The Buddha’s Eight Principles

We live in a world where there are many versions, many reports on what the Buddha taught, and some of them are contradictory. Some say that he taught just to accept, accept, accept whatever comes up. Others say that you have to work on fighting defilements. Some say it’s all about compassion; some say it’s all about equanimity.

That’s basically what you call sound-bitten Dhamma: Everything is reduced to sound bites and simplistic ideas. The Buddha never said it’s all about any one thing, except for release—that’s the goal.

As for how to get there, it’s going to require developing lots of different good qualities. Even when the Buddha talks about equanimity, he never teaches equanimity on its own. It’s always taught together with other qualities, so that you know when to accept and when not to accept things; when to be content, when not to be content. So there’s some nuance there.

And in line with the teaching on karma, the basic test for what’s Dhamma and what’s not Dhamma is: When you put something into practice, what are the results? If the results are good, then you know you’ve got some Dhamma. If the results are not good, then you know that it’s not.

But just “good” is not precise enough. Good in what way? That’s the question you would ask.

So the Buddha expands on the idea of “good” with a list. There was one time when Mahapajapati, who was his stepmother, had asked to start the bhikkhuni order, and the Buddha gave permission. At that point, the bhikkhunis didn’t have any rules, so she asked him how to decide on what really is in line with the Dhamma and Vinaya, and what’s not.

He gave a list of eight qualities. The qualities fall into three categories: qualities having to do with the goal, what we’re aiming at as we practice; qualities that you have to develop within yourself to get to that goal; and finally, qualities that have to do with how you interact with other people along the way.

In other words, what impact is your practice going to have on others? Because you want to make sure you don’t harm yourself and you don’t harm others. You can’t take others to the goal, but you can develop the qualities within yourself that would lead to the goal, and you don’t get to the goal by harming others.

The qualities that define the goal are, one, dispassion, and two, being unfettered. It may seem strange to put those two together. A lot of us think that our happiness lies in passion, but dispassion doesn’t mean just a gray oatmeal kind of quality. It’s more maturity—when you grow up.

As the Buddha points out, we tend to be intoxicated with things. We tend to be very childish about a lot of things. When you finally realize that your childish ways are not producing genuine happiness—you’re just doing what you want but you’re not getting the results that you want—that’s when you grow up.

So dispassion means maturity. And when you’re free from your passions, then you’re truly free. That’s what it means to be unfettered. To be fettered means that you’re tied down. We’re tied down by our passion for sensuality, passion for form and formlessness, which we’ll get into as we study this list more in detail.

The important thing about passion is that you have a lack, and you’re aiming at something to fill the lack. But when you find total freedom, there’s no lack at all, so you don’t need passion. It’s not that you’ve smothered your passion, it’s just that there’s nothing worth getting passionate about again, because you’ve found the ultimate happiness. That’s the goal we’re aiming at.

So as you try different practices, you ask yourself, “Is this increasing passion or decreasing passion?” You have to watch out, though, because the path itself will require some passion to put it together. The mind is not going to get into concentration unless you want it to. Even just being mindful, you have to want to be mindful.

So, strategically, you have to develop some passion for the path, but realizing that the qualities you’re developing will eventually take you beyond the need for passion. As long as you understand that, then you can follow the path.

As for the qualities you’re trying to develop within yourself, there are three: persistence, contentment, and shedding.

Persistence means that if there’s any unskillful quality in your mind, you try to get rid of it. Then you try to make sure it doesn’t come back. As for skillful qualities, if they’re not there yet, you try to give rise to them. Once they are there, you try to develop them even further.

Contentment here means contentment with your physical surroundings. If your food, clothing, and shelter are enough for you to practice, then it’s enough. You don’t have to go squirming and wiggling and trying to get more, because the more time you spend on trying to fix up the world around you to be comfortable, the less you’re focusing on your mind.

Now, it’s important to realize that contentment doesn’t spread to everything. Some people think that contentment means that whatever happens in your mind, you’re okay with it. But that would go against the principle of persistence, which is that if there’s something unskillful in the mind, you’ve got to get rid of it. If something skillful is not there yet, you do your best to give rise to it.

But remember, contentment is just about material things. Discontent has to do with the realization that there’s still more work to be done. As I said this morning, you want to be happy about the progress you’re making, but not satisfied—until you finally reach the goal.

As for shedding, this seems to center mainly on shedding your pride. When your pride or your sense of honor gets violated, then the other thing you’ve got to learn how to shed is thoughts of revenge.

There’s a story in the Canon about a young prince whose parents have been killed, and he plots revenge against the king who killed them. He applies for a job in the king’s palace to help look after the elephant stables, and at night he plays the lute for the elephants. He plays the lute really nicely.

The sound of the lute doesn’t stay just in the elephant stables. It floats up into the king’s apartments. The king hears it and he likes it. So he calls the young man and says, “Play the lute for me.” So the young prince plays really well. The king is pleased and he says, “Okay, from now on you’re staying here with me.”

The young prince does everything he can to please the king: Gets up early in the morning before the king, doesn’t go to bed until after the king has gone to bed. Eventually, he gets totally trusted by the king.

Finally, gets the king in a position where they’re alone, one-on-one. He could kill the king if he wanted to. He has a sword in his hand. They’re off in the wilderness and the king is lying down to sleep with his head resting in the young man’s lap. But the prince thinks about what his father said before he died: “Don’t look too far, don’t look too close, because animosity isn’t ended with animosity, it’s ended with non-animosity.”

