I thought I’d found the door. I was part way through, but lingered on the threshold.
Glancing back…. there were ancestors, known and unknown. Sure, the lineage of Buddhas, Arhats, teachers. But also family members, known and unknown. Do you always include the family members or did you turn your back on them when you got your new name and new clothes?
Really, this vow to save all beings, touches on precious. And not in a good way. Beings will save themselves is a more accurate, in my view, understanding of time, change, and practice. The primacy of the “I” as opposed to seeing clearly, the “eyes” conditions the notion of vows in the the cultures of the Western liberalism.
Lingering on the threshold, I consider what lies ahead. People, places, and events, known and unknown.
Just try to be a good human being. Precepts as the core of practice. But once you start talking about precepts, already, you’ve stained them. Can you practice without saying you are practicing? Practice does not require the clothes, the veneer of adornment, the speech. In monastic or residential practice, ok, that’s a different context, maybe. In the U.S., Buddhism might be a kind of aesthetic signal….. see the images here, these are some of the many pieces of the iconography of Buddhism. To be inspired is perhaps a mode of entering. But practicing precepts does not require the invocation of the iconography.
