The date on the Instagram post shows July 1, 2018. It had been ten years since my mom and I had been back to Chùa Quang Minh in Chicago and at least twenty since we attended regularly. I don’t remember when the word Phật (the Vietnamese word for Buddha) entered my consciousness, but this place was a part of that. I still have my copy of The Story of the Buddha that the head monk at the temple gave me when I was about 10 years old.

I just plugged Quang Minh into Google Translate to see what it means in English. Google says clarity. How appropriate!

My mom had found her dearest temple friend in the kitchen. I had just finished exchanging eagle pose for some other arm movements with one of the elder nuns. The temple was packed between services everywhere but the Buddha Hall. I slipped off my shoes, offered incense and greetings to the Buddha and bodhisattvas, and sat in the back to be by myself for a minute after a three hour drive from my mom’s house. Everything in the hall — the carpet, perfume of sandalwood incense, the colors, the lyrical conversation and laughter wafting in, the discomfort in my knees — rhymed with my memories, everything except some text close to the ceiling.

You know the old saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears?” I got it in that moment. Here’s another saying: “You’re either ready, or you’re getting ready.” That one is from an affable Gujarati Swami named Swami Pratybodhananda who I had the good fortune of meeting at an ashram in the Poconos a few years back. I learned recently that he passed away. Had I not encountered him in 2013, I’m not sure I would have been ready for this.

I learned later that these words above the statues are verse 183 of the Dhammapada, one of the earliest Buddhist texts, and they are referred to as the Three Pure Precepts. These were written in both Vietnamese and English in the Buddha Hall, as you can see in the picture. Click to hear this verse chanted in Pali by someone who knows how.

The English reads: “Not to do any evil, to cultivate good, to purify one’s mind. this is the Teaching of the Buddha.”

This English translation is a pretty common translation of the original Pali. I found it lacking. What is evil? What is good? What are good and bad but what you like and don’t like? That question is what got me ready to learn the lesson of this particular day. Swami Pratyabodhananda, at a retreat he was teaching that I attended in 2013, said that sentence in passing, in the middle of a lecture on… I can’t remember. Perhaps some paragraph of the Bhagavad Gita that he was unfolding for us at that retreat. That sentence was one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned, a lesson I neither sought nor expected, sort of like the lesson I learned reading the text over the statues. When he said those words, I realized that saying that something is good or bad, or better or worse, or best or worst, is not true. It’s not Right Speech. When I say that something is good, I am attributing goodness to the object, but the object is just the object. What is true is that I like it, or more accurately, I like something about it, or them, and I’m neither acknowledging nor owning the feeling. I immediately began an exercise that I still do today. Anytime I catch myself using good or bad, or equivalent words, I stop and rewrite the speech in terms of like and dislike, which has a funny way of rewriting the thought, which has a funny effect of changing my thinking. For example, “That food was good.” becomes “I liked the food.” which can become something like “The tortillas were piping hot, the filling was a little bit bland, but what I liked most was enjoying it with my friends.” “He’s a bad guy.” becomes “I don’t like him.” which becomes “He makes me nervous for some reason.” which can lead all sorts of places. The feeling of like or dislike is a window. When I own and acknowledge my feelings, I can see what’s underneath. When I think that something or someone is good or bad, it’s their fault, and I learn nothing. Anyway, years of practicing that created an important condition that kept my eyes on those words and initiated the contemplation of those words, including the Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese felt more true and precise: “Tránh làm các việc ác. Gắng làm các việc lành. Giữ tâm ý trong sạch. Ấy lời chư Phật dạy.”

