A Talk On Right Action

Right Action is one of the aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path. It involves being mindful of your actions, and acting in a way that is benficial to yourself and others, not harmful.

Right Speech includes abstaining from killing living beings, abstaining from stealing, and abstaining from sexual misconduct.

Transcript

What is Samma Kammantho?

So,

Samma Kammantho is right action.

And the definition that the Buddha gives is that one abstains from taking life.

One abstains from taking what is not given.

And one abstains from sexual misconduct.

These three things are considered to be right action.

And so,

What is taking,

Or what is abstaining from taking life?

The Pali word is Panna Tipata.

If you've taken the five precepts before,

You know that's the first one.

You've heard that word many times.

Panna simply means like life,

A being.

And Atipata is to slay.

So basically,

What this right action is to abstain from slaying beings.

Of course,

This encapsulates all beings that are sentient beings that are in samsara.

Even the little creepy crawly ones that you hope stay on their side of the kuti.

So you don't have to hurt them if they get too close.

These kind of things.

Even all these beings,

The beings that slither on the ground,

Creepy crawlies.

Every being,

When we take on this right action,

We train to abstain from killing.

Any being.

Even if it's for what we think is a good reason.

Like that spider creeped me out.

So,

The Buddhist definition of this,

What he says is this is,

There's a case where a certain person,

Abstaining from taking of life,

Dwells with rod laid down,

Merciful,

Beneficent,

Scrupulous,

And with compassion for the welfare of all beings.

So as I said in speaking about right speech yesterday,

All of this is an ideal to strive for.

Nobody expects that we're going to take the five precepts,

We're going to follow this,

I'm going to totally refrain from killing all beings.

And then the next day,

You see a spider and you freak out,

And you're in a mind of fear,

And then you kill the spider or something like that.

And it's like,

Oh man,

I'm a really horrible Buddhist.

I'm so bad,

I suck.

All these kind of things.

No,

We want to understand that this is,

When you get into a situation like that,

That's the situation,

That's the time to examine that.

What led,

What were the events that led to you taking the life of that being?

What was the mind state involved in that?

So then you can start to see how one thing leads to another.

You can start to see how fear makes you unmindfully do action.

And then you can even extrapolate that when you start to see that,

How it works in your own mind.

You can start to see how it kind of works in the world.

All the fighting and the killing and the fear and the hatred and all that.

You can start to understand a little bit of why this group hates that group,

And they've been fighting for a long time and all these kind of things.

It gives you insight into how things work in nature.

And so with that insight,

When you continue to practice,

And you develop the insight,

And you're in your room or whatever,

And then there's all of a sudden a big spider,

And you feel the fear behind you.

You feel that fear.

The fear is there.

But it doesn't control you anymore because you understand that the beings want to live,

And you understand what it is to take the life of a being.

And even though you have to decide,

Okay,

Well maybe I'm just going to try to grab one of those cups and bring it outside or something like that.

That's when you have developed the insight and the compassion to overcome your innate drives to do something as ideal as letting go of the slaying of beings,

Of the staining from slaying beings.

It's not easy.

It's a practice.

It's an ideal to strive for.

So it's important in that regard to do your best.

Most people in the world,

Most beings,

Most human beings,

Are not going around killing other human beings.

That's a,

You know,

That's a life that's not going around killing other people.

But maybe they're killing all kinds of little beings.

Especially for us,

You know,

In a country where we don't have to,

We're not in a war torn.

We might have bullets flying and people shooting each other and all these kind of things.

It's a little bit easier that we can concentrate on,

You know,

Developing this ideal,

This practice of avoiding taking the life of even the smallest beings among us.

So the next one is Dinna Danna Vedamani.

And that is abandoning the taking what is not given.

So essentially this is stealing.

And the Buddha's definition of this is one does not take what has not been given in a town or a village or even in the wilderness as something that belongs to somebody else.

So this is something that we can see that it might not be as harmful and as big as,

You know,

Killing a being.

But we can understand we like our things.

We like,

I have this and I have that and this is a useful tool and I have a car and I have these things.

And then I'm sure all of us have had some experience of somebody taking something that we hold dear or something that we find useful.

And it's a horrible experience.

It's like you have an attachment to this thing and then the next day,

The next second,

It's gone.

