Hello everybody,

I (irregularly) practice Vipassana in U Ba Khin tradition (Goenkaji), and I am glad to be here at Dharma Overground and to find that so many people are dedicated to hardcore meditation practice based on Buddha's teachings.

My question to those who have attained stream-entry and beyond:
How strictly and diligently did you observe Sila (Morality) before the attainment? Do you think strict Sila played significant role in your attainment? Do you think it is very important for stream-entry and thereafter?

I would appreciate your reply.
Thanks.

peace

Quite strictly and quite pedantically having also spent some years in the Goenka tradition as a long term server.



Yes, I do.



Regulating behaviour that is the result of ill will and belief in a separate identity craving its own illusory existence that just re-inforces the agitative unsatisfactoriness inherent in such an illusion will aid in cultivating dispassion for and relinquishment of it. When the mind is calm and not agitated by such movements of mind, one is able to see the very cause and cessation of that which fuels such behaviour thus reducing its hold on this mind/body organism eventually cutting their causes off for good (via combining such regulation of behaviour with cultivation of a pliant, malleable, luminous and discerning mind).

Nick

It sometimes seems like Sila gets short shrift in the pragmatic dharma scene. Which is too bad. It's great stuff.


My first response is to ask: Why are you asking this? What is it in you that you're struggling with? What is observing Sila provoking from you? I don't personally need to know your answers, but you should consider investigating them.


Diligently and with curiosity and investigation.

Curiosity: What forms does my Sila take? Why do I accept these forms? What is the foundation of my Sila? Why? (for me I trace it back to non-harming...so when I have a question, I ask myself, is this harmful to myself, to others?) There is no moral authority to report back to or confess to. Sila is not about dogma.


What is "strict" to you? Why is this a concern? This word has oppressive and potentially self-aggressive qualities. Is there another way to think about "strict." What about words like, "lively," "investigative," "curious," "firm" ? In the same vein, do you feel oppressed by some precept? How do you understand the precepts?


Yes. But there is no "formula" for this process of awakening. Sila is part of a continuum of practices for cultivating on-going engagement with your experience.

If Buddhism has something akin to a self, you might say it's our intention. Also who we "are" is more readily discovered/indicated by what we do. "You are what you do." (and that includes not-doing).

Sila is useful in strengthening mindfulness and self awareness. "What is going on in my that I feel compelled to have sex with my best friend's partner?" "What is going on with me that I feel compelled to take these office supplies from work?" "What's going on that I'm getting plastered every weekend? Or whatever....

Sila presents some challenges because of changing cultural and historical norms. For instance, Sila surrounding sexuality. Words like "immorality" are very culturally defined and confusing. If you take it down to the non-harming level, the answers should be clearer to you, plus you'll learn a lot about yourself just in thinking it over.

For some people, observing the precepts is very challenging. In some cases, "strict" observance of, for instance, not dwelling in intoxication, is very, very rough. But that observance is a game-changer.

However your sila fully manifests, for now, take it one day at a time. Investigate.

Sila is "the first training and last training." Why would someone say this? Don't underestimate the peace, happiness and contentment that can arise from well observed sila. Both in yourself and in the effect is has on the people around you.

If everyone in the world observed the five precepts, what a world it would be. But nevermind ideals...explore the reality of this in your life.

How important is Sila?


It is absolutely necessary. That is to say... if you are lacking Sila, no amount of panna or samadhi can make up for that. Stream entry is impossible without sila,panna and samadhi in balance.

Try some metta, some say its good for all 3 at once.

If you are asking if you need to follow a particular set of precepts, then that answer is a little murkier. Afraid to give up fermented drink? Afraid of the ramifications of giving up 'false speech'?

Be specific with your concerns, and I'll speak to that. otherwise, your answer is: VERY IMPORTANT.

Thank you Nikolai, boeuf, and mma for your replies.


I am asking this because I want to know what DHO members who emphasize meditation and have attainments think about morality. Currently I am not struggling that much with Sila, but it would be helpful to know how much importance I should give to morality to progress rapidly like you guys are having.

I agree with your views; thanks for your time to reply.



Well, yes it's sometimes challenging to follow the precepts, and to decide how much lenient or flexible we can be. Like drinking (a little) in social gathering; speech which is not perfectly truthful but necessary to please someone, etc... I just wanted to know if such "little deviations" from Sila do affect severely, or should I be 100% strict regarding sila.

When wondering if this or that action should or should not be triggered, ask yourself does this act support the cultivation of a malleable, pliant, luminous and discerning mind or does it cloud and obfuscate it? Experiment and you will know what works and what doesn't.

