THREE WORDS ONLY
Those are the three words: Precepts – Concentration – Wisdom.
Just recently, a practitioner asked again about Precepts and Concentration. Why do we keep asking on definitions like that? The Trio of Precepts, Concentration, and Wisdom, all support each other. All the three are equally important and none can be missing.
The final result for a Buddhist practitioner to aim at is a life of peace, ease, happiness, and not being bound by anything in life. To reach that, one must live with wisdom. That’s the plain and worldly speaking. We won’t refer to it in the scriptural language which always states that the practice objectives are to end suffering, awakening and self-liberating.
To live in peace is a peaceful mind. To live in happiness is a happy mind. To live in wisdom is a wise mind. So, the point is our mind need be pure, still, and luminous. What we are aiming for is to live in such a mind. Whether one cultures his mind in just a single life, more than a life or countless lifetimes, everyone does suffer innumerable hardships and the endless samsara, dead and reborn recycle. One’s white bones could pile up as high as mountains and one’s tears for self-lament as vast as a great ocean. Pause and reflect, friends. Have you ever, in the deep night, suddenly waken, gazed at the distant moon, felt a quiet sorrow for yourself and ached for human destiny. Oh, how boundless the road ahead is, stretching on and on!
Yet the Buddha and the Patriarchs have made it clear: that luminous mind is inherent in each of us. Only because we become absorbed in the play of life, like naive children who runs away from home, dazzled by bright colors and noisy excitement, mistaking all that bustle for happiness, we plunge in headlong. Then, one morning we wake up. Where are the colors? Where are the sounds? All that remains is a lonely body, grey hair, and life nearing its end. No strength left. No time left. How could we possibly make it back home in time? And so, it goes!
Death, then rebirth again… and again. Home is something everyone inherits. But how come we keep wandering without ever arriving? Why, after uncountable lifetimes, have we still not made it home? Why is that my friends? Why… oh moon?
Since immemorial time, all the Buddhas and the Buddha Śākyamuni as well have seen the mundane truth. They have felt compassion for human beings lost in delusion, swept away by the currents of worldly life, spun about by confusion, minds in turmoil, giving rise to conflict, clash, and mutual destruction alternating between craving and resentful anger. From this, the Buddhas have employed many skillful means to simply reveal the truth, gradually guiding humans out of the dark, chaotic realm of delusion, and their clouded mind.
For example, there are common methods we already know, depending on each person’s capacity:
- The Five Precepts: for lay people. Many of them have set their hearts on the Buddha, study the Dharma, and seek guidance from the Sangha. By placing ourselves within the framework set by the Buddha and striving to observe the Five Precepts, we can transform our karma. When our mind becomes more at peace, unwholesome karmas can stop, our life becomes calmer, and our families happier and more harmonious.
- Ordination (monastic life): a necessary condition for taking further steps on the path.
Even if one feels drawn to Precepts and practices the Precepts only, the result must be a Completion of Moral Rules in which there should be the presence of Concentration and Wisdom. Similarly, if one just nourishes Concentration alone and has attained a Mature Concentration that should naturally consist of the Completeness of Morality and Wisdom. And if one merely cultivates realization, then a Fully Ripened Wisdom necessarily includes both Concentration and Precepts.
Those are the three gates leading into the Abode of Mind. It’s the mind of absolute purity. It’s not only undefiled but also illuminating. Just because the mind nature itself encompasses the discipline essence and form. The mind itself is still and serene. It’s the completeness of Concentration whose natural functions are generating, direct realizing and creative responsiveness in clear comprehension. It’s Wisdom in its fullness.
If long time of practice does not bring forth Discipline, Concentration, and Wisdom together for us to experience, though simple at first and gradually deeper and steadier, we should reflect on ourselves. Something might be misaligned. We ourselves should improve that situation with reminder and guidance from virtuous friends. Otherwise, there’s no way. Our unchanged ego always convinces we’re right. Inevitably, then, it clouds our neutral insight.
How could we keep our mind intact? Don’t entangle yourselves with the outer world. But how could we stay unattached while our six sense doors are always open? We must apply various approaches:
-Contemplation: with clearly understanding everything is transient, afflicted, and selfless, we no longer desire or cling to worldly life.
- Discipline (Śīla): self-refraining from unwholesome actions, speech, and thoughts that cause harm to others.
- Concentration (Samādhi): keeping the mind settled and still, without further judging.
- Insight (Prajñā): simply recognizing the world objectively.
