As you know, traditionally the Vinaya schools of Buddhism and almost all schools that are monastic have many precepts, major precepts and divisions of minor precepts. we tend to think that our understanding usually is that the Hinayana school or the Theravada school has all these Vinaya precepts but actually there is a Mahayana Vinaya as well and that has actually more precepts than the Theravada school. I'm not going to read all those precepts to you, but it's interesting to have some feeling or understanding of those precepts because they're mostly for monks.

[01:08]

So in Japan, of course, the precepts have been reduced to 16, which include the three treasures. But you know Suzuki Roshi once said we should have our own minor precepts. Major precepts of almost all schools of Buddhism are the same, like the ten prohibitory precepts that we all take. each school has its own minor precepts. In China, alongside of the 250 precepts of the Vinaya school, or however many there are depending on the school, there were the Bodhisattva precepts which were the 10

[02:11]

were observed, so it was mostly the Bodhisattva precepts that were observed in China, although the Vinaya schools are the schools whose main practice was precepts, so everything they did was preordained, so to speak. You lived your life following narrow kind of context. So the fewer rules you have, the more freedom you have of expression. In Japan it boiled down to 16. I remember Suzuki Roshi saying, talking about the monk who came from to China and he had to go back home because he couldn't follow the Vinaya in China.

[03:18]

The weather was different, the food was different. Here's an example of minor precepts in the Mahayana Vinaya. Hope I can read this. I'll just give you a few examples of just like rules for eating. So a bhikkhu, that is an ordained person, should learn to sit with the utmost calmness while sitting in a house. A bhikkhu should learn not to burst into a loud laugh when walking in a village. A bhikkhu should learn not to burst into a loud laugh when sitting in a house.

[04:19]

A bhikkhu should learn to receive an offering of food from the believers in a polite manner. A bhikkhu should learn to receive an offering of food till his bowl, till his food bowl is full to its brim. A bhikkhu should learn to receive an offering of curry or stew in a soup till his food bowl is full to its brim. A bhikkhu should learn to eat curry or stew appropriately to the rice in his bowl." Actually, that's what ariyoki means. It means the appropriate amount in the bowl, the bowl which holds the appropriate amount of food. Bhikkhu should learn to eat food that has been offered to him in a suave politeness. Suave actually means smooth. Suave means smooth.

[05:23]

Bhikkhu should learn not to dig a hole into the rice in his bowl when eating. a bhikkhu should learn not to ask for curry or stew from a believer and eat it with a good appetite unless he is a sick bhikkhu. In other words, you shouldn't show your appetite, you should eat calmly and smoothly. These are all kind of rules of dignified behavior, basically, how to behave in a dignified manner. A bhikkhu should learn not to bury the curry stew or other foods underneath the rice in his bowl in order to obtain more food. A bhikkhu should learn not to peep into another bhikkhu's bowl when eating. A bhikkhu should learn to direct his eyes to his own bowl when eating.

[06:32]

So these are kind of examples of minor precepts and it gets even more minor and so the major precepts are universal but the minor precepts are according to place and time and the necessity of the circumstances that arise in a place at a certain time. So we have our 16 precepts, but we don't really have our minor precepts. And minor precepts arise over time, depending on the behavior and our circumstances, and how we want to feel we want to have dignified behavior and not get into trouble with each other and ourselves.

[07:46]

So my feeling about minor precepts is not so much rules as attitude. And I spontaneously made some minor precepts, which are not like rules, but they're more like attitude. What kind of attitude should we have that is correct behavior? So I'm going to read you my minor precepts. I think I did this before, actually, but once is not enough. So these precepts, minor precepts, came out of my observation of how we act, so they're rather spontaneous and pertain to us.

[09:01]

Lori made some headings here. This one is called dominance. the heading of dominance. I have this dominance, center of attention, and control. So be aware of when strong emotions arise, and don't use them to fuel a dominant position. So when a strong emotion arises and you want to control things through your emotions and puts you into a dominant position, when you feel that you don't have ... that you want to be on top of things and you use a strong emotion to intimidate actually. Sometimes when a person gets very angry and puts themselves into a central

[10:05]

Whoa, you know, kind of like the bully on the block in a way. Practice letting go of the need to dominate a situation. Practice letting go of the need to sum up at the end of a conversation or have the last word. Oh, this is what it all means. Practice letting go of having to have the last word. Practice not having to be first but being last or in the middle. In other words, you don't always have to be the first person to say something or the first person in line In other words, to see that everyone is taken care of before you take your own thing.

