ibetan Way g and Dying By Brendan Caldwell
The Ti of Living IT’S AN EMPTY ROAD - the road to Throssel Hole Abbey. Long and uneven and empty. It weaves across the Northumbrian countryside like a wide, grey sidewinder, making the taxi-bus bank sharply to the right or left. I try to tame my bag as it slides about. It slips out of my hand and shudders its way viciously to the other side of the floor as the bus struggles over the bumps and blemishes in the road. We bank left for the twentieth time and the bag slips reluctantly back into my hands. The other passengers glance at me for a moment. The ride is uncomfortable. Throssel Hole is a large, brown and cream building resting on the emerald slopes of the Weardale, hidden behind tall pines. We get there after a half-hour journey from Hexham train station. The Abbot, Master Daishin Morgan, lives in a white house just by the main entrance of the abbey. There is a vine creeper crawling up
the wall at the side and little statues of lions on the drive. And a Sky satellite dish on the chimney. Although Daishin Morgan runs the Abbey now it was founded by Buddhist master Jiyu-Kennett, an Englishwoman (born Peggy Kennett) who grew disillusioned with the gender-bias in the Christian church and went to Japan to study under a Zen master. Eventually, she became a master herself and brought her knowledge of the religion back to England to found the Abbey in 1972. The passengers and I clamber out of the taxi. The monks at the abbey invite anyone to come on retreat and stay if they want to learn more about the Buddhist way of life. The other guests disembark and throw their bags over their shoulders. There is a young American drifter wearing an oilskin bush hat, a sour looking Scot of about fifty years and a heavy, longhaired Religion student from Bath University. And me. Two monks - one man and one
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Meditation is done in the ceremony hall, sitting and with eyes open.
its most basic level, meditation is done by sitting silently in a kneeled position (usually facing a wall) and trying to calm your mind by quieting your own thoughts. Your eyes remain open. There is no particular breathing exercise to do. It’s just sitting. Raymond explains that the aim of meditation is to rid our minds of thought. To try and clear any noise in our heads. Worries or stresses or fantasies. He uses an example of the planes from a nearby RAF base flying over the Abbey on a flight practice and the noise that they often make. “Try to just keep in tune with your breathing and with the here and now,” he says. “Forget the worries or fantasies that come from this. You know, what if the planes crash into the abbey?” he mock-speculates. “Don’t add any thoughts to this fantasy. Where are the fire exits? Where are the fire extinguishers? What will I do? … Try to banish these thoughts,” he says. We are asked to attempt to meditate while in the circle. I adopt the position. Total silence wafts through the room… This is uncomfortable. Better shift a bit. As I fidget my jeans tear at the knee. Rrrrrrrrrrpp. I mutter a swear word, and then realise where I am and how silent it is. A stern-faced monk with big glasses like he hasn’t changed them since the 1980s is looking at me. I settle down. Forget about the jeans. Straight back. Hands on my knees. Just sitting. I can do that. No need to think of anything at all. Least of all the bloody Royal Air Force. Well, I didn’t have those thoughts to begin
with. Of course, now I do. And it’s pretty difficult to banish them come to think of it. It’s just so ridiculous. What would it be like if the RAF really did crash into the Abbey? It could only be a better story if instead of crashing into the Abbey, they accidentally fired missiles at the place. Napalmed the entire grounds. ‘50 Buddhist monks killed in military cock up’ - The Times’ front page. ‘Students among dead.’ And a picture of me and the fella from Bath taken off Facebook and planted straight on a two page spread of a fantastic disaster. Damn, it’d be glorious. There’s no way I’m banishing this thought, Brother Raymond. No way.
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What if the RAF crash into the abbey? Where are the fire exits? What will I do?
The stern faced monk is still glaring at me intensely. His name is Hugh. For a monk he has a surprising amount of violence in his eyes. His forehead is tall and narrow. His thin face sports brittle cheek bones and small, tight, thin lips that when pursed in such a way adds rage to his expression. But his eyes. He fires bullets from his eyes. He is probably glaring at me now because of the broad smile expanding slowly across my face. I’m trying desperately to smother my desire to laugh. At the looks of complete seriousness on the face of every other person in the room. At the insane absurdity of it all. I lower my head to escape brother Hugh’s bullet-stare.