And you understand that this is not very conducive to living in the world with other beings and living amongst other,

You know,

In a compassionate and understanding community.

So with this understanding in mind,

You decide,

Well,

You know,

If I know that I don't want things to be stolen from me,

I just,

I will not do that to other people.

I won't take what has not been given to me.

And of course,

That can,

In modern times,

That can be quite complicated.

And especially if you're living,

You know,

Trying to follow the precepts and all these kind of things and you're thinking,

Well,

If I take a pen from work,

Is that stealing?

Or even people think,

Well,

If I downloaded a movie or something like that,

Is that stealing?

You know,

There's a lot of gray area.

And if you follow the precepts in your life and you really try to take that on,

You'll actually realize that there's a lot of gray area in life,

Period.

And out of times where it's not going to be a black and white decision,

Like,

You know,

Easy as day,

Well,

Duh,

Of course,

I don't do this.

So the best we can do is the best we can do.

Just like Buddha was talking to his son Rahula from yesterday.

You know,

You do something and then you examine,

Has this been harmful?

Oh,

Yeah,

It has.

So I try to do better next time.

So he says that this person,

The Buddha says that this person does not take in the manner of a thief.

So we want to avoid taking what is not ours.

And so the next one is kamesu michachara.

Simply means you can define that as sensual misconduct or sexual misconduct.

It's most often talked about as sexual misconduct because that is indeed what the Buddha's definition of this,

Of this right action is much more related to the sexual activity.

So it says that the Buddha's definition is that he abstains from sexual activity with one who is under the protection of their mother,

Father,

Brothers,

Siblings,

You know,

Aunts,

Uncles,

Etc.

So we can understand that to be like minors or even maybe,

You know,

People who have,

You know,

Maybe they're of age,

But they don't have the mental capacity to really make,

You know,

These kind of decisions,

That kind of stuff.

So people who are under the protection of their family,

People who are under the protection of their dama.

Basically,

That would mean monks and nuns and priests and all these kind of things.

People who are married,

Obviously,

People who are even engaged.

So you can see,

And another one is people who entail punishments.

I don't know what that means.

I haven't been able to find any information.

You know,

We don't know 2600 years ago what that could mean.

But these are the aspects of sexual misconduct.

We can see that this is conduct that is nonconsensual and that is harmful to yourself or others.

And if you really,

If you think about it,

You know,

Today we live in this kind of global big society where everybody kind of doesn't even know each other.

We have like 10,

000 friends on Facebook,

But we don't know each other and all these kind of things.

Think about 2600 years ago in small villages in India or even anywhere,

Small communities.

Something like adultery,

Something like,

You know,

These kind of acts that break trust and cause this strife.

That's not only hurting the people who are directly involved in it,

But it's hurting the community itself,

Causing strife in the community.

So I think it makes sense as to why the Buddha would say that we should be very careful in this regard.

And so these three things together combine as right action.

And again,

In short,

You can see that it's simply examining your actions and doing your best to perform actions that will not be harmful to yourself and others.

You don't even have to think,

What's the Polly word for this and what's the direct definition for this and all that.

You can just think,

Is what I'm doing harmful or beneficial?

Should I continue to do this?

That's something that you can have a mindfulness for as you're going through your day.

Have that power of recollection that when you're in a situation,

When you're getting involved in something,

And you can have,

If you think about these three acts,

What are the killing,

The stealing and the sexual misconduct?

When somebody is doing these things,

They could be wrapped up in fear,

Wrapped up in anger,

Wrapped up in greed and lust.

All these mind states that cloud the mind that we get involved in and we can do something and then later on we're more clear headed and we're like,

Wow,

I didn't even realize that I was doing this or that it would get to this point,

These kind of things.

That's because at that point,

When you have this clouded mind full of this greed and hatred and fear,

You don't have mindfulness.

You don't have heedfulness.

And so you don't know what is best for you and what is best for others.

So if we develop this mindfulness of this is that we want to perform,

We want to keep right action in mind so that all the actions that we do will be beneficial,

Will help you and the people around you,

Not harm you and the people around you.

Reviews

Great

Very clear and helpful. Thank you

I love this. Right Action is so important even if you aren't Buddhist. Thank you.🙏

As always, perfect lessons.

Great message not sure if it was my connection or not but it did break up for a second then returned to the talk.

I really like his talks. Very well versed and presented.