Affirming Life: The First Precept
Listen now
Description
Even though the precepts were not directed to the community directly, they are all about community. The precepts are about action and intention.  I appreciate this from Wendell Berry, “ To act in short is to live. Living is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. And one does not live alone. Living is a communal act… He goes on to quote Emerson, “I grasp the hand of those next to me, and take my place in the circle, to suffer and work.” I love the lack of sentimentality in these words. For us, the suffering is the first noble truth- dukkha – the acknowledgment that in the midst of life there is suffering and for us, the work is the practice.  The precepts can be seen as the practice.  This is what we do as a Sangha, we take each other's hand in our suffering and do the work. And what precept is more at the heart of community than affirming life?  The first precept is from which all the other precepts flow.   
More Episodes
Published 01/23/23
Excerpt   When I first started to explore and examine this precept, my first inclination was to feel guilt for taking paper clips from work or printing things for personal uses on my work computer.  Funny, that I found ways around it Like buying a ream of paper to replace the 40 pages I used. I...
Published 09/22/20