Ornoth

大成功

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 21:04:23 GMT

Time for a brief update on my kyūdō practice.

You may recall that after 2½ years of painful struggle and utter failure in this martial art of Japanese archery, I attended a seminar in South Carolina in hopes that our sensei would be able to correct my constant misfiring, which I wrote about at length here.

That was four months ago. So how has it gone?

Holding the tally board following Austin Kyūdō's 108 Arrows Shoot 2026.

Pretty well. Putting sensei’s feedback into practice has helped immensely. While I’m still far from perfect, I’d say I’m able to shoot nearly as reliably as anyone around me, which is an amazing degree of improvement.

Which brings me around to yesterday’s practice session: our annual ceremony of shooting 108 arrows to begin a new year.

Ironically, the meaning behind the ceremony is Buddhist in nature, as a way to recommit to overcoming the 108 Defilements. In her email to the group, our club leader phrased it as “letting go of tension, frustration, mistakes, grudges, and anything else we carry from the past year.” I think those words perfectly encapsulate my attitude toward my shooting in 2025.

So this was a very intentional opportunity to make a break with the struggles of the past, and begin a new year with a clean slate.

In previous years, my terrible form and lack of confidence made this ceremony uncomfortable for me, and I contributed very little to the group effort. But with newfound confidence in my shooting, this year I was eager to push myself and publicly demonstrate my progress. Plus this would be exactly the kind of shooting-focused practice I need.

One way I prepared was working out with my bow while the group was on hiatus over the holidays. I specifically wanted to develop the strength to hold a full draw for longer, and the endurance to do so repeatedly. To that effect, I did daily workouts, building up to three sets of three draws with my 12 kg bow, holding each one for 24 seconds before release.

On the day of the ceremony a dozen of us showed up, so math suggested each person should aim for about 9 or 10 shots. Whatever! I was the first archer to the firing line, shot the club’s first arrow of the year, and spent the most time at the line.

And at the end of the session, I tallied 36 shots, well more than anyone else, and tying (intentionally not surpassing) the current record for most shots during the annual ceremony.

Not all of them were perfect, of course. About a third of the way in, three of my shots ricocheted off the target, but I realized what I was doing wrong and corrected my form from that point forward. And even if I count those as misfires, that’s still a 92% success rate, which I haven’t enjoyed since early 2023.

So yeah, my shooting has definitely improved, and I’m pretty happy with where I’m at, with an eye toward improving even further in 2026. Or, as the Japanese would say, “Daiseikō!”

Aside from general improvement, one of my next steps is joining the local archery range and getting proficient at distance shooting. The range is open all day, every day, and is a very convenient 10 minute drive from home.

I also have the option of formal testing and advancing in rank, but – having begun in a different school of kyūdō that doesn’t have tests or ranks – those things aren’t of any interest to me. Nor am I particularly interested in flying out to South Carolina (or further) every few months for seminars.

For now, I’m perfectly happy taking my time and refining my form, free of the significant downsides that come with formal testing and ranking systems.

Though I will say that after 2½ years of stress, insecurity, and failure, being the top dog at the dojo – even if it was just for this one day – felt really, really good. If this were a TV drama or sports anime, this would have been the climactic episode of my redemption arc! And it was a deeply satisfying way to begin a new year.

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Freedom Fighters

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 18:19:07 GMT

Since ancient times, mankind has been preoccupied by a quest for “freedom”. Even in today’s somewhat enlightened society, safeguarding our “freedom” is an almost daily topic of conversation.

But I wonder how many of us have ever made the effort to formulate in words exactly what that term means to us. And if you don’t know what freedom means, how can you possibly successfully attain it?

Freedom!

For me, freedom has three main components: choice, independence, and ethics.

First is the freedom to choose between alternatives. Where a man has no choice to make, there is no freedom.

And to be truly free, that choice must be largely independent of external influence or coercion. A man who is coerced or misinformed is not able to freely choose.

And finally, “freedom” has no meaning unless a person can make decisions based upon the values and beliefs that he holds as the product of his upbringing, education, life experiences, emotional makeup, and philosophy.

