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Let’s say you’re going to move across the country. This is a big and complex project, with a lot of moving parts, requiring a lot of effort and attention. To start, you have to prepare. You need to pack your old place, look for a new place, and figure out how you’ll get your stuff there. You need to swap utilities, forward your mail, and so on. Every one of these is necessary to have a successful move—but, while they’re part of that move, they’re not the move itself. 

As we discussed earlier, Buddhism’s Eightfold Path is the journey we undertake to achieve the change in perspective and values, and develop the wisdom and mental discipline needed to alleviate our suffering, stress, and unease. (It is simultaneously a description of what that goal looks like in actuality, an interesting dual nature we’ll explore in a later issue of this newsletter.)

If the Eightfold Path is the cross country move itself, then the Five Precepts are the preparation that is also part of that move. These are general rules of behavior, and they act as a foundation, a set of ethical guidelines that create the space and clarity needed to truly delve deeper into the path. They’re not the entirety of Buddhist ethics. Think of them as the essential first steps on the path, ensuring a safe and clear path forward.

The Five Precepts are not a rigid set of rules, but rather ethical principles that cultivate qualities like compassion, mindfulness, and self-discipline.  By following them, we create a more positive environment for ourselves and those around us. Their clarity makes them easy to interpret—even if they are often difficult to diligently follow. The idea is that by making the Precepts part of our life, and by doing the best we can to hold to them, we set ourselves up for success in developing the skills needed to achieve the goals of Buddhist practice. Put another way, it is difficult to see how we can achieve much of anything from a Buddhist perspective if we are the kind of person who would violate these precepts.

Here they are:

1. Abstain from taking life. We can broaden this—most of us already refrain from killing—to include not harming others. But maybe Buddhists also take the precept to mean we should be vegetarians. (The earliest texts present the Buddha as eating meat, but not allowing animals to be killed specifically for him.) 

2. Abstain from taking what is not freely given. This means avoiding theft, but also dishonesty. When others give to us—whether that’s their belongings, their money, their emotional investment, or their time and attention—it should be of their own will. Forcing them, tricking them, defrauding them, or lying about what it is we need and why we need it, all violate the second precept.

3. Abstain from sensual misconduct. “Sensual” is often instead translated as “sexual,” and that’s definitely part of this precept. But the idea is broader. We shouldn’t let our craving for sensual pleasures cause harm to others, or to ourselves. This principle promotes healthy and respectful relationships.  It encourages clear communication, fidelity, and avoiding actions that might exploit or harm others. (Cheating on a significant other would violate both this and the second precept.)

4. Abstain from false speech. Our words have immense power. This precept encourages honest, truthful communication, avoiding gossip, lies, or malicious speech intended to hurt others. (Keep this in mind when you’re on social media.)

5. Abstain from intoxicants that cloud the mind. This precept promotes a clear and mindful approach to life.  It encourages moderation and avoiding substances that impair our judgment and ability to practice mindfulness. It doesn’t necessarily mean abstaining from alcohol entirely, but rather says not to use it to such a degree that it causes “heedlessness.” The idea behind the precept is that if we fail at this one, we run the real risk of violating the preceding four, as well.

These principles may seem simple, but integrating them into our daily lives can have a profound impact.  Imagine the ripple effect: by choosing kindness over anger, honesty over deceit, and respecting the well-being of others, we contribute to a more peaceful and harmonious world, and be more comfortable within it.

As said above, the Five Precepts are a starting point, not an endpoint.  As we cultivate the qualities they nurture—compassion, integrity, mindfulness—we are better equipped to explore the full potential of the Eightfold Path and create a truly fulfilling life.

Reader Q&A

My first call for reader questions was a hit. I’ll be spacing out my answers to them over a couple of issues of the newsletter. Here’s what’s up first:

“What books do you recommend to learn more about Buddhist philosophy?”

A caveat: This is a difficult question to answer concisely, because there’s no such thing as “Buddhist philosophy,” just as there’s no such thing as “moral philosophy.” Rather, there’s a large and diverse family of philosophies that fall under the umbrella of Buddhism. They have a ton of common features, of course, but just as many sharp different. So my answer’s going to add a couple of criteria to the question. First, I’ll pick something that presents Buddhism in a way aligned with earlier texts. And, second, because these are the texts that most speak to me, and so are the basis of the explanations I give in these newsletters, I’ll pick something that presents Buddhism as I think about it. This is, roughly, the Buddhism of the Pali Canon, a collection of early texts recorded in the Pali language, and the earliest complete set of Buddhist texts we still have. (What this means in practice is if you want an introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, or to Zen, it might look a little different.)

All that throat clearing out of the way, a remarkably comprehensive, while also remarkably concise, overview of Buddhist philosophy is Bhikkhu Bodhi’s The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering. In just 100 pages, he sets out the core ideas with both rigor and clarity. His is not a secular approach, and so there are claims that sound fishy from a modern perspective, but if you want a summary of early Buddhism from a monk and noted scholar, this is the place to start.

“I’m interested in the intersections between Christianity and Buddhism.”

I’m not a Christian, and not a scholar of Christianity, so I’m well-equipped to answer this in a satisfying way. But one clear area of overlap is the values of kindness, friendliness, and compassion that are very much part of Jesus’s teachings—and very much part of the Buddha’s. An ethical Christian and an ethical Buddhist are going to agree in a lot of ways on what it means to be a virtuous and good person. And they’re going to agree on a lot of the features that make someone vicious and unethical.

That said, there are also deep points of disagreement. The obvious one is the nature of the self and the existence of God. Buddhists reject the idea that we have a permanent essence, and so reject the idea that we have a soul. Further, because they argue that everything is constantly changing, and constantly the result of a chain of causes, the God of Christianity simply can’t exist within Buddhist metaphysics. And Buddhist goes a step further to argue that the beliefs about the nature of the world that make God possible (i.e., that there can be permanent, unchanging, uncaused things) is a source of suffering.

What this all means is that, while a Buddhist and a Christian share many ethical values (and can agree that the world would be better if more people were ethical in the ways Buddhism and Christianity tell us to be), at the level of basic, foundational beliefs, they’re incompatible.