Sila makes everything more clear, and the precepts make sila more clear. It then follows that the precepts make sila clear.
If you do follow the precepts, you'll be caught in fewer sticky situations, as things like lying, alcohol and lust really are detriments to seeing clearly. Following this logic, one eventually becomes a monk and recedes from the world; hermits have fewer distractions. However...



In the end sila and 'progress' are two sides of the same coin. If you are present and aware enough to approach the situation as Nikolai says, is that not samadhi and sila incarnate?

a good practice for samadhi is zazen, but all is samadhi.
a good practice for sila is doing no harm, but all doing is dharma

Another way to look at it: if there is no fear, actions tend to be 'right'.

Most of my bad actions have fear at their source. If I drill down deep enough with some analysis, it's always there.

So if my mantra is "no fear", it's an easier way of doing sila for me.

If you are pondering over very minor actions such as "is one glass of beer once a month ok?", then you need to do a bit of drilling down into that. At it's source you'll find fear. That style of thinking means you're afraid of karma... very afraid. Drop it.

I never gave it any thought while pursuing stream-entry. Doesn't mean it's not important. I mean, I'm not a serial rapist, a thief, or a psychopath (much), so maybe those things would get in the way if they applied to me. But they don't, so beyond that, I can't say.

Around the time I got stream entry, Sila played into things in the following ways:

• I had spent a year doing full-time, unpaid volunteer service for some of the poorest people in India (street clinic in Calcutta, very rural villages about 5 miles walk through the rice paddies outside Bodh Gaya)
• I didn't drink, smoke, or do any drugs
• I was in a monogomous married relationship
• I tried always to be as honest as human relationships allow
• I stole nothing
• I was vegetarian
• I tried to avoid killing even mosquitos, though was only partially successful on that front, given the malaria, etc.
• I lived on nearly nothing, eating cheap street food and staying in the bottom of the line non-air-conditioned hotels without hot water the majority of the time (two people living on about $400/month for all expenses: pretty bottom of the tourist barrel)
• I did my best to be as generous as my meager living situation allowed and always kind when I could pull it off

In short, morality was then and since has always been extremely important to me, and most people would find my personal moral code pretty restrictive and perhaps even oppressive, I believe.

Daniel, for what reason do you live this way? What is the pay off? What would happen if you killed a mosquito?

I understand bad karma is to be avoided, because it has to be worked off later, but if killing a mosquito doesn't bother me then it's not bad karma since no impression is left. What do you reckon?

I know you are addressing Daniel here, but I would like to say that something "not bothering me" is not as clear cut as many might think. The whole point of mindfulness is to gradually become aware of what exactly it is that "bothers you," i.e. causes suffering. If you're an arahant and you are sure that you are one, then I guess you're right; but if you're not, then you can't know for sure that an action does not leave an impression, can you?

This is very admirable. The question it raises for me is, how exactly did it help in your attainment of SE?

Basically agreed to what Nick said. Out of all the 5 precepts I would emphasize the most on Right Speech. It extends far deeper than it appears. It includes talking on forums. A simple way to understand the practise of sila is to simply avoid doing anything that can agitate the mind because with an agitated mind one cannot concentrate and hence insight is difficult to arise.

Having said that I'll add 2 more points :-

1. Do not be too attached to following the precepts to the letter if you are a lay practitioner- as a lay practitioner , who is subject to all sorts of people and situations , one can break the sila precepts if required. I broke them a couple of times before stream entry. Mainly I had to break Right speech - sometimes you just have to lie to your boss.

2. sila precepts in itself are no holy/sacred rule of the universe - most likely the monks/meditators found out over time that by doing some harmful things , it can lead one to such a crap that the person wont be able to meditate nicely

Yes, it's worth noting that in the first sutta of the longer discourses, the Buddha refers to sila as "...trifling and insignificant matters, ... the minor details of mere moral virtue..." of which "...the worldling would speak when speaking in praise of the Tathāgata."

This reminds me, too, of a conversation I had with someone recently. He asked me when meditation helps you deal well with loneliness (or something like that). I told him that was pretty much its own thing, but I added that I had spent a lot of time before I ever got into meditation addressing the negative feelings that come up sometimes with being alone. I guessed that, since meditation is largely a solitary activity that takes you into weird territory, that tolerance of being alone might have helped me.

