Sila

0:06The two things that we need before we begin to practice satipatthana are sila, ethics or morality, and sammadhiti, right view. That's it. That's how you prepare yourself to practice satipatthana, how you practice cultivating a mind that is set on the remembrance of things as they are, satipatthana. So it may seem quite simple, basic. Sila seems quite simple, samadhi. But there's more to these things than simple word definitions. For example, sila is often associated with precepts.

1:33And yes, precepts are a part of what is needed. But in total there are four parts to the practice of Sila. And all four of them are important. Sila is the base, the foundation of one's spiritual development. It creates stability, focus, strength, Without it, you could say you're on shaky ground, even with right view. First of all, with regards to precepts, things, actions that we perform, actions, speech, This is an extreme form of disruption of practice because it involves the world around us.

2:40It creates instability in our lives, not to mention the trauma that it brings and the memories of the bad things that we've done. that certainly disturbs our practice, prevents us from progressing in the practice. So things like killing and stealing, lying and cheating, taking drugs and alcohol. It's very hard to, it's extremely hard, maybe even impossible to progress in seeing clearly when your mind is so corrupted by the states of mind involved with these actions.

3:31And there's such a corruption associated with the external manifestations of corruption, of being angry, greedy, deluded, is a disruption of your practice, but when it takes on an external manifestation, it is extreme. There is a categorical difference, a categorical shift, where it's no longer a state of mind, it's a reality, a physical reality. that has, of course, worldly repercussions, but also leaves a more profound mark on the mind. So keeping precepts is important.

4:34And if you can, of course, before doing a meditation course, it's important that you take on the eight precepts. But at the very least, we should know as meditators about the other three and try our best to Put them into practice whenever we can. Cutting down on food, trying to eat just what we need to survive. Once a day is enough. Try to give up entertainment, beautification, and try to reduce our sleep and our need for the comfort of sleep, so sleeping on a simple bed or mattress.

5:38So this is useful, this is sila, but there's more to beyond that. Sila isn't just about specific acts or breaches of conduct through speech. Sila involves our behavior. It's much more complex than simply keeping some rules, some important rules. For example, the second aspect of sila is reflecting on the use of requisites. the things that we use. Now, most people, I think, have things that they use well beyond what could be considered requisites, but even those things fall under this category.

6:52Absolutely, if we can find a way to reduce our need for possessions to simply that which is required to survive without letting them become a distraction, a diversion, an obsession, an addiction, then we would absolutely benefit from that, and our meditation would benefit greatly from that. But first and foremost, whatever it is that we do use, regardless of cutting back or not cutting back, we change the way we perceive, we begin to look at the things that we use in a new way.

7:42So taking the very basic requisites as examples, cloth to wear. We take on as a practice to wear it only for the purpose it was meant. Cover our nudity and protect us from cold and heat. Going naked is not preferable, not in most places. meaning in most places it's highly uncomfortable to go naked, of course, so there's no question that we need to wear clothing. But our clothing becomes a crutch, an addiction, an attachment, worrying about how we look, enjoying the specialness of our clothes, brand names, Beautiful colors and so on.

8:57It's an example of something that can become a source of distraction and diversion and attachment. Attachment that takes us away from the present moment. Keeps us from being at peace here and now because we're thinking about it. Food. Food is probably the biggest out of all of them. Food we use for entertainment, for diversion. We eat when we're bored. We eat when we're depressed. We eat when we're anxious, afraid. Food becomes a real crutch. We eat just out of addiction.

9:45Food is medicine. Food is something that keeps us alive, that keeps us healthy. It's a very good thing, an important thing for the body. We don't use it like that. We don't normally eat simply because of a need to survive. Even regarding our health, we become obsessed with it, worrying about what we're eating and obsessing over the ingredients and so on. Not that it's not good to be healthy, but it's not healthy to be obsessed with anything. Much more common, of course, is the eating of unhealthy foods.

10:31We can see how horrible addiction can be and how unhealthy it makes us, how anyone could get diseases like diabetes or obesity and so on. It really is kind of incredible that these diseases, these sicknesses can arise. There's no accidental There's no, well, it's not common for it to be an accidental getting of obesity or diabetes or heart disease or liver disease or so on. There are many kinds of cancer that can come from eating the wrong foods.