As a bonus aside, I’ll assert here that a person’s values are most often a uniquely individual balance between benefit to oneself and benefit to others, where the latter category might be further subdivided into one’s “in-group/family” and “outsiders/others”, however broadly or narrowly one chooses to make that distinction.

So that’s my operative definition of personal freedom; now let’s consider whether we do a good job attaining it…

We humans like to think of ourselves as complex, multifaceted, and diverse, as the pinnacle of evolution, and imbued unique capacities of intellect, free will, discretion, morality, and freedom of choice.

How ironic then that, across all cultures and times, the overwhelming majority of human behavior can be reduced to two very simple principles:

Get more of the sensations that we perceive as pleasurable, and
Get rid of the sensations that we perceive as unpleasant.

This two-line algorithm is not only sufficient to describe almost all human behavior, but that of nearly all animal life, down the simplest amoebae and paramecia. If it’s pleasant, move toward it; if it’s unpleasant, run away from it. It’s poignantly emblematic that the Declaration of Independence, one of mankind’s most cherished documents, proclaims “the pursuit of happiness” as a vital and basic “unalienable right” of all men.

What does it say about our vaunted sense of freedom and individuality if 99% of all human thought, feelings, and behavior can be boiled down to a ludicrously simple two-line program, the exact same one used by the most tiny, primitive unicellular organisms? Where is freedom to be found in slavishly obeying that biological imperative?

Here is where the Buddhist in the audience has something to contribute.

Without judging anyone’s individual spiritual practices, I would assert that Buddhism is not fundamentally about stress relief, quiescing our thinking, blissing out, self-improvement, earning merit for future lives, extraordinary experiences, psychic abilities, or deconstructing the self. Those things may or may not happen along the way, but I think that the core goal of the Buddhist path is breaking free of our instinctual programming by first understanding that we habitually live under a false illusion of freedom, then gradually learning how to find genuine freedom by ensuring that our thoughts, speech, and actions are driven by conscious, values-driven choices, rather than never-questioned blind reactivity and maladaptive habit patterns.

Realizing that pleasure and discomfort are the central drivers of our biological programming, the principal line of inquiry for Buddhists has been cultivating a more skillful and beneficial relationship to these influences. A key tenet is the principle of dependent arising, which describes the chain of cause and effect that explains how our relationship to desire creates our experience of dissatisfaction. My distillation of it goes:

Because we are alive, we have senses.
Because we have senses, we experience contact with sensory objects.
Because we experience contact with sensory objects, we experience sensations. These sensations are immediately perceived as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral at a pre-verbal, instinctual level. Let’s call that the sensations’ “feeling tone”.
Because our perceptions produce these low-level feeling tones, we instinctually relate to the pleasant ones with desire, the unpleasant ones with aversion, and are mostly disinterested in the neutral ones.
When our desires and aversions arise, we react with craving and need, becoming entangled and increasingly attached to having things be a certain way in order for us to be happy.
Because of our attachment to things being a particular way, in a world where we control very little and where change is inevitable, we suffer when our needs and desires are not met, and even when our desires are fulfilled, we become anxious knowing that it’s only temporarily.

This is the sequence of events that leads to our experience of dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, suffering, and unhappiness.

Of course, if dependent arising were an immutable progression, it wouldn’t be of any practical value in our quest for freedom. But there’s one key step where — with sufficient mindfulness, wise intentions, and skill built up through patient practice – we can pry open a tiny window in this sequence of events and grasp our one opportunity to consciously choose a different response.

And that window of opportunity presents itself in how we relate to our sensations. It’s telling that, looking back on what I’ve written above, aside from “pleasure”, the other word that appears in both my two-statement definition of human behavior and the Buddhist principle of dependent arising is “sensations”.

A Buddhist would say that the only place where we have the opportunity to influence our unrealistic expectations is found in how we relate to our sensations. If we can see our perceptions clearly and in real-time, as well as the pleasant/unpleasant/neutral feeling tones that they evoke, we can wake up from our unexamined habit of letting those feeling tones blossom into the reactive craving and aversion that drives most of our subsequent thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. In each moment, if we can bring mindfulness to our sensations and our reactions to them, we can consciously choose to respond in a way that is less compulsive, less harmful to ourselves and others, and better informed by our values.

