The elimination of dukkha is based largely upon the cultivation of wisdom. The Buddha’s prescription for cultivating wisdom is radically simple. Like any caring father, he tells us to “Sit down, shut up, and pay attention.” This is the basis of a meditation practice that forces us to come face-to-face with our delusions. It is only through facing these misconceptions directly that we can ever hope to end their control over us. The more we practice in this way, the deeper our understanding becomes. Eventually we will get to a point where our insight becomes so deeply rooted that we no longer let ourselves get dragged around by our thoughts. Meditation helps us to cultivate the skills necessary to simply accept these states as they come along like clouds passing through the sky. We learn that these qualities, just like all other phenomena, arise, persist, and fade away. This is the wisdom that meditation provides.

Pairing an increased understanding of our deluded minds with a constant effort to keep the ultimate goal of nirvana in mind, we begin to realize how we should approach the situations in which the precepts fail. This realization shows us that these precepts should not be held as law but rather regarded as guidelines informed by meditative insight. In the Digha Nikaya, the Buddha explains that “from the observing of the moralities comes wisdom and from the observing of wisdom comes morality… It is just as if one should wash one hand with the other… exactly so is morality washed round with wisdom and wisdom with morality.” Morality is the list of precepts, but this alone is not enough. For true skillful action, one must also have the wisdom to know how to apply these precepts.

After a certain point in practice, wisdom will not only act as a guide for the precepts but will replace them altogether. Just as a master chess player abandons firm strategic rules and acts from skilled insight, so too does the experienced practitioner. The precepts, just like training wheels on a bike, are an important means of guidance but are not an end in themselves—once we learn how to balance, we get rid of them. Keeping them after the fact would be ridiculous. Just imagine the reactions Lance Armstrong would have gotten if he raced the Tour de France with training wheels! Similarly, once we learn how to balance ourselves morally, we can abandon the precepts as strict rules and use them only when appropriate. This was the approach Gautama espoused for the entirety of his teachings. He told us that the dharma should be used like a raft to aid on our journey. It is a tool that we can use to cross the tumultuous sea of samsara. Like any sailor making port, however, when we finally reach land we do not carry the ship with us. We leave it in the water. Once we reach the shores of nirvana, we need not keep the teachings as dogma. Instead, we let them go. We can certainly return to them if the need arises, just as we sometimes use our feet to help us balance when riding on a treacherous path. There comes a point, however, where we must take all of our practice out of the meditation hall and into the real world—take off our training wheels, let go of the rules and try to apply the wisdom we have gained through practice into everyday life.

This post was originally published by Shambala Sun on their blog Sun Space. You can find it here

Pages: 1 2 3

Tags: 5 Precepts, Buddhist Ethics, Meditation, Practical Wisdom, Practice, Siddhartha

Both comments and pings are currently closed.