Precepts are very precious because if we are going to actualise the complete meaning of the Buddha’s teachings in our minds and really transform our minds, we have to start with the basics, which are subduing our harmful verbal and physical actions. Precepts deal with that, pointing out to us specific behaviours to abandon. The precepts do not just work with the body and speech, because to keep the precepts, we have to work with the mind, and in particular with the mind of attachment. By keeping the precepts and subduing the mind of attachment, it becomes possible to generate the real determination to be free from samsara, and real renunciation (because renunciation wants to be free of attachment and it sees attachment as the cause of suffering and as an enemy).

Subduing attachment through keeping precepts also enables us to generate bodhicitta because attachment to our happiness is a big obstacle to generating bodhicitta. Similarly, keeping the precepts is an aid to realising emptiness, because attachment is one of the things that we are trying to get rid of by realising emptiness — seeing a person that we are attached to as empty, the object we are clinging to as empty, and so on. By using the meditations on emptiness on bodhicitta and renunciation to subdue attachment, we keep the precepts while we also begin to actualise the training of the three principal aspects of the path. Whatever level of precepts we have, we are quite fortunate. The mind that aspires to have more precepts is very virtuous because we see the benefit and we see the precepts as a protection.

“365 Gems of Wisdom” e-book is out now!