Part Nine · The Modern Diagnosis · The Precept as Teacher

Eight parts of this book have stood the precept in every place it can stand within the scriptures: its definition, the entry into the stream, the Vinaya collections, the three clusters, the precept-substance, the guarding of conditions, the sign-less, the complete. What Part Nine does is the last thing this book has left to do—step out of the scrolls, and walk back into today.

To walk back into today, one must first see today clearly. Three chapters, three steps. Chapter one diagnoses the two illnesses of precept-keeping today: one talks the precept soft, until only a ball of well-meaning warmth is left; the other holds the precept hard, until only a complete ledger is left. The two illnesses look opposite; the root is one and the same. Chapter two walks to where the illness bites deepest—the karma of speech. In an age when machines too can write speech, when image and voice can be synthesized out of nothing, the words "false speech" have met something they had not met in more than two thousand years. Chapter three returns to that middle watch of the night between the twin śāla trees, to hear the last instruction the Buddha left—take the precept as your teacher—and to answer the final question this book has been gathering all along: the doctrine has all been spoken; where, in the end, does the precept land?

It lands in doing it, day by day.

When this Part is read through, the book closes. Before it closes, we first see today clearly.