When it doesn’t harm ourselves or others, pleasure is a vital part of living a fulfilling life. However, our dysfunctional habit of blindly following pleasure and running away from discomfort needs to be balanced by wise intentions like purpose, mission, and ethical values that are more complex but also more advanced in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In this sense, the traditional Buddhist monastic way of life may go a bit too far in its inclination toward banishing or vilifying pleasure, rather than seeking a middle way that allows one to wisely examine, engage, practice with, and potentially master one’s relationship to pleasure and aversion.

Note that this isn’t the same as saying that “life is just suffering” or that one has to avoid pleasure and resign oneself to pain. What I’m saying is that we can learn how to relate to our desires and aversions more skillfully, rather than being mindlessly led around by them. And that is the only path to true freedom and living a fulfilling life of integrity, wisdom, and joy, and a life that is in alignment with our innermost and highest values.

Rhonda, one of my meditation teachers back in Pittsburgh, used to liken it to commuting on a familiar route. Taking the main highway might require the least mental effort, but it might not be the best, fastest, safest, or most pleasant route. The only way to know is to cultivate the ability to choose something different: something other than what comes to mind automatically.

Then she would describe her commute home on Ohio River Boulevard. She could stay on the highway, but the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation had thoughtfully placed a big traffic sign indicating (the town of) “Freedom” with an arrow indicating the off-ramp (that’s it, above). True freedom is exactly that kind of off-ramp, giving us an opportunity to get off the limited access highway of compulsive reactivity and mindless habit.

If you want to be truly free – not satisfied with the mere illusion of freedom and the suffering that it entails — you need to be able to see beyond desire and aversion, beyond reactivity and habit. Freedom means being fully awake in every single moment, willing and able to make real, meaningful choices that are informed by one’s ethical values.

The key to success is developing the skill to be awake enough in each moment to avail ourselves of that little window in the chain of dependent arising, where our perceptions of pleasure and discomfort, if unexamined, can blossom into untempered desire and aversion. If you will excuse me hyper-extending an apocryphal truth: in terms of manifesting wisdom and living an ethical life, the price of freedom is eternal mindfulness.

Or so it seems to me.

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Memorabilia: T2SP Chucks

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 18:38:09 GMT

Here I was, all set to post my first of these new “Memorabilia” blogpos, when this happened:

See that big black gaping hole in the toecap of my pine green Chuck Taylor sneakers? Yep, they bit it. Now let’s talk about why I care about a dirty old pair of Chucks…

Out of all the pairs of Chucks I’ve had, this was my only real custom order. Back in 2011, I used Converse’s custom sneaker configurator to build this pair up from scratch, with gunmetal grey stitching and eyelets, green highlight stripes, and a gingham patterned inner lining. But the topper was the silver embroidered “T2SP” on both outer heel panels.

The significance? It’s a reference to an old fable about a monarch who commissions a ring to make him happy in times of sadness. The ring is inscribed with the phrase “This too shall pass”… hence “T2SP”.

Although the story is Persian in origin, it echoes the central Buddhist doctrine of impermanence, anicca, one of Three Characteristics of Existence. Something well worth keeping in mind at all times!

While they were my favorite pair of sneakers for most of the past fourteen years, impermanence finally caught up with my Chucks this past week. Into the bin you go!

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The Duke of Mentality

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 22:22:28 GMT

I’ve always been a little – sometimes a lot – older than the friends I hang around with. So I figure some folks might be wondering how it’s going following my recent stroke… What it’s like to live with the realization that a portion of my brain is, literally, dead.

The most pertinent fact is that my stroke is over. Actually, it was probably over by the time the EMTs showed up, but then there was the whole diagnosis and treatment protocol and investigation and followup plan. But now, six weeks later, that episode is as much a piece of history as my first driving test.

Physically, I’d like to say that I have no lingering aftereffects. Sensation returned to my left hand over the first 48 hours, and that numbness had been the only significant aftereffect.

