The Five Really Excellent Suggestions

5 minute meditation: Take a few minutes to consider what something is made of. I don't mean just the ingredients. I mean, the work that goes into it, the people who designed it, the process of making it at and the people who transport it, sell it and fix it when it breaks.

I tried to do this with a cell phone recently and about had a meltdown, so let us instead consider a single piece of paper. (!) A piece of paper is made primarily of wood. Wood comes from trees, which grow in a forest, so there's a forest in the piece of paper. There's the earth and the sunlight and the rain. There are the lives of the men and women who harvest the tree, put it on a truck and drive it where it needs to go. There are the people who get the tree and cut it into pieces so that it can be made into paper. There are big pieces of equipment in the factory that break the wood down into pulp. There are giant rollers that roll out the paper, and there are also machines that cut it to size and wrap it up. Somebody had to invent that process and design all those machines. Somebody also has to pick up the wrapped packages of paper at the end of the process and put them on a truck. The truck has to go someplace that sells the paper. And so on and so on and so on.

The deeper you look into this, the more you realize that there's actually an entire universe in that piece of paper. And in everything else, including you. Try it for five minutes. It's pretty amazing.

So I haven't done anything really Buddhist-y in a while. I mean, I could talk about the Noble Eightfold Path or the Four Noble Truths or the Three Nifty Teacups or the Six Scary Things Not To Do With Electricity (Buddhists are big on numbered lists; in fact, Buddha may have invented the bullet point). However, I think I'll just take on the Five Precepts today. This is the short list of Buddha's suggestions for living a good and happy life, and increasing the happiness of those around you. They should be kind of familiar to those of you who know of these Ten Commandments. There's only five of them, so they're easier to remember, and you don't have to define "adultery" or "false witness".

Now, there are a lot of different kinds of Buddhists and we don't all agree. One person's interpretation of "sexual misconduct" is gonna be different than another's. So this is my interpretation of What All This Means, shaped in no small way by Thich Nhat Hanh and my Buddhist group. If you want the official Thich Nhat Hanh version, it is here. (Probably worth a look, anyway.) You'll note our boy got a bit wordy. Some of these have been edited since he died but I don't think the essential meaning has changed.

Here they are:

• I will refrain from killing any living being.

This covers every living being everywhere, even blades of grass, but it's not meant to be unreasonable. I mean, we all gotta eat. We all gotta breathe air (every time you do, you massacre millions of germs). The idea is to do what you can not to do harm to things, and it's dependent largely on your awareness. You may or may not be aware, for example, that lower life forms, like insects, are afraid of getting hurt or killed. Of course they are. They even have dreams, and they are crafty. They think things through. If you are aware of this, you will probably try not to kill them, if you're a reasonably nice person. I mean, I try not to kill them. I make an exception for those Big Creepy Bugs, not because I particularly want to. It's just that they're fast and they're scary and my brain won't let me go near them and so I can't always catch them and throw them outside, which would be my preference. I feel bad about it when I do stomp on one, or kill one by proxy (that's my wife's job). I am getting better at catching them. I don't think something should have to die just because I'm afraid of it.

That doesn't stop me from having regular pest control service at my house. My hope, tho, is that it convinces the critters to Just Stay Away.

Some people also interpret this one to mean that you have to be a vegetarian. Thich Nhat Hanh suggested (gently) that people aspire to not eat meat to the extent possible. As a young monk, he and the other monks did daily alms rounds with begging bowls, where they took whatever food people gave out, and sometimes that was meat. They were supposed to refuse if the animal had been especially killed for them, but you're not always gonna know that. And some people (like me) need meat to keep their iron count up, or their blood sugar low, or both. Again, it's do what you can do. If you can get meat from farms where the animals had good lives, enough space to run and play, and fresh air, that's obviously better than factory farmed meat where the chickens never leave their 2 foot by 2 foot space. Better for the chickens and better for you.

• I will refrain from taking that which is not freely given.

The second one is basically about not stealing, but it goes beyond physical things. It encourages us not to steal people's time, either, or their goodwill. Also to practice generosity with other people and with yourself. I dunno about you, but I'll cut other people way more slack than myself. Maybe give yourself a break sometimes. Take a nap if you need one. Tell a friend you need help or a friendly ear. Tip well. Give money and things to people in need. Whoever they are and regardless of their political, religious or citizenship status. And, you know, if somebody says something that comes across to you as really ignorant, racist or otherwise, maybe assume they don't know any better before jumping down their throats.

• I will refrain from committing sexual misconduct.

This is a big one. Most Buddhists interpret this as "Don't fool around." Which means different things to different people of course, but to me it means, "Don't have sex with somebody with whom you're not in a committed, long-term relationship." So one night stands are off the table. Cheating on your partner is off the table. Sex with exes is off the table. Group sex orgies are definitely off the table. (Some people somewhere must really do that.) I'm not sure about people married to more than one person. That sounds really complicated, but some societies make it work, so I guess never say never. Are you in a committed, long term relationship? Does the person you want to have sex with, with whom you are in the committed, long term relationship, want to have sex with you? In that case, knock yourself out. (Use a condom, please.) But I think it also means to keep your sex life out of public view, and not to indulge in salacious gossip about who's sleeping with whom. (I'm looking at you, Grey's Anatomy.) 

• I will refrain from misusing my power of speech.

"Misusing power of speech" generally means "Don't lie," but like everything else, it also means other things. Don't spread gossip. Don't say things to people to hurt their feelings or put them down. Don't say things just to sound superior or smarter than everybody else. If it's not really contributing anything, it's fine to just keep your mouf shut. In short, be mindful about what you're saying and to whom you are saying it. The same thing that's appropriate to say to a good friend may be totally inappropriate to say to your boss. Dude.

• I will refrain from taking intoxicants that cloud the mind.

Which are, in no particular order, alcohol, drugs not prescribed by a doctor, weed, excessive sugar, video games, social media and cell phones generally. (Cell phones are the anti-Buddha.) And gambling. Buddha made a point of not gambling. In short, it's anything addictive, which you fall into, waste tons of time you don't have, and lose track of everything else, with negative consequences for your peace of mind. Such as, losing money, losing time, deleterious effects on your body, etc. Also stuff that's flat-out bad for you. I love horror movies, for example, but I can only watch a very narrow stripe of the spectrum. Anything with serial killers, zombies, torture porn or psycho stalkers is right out.  I can't tolerate that kind of stuff. I also can't watch anything about slavery, mental hospitals in the 1900s, the Spanish Inquisition or El Salvador circa 1984-1992. Social media is also bad for me. Does that keep me off it? No. I'm doing my best, though.

And that's kind of the point. They don't say, "Thou shalt not." Buddha didn't give commandments. He gave really excellent suggestions. Also, the way the precepts are phrased, it's more of a statement of aspiration, not so much "I will" (or will not) but "I will do my best." Because really, all we can do is our best. We're human. We're gonna screw up. It's endemic to the species. The neat thing about being human is, we know when we've screwed up and we can do better next time. Probably some dolphins and whales also know this, and octopuses, and certainly cats. (If you've ever seen your cat do something inadvertently funny and then make a great show of washing its paws, that's because it's embarrassed. Yes, cats know when they screwed up.)

So that's it.

Let's not screw up this election, everybody.