On this last day of 2019 and in this final post on Right Action, I want to talk about the danger of inaction. We’ve been talking about how to make sure we do the right things, and avoid doing the wrong things. We want to be…
I know it’s a busy week with so many celebrating the holidays and guests coming and going. So just briefly, I want to share this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, which gets to the heart of what it means to practice Right Action. I hope these…
A Buddhist meditation called the five remembrances can help us practice Right Action. Fair warning, this list of five hard truths can feel a little depressing, but the purpose is to help us get clarity around how best to spend our days. This version comes from…
If you want to practice Right Action, honor your natural senses. Throughout my readings on Right Action, I kept running across the idea that a general sense of sobriety and temperance is implied. When we translate the words of the Buddha literally, his admonition against sexual…
The third aspect of Right Action is to abstain from sexual misconduct. In other words, act with love, not possession. And don’t we know it after the last few years of #metoo, when so many have started to realize how widespread it has been for men…
The second aspect of Right Action is not taking what isn’t given. In other words, don’t steal. But it’s also so much more than that. Buddha teaches, “He avoids taking what is not given and abstains from it; what another person possesses…he does not take away…
The first point of Right Action is the command to preserve life. Actually, that’s my wording, and I’ll explain why I think it helps clarify what this means. Technically, the first precept of Right Action says to abstain from taking life. By life, the teachers mean…
It’s a new month, which means a new step on the Eightfold Path. This December, we will be practicing Right Action. As you can see, these steps follow each other in a logical way. We begin with how we see the world, then what our intentions…
In this final post on practicing Right Speech, I want to talk about noble silence. Noble silence is a term used originally to describe when the Buddha simply refused to answer what he considered unanswerable or unknowable questions. (Contrast this to the endless blather we often…
There’s an old Buddhist folktale about a gentle elephant who belonged to a king. Everyone praised the elephant for its kind disposition. But gradually, the noble elephant began to become more aggressive and difficult. It wouldn’t allow anyone to work with it, and lashed out in…