The psychological impact was more lasting, manifesting in several flavors that’ll fill the balance of this blogpo.

Betrayal

Easily the most prominent emotion has been the feeling that I was betrayed by my body. For sixty years, I knew in my bones that my body could thrive and succeed no matter what outrageous demands I placed on it. Eating like a 14 year old? No problem. Bike 150 miles in a single day? Piece of cake! Going out drinking and nightclubbing until 4am and getting up at 6am to facilitate meetings with Fortune 500 clients? Easy-peasy! Work 80 to 120 hours per week for nine months straight on a death march project? BTDT.

But completely out of the blue one morning, the body I’ve relied upon all my life suddenly betrayed me, with no warning, while doing nothing more strenuous than walking down a staircase, something I do dozens of times every day.

I can’t tell you how much of a shock that was. I’ve been through the classic responses: anger, grief, bargaining. The only one I missed was denial, because it just wasn’t possible to ignore.

Mistrust

Trust, once broken, is difficult to restore.

Even after the hospital sent me home, I didn’t feel that I could just go back to a normal life. Even though that episode was over, I didn’t trust that I wasn’t still in imminent danger. I still felt that I had to stay vigilant, on guard against anything that might come up, even though I know that I’m not in full or direct control of my body’s health. Once bitten, twice shy.

Hyper-awareness

Because of that, I’ve been hyper-aware of every little niggle that arises… and in a 61 year old body, there are plenty of them.

I have developed some neuropathy in my feet, and any time a body part “falls asleep” sets off stroke alarms in my head. And that pain in my armpit: could that be a lymphoma? The stitch in my side kinda feels like a kidney stone, or maybe diverticulitis. The pain in the opposite side is probably pancreatic cancer, or maybe just liver failure. And my chest pains might be a symptom of atrial fibrillation, which is a huge risk factor for stroke.

I’m not normally prone to hypochondria, but nor am I used to waking up one morning and having a stroke. Even after consulting my physician, I can’t say for certain whether all these maladies are complete fiction, or real but minor discomforts, or something far worse.

Fear

What does the future hold? How much longer will I live? The truth is that I have almost no information and very limited influence.

That’s hard. It’s a cause for anxiety, uncertainty, and unease. In a word: fear. Raw existential dread. Not something I’ve ever had to face directly, so it’s one of those unpleasant “learning experiences”.

During the day, there’s enough stuff going on to distract me from all this, but the fears are more insistent at night. Keeping one’s imagination in check is a full-time job!

Living a normal life in this midst of all this is not easy! But then, what’s the alternative?

Fortunately, every morning I get up and notice that I don’t appear to be fatally ill. And after six weeks of evidence to the contrary, my worst fears have weakened to the point where life has started to feel normal again.

Coping

What helps? Good question.

Has my longstanding meditation practice helped? Somewhat. Meditation taught me how to distinguish between skillful thoughts and unskillful thoughts as they arise; that I don’t need to give full credence to everything a fearful mind envisions; and how to short-circuit the mental proliferation that can fuel unnecessary fear about the future. It also allows me to see that my moods and emotions are intensely charged interpretations of one possible future – not reality itself – and that they are essentially both transitory and empty of real substance.

That doesn’t mean that I’m able to dispel all my fears, especially in the dark, lonely silence of a late night, with nothing to think about other than my body, its ephemeral nature, and its treacherous sensations.

The thing that seems to help most is the simple passage of time. As I mentioned above, day after day, the worst case scenario doesn’t seem to happen. And that data has slowly piled up into an irrefutable conclusion that I seem to be mostly okay, at least in this moment.

Not that I feel like I can trust that just yet. But it does seem more and more plausible as each day goes by.

Conclusion

I am subject to aging. I am subject to sickness. I am subject to death.

These irrefutable truths are hard to face, and they’re a rude awakening that every one of us will have to come to terms with, at a time and in a manner we do not control. And this society does a shitty job preparing people for this immense challenge.

I’ve had a conceptual understanding of these truths since my sister died following a stroke fifty years ago. In my life, they’ve been reminders of the preciousness of life. Now they’re more omens about the precariousness of life. My life. My very finite life.

