Seeing Through the Eyes of the Universe: The Three Pure Precepts in Practice
This practice is such a wonderful practice. It’s a way of transforming delusion into awakening. But of course, within it, there are a lot of practice forms, and we’ve adopted some of these forms from the Orient. They have moved through many countries, different places, picking up different flavors along the way. And these practice forms themselves can be beautiful as we immerse ourselves in them.
I know that Kosei is working now on setting up a sewing circle so we can work more diligently on our robes, outfitting ourselves in the robes of our tradition, which is wonderful. Hōen’s on the same path. We should celebrate and enjoy it. It’s a good way of bringing practice into our daily lives. But the bigger part of this practice is how it transforms and uncovers the beauty around us—the things that surround us.
It uncovers our true nature, how there’s no distinction or separation. That’s not always easy to see, particularly when people are suffering, when there’s work to be done, and when we feel like the clock is always ticking. It’s hard to keep up. And that pressure obscures beauty.
One of the things we begin to notice when we practice—if we look carefully at our mind—is that we don’t just have judgments about a few things—we have judgments about everything! Absolutely everything we come in contact with. And where do those judgments lie? They lie on the very vista of our perception. They are not distant, external objects informing what we see; they are what we see. These judgments loom much closer and more real than the truth of our interactions. And when that happens, it obscures the beauty of what is actually present.
So the question becomes: what is it that I’m constantly referring to when I talk about shifting our gaze? What is it when I talk about how we’re myopic, how we’re constantly nearsighted, caught in the stream of our conscious judgments, thoughts, and ideas?
When we see rightly, we ourselves begin to drop away, and that transforms our presence. We begin to recognize our rightful place in a world filled with suffering. We begin to see that we have what it takes to transform it.
In your early studies, all of you studied the precepts. You’ll remember at the end of the Three Pure Precepts—they’re not stale rules; they’re a process. The precepts are:
Cease from evil.
Practice good.
Practice good for others.
But once we’ve been trained to look beyond the surface, we begin to recognize there’s something hollow in how we often think of these. Cease from evil implies a dichotomy—that some things are evil, some things are good. But when we practice deeply, we begin to see that what we call evil is nothing more than the narratives we construct and cling to, placing them above the truth of what is actually in front of us.
Of course, we’re going to have judgments. We’re going to have labels. They belong within the vista of our perception. But when we cling to them, when we identify with them, when we elevate them above the direct experience of this moment, we walk away from our lives. We live in the judgments rather than in reality.
So, to a large extent, our practice moment by moment is to not know—to be in a state of perpetual wonder. To ask ourselves, Is that so? when we have the inclination to cling.
When we cultivate this deep wonder, we recognize that there are infinite possibilities. The limitations we impose are only imposed by our own judgments and fixed ideas. We start by releasing our grip on knowing.
Then comes practice good. Well, if we understand from the first precept that the idea is not to construct some ideological wall that overlays all of our lived experience with labels, ideas, transference, and countertransference, then practicing good is what? Constantly wiping that slate, seeing judgments for what they are—not the whole picture, just a small part of it. Because when we see that we are the ones constructing the narrative, then we can construct it more skillfully—something that more closely resembles what is actually there, something that helps point a way beyond delusion and back into direct experience.
It’s not easy, but practicing good means staying with it. Some people have expressed it as bearing witness, being present with it even when it gets hard. Don’t walk away. Don’t collapse into the comfort of certainty. Because once we knowsomething, we put it in a box and store it away. But it doesn’t matter—you can put it in a box, take it to the curb, have the truck pick it up and take it to the landfill—it’s still with you. It just changes location.
And the third precept: practice good for others. Well, if we are still seeing self and other, then we know we are creating a gap. And so, to a large extent, compassionate action requires us to eliminate that self-created gap and to step directly into it. To recognize that when we see through our eyes or through the eyes of another, we are both seeing through, ultimately, the same set of eyes.
We begin to see our self reflected in everything we encounter. And when that happens, we stop separating. If someone is hungry, we are hungry. If someone is tired, we are tired. That tiredness is experienced firsthand because there is no secondhand perspective. And when we move beyond that separation, then the wisdom of how to respond arises naturally.
There’s a case in the Mumonkan, Case 36: Meeting a Man Who Has Accomplished the Way.
Goso said, If you meet a woman on the path who has accomplished the Way, don’t greet her with words or silence. Tell me, how will you greet her?
How indeed?
Oh, boy. Does our discursive mind get tied up in this one right away! We start layering our own pictures of who we think we’re greeting. Some hero from the lofty past, one of the esteemed ancestors. But when we take the Three Pure Precepts into account, we begin to recognize—where do we start?
We start from not knowing. We don’t jump to conclusions. We actually sit with our embodied experience. We ask, Is this so? and we try to see how we are moved by the circumstances. And then we manifest as compassionate action.
And again, there is so much magic in this. We want to cling to some idea of how we are supposed to speak or engage. But how much passes in just a glance? In just a sigh? Just in a bow that shows that someone is seen?
So if we work with this, if we approach what we think of as self and other with wonder—if we set aside ideas of enlightenment and delusion, higher and lower, and just open to what presents itself—then we know how we are moved, and we respond naturally.
It’s when we get caught in ideas that things become jumbled. The Three Pure Precepts—this is not just some list of moral rules. This is practice. And when you really look, you’ll see yourself reflected everywhere. When you greet from this place, you truly greet.
And even what we think of as casual, as reflexive, as perfunctory—when met fully, without separation—becomes something that heals.
This takes everything. It will cost you your life as you see it.
But I have found in Doksan that most of you don’t like the self you’ve created very much, even though you made it. So why cling to it? We hold onto it like a ring, polishing and polishing, thinking if we get it just right, it will be enough.
Here’s a hint: It will never be enough.
So just put it down. Let it go. Show up.
And look at what you gain in return.