[11:17]

So you're not just putting yourself forward all the time, but taking care of people and making sure that everyone is taken care of before you actually take care of yourself. Of course, in the airplane, When the oxygen mask comes down, you put it on the kid first. No, I mean you're on yourself first. You're taking care of yourself so you can take care of everybody. That's a little different situation. Practice humility. Humility I've talked about this before, humility is to know exactly where your place is. It's not putting yourself lower or putting yourself higher, it's seeing exactly where you are in a situation and acting out of that situation so that you're always comfortable.

[12:22]

It's the place where you always feel right because you're harmonizing with the situation. Don't treat people in a subservient manner, like you are superior and they are inferior. It's easy to get into, when you have a position, It's easy to get the feeling that you are in a superior position. So, you know, the higher we go in position, the more tempting it is to feel superior. So, to always take humility, to know where you are, that's humility.

[13:31]

No matter how high a position you are, you know that you're no higher or lower than anyone else. Don't strut around like the cock of the walk. In other words, don't have an imperious attitude, like Mussolini, you know. Remember Mussolini? He always had his chin out, you know. and strutting around, you know, like the emperor. Emperor is like imperious, so don't strut around in an imperious manner when you have some authority. It really turns people off. And then, don't show off. You have something wonderful, don't show it off. We say, hide your jewels in the dust. Don't show your wealth to poor people.

[14:36]

Don't show off your wealth to poor people. So this is like, the next added one is center of attention. Practice letting go of the need to be the center of attention. When this feeling comes up that we want to be the center of attention, to recognize that and back off. Let someone else be part of things without being the center. And then practice letting go of resentments. That can be an actual practice. When resentments come up, which they come up all the time, even when we don't realize it, to realize, well this is resentment, because resentment is a binding of ourself, of our own mind, our own feelings and emotions.

[15:44]

How can I have some compassion about someone who I feel resentful for, or about? Even though we may have resentment, to not let it control us. Maybe that's better. You can't help the resentment, but you don't have to let it control you. And then practice returning to calm mind over and over again, because our mind does get pulled around by these things. And then practice renunciation, which is dropping self-centeredness. So all these really are aspects of the same problem. And then don't cry, which means don't get kind of whiny about your

[17:00]

pain, your painfulness. Then there's the category of control. Practice sitting back and letting others take the lead. There are assertive people and there are people who hold back. If you're ever in a meeting, there's always somebody who has the first word, who has the most dominant thing to say, and that person should hold back and let those people who don't say so much or who are more quiet to encourage them to come forward. And instead of always coming forward yourself with the first word, So practice letting go of control, like controlling a meeting or controlling a situation.

[18:06]

If you need to control it, of course you do, but to let the situation find its form and then find your place in that form. And then to practice no excuses or reasons when something comes up and we're at fault in some way, to accept that. And to practice no defensiveness, not striking back when something happens. And then practice stepping off the pole, stepping off the 100-foot pole of, in other words, coming back to the beginning, coming back to beginner's mind all the time, not depending on your learning so much or your position.

[19:22]

Practice not letting your mind get ahead of your body. or vice versa, to keep our body and mind harmonized so that we're not into one movement before we've finished the present movement, really to practice being in this moment's activity before reaching out to the next moment's activity. You're already out the door. You're already closing the door when your foot's still in the room. Or you're putting something down and you're already talking to somebody else instead of completing this act. And then it's very difficult for someone over 50 to receive correction, but that's no excuse.

[20:29]

Try hard and let yourself be moved by others. Take correction without excuses or backbiting. This is very hard. It's very hard to correct somebody without them feeling resentment, almost inevitably, no matter how gentle or thoughtful someone is in giving correction the receiver always feels resentful in some way so take correction without excuses or backbiting and don't use excuses like I am not good at that or that's just the way I am when we're asked to do something I'm not very good at that. You know, in our Zen practice we always ask people to do things that they're not good at.