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Book 'Em, Danno

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 17:28:38 GMT

I’ve been burnt out on dhamma books for a number of years, feeling – justifiably – that after a certain point, reading about dhamma has diminishing returns, and what’s truly important is putting what you’ve learned into practice. But circumstances ensured that these five titles made my reading list. Here’s some capsule reviews of my dhamma reading from earlier this year.

Richard Shankman’s “The Experience of Samadhi”

The jhanas — esoteric states of heightened concentration – have perplexed me since my 2007 reading of the Buddha’s Middle Length Discourses. Although they are emphasized in a huge number of Buddhist suttas, there’s lots of disagreement about what they are, how to achieve them in meditation practice, and how important they are. Shankman’s book was recommended to me by Mariposa Sangha teacher Carolyn Kelley. The first half summarizes what the original Pali texts say about jhana, contrasting that with the radically different reformulations that derive from the Visuddhimagga, a commentary written 900 years later.

The latter half of the book contains statements — also frequently at odds with one another – from well-respected modern teachers, both lay and monastic, including Jack Kornfield, Bhante G, and Ajahn Brahm.

My takeaway is that it’s futile to strive to find a “real answer” to those questions about the jhanas, because the disagreements have persisted for centuries. The best thing to do is to concentrate (pun intended) on your own practice, ignoring all the furor over what the jhanas are, whether they actually exist, how important they are, and how to achieve them. From Shankman’s introduction:

“Dharma practice is not a matter of finding the one ‘true and correct’ interpretation of the doctrine and practice that is out there waiting for us to discover, if only we could find it, but instead, it’s the ability to examine ourselves honestly, recognizing our strengths and limitations so that we may apply our efforts in the most fruitful directions.”

Robert Pantano’s “The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence”

I’m a sucker for these kinds of brutally honest titles: this one by the creator of the philosophical “Pursuit of Wonder” YouTube video series. This book is basically an encapsulation of the author’s version of the quest I undertook 25 years ago: to revisit the philosophical and ethical alternatives to religion, as well as my own personal beliefs. Then – given those beliefs – how to find the best way I can to live in accordance with my values.

Pantano pulls from all the major Western superstars, including Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Jung, Emerson, Bukowski, as well as my biggest influences: Sartre, Camus, and Alan Watts. He doesn’t spend much time evaluating Buddhism, but — like many kids these days – gets positively juicy about Seneca and Stoicism.

Ironically, when alphabetized by author, this book sits on my shelf directly adjacent to the “Philosophy For Dummies” book that I kicked off my inquiry with back in 2002 (blogpo)! I found it enjoyable going back over some of the intellectual paths I trod over two decades ago and hearing what someone in a similar situation made of it. From his summary of Ernest Becker’s work:

“What’s worse than living a life knowing that one will die is living a life knowing that one will die without having lived as many moments as one can properly relishing in the fact that they have not yet died.”

CIMC’s “Teachings to Live By”

I received this privately self-published book as a benefit for being a longtime member and supporter of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. It is a compilation of reflections that were sent out by email during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, authored by several CIMC teachers, including Larry Rosenberg, Narayan Liebenson, the late Ron Denhardt, Madeline Klyne, and longtime dhamma friends Zeenat Potia and Matthew Hepburn.

This book reminded me of so many things about CIMC that I hold precious, even a decade after last setting foot in that building. One of those treasures is the center’s unwavering dedication to ensuring that practice isn’t an esoteric, intellectual exercise, but visibly transforms our mundane, everyday lives.

I think that’s summed up best in the following citation from one of Narayan’s sections, entitled “Begin Again”. I’ve already read this in one of my dhamma talks, and will no doubt continue to share it with other practitioners.

Remember that meditation is not sitting. Sitting is a form and meditation is the love of awareness (whatever posture the body may be in). And sitting is an invaluable form in which to cultivate the love of awareness and the capacity to bring our practice to the entirety of our lives, not just to the cushion.

