Part Two · The Precept in the Āgamas · A Precept Handed into Human Hands

Part One came to know the word "precept" at its root: it is an ability grown into the body; it is the fourth factor of entering the stream; it is a lesson one can recollect; it is the foundation of concentration. But those were words at the root—they spoke of the precept's identity and its position.

Part Two walks into the field.

This field is the four Āgamas in Chinese translation: the Saṃyukta Āgama, the Madhyama Āgama, the Dīrgha Āgama, the Ekottara Āgama. In these discourses, when the Buddha speaks of the precept, He is not speaking at a table of definitions; He is speaking to living people, one at a time—to the bhikkhus in the lecture hall, to the householder come to ask about the Dharma, to the woman who on a fast-day morning has bathed and changed into clean clothes, to the youth outside the city walls bowing to the six directions. Here the precept is no longer a concept; it is a thing handed, line by line, into human hands.

Four chapters, each receiving one of these. Chapter one watches how the precept is set into the great road out of suffering—of the noble eightfold path's eight limbs, three are themselves the precept. Chapter two spreads out the five most familiar precepts and looks at where each one's line is drawn. Chapter three watches an arrangement of rare genius—the eight-precept uposatha: borrowing a day and a night so that the householder may learn leaving home once. Chapter four watches what the precept, once kept, gives off in the world—a wisp of fragrance that can be smelled even against the wind.

From "what the precept is" to "how the precept is kept, and what the keeping brings forth." We go down into the field.