I had a message today from a student who was suddenly caught in circumstances where he ended up lying, wondering if there might be some leniency for the laity who lead a more difficult life than we who live in the monastery – leniency, I guess, in the sense of not being punished for breaking the precept.
Well, regulations are not about punishment or a judge who obeys or disobeys. The regulations are training rules. You should learn from following them. The more strictly you adhere to them, the more you learn. This is part of the Buddha’s general teachings on how to know your mind while developing good qualities in your mind. These two things go together.
After all, if you act based on intentions that can you are clumsy, resisting. You put up a wall and then you say: The Buddha doesn’t matter; the teachings of the Ajayans and all the efforts they put into restoring the dhamma do not count. If you have a wall like that in your head, you won’t learn anything. When you act on clever impulses, the mind is much more open to itself, more open to judging the results of acting on impulses, to see how harmless they really are. In this way, it trains the heart and the mind at the same time. You train your heart to desire harmlessness, and your mind to the desire to know yourself.
Of course, remember that Pali word citta it means both heart and mind. If you train one side, train the other side as well. Otherwise, it’s like exercising your body: If you only exercise the right side and not the left, you’ll lose your balance. If you practice both sides, things are balanced. You will be strong and your strength will not be a burden or an actual obstacle.
So, what are you learning? Well, one thing: you learn mindfulness. The regulation must be kept in mind.
And you have to be alert because things come up fastboth inside and outside.
I consider this particularly important in the case that the student talked about today: by lying, he spared himself a lot of trouble. But this means that your comfort is more important than the prescription. Is this really your sense of worth? If so, you’ve learned about your values, but then you have to say, “This attitude is getting in the way of my training. I need to do something.”
Sometimes you lie out of a desire to be liked, to be friendly, to not make waves. Okay, what’s more important: sticking to the rule, realizing that telling the truth will be better in the long run, or simply being the likable one?
If you stick to the precept, you will learn the set of values that form the basis of the third quality, enthusiasm.
Remember when Ajaan Lee He described these three qualities, alertness, alertness and enthusiasm, for him enthusiasm was the factor of the three insights. This is different from what you get in the commentary. The commentary defines the word sampajañña –which we define as “mindfulness” – “pure understanding”: understanding things according to the three characteristics of insight and other aspects. Well, you won’t find that in the canon at all. Every time the canon about vigilance, or sampajaññait means you know what you’re doing while you’re doing it.
But the commentary says, “Well, everyone knows what they’re doing while they’re doing it. Even jackals know they’re roaring when they’re roaring. Babies know they’re sucking their mother’s breast when they’re sucking their mother’s breast.” But do they really know? Their minds are somewhere else. When the commentary gets this cheesy, you know your interpretation is on shaky ground. To be alert, you have to be really aware of what you’re doing and aware of what you’re doing.
Now, as you zealously try to do things right, you begin to see more clearly what is standing in your way. If you’re not particularly enthusiastic, things can get in the way and still appear to be fine. Enthusiasm includes the value judgment you really want to keep with the precepts and learn the lessons they have to teach.
You begin to understand the layers and layers in your mind. After all, how can you break a regulation? You do it on purpose. How aware are you of your intentions? Most people are not clear at all. You ask them, “Why did you do that?” and they have to stop and think for a minute. If you were truly on top of your intentions, you wouldn’t need to pause.
There are actually many layers to your intentions, some of which are neat, some of which are not. And you won’t see them if you keep breaking the rules. You will but watch them if you try not to crush them. Then you begin to focus on the Buddha’s teaching about where desire is located, which is basically the same as, “Where is the tempting from these things that would drag you away?” what do you like about them?
There are many layers to your intentions, some of which are neat, some of which are not. And you won’t see them if you keep breaking the rules.
As the lyrics say, seduction can be anywhere. It may be in a perception; it can be in a mental construction. You read the long list of possibilities and are amazed at the fact that temptation can be anywhere, but the Buddha does not describe things that overwhelm you. It gives you guidance. Follow this guide and see where it takes you. Follow this path and see where it takes you. A list opens your mind to possibilities.
For example, look at your perceptions. See how you perceive the situation. Look at the narratives you tell yourself about a situation, especially the ones that say, “I don’t have to follow the rules here,” or, “The rules don’t apply here.” What is the appeal of this narrative? Or does seduction lie in the desire to please? Or in the desire for comfort? Where exactly is that desire? Where is the temptation?
When you try to thwart these things, you know them. The Buddha gives the analogy of a dam. You build a dam on the river and it holds back the water. But it doesn’t just retain water. During the relocation of the dam on the river, we can learn a lot about the currents flowing under the surface.
So remember, these regulations are called training rules for a good reason. It trains the mind to know. The more you train your mind in the precepts, the more open you are to yourself. The fact that you are able to stick to the rules makes you more willing to open up and look at yourself with that confidence. can do something about what you find inside when you encounter things you don’t like to see about yourself.
The regulations are called training rules for a good reason. It trains the mind to know. The more you train your mind in the precepts, the more open you are to yourself.
This also teaches you a lesson: your sense of self is fluid. This can be tricky because it’s fluid as it identifies with things you wouldn’t expect sometimes. This fluidity seeps into your perceptions, mental constructs, and inner conversations. But you can infiltrate it in a good way.
That’s a big part of the exercise: seeing things you don’t like about yourself, but not having to identify with them. Familiarize yourself with the regulations. Create a sense of self around the precepts, at least for the time being, so that you can withdraw a sense of self that would be willing to break the precepts.
Just because you’ve been a certain type of person for who knows how long doesn’t mean you have to continue to be that person. After all, the Buddha said that if people could not learn how to develop skillful qualities and how to abandon the unskilled, then his teaching would be meaningless. This is because we can do what he taught. So he trusts you to change his ways. And you realize that you are more and more able to live with yourself and be more and more open to yourself, the more you stick to the rules.
Sometimes there is a tendency to divide the practice of Buddhism into two areas: one is the area of earning merit, and the other is the practice leading to nibbana. Earning merit is considered a lowly practice. Of course, it’s better than not deserving, but it’s more than that. He is not detached from the practice leading to Nibbana. After all, you deserve a good life in the lives to come, and part of that is following the rules. When we chant the factors of the Noble Eightfold Path, we again run into the precepts. The difference is simply how you use them. When you use them to train your mind to understand itself, you are actually doing both exercises at the same time. It simply depends on how sophisticated you are in the lessons, how attentive you are.
This is one of the reasons why we practice meditation by developing awareness and concentration. This practice builds on the regulations, but also reverses them and helps us to be even more strict with ourselves in following the regulations.
After all, one of the rewards of the dhamma eye is that your precepts are now pleasing to the nobles. In other words, you keep holding on to them in a way that promotes concentration.
So you can learn a lot by following the rules: this is the effort to always choose the right thing, to do, say and think the smartest thing. See them as training, an opportunity to know yourself and be open to yourself, so that the mind is open to the heart and the heart is to the mind – and both sides grow.
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This piece is from a spoken dhamma lecture October 14, 2025.