So he puts the sword away. But then he starts thinking again about the mischief this king has done. He pulls the sword out again, but then puts it back when he thinks of his father’s words. This happens three times.

Finally, the king wakes up with a fright. He’s had a bad dream that this prince, who he didn’t know was the prince, was searching him down, aiming to kill him. So the young prince holds him by the hair, pulls out his sword, and says, “Do you know who I am? I’m the prince whose parents you killed.”

So the king pleads for his life. And the young prince says, “No, you give me your promise that you won’t take my life.” So they both promise they won’t take each other’s lives. And the story ends well.

The Buddha says, basically, in a previous lifetime, he was that young prince. Even though he was a noble warrior, and noble warriors live by the sword, he knew enough to not go for thoughts of revenge: to shed the pride that comes with being a noble warrior, to shed the thoughts for revenge.

He teaches this story to monks who have gotten involved in a quarrel over something really minor. The purpose of the story is to remind them that even in extreme cases like that, the Buddha would counsel forgiveness: Shed your pride, shed your thoughts of revenge, because those things just keep you coming back, coming back, coming back. They don’t take you to dispassion and they don’t unfetter you. They tie you down.

So when the Buddha teaches contentment, it’s contentment with material things, but discontent with the good qualities of your mind, as long as they haven’t gotten all the way to the end. You take joy in the fact that you can make progress, but don’t let that joy turn to satisfaction until you’ve reached the goal.

Finally, the qualities that have to do with your relationship to other people come down to three: being modest, being unentangled, and not being burdensome.

As you’re practicing meditation, you’re not here to brag to other people about what you do.

During my years with Ajaan Fuang, I was convinced—and a lot of other people around us were convinced—that he could read our minds. He could read our minds very quickly. He was very sensitive to that, but if you ever asked him about that, he’d glare at you. He would never talk about the things he would see in his meditation. He’d been taught by Ajaan Mun: “The things you see in your meditation are your business and nobody else’s. Your business is to learn how to interpret them in a wise way. You take a Dhamma lesson from them, then put them aside.”

So we’re not here to show off. After all, you’re dealing with your own personal illnesses—the illnesses of greed, aversion, and delusion—and that’s your personal work, nobody else’s. It’s something you have to take responsibility for, and then you’ll know the goodness of the results inside. You can’t show them to other people. If you talk about them, it actually seems to take something away.

So remember, we’re not here to impress other people with our practice. We’re here to cure our own illnesses and to free the mind.

Unentanglement the Buddha explains with an example: Let’s say you’re a monk, and someone comes and asks you a question on the Dhamma. You answer the question just to their satisfaction, so that they’ll then go away. You don’t try to pull them back, and create longer and longer discussions. You deal with what needs to be dealt with, then you drop it.

Years back at Wat Dhammasathit, after Ajaan Fuang passed away, there was some question as to who was going to take over the monastery. The acting abbot had found an old meditation monk who was very talkative, brought him to the monastery, and told the people in the neighborhood, “This might be your new abbot.”

So we went up to the chedi, the spired monument at the top of the hill. The old monk closed his eyes and started giving a Dhamma talk—a talk that meandered all over the place. It was hard to figure out what he was actually talking about. Those of us who’d been Ajaan Fuang’s students looked at one another.

What we were used to was Ajaan Fuang’s just being available for questions. If you asked a question, he would give it, usually, a pretty short answer. If it required a longer answer he’d give it, but he preferred to give short answers, and that was the end of the discussion. You’d take the answer and go off and meditate. There was no need to entangle people in long conversations. Yet here was a monk giving a very entangled Dhamma talk.

Somebody got up, bowed down, left. Somebody else got up, bowed down, left. I got up, bowed down, and left. By the time the old monk opened his eyes, there was nobody left.

We were used to someone who followed the Buddha’s teachings on not being entangled: Communicate what needs to be communicated, whatever is helpful, and then leave it at that.

And then finally, being unburdensome: We try to live as lightly as possible, and this applies both to monks and to lay people. You don’t want your practice to place burdens on other people.

You try to live as frugally as you can, as simply as you can. The more you can live simply, then the more you have to share. You want your practice to be light on the earth, because after all, you’re going to be leaving. We’re all going to be leaving. The question is, some of us will keep coming back, coming back. But if you decide that you want out, then you can’t just trash the place before you leave. You have to leave it in as good a shape as you can. That means that you’re generous and you’re unburdensome.

Some people say, “I’d like to come back many, many times.” But remember, each time you come back, you have to weigh somebody down; whoever is your mother, whoever is your father, you place a weight on them. Then for the rest of your life, you’re placing weights on other people.

So as we try to practice, we want to be as light as we can in our practice. That way, when we leave, people will be sad to see us go, and we wouldn’t have left any weight on the world.

So those are the principles the Buddha taught to his stepmother to help her to decide what’s genuine Dhamma and Vinaya, and what’s not.

Even though we do have all the rules of the Vinaya now, and lots and lots of Dhamma talks, lots and lots of suttas from the Buddha, it’s good to keep these principles in mind, because it’s possible to interpret the Dhamma in many different ways. As you try to boil it down to what you can put into practice, you want to make sure that you’ve boiled it down right, and then you can test it.

This is a test for the principle of karma. If it’s really Dhamma, then your actions based on that Dhamma will have to give good results: the results of freeing the mind, getting so you don’t need passion anymore because you’ve found the ultimate happiness.

That’s when you know for sure that you’ve found the real thing.