Recollecting the Precepts You Have Kept
1.3 Recollecting the Precepts You Have Kept
Still Kapilavatthu, still the Nigrodha Grove, still Mahānāma.
This Sakyan householder, head of his clan's affairs, is one of the most diligent question-askers among the laypeople of the sūtras. In the thirty-third fascicle of the Saṃyukta Āgama, discourse after discourse, it is he who comes, and always to this grove. This time his question is about practice: one still on the trainee's ground—seeking what he has not yet gained, wanting to advance, wanting the security of nibbāna—how should he practice, and practice what, so as to go forward quickly?
The Buddha's answer was a short assignment: cultivate the six recollections. And He made the plainest of comparisons:
It is like a starving man, his body lean and wasted: gaining delicious food, his body grows full and lustrous.
A man long hungry is thin and weak; given good food, his body fills out again. The mind on the trainee's ground is that hungry man; the six recollections are the food that nourishes him. The six recollections are six objects: recollecting the Buddha, the Dharma, the Saṅgha, one's ethical conduct, one's giving, the heavens. The mind calls them to mind one by one, and is nourished by them one by one.
This book is about the precept, so out of the six we take one recollection alone and look at it closely—the recollection of one's own ethical conduct, recollecting the precepts. The text runs:
Furthermore, a noble disciple recollects their own pure ethical conduct: ethical conduct unbroken, ethical conduct without lack, ethical conduct unstained, ethical conduct unmottled, ethical conduct not taken by others, ethical conduct well-guarded, ethical conduct praised by the bright, ethical conduct in which the wise do not weary. When a noble disciple recollects ethical conduct in this way, no greed, ill-will, or delusion arises… perfumed by the recollection of ethical conduct, they advance toward nibbāna.
This short passage asks to be read word by word.
Recollecting One's Own Pure Conduct
Look first at the first word: own.
A noble disciple recollects their own pure ethical conduct—what is recollected is one's own. Not the general idea of the precepts, not the clauses of a text, still less anyone else's conduct; it is the share the practitioner has himself already kept into being. The one who recollects, and the owner of the conduct recollected, are the same person.
The eight features of the last chapter return here unchanged: unbroken, without lack, unstained, unmottled, not taken by others, well-guarded, praised by the bright, the wise never weary of it. Only their position has changed. In the last chapter they were the virtues complete in a stream-enterer—a fact; in this chapter they have become the subject of recollection—a practice. One same conduct: on one face an attribute already accomplished, on the other an object that can be recollected.
This is what makes recollecting the precepts a practice unlike the others: its capital is what you yourself have earned. Recollecting the Buddha, you recollect the Buddha's virtues; recollecting the precepts, you recollect the cleanness you yourself have kept into being, day after day. A person whose keeping has lately been pure has something in the heart to recollect—invite that cleanness back into the present, spread it open in the mind, and pass over it feature by feature: my conduct unbroken, without lack, unstained, unmottled…
What Happens in the Mind as You Recollect
Now the next sentence: "When a noble disciple recollects ethical conduct in this way, no greed, ill-will, or delusion arises."
Recollecting the precepts is not rehearsing the rules through once, nor is it raking over old accounts, auditing yourself for where you offended. When the mind is filled with this pure conduct of your own, the three things that ordinarily entangle it—greed, ill-will, delusion—cannot get in just then. The mind thereby becomes upright. And once the mind is upright, the familiar string of goods arises in its order—gladness, joy, ease of the body, the feeling of bliss, the mind settled in concentration. The chain of the Heyi-jing has started once more from the precept link; only this time, what starts it is not the act of keeping the precepts itself, but the recollection of precepts already kept.
The closing words have the finest flavor: "perfumed by the recollection of ethical conduct, they advance toward nibbāna." Perfumed—as incense perfumes a robe: the robe hangs beside the incense and, without anyone noticing, takes on the fragrance. A mind that soaks often in its own precept-virtue is, without noticing, perfumed along—moved closer to nibbāna. Not one mighty shove; a daily perfuming.
A Panic Before the Sewing Hall
The real worth of this practice shows only in one more scene. Still this grove, still this Mahānāma.
That time, many bhikkhus had gathered in the dining hall, sewing robes for the World-Honored One. Mahānāma heard of it and his heart sank: the robes were being sewn because the three months of the rains retreat were nearly over; the day the robes were finished, the World-Honored One would take up robe and bowl and set out to wander among men. He hurried to the Buddha and said something that shows his whole temperament:
World-Honored One! My four limbs will not obey me, the four directions are dim to me, the teachings I have heard are all forgotten. … When shall I again see the World-Honored One, and the bhikkhus I have known?
My hands and feet will not answer me, I cannot tell the four directions apart, every teaching I have heard is gone from me—once You leave, when shall I see You again?
A great householder, head of his clan—panicked to this degree. And the Buddha's reply is the most important sentence in this whole practice:
Whether you see the World-Honored One, or do not see Him … only hold to the five things, and cultivate them diligently.
Whether you can see me or cannot see me—it is all the same. Only take right faith as your head, and the precepts, learning, giving, and wisdom as your base; resting on these five things, cultivate the six recollections.
This sentence lays bare the nature of the six recollections—the recollection of the precepts among them: it is a practice that does not depend on the teacher being present. With the Buddha there, you recollect thus; with the Buddha gone wandering, you recollect thus still. For what is recollected was never outside to begin with—the Buddha's virtues are called up within the mind, and your own precept-virtue, all the more, is grown into your own body: wherever you walk, it goes with you. What Mahānāma feared was not seeing; what the Buddha gave him was a support that needs no seeing and cannot be cut.
For people today, the sentence works just the same. On days with no practice hall to go to, days with no good teacher at your side, days so clamorous there is nowhere to set down a single cushion—the precepts you have kept are still on you. Invite them back into the mind and recollect them awhile: greed, ill-will, and delusion do not arise just then; the mind is upright just then. This practice does not pick its hour, does not pick its place, and does not care whether anyone is there to lead you.
How Deep This Road Goes
Recollecting the precepts can carry the mind to a place of real steadiness—steady enough that greed, ill-will, and delusion do not arise, that joy and rapture and happiness arise in their order, that the mind settles. But it has a ceiling: it can bring the mind to the doorstep of concentration, yet it cannot enter the deepest concentration inside the door.
Why? The hint is hidden in those eight features—eight, not one. The mind must look after the eight one by one; it cannot congeal into a single point. There is a principle in this—how a mind congeals into one point—worth talking through on its own; and once it is talked through, the most important seam of all, the seam between precept and concentration, comes into view.
The next chapter walks onto that seam.