11:16Because if we ate simple foods just for what was healthy, if society was based around that, then society isn't based around that. And so our food makes us sick. This thing that was supposed to be a medicine makes us sick. But that's only remarkable from a Buddhist perspective, again, because of how this is a hindrance to our meditation. This is important, not because of how it makes you physically sick, but because of the mental sickness it involves.

11:54The addiction, the distraction, the avoidance all of the mental conditions I mentioned that we use food to avoid are the important reasons why we practice mindfulness in the first place. To understand and to work through these states. And you'll never get that if you're always avoiding them. Food can be a real crutch in that sense it's a hindrance in that sense keeping us from facing our issues and we really don't need a lot of food to survive if we learned to eat just food just to survive we'd be so much happier people think it's hard to eat only one meal a day it's not really that hard It could be hard, of course, for those many people who have to do physical labor.

13:05But it's not exactly about the amount. So if you have to eat more times a day, it's about eating for the purpose for which food is made, exists in the first place. They keep us alive, keep us continuing and give us fuel to perform the thing, the actions, the speech, the deeds that we need to do, mainly to keep us practicing meditation. The third thing is, the third requisite is shelter or dwelling. Dwelling is really two aspects, two parts. There's the environment in which we live, dwelling in which we reside and the bedding on which we sit and lie, the furniture.

14:34And both are important, an important part of the requisites when you need a place to live. You need a place to stay. And you need a place to sit and to lie down. But these become quite extravagant. Our dwellings become a place for us to perform those deeds that we wouldn't dare perform in public. Sexual activity is done in private, mostly. Entertainment, the consumption of entertainment of all sorts. We take the privacy as a means of performing unwholesome deeds instead of what it could actually be used for to perform great wholesome deeds.

15:28Solitude works both ways. When you're alone, you feel confident in doing unwholesome deeds, but when you're alone, you have such great power to do wholesome deeds as well. We think goodness is something you perform in society, do good things in society. We don't realize the greatest good for the world comes from the cultivation of purity within, which is best performed alone in solitude. So using our dwelling for the right purpose and having a proper dwelling, that's not extravagant.

16:10It's not a distraction, a diversion from the present moment. And the same with bedding. Do not have extravagant bedding. Again, that's going to distract you from the practice. And the fourth requisite is medicine. Medicine is something that we do abuse. In modern times, I think an unfortunate abuse is the rising need for psychoactive drugs. So medicine not just for the body, well not just for the other organs or limbs or parts of the body, but for the brain.

16:56Not for the mind, but for the brain. in an attempt at avoiding the issues in the mind, repressing the issues in the mind, you could say. Because it can't fix them. And there is nothing that can fix the problems in our mind except for mindfulness. There really isn't. Because mindfulness involves learning and understanding. It involves the ability to separate our thoughts from our emotions, our physical experience from our mental reactions to them.

17:36Medicine can't give us that. We abuse many kinds of medicine. Pain medication can be a real detriment to our practice. It's not to say that you shouldn't ever take any of these things. It's to be clear what they're for and to use them for the right purpose. If you're in great pain, taking a little bit of pain medication can be very helpful. But trying to be free from pain all the time is a cause for incredible aversion to pain, which is a big problem.

18:18So these are an example of a part of ethics that's required or important to consider. And not just these four requisites, but again, anything we do use. Vehicles, computers, telephones, any of the modern things that we have and use and see as necessary. They can be used for great good, but they can of course become great distractions, great problems for us in our practice. So this consideration beforehand, not exactly talking about being mindful of them, but considering carefully, why do we use these?

18:59Why do I use this? Is it for a good purpose? How am I using it? Am I using it in the right way? Or is it becoming a distraction, a diversion, a hindrance to my practice? The third type of sila regards livelihood. Livelihood is maybe a bit of a surprise, but of course livelihood is a huge part of our lives. Even as a monk, even a monk we have a sense of livelihood, even at least insofar as having to find a way to survive. The Buddha gave us the allowance of going on alms rounds.

