Virtues Bright & Neither Dark nor Bright

The Buddha described four kinds of kamma. There’s dark kamma with dark result; bright kamma with bright result; kamma that’s both dark and bright, the result being both dark and bright; and then there’s the kamma that’s neither dark nor bright, which leads to the end of kamma.

Dark kamma would be breaking the precepts. Its dark result would be falling to a lower realm. Bright kamma is holding by the precepts and as a result, you go to a higher realm. If your kamma is dark and bright—in other words, it’s a mixture of breaking the precepts, not breaking the precepts—it goes to a more middling result.

The kamma that’s neither dark nor bright, that leads to the end of kamma, is the noble eightfold path. It leads to the end of kamma in that it takes you to a state of awareness that doesn’t need to be maintained, where there’s nothing you have to do.

As Ajaan Mun said, it’s beyond all activity. Or as Ajaan Lee said, “Nibbana is easy. Everything in the world has to be maintained. Once you gain nibbana, though, there’s nothing you have to maintain.” Of course, getting there isn’t easy. But once you get there, you can put all your burdens down.

What’s interesting is that there’s an overlap between bright kamma and the kamma that’s neither dark nor bright. To begin with, both of them are the kinds of kamma the Buddha would recommend. He wouldn’t recommend mixed kamma—in other words, doing things with mixed motives, breaking the precepts sometimes and holding them at others. He’d recommend that you get your motives and actions as skillful as possible. But the interesting overlap is that the precepts figure in both bright kamma and the kamma that’s neither dark nor bright.

The difference seems to be that with bright kamma, you’re simply trying to hold by the precepts for the sake of gaining a good rebirth. But You’re not just following the rules. Your practice of the precepts is based on a sense of goodwill for the beings you’re living with, but it’s for the purpose of a good future within the bounds of becoming.

One of the motivations for following the precepts is not just that you will gain good results, but you also think about other beings: You wouldn’t like to be killed. You wouldn’t like to have people steal things from you. You wouldn’t like someone to have sex with your partner. You don’t like to be lied to. You don’t like dealing with drunks. Well, other people are like you: “Put their heart in your heart” is a phrase they say in Thai.

So you’re not just rule-abiding. You do develop some good mental qualities, positive mental qualities, as you observe the precepts. You realize that this is a way of showing goodwill. It’s a way of showing compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity—equanimity in the sense that you realize there are some things you would like to gain, but the only way you could gain them would be by taking the precepts, so you realize you have to give them up.

With empathetic joy, you see other people are wealthy and you’re not wealthy, but you’re happy for them. You don’t think of taking their wealth away.

Compassion: You realize there are people that you’re in a position where you could harm and probably get away with it, but you don’t want to. You feel for them.

So it’s not just a matter of following the rules—although you do follow the rules.

I was reading someone saying that the use of discernment with regard to the precepts is figuring out when to hold by them and when not to hold by them. That’s not very discerning at all. That’s just the way of the world. As the Buddha pointed out, it’s not the case that people who lie a lot are lying more than they’re not lying, or people who kill a lot are killing more than they’re not killing. There’s a mix for everybody. But still the vast majority of people break the precepts sometimes but not at other times. There’s no wisdom in that.

True wisdom lies in realizing that there are times when you know something that somebody else might want to know, but they would abuse that knowledge if you gave it to them and they ask you about it. What are you going to do? How do you not divulge the knowledge without lying at the same time? Or you’ve got pests in your house. How do you live with them so that they don’t damage you or your home, but at the same time you’re not going to kill them? That’s where your discernment gets tested.

But that’s still on the level of bright kamma that leads to a bright result—in other words, it leads to rebirth.

As for the precepts that come under the noble eightfold path, under the factors of right speech, right action, right livelihood: What makes them special, what makes them the kamma that’s neither dark nor bright, is the context. They’re based on right view, they’re based on right resolve, and they lead to right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In other words, they’re part of training the mind.

You practice the precepts, say, as a way of expressing your goodwill, but at the same time you’re also using them to develop your mindfulness, your ardency, your alertness. Those are qualities you’re going to need as you practice mindfulness, and especially the kind of mindfulness that leads to concentration.

Mindfulness, of course, is keeping something in mind. When you take on a precept, you’ve got to keep it in mind all the time. Don’t forget. Alertness—you have to be alert to what you’re doing to make sure that it’s actually in line with the precept. And ardency—you’re going to hold well to these things. Whatever the challenges, you do your best not to break the precepts.

You’re doing that as a way of training the mind to develop the qualities you’re going to need in concentration. You’re doing it to gain a sense of lightness, a sense of not having harmed anybody and being a principled person. There’s a joy that comes in knowing that you have principles. Other people around you may break their principles—or may not even have any principles to break—but you know that you have principles that you hold on to.

That attitude, the sense of well-being that comes from being principled, is really conducive to concentration because, as you’re going to get to settle the mind down, you let go of your ordinary thinking. The mind gets into a state where it’s more tender than normal as it’s beginning to get snug with its object but it’s not quite there yet. This is the part of concentration where people who are going to have visions tend to have visions—either as they’re settling down or as they’re coming out—because things are tender.

But if you’ve been doing wrong in the course of the day—harming somebody, harming yourself—it’s going to come up in that tender zone as the mind begins to settle down. And you’ll have two reactions: Either it’s like an open wound and it really hurts, or it’s like scar tissue—you deny that you did wrong. Neither is going to be helpful for concentration.

Years back, I was helping to lead a retreat, and in the middle of the retreat one man started breaking down and crying—huge sobs. I was freaked out—it was the first time I’d ever been in a retreat where something like that happened. People who frequent retreats tell me it’s normal. It turned out that he had been a drug dealer. As his mind was finally getting settled down in concentration, he started thinking about all the people whose lives he had ruined.

That’s how not observing the precepts can get in the way of concentration.

But as thoughts of the day come in as you’re trying to get the mind to settle down and you realize you’ve harmed nobody—you’ve held by your principles—it’s easy for the mind to get settled down and to stay. That’s the kind of virtue the Buddha said is pleasing to the noble ones. On the one hand, none of the precepts are broken, but at the same time it puts the mind in a good frame of mind, where you feel good about yourself. That makes the mind easy to settle down in concentration.

So as you practice the virtue for the sake of the path, in the context of the path as a whole, that changes the nature of what you’re doing. You’re not just hoping for good results in some future state. You’re treating it as part of training the mind in mindfulness, ardency, alertness, getting the mind prepared to settle down in concentration, the kind of concentration where you can be honest with yourself—because it’s only when your concentration is honest that it’s going to be conducive to discernment. After all, what are going to see with your discernment? You’re going to be seeing mistakes you’re making here in the present moment. You have to be really honest with yourself to see that sort of thing.

The whole purpose of concentration is to help you see how you create a state of becoming in the mind. It’s something you’re doing right now. You’re not just hoping that some good kamma of the past will suddenly show up and do it all for you. You’ve got to do the work right here, right now. It’s a very strong lesson in the power of your present kamma.

But if you’re used to being honest with yourself, honest in observing the precepts, you’re going to be very honest and observant in what you’re doing—and that’s going to be conducive to discerning how you’re creating unnecessary suffering and how you can stop.

So the attitude you bring to the quality of virtue is going to determine whether it’s bright or neither bright nor dark; whether it’s going to lead simply to a good rebirth or to something better. Either way, you benefit, but if you practice the precepts with the purpose of making them part of the path to the end of suffering, you benefit more.