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The practice of giving give you the blessings in order for you to practice morality morality is those dos and don'ts there are in Buddhism lay people have precepts rules of morality for Lay people in a forms of five precepts or eight precepts for left home people they have nervous precepts 10 precepts bigu 250 precepts bikuni 348 precepts those are the precepts designed to help you purify your mind I'm not allowed to explain them to you even lay people precepts until you plan to take them because it's not meant for public domain only to those who wish to practice these precepts and they are wonderful they
Are to me I enjoy really studying and reading about these precepts because it's a full of of wonderful Stories the precepts originally were created by the Buddha because his disciples when he first came there no precepts and then his disciples when they lived together they started making mistakes and that's when he said okay for the first time I forgive you but from now on if you violate this rule again you on your own you have to pay your own consequences so that's how the precepts came about so I think just between us I feel like many his disciples pretended to break precepts to make boo
Boos so that the Buddha says would slap them in the wrist and say oh you have to better you have to stop it this is so Unbecoming of us okay so Unbecoming of you so he formulated the precepts that's how it came about for their own protection so the original intent of the precepts is for our own protection so precepts you could think of precepts as your armor When You observe precepts it's like you're wearing an armor so you a lot safer you have this body armor that keeps you safer makes you impervious to the afflictions and the sufferings of of the world and you
Don't make mistakes another way of thinking of precepts is like there are boundary lines and that's why it's important to know about precepts Buddhist precepts each religion have their own rules of morality and they're very helpful but they all are not as useful as accurate as the Buddhist precepts so these these precepts the Buddhist precepts are designed to dispel out the boundaries that if you stay within the boundaries you safe when you cross the boundaries that's when you get in big trouble that you are not likely able to recover on your own when you choose to take the five precepts or one of the five
Precepts we train you we explain to you what the five precepts are not no killing or stealing those things we go into great details about what they are and particular with the objective of helping you teaching you on this the how to maintain them how to not violate them which violation are okay which type of violation that you definitely want want to avoid and there there the Chinese would like to teach you that when you receive precepts you should keep them even at the point you should be willing to keep them to the point of losing your own life to me I find a little
Bit extreme it works for the Chinese work for the Indian but to me westerners are is illogical to us westerners it's it sounds like a cult to westerners so I avoid talking about that you see because because it creates a wrong impression in our culture in Western culture so it's true it's fine if you have you have Asians so forth and you can tell them that you should be willing to sacrifice your life in order to keep precepts and when you do that you create great blessing that's fine but I'm I tend to stress more on the recovery the person who transmitted precepts to you
Is supposed to know what they are and they're supposed to help you we transmit precepts to you for the express purpose of benefiting you and you benefit greatly simply by observing precepts When You observe precepts that creates so many blessings without having to do anything without having to lose to give away your money your heart earn money think about it you don't even have to give away your money to create blessings just be a pure and moral person violating the Ten Commandments creates sin then what are the consequences of violating precepts the sins is a concept that we don't subscribe to it's intellectual concept that
Is designed to control the masses to control the followers control the Lambs but for us it has to be based on facts it has to be based on logic as well precepts is extremely logical and so when you violate precepts you will fall to the house you fall to lower Realms so if you keep the precepts then you are free from three poison the greed anger stupidity right there you pure so there's some real consequences of your your violing and precept once you fall to low Realms it's a lot lot more suffering than right now where you are for a very long long time the
Point here is that it's an aid to your practice and if you're serious about cultivation you definitely want to practice precepts the precepts parameter it's a lot more a lot more than I have time to explain to you again because for example the the in Buddhism we have hinana and Mahayana and hinana May Yana precepts are one and the same it's same exact books same exact records so the hinana they themselves specialize in studying precepts many of them do that and they make a name for themselves by say m special I'm a specialist in the precepts and for example in Taiwan there are a few
Taiwanese temples who that specialize in precepts and they they very good at that I had to go to one of them to learn I send my disciple to and learn from there and so that's where I learned from the books from from the from that's called precept marks precept marks are the description of the precepts okay the things you can see yeah can explain to you if a precept against stealing what constitute of violation on that precept it's different for a lay person than for a left home person okay slightly different so anyway so we we we learn those things I remember so the the
Hinana they very very rigid they said I'd rather die than than violate precepts and I remember I was that at that Temple and the the general manager of the temple we are like we have like 40 different monks being together the study precepts we specialize on studying precepts that's it we do nothing but study precept recite Buddha's name and meditate a little and so one day because of their reputation a person who is a nervous monk called him up and said I violated one of the five precepts the non-reputable portion meaning you violated it extremely difficult to repent and now I want to leave the
Home life life what do I do and the dang says you know I have bad news for you you violate this thing here you cannot leave the home life and when I heard of that story he told it that story himself his own his own mouth I—I—I heard that story I said that conf reaffirms for me why is that it it's really nonsensical to me that we among transmit ify precepts to our followers and we don't teach them properly including my Master's temples they don't teach their followers about how to practice the five precepts again to me I find it disappointing because when
We P give you a Dharma we transmit a Dharma to you we have to help you how to practice it as well otherwise not complete so they wouldn't explain how to practice the five precepts just like most temples when they transmit the five precepts they don't explain how to practice them and these people violate them and then they have dire consequences and to the hinana they said who too bad now you ruin your life meaning we ruin your life because you transmitted to you in the first place they say they come back and say my God why did you transmit it to to me if
You you didn't teach me how to how to uphold it and not get in trouble I didn't know you because you never taught me yeah so that's H understand hinana to me I'm only telling you this story to illustrate to you the hinana understanding of precepts is very very rigid because when people violate the these precepts Mahayana have ways to restore to recover H Yana have very limited ways to to recover that's why they can't they can't help you so in conclusion it's very advantageous for you to practice the morality to receive precept and practice and try to reach the morality parameter if you fail
At least you should learn how to do it if you fail there are ways to help you recover and even if you don't you can't recover I finally understood that it's eventually you will recover even though you have to suffer a lot first and we try to avoid to minimize your your conse the consequences for you that's all the learning of precepts is never to control you learning precepts is to give you peace and Bliss and blessings it's to you to benefit you we never try to control you we never try to influence you it's for your own benefit everything the Buddha taught everything we teach you in Mayana is always for one goal only is to benefit you it's very good for you you have to believe that as you don't believe me right now but in the future it will come back when you see that everything we do is never outside of benefiting you to