Larry Rosenberg’s “Three Steps to Awakening”

Cambridge Insight’s eminently practical view of meditation practice derives largely from CIMC’s founder, Larry Rosenberg. I studied with Larry for twelve years, and nowhere is his understanding of the dhamma more compellingly articulated than in this book, plainly subtitled “A Practice for Bringing Mindfulness to Life”. I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in meditation’s value in learning how to live.

Larry has distilled a lifetime of dhamma practice into three steps that anyone can perform. In my own words, those are: finding calm by maintaining awareness of the sensations throughout the body that arise with breathing (shamatha); using awareness of the breath to identify less with habitual discursive thought (vipassana); and transitioning awareness from the breath to the silence that underlies all the happenings in our daily lives (choiceless awareness).

That sounds pretty esoteric, but Larry is always practical, down-to-earth, and immediate.

Don’t put your faith in a “future you” who will evolve over a number of retreats and sittings. Of course you will reap byproducts down the road. But you do not have to wait, because meditation is a never-ending process of learning how to skillfully relate to everything daily life presents. Confirmation and verification occur right here and now!

Actually, this seeming passive activity sets in motion a dynamic energy that does move you in a wonderful direction. But don’t divide your attention with a preoccupation to improve. In our approach, you’re not attaining specific stages of wakefulness, or life goals, but rather taking care of each moment, whether on the cushion or at home or in school. This is why you are encouraged to not separate practice and daily life.

The Buddha is considered a fully awakened human being. He is offering you help to join him. Each moment of awareness is a small moment of Buddha mind. As the wakefulness matures by applying it to every occurrence in life, off and on the cushion, you will see the by-products of the learning that comes from this enhanced awareness. You are learning how to live skillfully in every moment, whether on retreat or at home with your family, at work with colleagues, or with strangers on the bus.

Narayan Liebenson’s “The Magnanimous Heart”

Narayan is a co-founder of Cambridge Insight and Larry’s longtime partner in teaching at CIMC. I also received her new (well, 2018) book as a thank-you gift for my support of the center. Amusingly, it was the first work selected by the new book club at Mariposa Sangha, my new meditation center in Austin.

The book is her very personal response following a period of tremendous loss, grief, and trauma in her life, and she confronts these topics head-on, without denial, distraction, or avoidance. It’s an unvarnished sharing of how an experienced meditator met some of life’s most painful challenges, which may be of value to others going through similar difficulties.

Fortunately, my life has been largely free of trauma, so for me the book was more like an evocative, frank, heart-opening account from a dear friend.

Is there any moment other than now that is more worth being awake in? We would have to answer no to the question, given that now is the only moment in which life can be lived. There is nothing to be gained by looking forward to future events that seem better than this boring moment right now. This boring moment right now is our life, and everything else is just thought. When we make contact with the sparkling nature of right now, the specific content we encounter in this moment matters less. Ultimately, being present for whatever is going on is more important than whatever is going on.

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Be A Refuge

Tue, 17 May 2022 18:40:16 GMT

Major milestones don’t come as frequently after 18 years of meditation practice, but this month provided a big one in my burgeoning role as a teacher: my first time having the honor of offering the Three Refuges and the Five Precepts.

Taking the Refuges & Precepts is the most fundamental Buddhist ceremony, and is frequently offered at meditation retreats.

The Three Refuges are a public statement of confidence in the historical Buddha as a regular human who came to a profound and useful understanding of how the human mind works; the Dhamma, or teachings he gave based on that understanding; and the Sangha, the community of like-minded practitioners. It’s helpful for meditators to relate to these vows as more descriptive of how one feels and where they are currently at in their practice, rather than something proscriptive that someone else is imposing upon them.

How important these vows are in the context of your practice, the specific technicals details of what they mean, and the consequences of breaking them are entirely up to the individual. You can view these as a solemn public statement that you are “A Buddhist”, or you can simply consider them an unnecessary holdover from uncomfortably devotional Asian Buddhist practices, or anything in-between. The Refuges & Precepts are only as solemn as you want them to be.

The Five Precepts are voluntary ethical practices that prompt the practitioner to increase our awareness of the skillfulness of our thoughts, speech, and actions, and to reflect on their impact upon our inner wellbeing.

