Living Together

We’re beginning the rains retreat today. It’s not really raining, and it’s not really a retreat. The Pali term vassa means the time to stay in place. So for the next three months, the monks will be staying in place. They make a vow tonight that they’re going to stay here, be here at dawn every day for the next three months until the full moon in October, except on occasions when they have legitimate business for being away. And even then they can go away only seven days at most per trip. So it’s a time to live together.

The Buddha talks, in many places, about the principles for living together in peace and harmony. One of them is the six Sārāṇīya Dhamma. These are the principles that make sure that we get along with one another, and that we’re happy to be here, and that our presence together actually is an aid to our practice and not an obstacle.

The first three have to do with goodwill: goodwill in your actions, goodwill in your words, goodwill in your thoughts. The Buddha simply could have said goodwill, but he wants to emphasize the fact that it’s important that it be expressed in what you do and what you say—not just in what you think. As long as we have goodwill for one another, it’s a lot easier to overcome our differences, overcome our disputes, places where we don’t see eye-to-eye on things. As long as we have goodwill for one another, the community becomes a good place to live together, and it does become an aid to the practice. We’re happy to live with one another.

So if you think thoughts of ill will, that you’d like to see somebody suffer, or you just want to show your power and push them around, remember that that’s not a principle for getting along together. Think about what other people need, what other people lack, and if you can somehow help make up the lack, that’s a way of creating harmony.

That relates to the fourth principle, which is that if you get something special, you share it. You don’t just keep it to yourself.

The fifth and sixth principles have to do with your views and with your virtues. We all try to live up to right view, and we ought to bring our virtues up to the level that they say is pleasing to the noble ones. In other words, our virtues are strict, clear-cut, universal. Under no circumstances would we kill, have illicit sex, steal, lie, take intoxicants.

If you’re taking the eight precepts, you take the eight precepts all the time. Don’t make exceptions. In any case, you hold to the precepts in a way that’s conducive to concentration.

Some people get really worried about their precepts to the point where it harms their concentration. As Ajaan Mun once said, all the precepts come down to one big precept, and that’s your mind. As long as you know that your intentions are right, then you don’t have to worry about the fact that you might be breaking the precepts here or there, because it’s not intentional.

Now, you do want to be careful. If you find that you’re breaking it again and again, even without having the intention, but you just find yourself doing it again, you want to tell yourself, “Okay, I have to be more careful.” And if our precepts are on the same level, on the same high level, and our views are all right views, on the same level, then it’s really easy to get along.

It’s when these things go scattering off in different directions: That’s when it becomes a place without harmony. When there’s no harmony in the group, there’s no happiness. And when there’s no happiness, it’s harder to practice and get the mind into concentration.

So because we’re living as a group, we have to be very careful to create a good atmosphere in the group through our attitude of goodwill, through being generous, through maintaining a high level of virtue and right view. In that way, the fact that we’re close together doesn’t interfere with our mental seclusion. It actually becomes an aid.

So think about these things. And look at your own behavior to see in which ways it needs to be improved in order to be up to these standards. That way, your practice becomes better for you and better for the people around you.