Principle of "Truthfulness" P2/2 - precepts

Principle of "Truthfulness" P2/2 - precepts

The Four Precepts, by Suvannavira.

Buddhism usually teaches four speech precepts:
I undertake to abstain from false speech,
I undertake to abstain from harsh speech,
I undertake to abstain from useless speech
I undertake to abstain from slanderous speech.

And their positive counterparts:
Truthful communication I purify my speech,
Kindly communication I purify my speech,
Helpful communication I purify my speech,
Harmonious communication I purify my speech.

Four precepts are not just four qualities of communication,
not just four independent qualities.
They can be seen as four levels of communication,
each level being higher than the preceding one.
Each higher level requiring a higher level of awareness.

So we can look at each of the positive counterparts as independent qualities,

and as a level of communication.

We can look at them in everyday terms, and from the perspective of spiritual development.

1/ So beginning with Truthfulness.

I undertake to abstain from false speech,

Truthful communication I purify my speech,

We’ve already looked at this.

As our first level of communication it means saying what we really think,

meaning knowing what we really think,

it means saying what we know independently of parents, teachers, friends,

independently of what we’ve read in books and online and seen on the TV.

2/ Then moving on to kindly speech.

I undertake to abstain from harsh speech,

Kindly communication I purify my speech,

It means not rough speech.

Not shouting, swearing, or just talking non stop without listening,

or just trying to be the only one talking.

It means not gaslighting, not being judgemental.

It means not changing what someone else say,

often quite subtly changing what someone else says, to their detriment.

You say something and the other person say, ‘I am assuming you mean such and such’.

Maybe the ‘such and such’ is a view they love to hate,

and they attack you for having ‘such and such’ a view.

So kindly speech isn’t just kind,

it can be gentle, it can be gentle but firm,

we can speak in a pleasant tone of voice, using beautiful language,

where we listen as well as talk,

talking with respect for the other person,

and responding to what they actually say,

so paying a lot of attention to what the other person says,

so we look at them, maybe we look at them in the eyes.

All of this is included in kindly speech.

Let’s look in particular at the question of white lies, lies for the good.

People often experience truth and kindness as being opposites,

as being mutually exclusive.

You can be kind, but not truthful.

You can be truthful but not kind.

You can’t be both kind and truthful.

But let’s look at a story from the life of the Buddha,

so see how to resolve the problem.

The Buddha’s teachings are important,

but also stories from his life are important,

they show how the Buddha acted in everyday situations.

The was a woman called Kisa Gotami, who has a child,

only sadly the child died.

But Kisa was not able to accept that fact.

She kept carrying the baby around, asking people to bring her baby to life.

She got into a state, and people started to think she was mad.

Children started throwing clumps of earth at her.

Eventually she found her way to the Buddha.

She asked him if he could heal her child,

and he said yes. She was beside herself with joy, and hope.

But under one condition he said, yes, yes, yes, yes ….

You bring me a mustard seed …. that is easy to do ….

From a house where no one has died.

So Kisa joyfully ran off to fulfill her task.

Of course she didn’t find a house where no one had died,

and slowly it dawned on her that the dead are many, and the living are few.

She returned to the Buddha to tell him and was ready to bury her baby.

The story demonstrates the Buddha’s skill in communication,

his ability to be kind and tell the truth at the same time.

Speaking with awareness of others

We start being aware of others with quite practical steps.

We can simply look at another person,

we can notice how they are reacting.

Do they seem happy and relaxed,

or do they seem tense, and irritated,

or holding down what they are really feeling?

We can simply look people in the eyes,

let them know we are taking them in as a fellow human being.

Sangharakshita taught that the spiritual essence of kindly speech is love,

and what love really is is being aware of the

And not accroding to roles and projection.

We’ll look more at roles and project later.

3/ Helpful speech:

I undertake to abstain from useless speech
Helpful communication I purify my speech,

Sometimes this precept is translated as helpful speech,

sometimes it is said to be meaningful speech,

which means we don’t talk nonsense, we don’t talk rubbish.

As helpful speech it starts with giving people the information they need.

But it also means not giving unwanted advice,

not everybody always appreciates being given advice.

Following the preecpt means knowing what to say, but also what not to say.

On a higher level it also means being appreciative,

which includes being able to see the positive in a situation,

and express it.

There is a story in one of the apocryphal gospels,

Jesus is walking along the roads of Galilee with disciples,

and they see a dead dog, a dead dog does not look nice,

and Jesus said, “what beautiful teeth”.

So appreciative speech meaning being able to see the positive.

On the highest level this precept means being able to

raise the level of conscious and being of another person by our speech.

