The Toledo sesshin, long meditation retreat, culminated with a Jukai ceremony where ten people formally embraced the Bodhisattva way as it is presented within the Zen dharma.
Let’s see. First a little unpacking. Sesshin is a Japanese word that translates as “to touch the heart mind.” It is the term for multiple day intensive meditation retreats in the Zen tradition. Jukai means “receiving the precepts.” It stands for the ceremony in which one undertakes the obligations of the Buddhist ethical/moral/practice code, in Japanese-derived Zen a sixteen part undertaking. The Bodhisattva way is the path of the open heart, open mind, a shorthand for the way within the Mahayana branch of Buddhism. Dharma as a modifier for Zen means the teaching, way, practice of the Zen school.
As part of the retreat talks touched upon aspects of the precepts.
I spoke in passing about the “three pure precepts,” the second three of the sixteen vows.
According to Robert Aitken, one of the principal teachers in our lineage of Zen, “‘The Three Pure Precepts,’ which derive from a gatha (didactic verse) in the Dhamapada and other early Buddhist books:
Renounce all evil;
practice all good;
keep your mind pure —
thus all the Buddhas taught.
“In Mahayana Buddhism, these lines underwent a change reflecting a shift from the ideal of personal perfection to the ideal of oneness with all beings. The last line was dropped, and the third rewritten:
Renounce all evil;
practice all good;
save the many beings.”
The exact formulation within the Boundless Way is:
I vow to avoid evil
I vow to practice good
I vow to save all beings
For me much of the heart of the matter is revealed in these three things.
If you can’t do anything else, stop doing evil.
If you can possibly move beyond that, do something good.
And, finally, do good for others.
I unpacked that a bit more and then there was a sharing that I found particularly moving. People had reflected on this matter quite a bit, and were trying hard to bring their lives into alignment with what seems to be the deepest calling of our hearts.
Then I came home and when I was going through my emails I opened one from a new friend who provided a link to an article, “Speak No Evil, Tweet No Evil,” by Michael Stusser. He doesn’t appear to be a Buddhist, although he moves in circles that connect him with a Tibetan lama.
In an often foulmouthed account Michael tells a secular tale of this path of precept, of opening our hearts to a larger view and trying, as hard as it can often be, to find that deep alignment.
For all of us on the way it couldn’t hurt to read his account of what it looks like when the rubber hits the road and we really try as the people we are to be a bit better.
Good stuff…
Maybe good for oneself.
And good for the world…
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