You need to have some steadiness of mind to even get into meditation. This is the most obvious connection I can think of where sila grounds the other two trainings. You probably need some degree of psychological health to deal with the weird, disturbing stuff that comes up. Good boundaries and a sense of humor are indispensable if you don't want to trash your life. I managed to make it through dark night without anyone in my life knowing about it other than one very close friend and my meditation teacher. That wasn't a new thing with dark night. I've trained myself for years, when something negative comes up for me, I don't automatically assume it's coming from outside me. In fact, my behavior during dark night was probably better than it normally is, because I wrote off every nasty thing that came through me as more dark night crap. Everyone got a free pass from me whether they deserved it or not. I doubt I would have been able to do that if I hadn't trained myself in that particular dimension of ethics beforehand.

But no, I drink, eat red meat, and entertain plenty of mean thoughts. I managed to get stream-entry about a month after hitting A&P for the first time. So those things didn't slow me down much if any. I think I illegally downloaded an album or two during that time. :-) But I think I was GREATLY aided by the aforementioned skills, which I think also fall under sila when taken generally.

I generally did feel bad when I killed a mosquito, still do.

I remember on a work retreat at Gaia House when I was doing organic gardening and some sort of blight had gotten into the tomatoes and the head gardener said that the way to deal with this was to change out all of the soil down to about a foot in that bed in the greenhouse, so I did this, and in the process killed what must have been hundreds or even thousands of ants, grubs, worms, slugs, beetles, and all sorts of other garden soil dwellers, and I felt pretty bad about it, and I remember telling the meditation teacher about it, and they basically freaked out and said that I wasn't allowed to say that I was killing thousands of things for their tomatoes, but I digress...

I don't think specifically that killing a particular mosquito or not killing a particular mosquito did or didn't have anything to do with me getting stream entry, as that was part of a larger picture. Just driving to work these days when the bugs are out I kill hundreds on my grill...

That's a lot of thoughts on dead bugs, and I don't think it answers the question. Why not just get stream entry?

Daniel

I always felt bad for killing bugs as well. Never tried to on purpose and would spend a lot of time catching the ones that weren't were they were supposed to be. Once while living in Chile in an old colonial style house, after an earth tremor, the mud walls cracked and let loose a plague of fleas. I ended up moving out after a week. i couldn't stand them jumping on me, but I couldn't stand killing them with flea powder etc even more.

I was like this for over 8 years in the Goenka tradition. When given the task of cleaning goenka's residence before his eminent arrival at Dhamma Giri,India, I was asked to wipe the cobwebs from the entrance ceilings. I couldn't do it for all the spiders I would know i was killing.

I was pretty anal about it for a long time that it stuck when big brain shifts occured. Can't kill anything for the life of me now. After the 1st shift in July post 4th path (which seriously changed the experience of 'being' to residual shadow), I was asked by someone guiding me what I would do if someone told me they'd give me a million dollars but I had to break the legs of a homeless man lying on a park bench or no million dollars. I could not see that as an option. Whether it was a result of previous conditioning and training behaviour or of the massive hit 'being' took, or perhaps the changing of 'being' cementing that conditioned behaviour, I don't know. All I know is that I am where I am because of what was done and not done.

Thinking back, I am unsure how my practice would have panned out if i had not cultivated such behaviour. Seeing as i have made some pretty quick progress, it might be useful to assume it was because certain factors had grown strong enough, and thinking about how moral I was about not killing, lying, stealing etc, it always lead to a much more heightened, malleable and pliant mind. My concentration abilities probably benefited greatly. Cause and effect.

Nick

Edited x 2

Thank you Daniel, Nikolai, MMA, CCC, Jim, Dauphin, Shashank and everybody for your replies. This discussion really helped.

I just thought of something: God (or Life) Itself is killing stuff all the time. If I go out into the wilderness I will see God in the form of: animals hunting and eating each other, fighting for mates, carcasses getting picked over, dead flowers, trees struck down by lightning, and probably a few dead mosquitoes as well. All this stuff is Life, doing as it must. Death and decay.

So why would a person bother himself about killing an animal if God Itself does it on a constant basis. By God, I don't mean as an external agent, but as the Everything. Wouldn't that be akin to resisting Life itself? By practising sila, would that be like resisting Life? Am I trying to be better or nicer or more holy than my true Self (God)? Why would I do that?

Playing devil's advocate. What do you think?

A whole lot of weird arguments can be made using logic like that, such as killing those beings of inauspicious birth is actually helping them get to a more auspicious one, but that is a very rapidly slippery slope that leads rapidly to conclusions that are likely very unwise and unskillful, as well as likely highly immoral and perhaps illegal, so care must be made regarding logic and how things can be argued, as more meta-logical factors need to be in place for that to work out well most of the time.