[21:35]

We don't ask somebody who is a really good cook to cook in the kitchen. We don't ask somebody who really knows how to use a broom to sweep. Anyway, it's like you're always put into a position where you don't know what to do. I mean, that's the best kind of practice. to be put into a position where you have no experience, and you don't know what to do, and you just have to deal with that. So don't use the excuse like, well, I'm not good. I've never done that before. I'm no good at this. I'm really no good at this. That's a good place for you. Don't ever say that, because that's the place where you will be put. Don't throw me into the briar patch!" Or, that's just the way I am, you know, I can't change, you know. So then practice letting go of self-righteousness.

[22:41]

Self-righteousness is a way of promoting yourself so that you don't have to suffer, but in the end you suffer more. Oh, and then this is the actual rule. Don't walk around while eating or drinking. Don't come to the work meeting with a cup of coffee. Don't walk around eating something or finishing your meal or something like that. If you smoke, sit down and smoke. Don't walk around with a cigarette in your hand. Nobody smokes anymore, though. I mean, most people don't, but everybody used to smoke. Everybody used to smoke, it's amazing. So these are some what I call attitudinal precepts. They're more subjective, not so much rules.

[23:46]

who everybody in Japan loves, has a whole set of these pages of his subjective presets, which I ran into recently, and I find a lot of them overlap what I've written here. So I think that we should think about our own vinaya, our own precepts that really help us all to practice. I don't know how much time we have, about two minutes, five minutes, so maybe that's something that you have thought of. would contribute to that, and to me this is a kind of creative part of our practice, is to collect and examine this kind of precept so that we can examine our behavior and how we relate to each other and how

[25:18]

we do things that hurt ourselves. So if anybody has, yeah. Good morning. There's two things I want to say. One is, next week I go home to see my dad. Say that again. Next week I go home to see my dad. Yeah. So I just want people to know it's hard. Yeah. He's in hospice. It's not really home, it's Colorado. Secondly is, Bob Rosenbaum and I have discussed several times over the past year, I think, gendered voices. And I know for myself, trying to learn to bring my voice into sangha, I felt was something important for me to do. And I think we both feel that it's possible that women's voices in Sangha, that we need to work on them a little bit more.

[26:28]

So I kind of feel it when we were talking about dominant voices, et cetera. I don't mean it as a criticism. I'm just meaning it as a kind of task that I kind of look at for myself and what I think, what I hear. So what's your conclusion from that? I think we should maybe be mindful of gender dynamics and see if there's a way that we can bring more parity to the general plurality. Well, I could follow that up, but I won't. But thank you for that. That's a good idea, I think. Ross? Thank you. What is your sense of a living precept, the term living precept? The living precept is what arises, how we respond to the situation of the moment in a way that

[27:42]

is appropriate to the situation. Sue? I have a question about enthusiasm in jobs. That if someone does have a talent or would like to learn to do something, it seems to me that there should be lots of room Yeah, that's another side. It's not that we suppress people's talent. As a matter of fact, one of the problems has been that ... I remember when we were starting Tassajara and there were people who had ability to do certain things, especially the carpenters. So instead of training them to do other things, we put them in to where they were needed as carpenters.

[28:55]

So in some way it would have, you know, ideally it would have been better for them to work in the kitchen or something. So they missed this kind of, you know, other side, which is to not depend on your talent. That's the hard part, you know. Practice is like not depending on your ability or your talent, but what do you depend on when that's not there? When everything is taken away from you, where are you? That's Zen practice. Doug? That brings up something that I was thinking about, and that is that a lot of times the, or sometimes, having someone do a job that they don't quite know how to do, that affects the whole song.

[30:09]

Yes, that's the other side. That's right. Well, the thing is, you know, sometimes we do something for the job, and sometimes we do something for the person. Right? So you have to know which is which. So when I say, you know, we put somebody in that position, it doesn't mean we always do that, or that's the only thing that we do, but there's that side of taking away all of the stuff that you depend on and putting it in a position where you have nothing to depend on, where you don't have your usual stuff to depend on. So sometimes it's okay to let the person rule in something if it benefits the person.

[31:14]

That's an extreme example. But we're always looking at what's best for the student, rather than what's best for the place. And maintaining that balance is not so easy. We're right out of time. He's a Numberless.

[31:46]

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