What the hell am I doing in this place? What am I doing? This is stupid. What must everyone else be thinking? They’ve got to be thinking the same as me. Jesus, what am I playing at? Nobody can ever STOP THINKING. It’s not possible. I mean, what? Just – what? How long is this horrible silence going to last? I can’t— “Okay, if we could just bring ourselves back now please?” Brother Raymond asks, “and we can explain some of the other sitting positions and equipment.” Thank God. Our meals with the monks are held in silence (apart from the short homage to Buddha before and after the meal). The food is vegetarian only. Tofu, lentil stew, sweet potato, vegetable soup, cornmeal, wholegrain bread. And the water is served warm, as traditional Japanese monks would drink it. Whichever dish is being served is quietly passed down the table. After you receive the tray of food you bow to the person who passed it to you, serve yourself only as much as you think you can eat, pass the pan on and bow to whoever you are giving it to. There is to be no waste. The monks always finish their meals fully. If the guests leave some food uneaten it has to be put into a small metal bowl during washing-up time (everyone washes their own dishes) and emptied onto the compost heap outside. Everyone has their own set of dishes and place at the table too. The monks have their own personal mugs, like teachers in a staff room. Brother Gareth has a glazed wooden cup with no grip, which he handles with great
woman - come out of the building in front of us and walk slowly down the drive to meet us. Crunch crunch crunch down the white stone gravel - their rust-coloured robes billow slightly in the breeze. Their shaved heads gleam a bit in the sunshine. There are more of us inside. They are waiting. “This way please,” says the male monk, turning with a wave of his long baggy sleeve. We are brought to our shared sleeping quarters to unpack, then all the guests are gathered into the common room on the second floor. There are about 20 people on retreat altogether. The four monks who are going to be leading our retreat introduce themselves and explain a few things about the monastery. What we will eat (vegetarian food only), when we will meditate (seven times a day), what time we will go to sleep (10pm every night). The monk who is doing most of the talking right now is called Gareth. As he goes over our timetable his voice and breath is shaky. Under his notes he twists his middle finger in his other hand. At first I think it’s a ring he’s twisting. Daft thing to think. One of the other monks speaks up, to the relief of Brother Gareth. “If you need anything, or have forgotten anything we have got lots of stuff. Towels, blankets and things.” After that there is a lengthy silence. Birdsong floats through the windows. The portly student from Bath looks across to me and widens his eyes. The ceremony hall is a large open room with a giant gold Buddha altar. It also doubles up as our sleeping quarters. Our belongings are kept in square Japanese cupboards running down either side of the hall. Behind the altar is a cloister with the statues of two of Buddhism’s spiritual figures. Rows of tea-light candles sit carefully on lowered wooden shelves around the statues. Each candle, one of the monks tells us, is offered for a person who has died, and we are free to light one ourselves if we so wish. Some candles are lit; others have gone out after the last millimetre of wick has been scorched away. By the entrance of the ceremony hall there is a small sign which reads: “As there is a serious risk of setting fire to your hair when ‘offering a candle’ we strongly recommend you not to bring the candle to your forehead as you normally would when offering incense. In gassho. (Thank you)” The warning is for our benefit. None of the monks here have any hair.
Throssel Hole Abbey is isolated in the hills of Northumberland.
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The female monk who is showing us around the hall is called Alicia. “We gave ourselves a sky,” reverend Alicia pronounces, grinning and pointing at the ceiling which has been painted a happy blue. She is small and frail but not that old. She speaks soft and slowly, draaaging ev-err-ry worrrrd on-aaand-on. Like a tortoise in a children’s cartoon. When rising after meditating monks traditionally sway in a circular motion from the hips upwards. As a result of years of meditation Alicia often sways from side to side even when she is talking and stood upright. She sways now, as she is explaining some of the symbols and imagery in the ceremony hall and in the cloister to us. There is a statue in the corner of the room elevated so that he stands over our heads - a colourfully dressed man with a sword. “That is…” Alicia thinks for a moment, searching her memory, then gets it. “Zojo-ten. He is a symbol of protection. The sword represents fearlessness and vigilance. He is one of the four heavenly kings.” She points out three other figures in similar positions throughout the hall. Each of them holding something different. An umbrella, a pearl, a lute. “The two birds flying towards the jewel above the altar are protection figures as well.” “The shape of the jewel is the shape you make with your hands while you meditate, you see,” says one of the other monks, interjecting. “They are flying towards enlightenment,” says Alicia. “What about that one on the window there?” asks one of the guests, pointing to a red picture of a Hawk on
There is a serious risk of setting fire to your hair when offering a candle. the giant main glass at the back of the temple. “That’s just so that birds don’t fly into the window.”
