If we don’t really possess things, how much less do we possess the people in our lives. The very nature of our relationship to them, if it is a truly loving human relationship, is freedom, even though it may include commitment and obligation. To really love someone—a spouse, a child, a colleague, or a friend—is to recognize that they are not us, that they have needs, aspirations, and lives that do not belong to us and that we cannot control. Can we appreciate and give ourselves to them without fixating on what they will give us in return? Can we allow them their freedom and autonomy? Love like that may be the highest form of the practice of nonpossessiveness.

Norman Fischer, on the Eighth Grave Precept inTaking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up

(Reference: Everyday Zen - 3 Versions of the Zen Precepts)

A Zen perspective on anger

Anger more commonly arises when we have been crossed or violated in some way and we do not want to admit this or to experience it fully. In this sense anger is an intoxicant, a cover-up for the painful hurt feelings we can’t bear to feel. The practice of this precept doesn’t require that we never be angry. That would be impossible—when the conditions for anger arise, anger inevitably appears. In practicing this precept, however, we can make the effort to turn toward our anger when it arises, bearing witness to it and experiencing it fully, but not grabbing hold of it, justifying it, or acting on it. Practicing this precept will give us the confidence and the spaciousness to stop suppressing our anger—to see that we can feel our anger and honor it without being consumed by it, that we can allow it and be it through and through, giving it space inside to fully manifest, without indulging it.

[…]

Anger is in the end a marker of our weakness, not of our strength, and this is why it’s so useful. Our anger will show, once we have practiced with it long enough to be able to notice, the limits of our power, for anger always flares up precisely in the places where we are most vulnerable, where the boundaries of our sense of self are most easily challenged. The person who doubts her beauty will get angry when someone suggests that she is not beautiful, the person who feels inadequate sexually will get angry when someone else flaunts his sexuality. Studying our anger shows us those places where we are brittle and defended, where we are weakest and most need to grow. As we practice not harboring our anger, with full attentiveness, we come to see ourselves much more accurately and viscerally. Using our anger well, we can pinpoint our weak points, our personal narrowness, and expand there, so that as our practice progresses and the horizons of our personal power expand, anger arises less often and less virulently.

—Norman Fischer on the Ninth Grave Precept in Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up

(Reference: Everyday Zen - 3 Versions of the Zen Precepts)

Only you know what you are doing with your mind

To practice the Precepts is to be in harmony with your life and the universe. To practice the Precepts means to be conscious of what they are about—not just on the surface, but on many levels, plummeting the depths of the Precepts. It means being deeply honest with yourself. When you become aware you have drifted away from the Precepts, just acknowledge that fact. That acknowledgment means to take responsibility for your life; taking responsibility plays a key role in our practice. If you don’t practice taking responsibility you are not practicing. It is as simple as that. There is nobody checking when you are doing zazen whether you’re letting go of your thoughts or sticking with them. It has to do with your own honesty and integrity. Only you know what you are doing with your mind.

It is the same with the Precepts. Only you know when you have actually violated a precept. And only you can be at one with that violation, can atone. To be at one with it means to take responsibility. To take responsibility means to acknowledge yourself as the master of your life. To take responsibility empowers you to do something about whatever it is that’s hindering you. As long as we blame, as long as we avoid or deny, we are removed from the realm of possibility and power to do something about our lives. We become totally dependent upon the ups and downs that we create around us. There is no reason that we should be subjected to anything when we have the power to see that we create and we destroy all things. To acknowledge that simple fact is to take possession of the Precepts. It is to make the Precepts your own. It is to give life to the Buddha, this great earth, and the universe itself.

Dharma Discourse: Precepts and Environment by John Daido Loori Roshi

The basic problem in sexual ethics, addressed in the third precept, is betrayal. ‘Sexual misconduct’ is sexual behaviour that causes harm by breaking the trust that a loved one has placed in us. The Buddha was compassionate, and he never laid down ethical rules that caused harm or distress. Making a moral proscription against homosexuality marginalises and harms people who have done no wrong, and it is against the basic principles of Buddhist ethics.

It’s so important to keep this essential ethical question in mind. In discussions on homosexuality, as with just about any other controversial ethical issue, there is a pervasive tendency to confuse the issue. Why do we find it so difficult to look at an ethical question rationally? It is true, there are some issues that are complex and the details can be difficult to work out. But this is not one of them.

Why Buddhists Should Support Marriage Equality « Sujato’s Blog

This is a fantastic essay.

Dwell not on the faults
and shortcomings of others;
instead, seek clarity
about your own.

Dhammapada 50, Ajahn Munindo rendition (download/read or listen)

This month, I am contemplating the sixth grave precept in Zen Buddhism as part of my training at NYZCCC. I am finding it to be the most painful to look at in just how habitual the mind’s judgments still are, and how externally-focused the lens is as well.

More words on this admonition:

Bodhidharma: Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the flawless Dharma, not expounding upon error is called the Precept of Not Speaking of Faults of Others.

Dogen Zenji: In the Buddha Dharma, there is one path, one Dharma, one realization, one practice. Don’t permit fault-finding. Don’t permit haphazard talk.

Zen Peacemakers: Unconditionally accepting what each moment has to offer. This is the precept of Not Talking About Others Errors And Faults.

(Thanks to The Village Zendo)

I will be posting additional verses from the Dhammapada this week for reflection.