Maybe they are raised up by honesty,

by a work of art or poetry,

by the Dharma meaning an expression of truth.

4/ Speech promoting harmony between people.

I undertake to abstain from slanderous speech.
Harmonious communication I purify my speech.

What is slanderous speech?

The Buddha taught it as repeating words in this place,

something that you heard in another place,

to the detriment of the people in the other place.

Also repeating words that you heard in this place,

in another place,

to the detriment of the people in this place.

Harmony occurs when there is no:

power in relationships, everybody is free to say what they want and do what they want.

Misunderstandings, we see others and they really are without projections.

In the Pali Canon there is the story of the Aniruddhas,

three monks living together in perfect harmony.

They each reflect why should I do what I am minded to do,

why not do what my friends in the good life are minded to do?

They all see what is needed to be done,

and do it without any fuss.

Their harmony is described as the blending of water and honey.

Harmony depends on real communication,

communication which is very receptive and attentive,

and we explore the spiritual word in complete honesty and openness.

Sometimes we may sit in silence and that is enough.

Our four levels start with truthful communication, where we say what we really think,

then kindly communication, where we see the other person as they really are,

then helpful communication, where our words raise them to a higher level of consciousness and being,

and end with harmonious communication, where we are in complete openness, honesty and harmony about all aspects of our lives with our friends.

Principles of Buddhism: Third principle, P3/3 - Contentment

Principles of Buddhism: Third principle, P3/3 - Contentment,
by Suvannavira.

Our third principle is “Contentment”.
Principles are universal laws.
They are the way things really are,
The dharma.
We can try to live according to these principles

We have looked at the principles of:
Awareness and truthfulness,
Now looking at contentment.

We also have precepts.
General things we try to do.
And not to do.
To live by these principles.

We also have practices
Specific thing we try to do
With our character and circumstances
Goal of classes is to come up with practices

1/ The negative precept is
I undertake to refrain from sexual misconduct.
2/ The positive precept / version is
With Stillness, simplicity and contentment
I purify my body
It is as called a promise in Russian.

Last time we looked at the noble striving.
Search for the unborn, the deathless,
Also called enlightenment.
We asked what meaning the Nobel striving had for us.
What are the practical consequences for our lives?

This week we’re going to look at what we can do if we don’t feel ready for such a big step.
What practices can we do?

A/ guarding the doors of the senses.
This teaching comes from the Pali Canon.
It means reducing stimulation.
The more we give our attention to something,
The stronger it becomes in our mind.
The less we give our attention,
The weaker it becomes.
So guarding the doors of the senses.

B/ staying in the intermediate point.
Buddhism / the dharma tells us,
That romantic love and sexual attraction are the strongest cravings.
We often feel the strongest craving in the sexual sphere.
That’s why love can easily flip into hatred.
And we have crimes of passion.

The dharma also tells us that
Craving arises in dependence on feeling.
If we feel pleasant feeling the craving follows.
But there is an intermediate point
Between feeling and craving.
Where we can be aware of our feelings,
But without experiencing craving.
We experience our feelings but we don’t act on them.
At least we have the choice to act in them or not.
We stop being a slave to our passions.
We can reflect on the consequences of our actions,
Before acting, before doing something.

Another way of staying in the intermediate point is by feeling bored.
If you feel bored don’t start doing something,
Don’t try to escape the feeling.
Just experience the boredom,
And see what happens.
Stay with the unpleasant feeling.
Stay in the gap between feeling and craving.

We can bring this approach also to feeling pain,
As we saw with the principle of awareness.

Q how have you found reducing stimulation and feeling bored? Has it led to a richer inner life?

We can practice the positive precept,
The promise,

With stillness simplicity and contentment,
I purify my body,
By refining our states of mind.

How do we refine our states of mind?
Some things are quite practical.

1/ we can spend time in nature.
Going to the dacha.
Change our environment.

2/ being alone and doing nothing.

3/ enjoying art, meaning fine art.
The arts in the broad sense of the word.
What does a great artist communicate by his art?
In essence he communicates his higher state of consciousness.
He communicates his greater awareness.
We can be positively affected by this,
By being in contact with his art.

4/ friendship and communication.
Spiritual friendship is characterised by communication.
Open and totally truthful communication,
Often about our inner world.
Real communication can have a deep and positive effect on our state of mind.
It can liberate deeper energies.

So all these approaches can lead to us experiencing greater contentment.
Both negative and positive approaches.
As well as them leading to greater stillness and simplicity.

Q what helps you most in experiencing contentment?

Next time we’ll take a step further and look at what it means to be an anagarika.
An anagarika means someone living without a home.
Why is that part of Buddhist teaching.
Well find out next time.