Raymond, the Vice-Abbot, takes us for our first meditation. He has the emaciated look of someone who has gone on hunger strike. But he is cheery and pleasant to the guests. Soft-spoken like the rest but more confident, more inclined to joke and smile and laugh. He has a giant grin – big, perfect teeth - but his thin face and shaved head make him look like one of those grinning skeletons from a biology classroom. As he explains the practicality of meditation he laughs. At all his own little remarks. Every tiny thing is hilarious in its own right. He sounds drunk. Drunk off the ability to speak for great lengths, which he would not normally be allowed to do - silence being very important in the daily life of the monastery. He laughs after most of what he says. Laughs or smiles. Which I find endearing, in one way. But in another way, it makes me nervous. Because I don’t get the joke. The meditation tutorial is a bit uncomfortable. We sit in a large circle facing eachother. The brand of Buddhism they practice at Throssel Hole is called ‘Soto Zen’ which literally means ‘Just Sitting’. It’s a fair translation. We are told that at
room are some peace lilies. Between them is the wooden Buddha idol which we must bow to as we enter and exit the room. “By all means if you have any questions or wish to know anything, certainly practical things, don’t be afraid to ask,” says brother Gareth. But I am afraid to ask. I’m afraid to ask him what happens: when communication is stifled - when all you are encouraged to say are practicalities - when you can hear no other voice but the one in your head saying ‘What am I doing here?’ During ‘working meditation’ we help with some of the monastic chores. They call it working meditation because we are told it is sometimes possible to quiet ones thoughts by doing simple tasks in silence. Some guests are sent to clean the kitchen, others are asked to tend the garden (unless they have a bad back or are unable to). Four other guests and I help to put cards in envelopes for Wesak, the festival of the Buddha’s birth, which is happening in a week’s time. Countless cards are sent out to people who support the abbey from as close by as Newcastle to the other side of the planet – San Francisco, Thailand, Singapore. The picture on the front is a watercolour of an Udumbara flower. “The Udumbara flower blooms when a Buddha is born,” the message on the back of the card reads and a generic thank-you message from the Abbot. “With our best wishes as we celebrate the birth of Shakyamuni Buddha; and with our thanks for the continued support you have given to us during the past year.” A unique scarlet blossom reprinted a thousand times. The cards slot easily into every envelope. We are working with a novice monk, dressed in black, called Clare. She is quite friendly, small with square glasses. But then most of them wear glasses. She works in the guest department, a small office below the common room. I help to carry some of the sacks of readied cards down into the office. Another of the monks is inside sitting in front of an old grey PC, typing an email. He is fully robed, complete with rakkshu (a purple scarflike robe that hangs around the neck to show that the monk’s life is fully devoted to Buddha). He is happily typing away and he doesn’t even notice us. He must be doing working meditation as well. “That’s the modern world,” Brother Gareth will later tell me.
Alicia sends an email. Even monks have to keep up with technology
“We have to realise that this is how a lot of people want to do things now, so we have to keep up I suppose.” “Mobile phones. When they see us with phones – that gets them.” The next day’s working meditation will be different. The foil cases of the tea-light candles used in the ceremony hall can be recycled. But first we need to scrape the last bit of wax out of each case using a metal chisel. We fill two plastic carrier bags of empty tea-light casings. Back in the ceremony hall we ready ourselves for more sitting meditation. This is the twelfth time in two days that I have sat and looked at a wall for twenty minutes and felt my archaic thoughts bounce off the inside of my skull. It is the exact opposite of what the monks want us to do when we meditate. It’s difficult to explain what the monks are trying to help us achieve. They often tell us during a daily tea and questions session that the aim is to stop thinking in the way that we usually do. Acknowledge thoughts and fears as they come, but let them go just as easily, instead of thinking any more about them. Let fluid thoughts wash over you, rather than snare them in a net. This way, they say, we can see the world as it really is, not just as we perceive it to be. But this ‘reality’ that Raymond and the other monks keep talking about is ghostly, ethereal. They insist it is attainable. And they insist it can be achieved easily by lay practitioners too, not just monks. They seem confused that we don’t understand when they explain it to
us. It is obvious to them, so when we say we can’t see it brother Raymond will often laugh and open his eyes wide and put his hand out, palm open, flat, gesturing outwardly. As if to say “There it is! It’s right there!” For some reason I am reminded of the art in the common room. But it is like looking for something when you don’t know what it is, or what it looks like, or what it is actually useful for. “The reason people tend to come to us to practice,” Raymond will tell me, “is that they feel there is something missing. They are asking themselves, you know, ‘is this it? Is this all there is?’ and we want to say that by practicing Zazen you can discover that missing piece.” Very often people become frustrated, he explains to us later. Angry thoughts can crop up even during the sitting meditation. But we are told to let go of such thoughts, not to let them drive us. The Abbot writes in his litanies that we must become the masters - not the slaves - of our thoughts. To allow fear, anger and passion into our minds is natural he explains. And useful in some cases. But if we can’t switch these evils off then how can we really be at peace? How can we know we are in control? During the evening ceremony a great roll of thunder can be heard, amplified by the space of the ceremony hall. As the sheet lightning flickers another even greater roar is heard, challenging the monks and the trainees to break their meditation. Not one sound apart from the now deafening rain on the