Reading this was mind-opening to me. Vietnamese is the language I use with my mom. I can hear the bitterness of her pained voice using the word ác to describe someone she felt was deliberately making her miserable. Contrast this with the word evil, which I associate with cartoon villains and cartoonish men vilifying people they don’t like. When I hear the word lành, I feel new skin growing over a cut. When I hear sạch, I see a freshly swept floor in a tidy room. My interpretation of the Vietnamese is: “Avoid doing all cruel actions. Strive to do all acts of healing. Keep your mind clean. These words are what the Buddhas teach.” The first part gave meaning to the word evil by equating evil with cruelty, the motive behind violent action, action intended to harm. If I can stop deliberately hurting those around me, the world around me benefits. Hurt people hurt people. Refraining from deliberately hurting people is an act of mercy and compassion that saves people beyond by interrupting a chain of harmful action. The second part gave meaning to the word good by equating it with healing. By addressing my own wounds, I am less likely to want to hurt other people. I’ve experienced the pleasure that comes from getting people back for hurting me. It feels good in the moment, but it also easily escalates and perpetuates further harm, destroys relationships, and takes root. The third part, I didn’t give much thought to. Clean of what? Over the next couple of years, contemplating it off and on, an answer came: keep my mind clean of ill will and willful ignorance. This means seeing those when they arise, and seeing the conditions that allow them to arise. I don’t know if my interpretation is THE answer, but it is an answer that helps me. Maybe that’s why these precepts were written the way they were, to give a person something to reflect on in the context of their own life.

Here is how I’ve chosen to represent these guidances. Why “Root Guidances” and not “Pure Precepts?” Regarding root vs. pure, every other teaching that I’ve found important connects with these guidances, so root is the word that comes to mind. As for pure, the word conjures standards of purity that have justified harmful actions against people, so ironically, the word pure and purity gives me yucky feelings. As far as guidances vs. precepts, I don’t look at these as rules to be followed in a framework of reward and punishment. Rather, these guidances form the basis of sound spiritual advice that have helped me to navigate conflict, love the people around me, build trust (what is trust but a state where the the idea of someone doing you harm doesn’t even enter your mind), and enable me to do really fulfilling and meaningful work in community with other people. There’s something to be said for doing things out of consideration for the well being of the community rather than doing something because the law says so.

1. Stop myself from deliberately harming both others and myself. I’ve learned that, as a human, I harm others accidentally all the time through misunderstanding, poor word choice, bad timing, and bad luck. That is enough to work through. Add onto that the suffering I create for both myself and others when I hurt people on purpose (for example by pushing their insecurity buttons, or making people feel embarrassed or humiliated) and I can quickly find myself in a world of hurt. The violent thoughts, words, and actions directed at myself has similar harmful effects. Hurting yourself or others is basically shooting yourself in the foot.
2. Take every opportunity acknowledge harm and the conditions that create harm that I encounter and create conditions for harm reduction and healing. I’ve found that this is especially powerful when I am the source of harm, whether deliberate or accidental. I’ve also found that framing decisions around a consideration of harmful effects and harm-reducing and healing effects has a clarifying power. Who benefits and who bears the cost? It’s true that hurt people hurt people. The antidote to that is to help people help people. You can claim this superpower and multiply the effects by inviting others to join. Heal yourself and #1 gets a lot easier. I’ve found that compassion arises when I can see the wounds that lead to cruelty in others. I can see those wounds more clearly when I am not blinded by my own pain. Help others and make it easier for them to help other people, and you can see how that can have a big, beneficial effect for everyone. See Three Acts of Healing below.
3. Face ill will and willful ignorance as they arise. When I see them, they lose a lot of their power and I can release them, or at least mitigate their harmful effects. This is another reason why community is so important. Friends can help you with your blind spots.

Three Acts of Healing

These are lessons I learned the hard way. Not doing them throughout the course of my life cost me friendships. There comes a point where wounds are too old and too deep for a full reconciliation. The right time to deploy these is ASAP.

1. Acknowledge harm that your views, thoughts, speech, action, and livelihood cause, have caused, and will cause.
2. Apologize to the harmed for your views, thoughts, speech, action, and livelihood that led to harm.
3. Atone for the harm done in a way that is satisfactory to the harmed.