Principles of Buddhism: first principle P1/2 - Awareness

Principles of Buddhism: first principle P1/2 - Awareness

We can also look at precepts for developing awareness in terms of energy.
We avoid anything which dulls or diminishes our energy.
We try to do more of anything that stimulates or intensifies our energy.

To begin with let’s note.
Some say drinking alcohol stimulates energy.
In the short term maybe it does.
But the energy doesn’t last.
After the effects of the alcohol have worn off,
We can have a big hangover.

When we are truest energetic,
Our energy stimulates more energy again.
We feel very present,
Very concentrated,
Decades later we can remember what we did in a concentrated state,
With all the details,
As if it was yesterday.

Being truly concentrated,
Not just concentration by an effort of will,
All our energies are concentrated,
They flow together.

When all the parts of purse are conscious.
Conscious of everything we call good and call bad.
Nothing is left hidden or unconscious.
When we know who we really are.
Then all our inner conflicts,
Which drain and reduce our energy,
Are overcome and resolved.
We are able to act with the whole if ourselves.
We can act with commitment.

We develop our ability to act with commitment then,
Firstly by developing our awareness,
Especially our awareness of ourselves.
Integrating all the different parts of ourselves.

Part of this process of integration is
Turning towards what we think of as bad
And turning towards painful feelings,
Even physical pain.
Turning towards things we usually try to:
- Ignore,
- Make an abstraction of,
- Escape,
- Destroy by an effort of will.

But instead we are invited to open up to them,
With warmth and awareness,
With understanding,
Trying to find out why they are there.

If we can be supremely open to ourselves,
We will be supremely open to others.
Our attitude to others reflects our attitude to ourselves.
If we give ourselves the gift of allowing us to be who we really are,
We won’t be able to not want others to experience being who they really are too.

And this is the true goal of developing our awareness.

Principles of Buddhism: Third principle, P3/2 - the Noble Quest

Principles of Buddhism: Third principle, P3/2 - the Noble Quest, class 14^th January

Question How will you spend your holiday time?

For me of deeper retreat, a semi solitary retreat

stopping my usual activity,

I’ll stop having online meetings

trying not to fill my time up with other things

Not switching my phone or computer on as much

Reflecting on the last year and the year ahead

Reflecting about the Dharma, tecahing the Dharma and life

Three day fast for health and spiritual discipline

More time for doing nothing

It helps to make a definite decision to do this,

and communicate this decision to others

Q How will you use these holidays?

How can you best use these holidays?

But now we are looking at the third principle to practice in everyday life

We have already looked at two principles,

the principles of awareness and truthfulness

And the questions, how to bring these two qualities more into our lives

What can we do, concretely and practically, to bring these qualities

more into being in our lives.

Our third principle is “contentment”

Why contentment and

Let’s see how we get to contentment from our point of departure.

So what is the precept for the development of contentment? The third precept.

(The third principle coincides with the third precept)

Negative variant: I freely undertake to abstain from irresponsible behaviour in the sexual sphere

Positive variant: with peacefulness, moderation and contentment I purify my body

Q How do the positive and negative versions of the precept fit together?

Lies and truth go together obviously as opposites.

But sex and contentment, do they go together as opposites?

We start then with the area of sex

This is a complicated area

1/ People who I tell I am a Buddhist often ask about the Buddha

The Buddha to be went forth from home into homelessness

The left his wife and child, family and kingdom, his wealth and social position

After his Enlightenment, he encouraged his followers to do likewise

He later explained his actions thus.

There is a noble quest and an ignoble quest, noble and ignoble striving

What is the ignoble quest, striving?

It starts with the reflection of this kind

Being subject to birth and death, being liable to birth and death,

I search for what is also subject to birth and death, I search for what is liable to birth and death.

The noble quest is when

Being subject to brith and death, being liable to birth and death,

I search for the unborn, for that which is not born,

I search for deathless, that which doesn’t die.

It raises the question

So do you have to be a monk to be a real Buddhist?

Do you have to live in a monastery?

Do you have to be celibate?

Can you have a family and be a real Buddhist?

Q What do you think?

When people ask such questions,

I think it is important to remember that practising the Dharma until Enlightenment is a long path.

Enlightenment meaning reaching the unborn, reaching the deathless,

becoming the unborn, becoming the deathless,

Buddhism also teaches rebrith.

We don’t have to do everything now in this life.

Especially if we don’t feel ready too.

It’s important to know what our next step is,

to not try to go too far, too fast.

To not build a bridge too far.