care every time he sets his place. After our breakfast we are given some free time. On the lawn outside there are three people standing at equal distances from one another. All staring into the distant countryside. Two of them, a man in his early to mid twenties and a young boy of 16 years pass eachother as they walk lazily around the lawn. They look at each other at different times and fail to catch one another’s eye. Behind them is a collection of stones and figures. The stones bear the names of the monks’ pets that have died. Harley, Charlie Cat, Bliss. A rabbit appears from a burrow behind the furthest gravestone, like some pet returned from the land of the dead. It
cerulean sky. His name, he tells me, is Jonathan. The morning sunshine draws a long shadow from his arms as they wave about. His steps are slow and methodical. Every now and again he’ll make a quick burst of movement as his open palms strike some invisible target. In the field next to us a white mare looks up from grazing and stares at him for a while, then snorts and buries her head in the grass again. He is a dark skinned kid with blonde highlights in his hair. Wearing a black hoody with ‘University of Northumbria’ on it in the style of US colleges. He’s a black belt at aged 16 - been at it for 6 years, he tells me. I don’t know if he is telling the truth or if he is just trying to be impressive.
in meditation he is not too keen on being here. The kid is from Cowshill, Northumbria. A small village about a half an hours drive away. Peace, he says. And smiles. There are rabbit droppings everywhere. The white mare has disappeared up the hill and we begin walking back down to the abbey. The gong by the doors is being drummed. Meditation begins soon. “Try not to talk so much in a social manner” I’m told by the nervous brother Gareth. “We like this time to be – uh reflective for each of us. N-n-now that doesn’t mean there’ll be – you know - no speaking again until the end of The view from the top of the hill near the monastery.
bounds over Harley’s grave mockingly, springing up a bit of dirt on its way past . It stops reflectively on the edge of a steep bank and inspects its surroundings. The rabbit starts. It careers off into the woodland nearby as the young boy begins to walk uphill along a path within the monastery grounds, but out of sight of the monks around the building. I take a walk along the dusty pathway too. There are rabbit burrows everywhere, peppering the hillside along with dozens of newly planted conifers, each with their own support – a sandy wooden plank. The dead artefact supports the living. Tiny malnourished trees. The rabbits run around them. Up on the hill the young boy practices his karate under the cloudless
He complains, but not about the food. Not about the meditation routines. Not about the monks. About the midges. They are still around from
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Try not to talk so much in a social manner. the night before and are flying around in columns near the stream coming down the hill. Dense, misty balls of them swarm and mate desperately before the sun is high and their tiny lives are spent. I ask Jonathan what brings him to the abbey. “Inner peace,” he says. He is smiling but I can’t tell if he is joking or not. His father is here too but judging by the man’s reluctance to engage
the weekend,” he laughs while clasping tight his waving hands. We are sitting in the common room. The entire room is blue. Blue carpet, blue walls, blue ceiling, blue chairs, blue bins, blue books, blue bottles of water for boiling in the blue kettles, blue mugs to drink the tea. The tea is green. On a table in the first half of the room a small sign reads: “Silence will help you benefit more from your time here.” The ‘silence’ is coloured red and given a big ‘S’ On the walls, spaced evenly apart, is some traditional Buddhist art. One painting shows a master monk teaching a trainee. Pointing at something in the air obvious to him but imperceptible to his student. In the corners of the far end of the
“[But] to do nothing out of fear of making a mistake is the saddest mistake.” The monks know more about this kind of conservation than Byron might have guessed. It was the rabbits. The monks knew that their population around the monastery grounds was rising uncontrollably. During the winter they would keep eating bark off the trees and the bunny boom would continue. So the monks wired off the trees and made them inaccessible. As a result the rabbit population fell during the winter as some of the poor buggers died off in the cold. The monks knew that they had to do something or else the numbers would be unsustainable and the rabbits would have eaten themselves out of their own food supply. Gareth sighs as he recounts the story. “We made that judgement call,” he says. “Sometimes you have to do what will cause the least harm in the long run but you will always have to endure whatever consequences that come up as a result of that.” “Unfortunately, that’s life.”
to see what the monks see? Let go, avoid distraction? The hall is serene. Absolute silence… Then, from the cloister behind the altar the sound of a small bell can be heard. The jingle of a cat’s collar. A white moggy with black patches strolls into the ceremony hall with slow, confident strides.