Isn't this the moral of the Bhagavad Gita? In which Arjuna is told to massacre his enemies because it's who he is?

I agree this could be a slippery slope, or it might just provide some philosophical support for being able to drive to work, eat, and even kill mosquitos.

In my case it came about from practicing. I used to have no problem swatting a fly that buzzed around at night and kept me awake. Now I open the door and wait for it to fly outside. I used to have no problem eating buckets of kentucky fried chicken, but recently my mom called and told me she's eating kfc for dinner and it feels a little strange (especially after something compelled me to go to www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com.

My knowledge of the precepts and buddhism, in general, isn't any greater than it was before I felt this way and was munching down buckets of kfc. I see absolutely no difference between a fly's life and my own (as it's internal experience is very likely the same as my own), so I guess that has a lot to do with it. However, I intellectually had thought about this and known this before I started being more careful about other beings. So I suppose it's "practice" that makes the difference.

This high degree of compassion could be viewed as extreme self-interest, self-pity reflected outwards.

don Juan: "Warriors are incapable of feeling compassion because they no longer feel sorry for themselves. Without the driving force of self-pity, compassion is meaningless."
Castaneda: "Are you saying, don Juan, that a warrior is all for himself?"
don Juan: "In a way, yes. For a warrior everything begins and ends with himself. However, his contact with the abstract causes him to overcome his feeling of self-importance. Then the self becomes abstract and impersonal".

I've noticed that people who are very anxious are much more likely to be averse to eating meat and killing spiders. Check amongst your friends and associates, you will notice the same. Since anxiety is ego's tool, well.... join the dots. The greater the ego's grip, the more likely you are to be this way regarding sila.

Myself - I am averse to killing animals but have no problems with spiders, flies, mosquitoes. Rabbits would be the current threshold for me. I think I'd feel bad about having to kill a rabbit. Fish - yes I'd kill a fish with my bear hands but I'd do it quickly. I'd feel a bit funny but I'd do it, and eat it. So I have the same problem.

My personal opinion is that avoiding eating food that comes from animals that were essentially born to be tortured and killed is, in general, a good thing and not at all extreme. As for the fly, it takes less effort to open the door than to turn the light on and jump around the room with a newspaper for 20 minutes. It's generally easier not to kill something than to kill it. If a spider is walking by, I let it walk by, and don't have to do anything at all. I don't walk around city streets killing every pigeon that walks by, in the same way, I don't walk around my house killing every spider that crosses my path. (And no, my house is not crawling with spiders, in fact I rarely see one). There was a line of ants that found some food the other day. Instead of killing all of them or setting up traps, I simply removed the food and left. I came back a few hours later and every single ant was gone. This kind of thing is infrequent, too, and has only happened to me once or twice. It was far easier to take away the food and walk off than to go into a fit and fury and buy some ant spray and set up traps all around the house.. I don't see how this is "extreme," in fact, it's more like the opposite as it is easier. Eating mostly vegetarian is easier too, as it is cheaper, healthier, faster to cook. All of these things mean I am not going "out of my way" to accomplish these things, in fact, it's the opposite.

Sometimes I eat meat if I have concluded (however irrational my logic may be) that the animal probably didn't suffer much in its capture and death to get to my plate. For example, I sometimes order shrimp at restaurants. However, I would be weary of eating something like lobster because it was likely boiled alive. If lobster happens to be on my plate, and I didn't order it, I will eat it because it's already dead and throwing it away or composting it would just be wasting food.

I have personally not fought in any wars or battles, and so am not a warrior and am not immune to feeling self-pity from time to time. If this is self-pity directed outward, so be it, it makes my life easier.

Hi Cloud,

In the Castaneda books, 'warrior' just means seeker. If you read it that way it makes more sense.

Like you I also feel self-pity. I was really just floating a philosophy about compassion which is quite different to the accepted Buddhist religious approach. It's not a philosophy that condones or encourages reckless or hurtful behaviour, but it does look at the underlying motive of compassion and kindness when that compassion and kindness springs from the ego. I think someone on the Dho once called it 'idiot compassion', which is a harsh term for it, but a good one. Real compassion and kindness comes from selflessness, as you know.

We all have buttons that trigger our ego defense mechanisms, and they are quite different from person to person.
Say one of my big ego threats is a wart on my face. I feel very self-conscious and embarrassed and ashamed of it. If someone so much as looks at me strangely I will feel mortified. If this is the case, I will be very careful not to stare at others who have some physical abnormality, because I know how hurtful it is (or how badly my ego gets re-arranged!). This is self-concern projected outwards. If I have no concern about my appearance, then this particular compassion disappears. It's the ego, once again playing tricks, making me feel righteous!