Principles of Buddhism: First principle P1/1 - Awareness

Principles of Buddhism: First principle P1/1 - Awareness

What does the spiritual life consist of?
What do we have to do to lead the spiritual life?
What’s the essence of what we have to do?

The essence of the spiritual life is awareness.
The essence is developing awareness.
The message of the Buddha is we can develop awareness.
We can develop awareness beyond the scope of anything we can conceive of now.
In doing so we totally transform ourselves.
We become someone, who we can’t conceive of now.

So developing awareness is very important.
It is very beneficial.
Learning how to develop awareness is very important and beneficial.

We can develop awareness of:
1/ the world, objects and the so called material world.
2/ ourselves, our inner life.
3/ other people, including their inner lives.
4/ reality, what’s true and what is false.

We have precepts and practices for the development of awareness.

The precepts:

A/ the negative version of the precept,
That which we try to stop doing,
Or reduce doing.
I undertake the training principle of not clouding the mind.

The most common application of this precept is not drinking alcohol.
The morning After drinking a lot, you might not even be able to remember what you did.
But this precept also applies to anything that leads us to lose awareness.
This means losing our awareness of our body, feelings or thoughts.

B/ the positive form of this precept,
The vow,
What we are trying to start doing in it’s place,
Or increase doing.
With mindfulness clear and radiant I purify my mind.

There are our course meditation practices for developing our awareness.
Mindfulness of the body.
Mindfulness of breathing.
Just sitting and doing nothing.
Walking meditation.
Even the metta bhavana (development of loving kindness)
Can be seen as developing awareness of other people.

But even if we meditate every day,
We are not going to make much progress,
Unless we try to develop our awareness all the time, ongoingly.

We can try to be constantly aware of our body,
This is very difficult,
Constantly aware of our feelings,
Constantly aware of our thoughts.

We can try to be more aware of our character type.
We can reflect on the effects big events in our lives have had.
What if I never got married and had children for example.
We can reflect on the effects of our words and actions on other people.

So in all these ways we can develop our awareness,
We can learn to develop our awareness,
By practising the precepts.

In part two we will look at other ways of developing awareness,
Or rather looking at developing awareness from other points of view.

Principle of Truthfulness P2/1 - Truthful Speech

Principle of Truthfulness P2/1 - Truthful Speech

Looking at principles, taught by the Buddha

principles leading to a genuinely happy life, if not always comfortable.

Principles leading to a life that is of benefit to ourselves and others.

Principles that leads to us being able to deeply reflect.

Principles that lead to wisdom.

The Buddha taught the principle of awareness leads to such things.

So looking at our second principle, the Principle of truthfulness.

This principle can be given a general conrete formulation negatively and positively,

what we try to stop doing,

what we try to do in it’s place.

Precepts, negative and positive:

I undertake the training principle of abstaining from false speech.

With truthful communication I purify my speech.

In Russian we have two possibilities for the translation of truth:

1/ правдивая речь — simple everyday truth.

2/ истинная речь — higher spiritual truth.

The precepts are not rules to follow, it is worth repeating again and again.
It is better to think of them like exercises.
We get better at doing them through practice,
and we reap the benefits of living more skilfully.
Which skills can we develop?
The skill of avoiding lying.
The skill of speaking truthfully.

So first let’s look at what we mean by false speech!
We need to know what there is in us to spiritually work on.
There a different forms of false speech,
some are gross, others are subtle.

1/ Starting with the most gross form of false speech, telling deliberate lies:
We went for a drink with a young woman after work,
and we tell our wife, we were working late at the office.

2/ Exageration and minimisation:
We went jogging and ran four kilometers, but say we ran five kilometers.
There is the desire to make us look better than we really are,
or to make someone else look worse than they really are.

3/ Factual accuracy:
We say we went for lunch with five other people, when in fact there were six people there.
We make a mistake unconsciously,
althouth we still lack of awareness.

4/ White lies:
We don’t want to hurt the other person, so we care for them,
so we avoid telling an uncomfortable truth.
Someone invites us for a meal, and we lie that we are busy.

5/ The long goodbye:
First we tell our English teacher that were not feeling well,
next week we are on a business trip,
the week after we have too much work to do,
eventually he stops asking us about the next lesson.

6/ Not telling the whole truth; we don’t technically lie but we don’t speak the whole truth:
A woman online asks us if we are married, and we simply say no. It’s true, we’re not.
But we don’t mention that we live with our girlfriend.

7/ Not saying what we really think, which means knowing what we really think:
What do we really know?
If you take away everything that we learned from our parents, teachers, friends, in books and online,
what is left, what do we really know?
And if we don’t really know very much, how can we speak the truth?

So here are some of the more prevalent forms of not fully telling the truth.
Can you think of any more?