Sila

[Nikolai]

Taken from here.



Q: How strictly and diligently did you observe Sila (Morality) before the attainment?

Quite strictly and quite pedantically having also spent some years in the Goenka tradition as a long term server.

Q: Do you think strict Sila played significant role in your attainment?


Yes, I do.

Q: Do you think it is very important for stream-entry and thereafter?


Regulating behaviour that is the result of ill will and belief in a separate identity craving its own illusory existence that just re-inforces the agitative unsatisfactoriness inherent in such an illusion will aid in cultivating dispassion for and relinquishment of it. When the mind is calm and not agitated by such movements of mind, one is able to see the very cause and cessation of that which fuels such behaviour thus reducing its hold on this mind/body organism eventually cutting their causes off for good (via combining such regulation of behaviour with cultivation of a pliant, malleable, luminous and discerning mind).

Nick

[Nikolai]

When wondering if this or that action should or should not be triggered, ask yourself does this act support the cultivation of a malleable, pliant, luminous and discerning mind or does it cloud and obfuscate it? Experiment and you will know what works and what doesn't.

[Nikolai]

I always felt bad for killing bugs as well. Never tried to on purpose and would spend a lot of time catching the ones that weren't were they were supposed to be. Once while living in Chile in an old colonial style house, after an earth tremor, the mud walls cracked and let loose a plague of fleas. I ended up moving out after a week. i couldn't stand them jumping on me, but I couldn't stand killing them with flea powder etc even more.

I was like this for over 8 years in the Goenka tradition. When given the task of cleaning goenka's residence before his eminent arrival at Dhamma Giri,India, I was asked to wipe the cobwebs from the entrance ceilings. I couldn't do it for all the spiders I would know i was killing.

I was pretty anal about it for a long time that it stuck when big brain shifts occured. Can't kill anything for the life of me now. After the 1st shift in July post 4th path (which seriously changed the experience of 'being' to residual shadow), I was asked by someone guiding me what I would do if someone told me they'd give me a million dollars but I had to break the legs of a homeless man lying on a park bench or no million dollars. I could not see that as an option. Whether it was a result of previous conditioning and training behaviour or of the massive hit 'being' took, or perhaps the changing of 'being' cementing that conditioned behaviour, I don't know. All I know is that I am where I am because of what was done and not done.

Thinking back, I am unsure how my practice would have panned out if i had not cultivated such behaviour. Seeing as i have made some pretty quick progress, it might be useful to assume it was because certain factors had grown strong enough, and thinking about how moral I was about not killing, lying, stealing etc, it always lead to a much more heightened, malleable and pliant mind. My concentration abilities probably benefited greatly. Cause and effect.

[Nikolai]

When the intention to kill something is there, what is fueling it? What is the trigger? Insight into the triggers often leads to understanding why regulation of such behaviour is useful on the path to the end of suffering (if that is the objective of practice).

When i first took on the vipassana practice, I would train myself to recognise the triggers for the intent to kill, the intent to lie, the intent to steal for example. I recognise most if not all the time, that the triggers for such intentions were always revolving around the illusory selfing processes. 'I' only intended to kill a bug out of feelings of aversion towards the bug interfering with 'my' happiness. 'I' only lied for the sake of 'me' and 'my' happiness'. 'I' only stole for the sake of 'my' happiness. These triggers were part and parcel of the illusory selfing processes, only support for their arising, only fuel for the continued flow of grasping at the continuation of a sense of existing as 'me', a separate identity. The intention behind such acts were seen to always have as the core trigger, selfish desire.

Even when i went once to throw a large rock on the head of a puppy who had been run over with its guts splayed out on the road, to ease its suffering as it was still breathing, was still in hindsight seen to have as its core trigger, the self-revolving desire to feel better that the puppy no longer suffered. It was, at the core of it, all about 'me', 'me', 'me'.

When it becomes clearer that there are these triggers for such actions, and that these triggers only fuel the ongoing illusory selfing processes, then these 'moral' guidelines become a means to counter such unsatisfactory processes. If the end of such unsatisfactoriness is the goal of practice, then addressing the supports and fuel for the arising of the illusory selfing processes seems to make sense. Sila then also makes sense. At least it did for me.

If one is not using sila as a tool to deal with the unsatisfactoriness, but instead using it as just support for more self-narratives, now a 'moral' self-narrative as opposed to an 'immoral' self-narrative, then sila has become a fetter which binds and causes suffering, i.e. guilt and fear (the realm of self-narratives/selfing processes). If sila is used to aid in the dismantling of the self-narratives as opposed to being a support, then the fetter of sīlabbata-parāmāso (attachment to rituals, rules, etc) is dropped at stream entry (where the fetter of identity view is also dropped).