yeah like
agitated in a sense and of course again it's very clear
that this sort of agitation in the mind is something which goes
against meditation practice this is like a very basic thing this
thing about greed and covetousness this idea of
craving being agitation in mind it's a very common topic in
Buddhism of course so instead of when we see this when we
understand that there is a danger in these things we can
also understand the advantage of just being contented with what
we already have and looking at our possessions and asking
ourselves well have I actually got enough this is of course
very difficult and there will always be times when we haven't
got enough when we need something else but generally
speaking if we can be contented with what we already have if we
can be satisfied with what we have already then we don't we
don't give rise to so much excitement when we see something
out there in the world we don't give rise to so much greed for
things that we don't want to have or that we don't already
own and as we all know if you have a sense of contentment it
makes meditation practice so so so much easier contentment is
like one of the most important factors to make meditation
peaceful and nice as Abraham talks about all the time and in
my experience it is also very true that when you have a sense
of contentment it makes the mind automatically more peaceful and
it makes for much better meditation practice so of course
I think this is obviously another difficult one but it's
worth noticing what happens with your mind and how your mind is
distorted by these things and how it takes it away from peace
and then we can maybe increase our sense of contentment our
sense of satisfaction with those things that we already have and
it will be obviously to our own benefit a great deal so that is
the second factor of mental conduct in meditation is to try
to overcome this sense of greed and the last factor of a good
mental conduct or bad mental conduct is right or wrong view
right view is good mental conduct and wrong view is bad
mental conduct I'm actually not going to talk about this at all
I wasn't going to talk about this at all but very briefly
obviously if you have wrong view and really really wrong view
then what that means is that you don't really think that there is
anything bad about being immoral for example you don't think it
really affects anybody else and certainly you don't think it
affects you personally so immorality is acceptable that is
really sort of the wrong view having gone completely berserk
and then you have been through some serious troubles according
to Buddhism because of the laws of Kama and the results that you
can expect from that sort of action so to maybe summarize
very briefly what I think may be the most important thing I
wanted to say tonight is simply that if we ever have doubts
about whether something is moral or immoral we have this
beautiful teaching of the Buddha look at whether it's going to
hurt anybody is it going to hurt yourself is it going to hurt
anybody else and from this basic premise we can make so many
decisions in life about whether something is right or wrong but
don't wait and make those decisions don't wait to think
about these questions until you are actually in a position of
particular situation because once you are in a situation you
can often be overcome by maybe negativity or desire and these
things will distort your perception of what is right and
what is wrong and what hurts people and what doesn't make up
your principles of what is right and wrong if you want to make
them up when you feel your mind is clear and you can think
clearly about what is actually going on here and this is the
most important thing and also the second thing which is really
important I feel is that morality is not something which
is just negative it's not something that we just have to
stop ourselves from doing but it's a positive aspect of
morality the opposite and that is what we should actively be
pursuing in life the opposite of the negative qualities the
generosity the kindness the beautiful speech to other people
and even the beautiful mental conduct that we are practicing
all these things of course are part of the practice of being a
good person being Buddhists or certainly at the very least
being interested in this Buddhist path so that is all I
really want to say tonight I don't know if people have any
questions or comments or anything so this is a time to
ask yes if there is injustice in the world equality in the world
is what is the way to change that view in someone to show
love and kindness to someone when there is inequality and
injustice is there not a time to feel anger and righteousness I
don't think anger is ever very useful and the reason it isn't
useful is because as I said before it distorts your mind and
it distorts your perception once you feel anger you are very
likely to do things that later on you will regret so what you
should do in those instances instead of actually getting
angry you should ask yourself what can I do to change this is
there anything I can do to change it then do whatever you
can to change these things anger is not going to be helpful
because if you get angry and your perception gets distorted
you are actually likely to do things which are going to be
worse than if you think clearly about the situation and do what
is and do whatever result you come to when you think clearly
about it so anger is never never useful but of course we should
do things and one of the really difficult things about this sort
of thing is that you actually have to do it with a sense of
equanimity you have to say well ok I'm going to go into the
situation there is some serious injustice here I want to help
out I want to do something here but if you go into that
situation with too much craving that you are going to succeed
then you will get very disappointed if it doesn't work
you will get frustrated and then you will get angry anyway so you
have to you know what I mean so what you have to do there is
that you actually have to try to go into that situation and say
well I may fail and if I fail I'm just going to have to let go
I'm just going to have to accept that there is going to be
injustice in the world I will never be able to solve
everything I can try to help out if I don't succeed so be it that
is ideally the right attitude of course getting to that ideal is
not easy but at least you have something there to measure
yourself against so the way I talked about kama
there are three types of kama there is white kama with white
results and the white kama with white results is like when you
have a completely pure mind with no hindrances like you come out
of the most profound meditation states your mind is clean as a
white sheet or whatever you want to call it then the kama that
you are producing is completely white you get reborn in an
exclusively happy realm but then there is kama which is black and
white and reaps black and white results right and I think what
you are talking about now is precisely one of these kamas