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It is our last meditation ceremony. We are kneeling inwards, facing eachother this time. Every guest kneels. Calves are used by now to the numbness and the pins and needles caused by lengthy sitting. That feeling of trapped blood and stretched sinew. It doesn’t irritate me like it once did. But I have not reached enlightenment. Thoughts are still a tempest. Can I achieve something in this last session? Can I quiet my mind long enough Meals are held in total silence apart from a short verse.
Enlightenment isn’t that important anyway. The cat never breaks his steady locomotion. He passes in front of every guest and monk on the far side of the hall in a perfectly straight line, tail up, head high. There is such pomp in the felines stance that it could be part of the ceremony. Still, nobody tries to remove it or take it away. It crosses the middle of the hall and parades down our side. The same royal saunter in front of every one of us, then it stops at me. My hands are lowered on my knees, near the floor holding one of the verse books. The cat begins to rub its head affectionately against the spine of the verses. I can’t resist. Enlightenment isn’t that important anyway. I break from concentrating and let my head down. Curiosity gets the better of me too. I reach out and stroke the cat briefly. Then it goes on its way. “That was Smudge,” grins Brother Gareth. This is our last meal before we are due to leave the abbey and go back to the train station. And it is the first time
since we arrived that we have been allowed to speak while we eat. Smudge was a ferocious kitten Brother Gareth tells me. He talks about his pet passionately and excited. All smiles and giggles. He barely stops to chew. “He’ll give you a fair thump,” he says, “a fair claw.” Gareth has been at Throssel Hole Abbey since 1993. He used to be a care-worker (“Which, you know, I really loved”) and before that he was an artist. The closest he gets to practicing his art these days is doing the illustrations for the Abbot’s new book. “When you start out that can be a problem. Missing things like that can be a problem. But I don’t miss it, not anymore,” he says as he swirls the last of his warm water around in his cup before finishing it off. He doesn’t say exactly why he became a monk. Just that it was always a life that interested him. “I came to the monastery on a retreat myself and it just appealed to me. So I came back about a month later. Then more and more often. And now - ” He gestures subtly with his hand and looks sideways up the long, fold-out table. Then he tells me about Wesak, the Buddhas birth festival. Every year the abbey puts on activities for the children of the lay congregation. Music, story-telling and football. The Wesak is all about the joys of youth. The wonder and naivety of children reflects that of the Buddha in his early life, when he was a young prince sheltered from the realities of the outside world. Last year the kids who came to the abbey helped out during a special ceremony by putting Lotus flowers into the fountain shrine up on the hillside. The lotus floated delicately on the pool while the Abbot recited a brief homage. Then the children went back to their games. “I was washing up in the kitchen – looked out the window and saw them all playing a game of football,” says Gareth rolling his eyes and mocking disappointment. “I had a pang then, to go out and play. A real craving for football. I haven’t even played for 13 years.” He laughs. “It’s the one day a year when the whole Abbey changes its face. It’s really nice.” He laughs again. Then his smile fades and he swallows, examining his worn wooden cup. He looks thirsty. But Brother Gareth has no water left. Ω
The monks sing every morning before meditation. The Abbot (far right) presides over the rituals.
rooftop and windows can be heard. Nobody moves. Nobody even winces at the sound of the rain turning into brutal hail and besieging the high, azure ceiling. Nobody flinches, except me. Ten minutes pass and the second chime goes to signal the end of meditation. The hail stops - the storm backing down just before the monks come back to the world of the senses. “We gave ourselves a sky,” Alicia had said. I look up through the skylight directly above me, pretending to stretch my neck. The sky and the roof are the same colour after all. We sleep in two rows down either side of the hall. On mattresses which we keep in our square cupboards. The smell of incense dominates the hall and clings to our clothes and blankets during the nights. And the first night we are offered ear plugs. “For those who aren’t used to sleeping in a room full of people,” Alicia explains to us the first night. I’m not sure I understand, but I will soon. The snores are loud and low – bear-like. And different people compete with one another for the loudest or most threatening. The smell of incense lingers through the entire night. The sleepy grunts and the eerie glint of the ever-smiling Buddha make the dark ceremony hall an otherworldly affair. Even as we wake up to the pitched chimes of the waking bell there is somebody snoring. We get up for morning service with the monks. Lining up in rows to face the altar. The monks file in unnecessarily slowly, rocking with each
step. They don’t look at us, just at the ground and the feet of the monk in front of them. The guests do as the monks do. We bow three times to the altar then three times again as they bow to one another. We are given a book of scriptures but the monks sing most of the ceremony. Man, can they sing. The chanting is hypnotic. The notes reverberate off the high roof causing a ghostly, shallow echo.