If I'm afraid of killing bugs, might that mean that I'm afraid of death? Or might it mean I'm afraid of karma? Remember I'm not saying that killing things is something to partake in. What I am saying is: look at your motivation for being ultra-careful about not killing, and see if it's based in fear. I think it is. Fear is the only block to liberation, and this is what the Dho is all about.... I think!

My motivation not to kill a rabbit (as an ego-maniac) might be quite different from Daniel's (as an arahat). Outwardly they can appear the same.

I'm killing this discussion. How about that....

Now you're being hurtful. What if karma seeks retribution upon you for your hurtfulness?!! Aren't you afraid of that?

Will you lie awake at night thinking "hmmm, I was a bit too harsh on CCC, I feel guilty" in the same way that you would feel guilty if you squashed a bug?

This is not a small issue. It's not a thread about mosquitoes, but about guilt, sin, karma, fear. All those topics that get swept under the carpet in polite religious circles.

what's your view?

When the intention to kill something is there, what is fueling it? What is the trigger? Insight into the tirggers often leads to understanding why regulation of such behaviour is useful on the path to the end of suffering (if that is the objective of practice).

When i first took on the vipassana practice, I would train myself to recognise the triggers for the intent to kill, the intent to lie, the intent to steal for example. I recognise most if not all the time, that the triggers for such intentions were always revolving around the illusory selfing processes. 'I' only intended to kill a bug out of feelings of aversion towards the bug interfering with 'my' happiness. 'I' only lied for the sake of 'me' and 'my' happiness'. 'I' only stole for the sake of 'my' happiness. These triggers were part and parcel of the illusory selfing processes, only support for their arising, only fuel for the continued flow of grasping at the continuation of a sense of existing as 'me', a separate identity. The intention behind such acts were seen to always have as the core trigger, selfish desire.

Even when i went once to throw a large rock on the head of a puppy who had been run over with its guts splayed out on the road, to ease its suffering as it was still breathing, was still in hindsight seen to have as its core trigger, the self-revolving desire to feel better that the puppy no longer suffered. It was, at the core of it, all about 'me', 'me', 'me'.

When it becomes clearer that there are these triggers for such actions, and that these triggers only fuel the ongoing illusory selfing processes, then these 'moral' guidelines become a means to counter such unsatisfactory processes. If the end of such unsatisfactoriness is the goal of practice, then addressing the supports and fuel for the arising of the illusory selfing processes seems to make sense. Sila then also makes sense. At least it did for me.

If one is not using sila as a tool to deal with the unsatisfactoriness, but instead using it as just support for more self-narratives, now a 'moral' self-narrative as opposed to an 'immoral' self-narrative, then sila has become a fetter which binds and causes suffering, i.e. guilt and fear (the realm of self-narratives/selfing processes). If sila is used to aid in the dismantling of the self-narratives as opposed to being a support, then the fetter of sīlabbata-parāmāso (attachment to rituals, rules, etc) is dropped at stream entry (where the fetter of identity view is also dropped).

Nick

Edited x 2

Thanks Nik.

I was little confused when i saw in MCTB three trainings (of concentration, wisdom and morality) completely separated, like each of them would be totally different practice. For me it always works like:

If you improve morality then you can improve concentration mush easier and therefore you can improve your wisdom
If you improve concentration then your morality improves automatically and your wisdom improves much easier
If you improve wisdom then you improve morality automatically and therefore you can improve concentration ability

and:

you can't improve concentration without morality improvement
you can't improve wisdom without concentration improvement
it's probably very hard to improve morality without improving concentration and wisdom ;)

What was getting at when this was posted was that there were no intentions to kill something arising as this post was directed at people who were post stream-entry and as such despite writing things that sounded like a significant self narrative was present (attachment to rites and rituals had been dropped when that was typed), and a self-narrative was not as present as much as was assumed (though still existed to an extent). Thus the actions were not based significantly in guilt, fear, sin, though some were still present.

I appreciate this post as it has allowed me to examine the phrase "self-narrative."

This is the most accurate way to put it which is way the interdependent eight-fold path is written and explained as it is.

Insight into the arising and passing away of feelings or the triggers of behaviour shouldn't end at the imagined boundary between the self and other. To be aware of what occurs at the 5 sense doors, provides insight into the the causes of all suffering