19:40seeing that there were people in the time of the Buddha and really in all times people who appreciate religious folk you see it in mega churches and religions with large followings giving large sums of money to their religious folk but in Buddhism it's simply the restriction is simply food well or the other requisites robes and so on but mainly food A monk is allowed to go on alms to receive what? A meal. Food from people who have food and who desire to give food to religious people who desire to give something.

20:27They take only what is the smallest thing and that's a bit of rice and beans or food of some sort as a means of staying alive. And it's such a joyous thing because it's not incredibly burdensome upon the people giving and And it gives a great feeling to feed someone. This is the reason for soup kitchens, food banks, because the feeling of being able to feed someone is much greater than giving someone money or any other kind of immaterial support.

21:17It's a very direct thing. But that's livelihood as a monk. So even as monks we have to, to some extent, go to find a way to live. And of course this is much more complicated for those who are not manat, who are not recklessness, who have left the life, left the home life. If you have a home, if you have a car, if you have a family, you have many expenses that you need to cover. So having a livelihood isn't wrong. But having right livelihood is almost necessary in order to be able to progress in the practice.

21:59So of course livelihood that involves killing and stealing and all that is wrong. But also livelihood that is obsessed with money, power, manipulation, and all sorts of unwholesomeness that is associated with killing, even if you don't do the killing yourself, but to sell meat or to sell live animals, to sell poison, to sell weapons, right? to sell drugs, alcohol. This is not really right livelihood. This is a problem. It's not wholesome. It feels unwholesome in the mind.

22:43It's kind of a sullying of your purity. It's hard to feel good about yourself when you're engaged in encouraging people in these bad ways. So it definitely has an effect, an impact on your practice. But probably the most salient point is the distraction, and our work should not consume us. even putting aside unwholesome livelihood, even if we are engaged in ordinary, non-evil livelihood, it can still consume us because of how distracting it becomes and because of our addiction to salary, to money, so that we can buy the things we want, money, power, and the stress that comes from work work that is unpleasant, work that is challenging or tiresome, stressful colleagues and so on.

23:48We have to be careful that our work doesn't get in the way of our practice too much. To some extent it's unavoidable, but it's an important thing to keep in mind. This is a part of sila. And the fourth part of sila involves guarding the senses. And this is the one that's most related and segues into the practice of meditation. We're not actually talking about meditation, but it really touches upon the whole idea behind meditation. So on a basic level, guarding the senses really does just mean guarding your eyes and your ears so that you don't see and hear things that are going to distract you.

24:34Don't go to parties. Don't go to bars. Don't go to concerts. Don't go to flower gardens. Things that are going to distract you and make you feel attachment. Don't go to the buffet. This can be useful. I mean, don't go to... a brothel. Don't go places where they're watching movies or listening to music or so on. When you are really serious about practicing, at least don't do your best to avoid the distraction that comes from the senses. Don't go visit with people who make you angry.

25:25When you hear things that make you angry, try and avoid it. Avoidance, no? It's not avoiding something because it makes you unhappy. It's not that kind of avoidance. It's avoidance because you know that if you put yourself in that position, you're going to get upset. So in order to stop that from happening and keep yourself calm enough to practice meditation, there is some sense of avoidance. Avoid things that are obviously going to get in the way of your practice.

25:57Guarding the senses. But of course much more important than that and much more sustainable, much more useful and helpful is through mindfulness. Guarding the senses. Recognizing that experience comes through six doors and the six doors of experience are not inherently a problem. change the way you perceive the world. Instead of seeing it as people, places, and things, see it as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking. And if you keep yourself in this way, this is actually the beginning of mindfulness.

26:42And so understanding sila as the guarding of the senses is a great way to begin. Once you have the rest of the bases covered, this is like the home run. where the final thing you do is begin to see the world as the senses and to guard them with mindfulness until they can be guarded by wisdom, which comes from mindfulness. So this is the fourfold sila. This is ethics in a Buddhist context. And this is, of course, in the context of preparation for the practice of satipatthana.

27:23So that's all for tonight. I said also right view. I guess next time I'll talk about right view as a prerequisite for practicing mindfulness. Thank you for listening.