In this plain, down-to-earth explanation, Discipline, Concentration, and Wisdom are not really separate from one another.
Traditionally, it is often simply said that the practice of Moral Rules leads to Concentration, and from Concentration, Wisdom arises. This is also true for practitioners of normal spiritual background who cultivate their mind gradually. Yet, upon deeper reflection, we see that the Trio of Discipline, Concentration, and Wisdom are inseparable because each of them is perfect and contains the other two.
We may recall that in the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, the Buddha repeatedly reminded the bhikkhus:
“This is Discipline; this is Concentration; this is Wisdom. Concentration cultivated together with Discipline leads to great fruition and great benefit. Wisdom cultivated together with Concentration leads to great fruition and great benefit. Mind cultivated together with Wisdom leads to the complete liberation from all taints, namely, the taint of sensual desire, the taint of existence (the taint of views), and the taint of ignorance.”
The Buddha also explained why he left his household life and went forth:
“Family life is confining. It’s a path choked with the dust of the world. Renunciation is like living in open space. It’s truly difficult, while living at home, to lead a fully pure and virtuous life. I then shaved off my hair and beard, donned the ochre robe, went forth from the household life into homelessness.”
A careful review on history reveals that the Threefold Studies of Moral Discipline, Concentration, and Wisdom, was taught by the Buddha primarily to the bhikkhus, not to householders. For the latter, the Buddha merely taught the observance of the Five Precepts through which they may be reborn in the heavenly realms. How come? Was it that the Buddha uncompassionate? Remember that the Buddha possessed the supernatural knowledge of others’ minds, clearly discerning the spiritual capacities of each person and foreseeing the fruits they were able to attain. Then why didn’t the Buddha guide them the way to reach Nirvāṇa?
My friends, you get the answer, don’t you? All the Buddhas are endowed with extraordinary wisdom. They never do anything in vain.
If the cord of “Craving” is not cut, then what can be done? That term can go by many names, “greed, desire”, and “ignorance”. That’s the very root of the ceaseless recycle of death and rebirth.
If one keeps living in the world, yet stays alone, without intimate attachments, that is acceptable. That is with little involvement in extended family, siblings, children, or social ties. One’s body and mind remain immaculate. Worldly entanglements and views are cut off just as the Patriarch Bodhidharma taught:
“Externally, end all preconditions,
Internally, let go of thoughts.
When mind like solid walls,
Able to enter the Path.”
So, it’s well-attuned with the ideal image of the Noble Vimalakīrti in the Sūtra. Vimalakīrti the Householder, an elite, wealthy layman, yet his way of life was utterly virtuous, endowed with wisdom and the spiritual powers of a great lay Bodhisattva.
Thus, ordination is clearly a method to cut off craving and desires, cultivate moral virtue, and subdue the ego through the protective boundary of precepts. It is to practice the form of the precepts in order to fulfill their essence later. However, I can say the very resolve to get ordained arises from awakening, a decisive turning away from worldly pleasures and a conscious choice of the path of liberation as well. Therefore, within the mind of one who aspires to ordination, the seeds of the Trio Studies of Discipline, Concentration, and Wisdom have been present.
In conclusion, the Threefold Trainings, Morality, Concentration, and Wisdom, are the three aspects of a unified Mind that cannot be separated from one another. We cannot say, “I cultivate Concentration only, without regard for Discipline or Wisdom”. In such a case it may be a kind of unrighteous concentration, as exemplified by Devadatta.
So actually, Morality, Concentration, and Wisdom are just the three words, or just the tools. The Buddha laid them out to guide human beings of different capacities, just like the Eightfold Path, the Seven Factors of Awakening, Taking Refuge, or Leaving Household… All of them are merely speech or words temporarily shown by the Buddha. We shouldn’t closely attach to the language. Instead, we need realize what deeply hidden within the letters. Sutras are the records of the Dharma; but Chinse Chan meditation consider them dead words, or lifeless lines of text. We must recognize the Path, the ultimate truth or the Dharmakaya, which cannot be expressed in words, has no form or sound, and is beyond this world. And what is that? It’s nameless, friends. If you answer too quickly, Reverent Venerable Huang-Bo will give you three whips.
Bhikkhuni Thích Nữ Triệt Như
Sunyata Monastery, November 12, 2021
English version by Ngọc Huyền
Link to Vietnamese article: https://tanhkhong.org/a2866/triet-nhu-snhp036-chi-la-3-chu-thoi
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