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To Observe the Precepts Is to Practice Mindfulness
The bell inviting us to the morning sitting meditation resounds a great bell half an hour before the official meditation time, marking the path to the meditation hall as the meditation hall itself, and strictly prohibiting cars, including golf carts, from entering during the time from 2:15 to 2:30, both in the morning and afternoon, totaling nearly 5 hours of car-free time each day. The caretaking teams and Dharma teachers have the responsibility to block the road, placing Bodhisattvas guarding the path so that lay practitioners are also aware to observe the regulations, in order to protect the pure space for walking meditation and to increase the joy for both the Sangha and lay practitioners.
Life in the Sangha always upholds the spirit of “a drop of water in the river”: sitting meditation, listening to Dharma talks, eating, chanting—all must be done with the community, not separately. The Sangha is not an ordinary Vietnamese temple but a place to sow the seeds of the Dharma into Western civilization, needing to transform the forms of solemnity, rituals, chanting, eating, and walking to suit the capacities of Westerners, in order to engage in dialogue and dispel the layers of “garbage” of suffering, despair, and discouragement created by modern culture.
Some principles for revising the precepts to serve the two purposes of protecting the Sangha and bringing ease to practitioners:
- The precepts must be a means of mindfulness, not becoming attachment to rules or mere ritual.
- The precepts need to be adapted to circumstances (gradually individually liberating, not fixed everywhere).
- Precepts are established to counteract wrongdoings, and can be revised, supplemented, or abolished when no longer appropriate.
- The revised code of precepts is called Universal Ease (Prātimokṣa), meaning that step by step, in every place, it leads to freedom and happiness.
Setting Up a Happy Meeting