unpredictable effects on the ecology of the countryside. So the county courts ordered that some deer should be culled for the simple reason that they were going to eat themselves to near extinction. “Was that the right thing to do?” asks Byron. The monks are direct and frank in their answer. “In cases like that, we would say that
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“When lightening flashes and the thunder rolls, - when hailstones beat and rain in torrents pours, The power of Kanzeon, - if thought upon, - will quickly clear the heavens of the storm.”
The words resonate through the bodies and minds of guests and the initiates. And I can’t tell if I am moved, amused or terrified. Back in the common room the monks are explaining the Buddhist Precepts to us. The 16 Precepts are basically the Buddhist version of the Christian Ten Commandments. Don’t kill, don’t covet, don’t be dishonest. Cease doing evil, seek only to do good. And so on. But when questioned the monks can be surprisingly utilitarian. Deer populations were getting out of control in Tennessee, says Byron, the young American drifter who got the taxi-bus with us at the beginning of the retreat. There wasn’t enough of their natural food to continue a population boom. Eventually, the food supply would dry up and the deer would die en masse, with
Things are not always simple. It’s not always black and white. There are shades of grey. we should seek the way of least harm,” says brother Raymond. “You still have to deal with the consequences of that action, but certainly in that case for the best possible outcome it may be necessary to do something like that. “Things are not always simple. It’s not always black and white. There are shades of grey. Things are often a lot more complex than they seem.” Their elusive Abbot, Daishin Morgan agrees in his writings. “The Precepts are not intended to be taken as absolutes to be followed in all circumstances without regard for consequences. “We are responsible for our actions and will receive the consequences that flow from them. Sometimes there are conflicting needs and it is hard to see what is right.
Life by scripture Reverend Master Daishin Morgan is the Abbot of Throssel Hole Abbey. He has written a book entitled Sitting Buddha: Zen Meditation for Everyone which he hopes will make Buddhist beliefs and practices more accessible to a western audience.
On Buddhism:
“Our way is to point directly to the truth that is within all of us, to trust it and live from it with all the commitment we can muster. We don’t have to make a picture of it, we don’t have to make it into an object that is separate from us or above us in some way, yet it is far more than our egocentric self.”
On the Precepts:
“The Precepts are not intended to be taken as absolutes to be followed in all circumstances without regard for consequences.
Where there are conflicts between the Ten Precepts, one takes the question to the level of the Three Pure Precepts. Cease from evil contains all the other precepts. We are responsible for our actions and will receive the consequences that flow from them. Sometimes there are conflicting needs and it is hard to see what is right. To do nothing out of fear of making a mistake is the saddest mistake.”
On sexuality:
“The starting point is to do no harm. In other words, to take the greatest care that your sexuality is an expression of compassion, love and wisdom, rather than greed and desire. The Buddha does not get into defining which sexual practices are OK and which are not. For example, homosexuality is not really an issue.”
Chapter and Verse
The Buddhist Precepts The Three Refuges: I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha.
The Pure Precepts: Cease from evil. Do only good. Do good for others.
The Ten Precepts: Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not covet. Do not say that which is untrue.
The Five Thoughts
The Toothbrush Verse
Do not sell the wine of delusion.
We must think deeply of the ways and means by which this food has come.
I take the toothbrush that all living things may profit;
Do not speak against others.
We must consider our merit when accepting it.
May they understand the truth quickly and become naturally pure.
We must protect ourselves from error by excluding greed from our minds.
Our teeth have been cleaned this morning so that all living things may profit;
We will eat lest we become lean and die.
Since we control the fang of delusion, let us crush delusion as this toothbrush has been crushed in the mouth.
We accept this food so that we may become enlightened.
Do not be proud of yourself and devalue others. Do not be mean in giving either Dharma or wealth. Do not be angry. Do not defame the Three Treasures.