which are black and white and reap black and white results
because you can be motivated by compassion towards these people
by really profound compassion you see so much suffering
because of this malaria but at the same time there is something
in you which then also wants to kill these mosquitoes so there
is a mixture there of intentions and motivation your motivation
is reasonably pure because you come through compassion but your
intention is still to kill those mosquitoes and the kama results
of that sort of action tends to be black and white and for that
reason it is not as pure and not as wholesome as a purely white
action so I think that if you are going to aim for the
absolutely highest then you wouldn't actually be killing
those mosquitoes you actually wouldn't do that you wouldn't
actually be able to have the intention even to kill those
mosquitoes if somebody asked you an opinion you would maybe say
something like you know you would maybe say what I said you
know what I said now what the Buddha said in the sutta is a
different type of action and then they would have to decide
from themselves what they would do from that point but if you
really have pure action you cannot really you cannot kill
you would never condemn of course anybody who did the
killing you would say well this is this is your decision and if
you feel it's right you must do it but I think the highest kind
of morality you actually wouldn't do that it's hard to
understand maybe but as I see it that is actually the highest
type of morality there yeah yes Gina okay there's actually two
more kamas actually I only said three but there's actually four
and the fourth one is the black kama with black results but that
is the one you really want to avoid and that is when your mind
is completely overcome by anger or by greed or by something
absolutely and your action is completely motivated by that and
nothing else and that is a sort of action which leads to great
suffering in the future the last type of kama which the Buddha
also taught and this is even more difficult to understand
this is the kama which is neither black and white and has
neither black and white results and this is the kama which
basically is only possible for somebody who is almost
enlightened or on the way to enlightenment whereby you are no
longer concerned at all with happiness and suffering all
you're concerned about is getting to nibbana and that is
the action which leads to now the black and white result
because it leads to nibbana yeah no certainly not okay this
neither black and white does not mean that you are beyond it so
to speak it just means it's a different kind of kama
altogether it's like neither black and white on top of white
if you like yeah okay very good anybody else anything to say
here yeah I can't see yeah please sir yes right yeah it's
true and it is basically the if you live as a human being you're
going to kill enormous amounts of people enormous amounts of
beings during this lifetime it is absolutely unavoidable that
you're going to kill enormous amounts of beings think about
how many beings it gets killed just to feed you even if you're
a vegetarian how many beings get killed in those fields of you
know where you plant vegetables or whether you plant cereals or
whatever it is enormous amounts of being get killed just by
existing just by walking out of this hall this afternoon I'm
sure you're going to kill about five ants before you get to your
car you know what I mean it's just impossible life is just
full of this and that is why it is in a sense so sad this life
because it involves so much killing it involves so much
suffering even if you are perfectly pure arhat full
enlightened person you're still going to kill a large number of
beings so it is unavoidable samsara is like that and this is
one of the reasons why this place called samsara is so
unpleasant in a sense and it's so full of suffering so when I
when I come here tonight I realize that I'm fully aware
that all the things are going to be killed but I certainly don't
have an intention to kill these beings I don't come here with
the thought aha if I come here I will kill all these beings great
that is not my thought I come here because I have basically
been invited to give this talk as Ambram asked me can you go
and give a talk at the buddha society that's why I come here
so my intention is pure and as long as your intention is pure
as long as you're coming from a wholesome motive then there is
no bad action there is no bad karma and for that reason there
is no bad karma there is no bad result of that in the future but
if I were to squash an ant intentionally of course that is
where the bad karma comes in it is your intention which is the
important factor here not actually whether a being dies or
not yes you mean in the case of
unintentional killing or yeah well if you kill intentionally
then I would say remorse is often a good thing because
remorse means that you will restrain yourself in the future
and in fact the buddha even said he went so far as to say that if
you do something which is unwholesome there is a natural
tendency for the mind to feel remorse this is not something
that you really can't control it will come up by itself you don't
have to sort of decide I will free myself from this remorse or
not it will come up on its own so because of that natural
tendency you will find that you are destroying your chances of
meditation because your mind will be filled with remorse when
you actually want to meditate but when it comes to
unintentional killing there is no reason why you should try to
bring up remorse in your mind because you can't avoid that if
you sort of bring up remorse and sadness you can bring up maybe a
bit of sadness because it will propel you to practice more and
get out of some of the things called samsara but don't sort of
whip yourself because you are unintentionally killing a living
being because you are going to be keeping doing that for the
rest of your life and it becomes like self-torture in a sense so
unintentional killing don't make that a big deal of course if you
can avoid killing a living being and you want to be compassionate
great but very often we just can't avoid it in those cases
don't make a big deal out of it ok sorry ok back there sure yeah
yeah yeah 착 Silently not just sitting
there �� I feel bad but same for you ok if Iise from this example
and she said that well Or they just are habitually angry.
They are somebody who suffers all the time, maybe.
Or you can reflect that somebody who does something bad to you,
well, they will be caught by the laws of Kama.
And they will get enormous suffering as a result of
whatever badness they do. I'm not going to say too much
because I gave a long talk on anger a few weeks ago.
If you're interested, it's actually on the website.
You can just go and listen to it.
But there are many things, many strategies you can use to
overcome anger. I think there are many books in
the library, probably many talks that have been given on that
particular subject. So, I'm going to read one of
them. Thank you.