The Precepts in particular can be uncomfortable for meditators brought up in the Abrahamic religions, where they can come across sounding like the Ten Commandments. However, the similarity is very shallow. A practitioner can adopt all, some, or none of the Precepts. In modern formulations, each Precept not only includes refraining from a particular unskillful action, but also cultivating a corresponding beneficial one.

In addition, taking the Precepts is completely voluntary, and there’s no requirement or pressure involved. They aren’t an edict imposed by some arbitrary external authority, but something one chooses for oneself because of the value and benefit one expects to receive by working with them. And there’s no one handing out punishments for failing to keep the Precepts.

Finally, the Precepts are vague, and (I believe) intentionally so. They’re meant to urge practitioners to look inside themselves and explore the subtleties of what their heart tells them is ethical and skillful. You would think that the precept to refrain from killing living creatures would be pretty straightforward, but our modern society raises complex questions in the ethical grey area that we must all face. Does that mean you can’t kill troublesome insects? Even accidentally? Does it rule out compassionate euthanasia or assisted suicide or abortion? Does it mean we cannot eat meat? And isn’t killing plants still killing a living being? And it’s the same with all the other Precepts; they encourage us to explore our own internal values and how well our real-world actions conform with them.

So that’s what the Refuges & Precepts are. Let’s get back to me…

I first took the Refuges & Precepts in April 2006 at Cambridge Insight, two years into my practice. I’d devoted enough time and study to be confident that I’d found a good home base for exploring how to live my life in accord with my inner values. When I took the Refuges & Precepts, it was deeply meaningful for me.

Over the years I gained knowledge and experience as a practitioner, then began slowly moving into teaching. The Refuges & Precepts were always in the back of my mind, and I hoped that someday I would be able to offer the ceremony to others. But I didn’t feel confident enough to volunteer until recently, now that I’ve got five years of regular teaching under my belt.

But it was the timing that forced my hand. I’ve always felt that the Refuges & Precepts should be offered in May, on the holiday of Vesak, which Buddhists observe as the day of the Buddha’s birth, his enlightenment, and his passing. When my Monday meditation group started lining up our May teaching schedule, they granted my request to take two consecutive weeks — May 9 and 16 – to offer the ceremony.

As the date approached, I sent out an introductory email to the group. After all, this would be very different from our usual sitting and dhamma talks, so I gave people fair warning and set expectations, and sent along the translation we’d be using. It’s worth noting that following the Covid-19 pandemic, the Monday group is still meeting in an online videoconference.

I think people heeded my warning, because only six people attended the first session, about half our usual size. My goal for the evening was to go over what the Refuges & Precepts are – the information I covered above – leaving plenty of time to answer questions. The explanation seemed sufficient, as there were only a couple questions.

The second session had seven people, as we lost one of the previous week’s attendees but gained two new ones. After a quick recap for the new people, I took a couple more questions, then segued into the actual ceremony.

In short, we read the Homage to the Buddha, the Refuges, and the Precepts. For each, I encouraged people to recite them with me in English, then I chanted the Pali version (and anyone who wanted to join in was welcome to), and rang the meditation bell. Because doing this online would have otherwise been a mess, I asked everyone to keep their microphones muted. It seemed to work out fine.

I wanted to follow CIMC’s custom of following the ceremony with a shared social celebration, and I’m really glad I did, because it helped me convey my joy and how special an event it was. For some people it was their first time ever taking the Refuges & Precepts; it was the first time the Monday group had offered them; it was, of course, also my first time offering them; it was the day of Vesak, the most important Buddhist holiday, observing the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and passing; and the Monday group’s fifth anniversary is close at hand. And talk about auspicious: there was even a lunar eclipse! It was a wonderful opportunity to share with each other the joy of our practice together, and seeing it bearing fruit.

I probably don’t need to repeat how pleased and honored I feel at being able to offer this ceremony for the first time to a dedicated group of friends and practitioners of varying levels of experience. For me, it was a resounding success, and a huge milestone in my meditation practice and my growth as a teacher.

Now I just have to turn around and teach Dependent Origination two days later to the other group I sometimes lead!

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