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Please show some examples of pre-20th-century Buddhist literature that goes into very explicit detail about the precepts leaving little to personal judgment. I

• michael_dorfman 16y ago
  I'll be happy to. I'm at home now, and my texts are at my office, but I can email some references to you tomorrow, if your contact details are on your HN profile. In the mean-time, the Wikipedia page on the Patimokkha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patimokkha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patimokkha) lists the monastic precepts for the Theravada tradition; even in schematic form, you can see that they are quite detailed. When you add on Buddhaghosa's commentary in the Kankhavitarani, things get quite detailed indeed.
  • sandal 16y ago
    From everything I've read and heard from teachers, the practices for monastics are extremely finely detailed specifically because it forces those who go that route to be mindful of what they are doing each and every moment. But this is a voluntary practice and has to do with amplifying some basic foundational ideas of non-harming and mindfulness so that you can see them in minute details. Nowhere have I ever seen Buddhist teachings that imply that it should be the goal of the laypeople to take on the monastic precepts. Even throughout history the vast majority of Buddhist practitioners were bound only by the 5 lay precepts. Again, I think that if you're a non-practitioner, from the outside it might seem strange that such things are meant as 'trainings' and not 'rules'. That having been said, there are certainly cases where these rules are taken very seriously. You can read the book 'Turtle Feet' for a contemporary look into how political and bureaucratic the Tibetan monastics can be. What I've been told is that the Buddha taught in many, many different ways depending on his intended audience. So when he was speaking to plain, common folks, he gave them simple instructions to follow. For some devotional types, he constructed elaborate and complex rituals to help with practice. I think that you may be studying the more complex end of things and missing some of the less academic teachings. I think that there are two phenomena here that we should distinguish with modern Buddhism. One is the sort of new-age culture that has taken the words of Thich Nhat Hahn and the Dalai Lama and turned Buddhism into a sort of 'feel good' spirituality that isn't very deep. This isn't the fault of the teacher, but of a mass audience hungry for some good feelings. But then there are also people like Jack Kornfield, Steve Armstrong, Larry Rosenberg, Henepola Gunaratana, Pema Chodron, and many others who have taken a more westernized, but still faithful way of representing Buddhism in the West. This is again speaking from the viewpoint of a non-academic, but I'm also not just a 'true believer', so I've done enough of my homework to feel like you're making too strong of a statement about what precepts are meant to express.