Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. Knowing that sexual desire is not love, and that sexual activity motivated by craving always harms myself as well as others, I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without true love and a deep, long-term commitment made known to my family and friends. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct. Seeing that body and mind are one, I am committed to learning appropriate ways to take care of my sexual energy and cultivating loving kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness – which are the four basic elements of true love – for my greater happiness and the greater happiness of others. Practicing true love, we know that we will continue beautifully into the future. So many individuals, children, couples, and families
have been destroyed by sexual misconduct. To
practice the Third Precept is to heal ourselves and
heal our society. This is mindful living. The Fifth Precept -- not to consume alcohol, toxins,
or drugs -- and the Third Precept are linked. Both
concern destructive and destabilizing behavior.
These precepts are the right medicine to heal us.
We need only to observe ourselves and those
around us to see the truth. Our stability and the
stability of our families and society cannot be
obtained without the practice of these two precepts.
If you look at individuals and families who are
unstable and unhappy, you will see that many of
them do not practice these precepts. You can make
the diagnosis by yourself and then know that the
medicine is there. Practicing these precepts is the
best way to restore stability in the family and in
society. For many people, this precept is easy to
practice, but for others, it is quite difficult. It is
important for these people to come together and
share their experiences. In the Buddhist tradition, we speak of the oneness of
body and mind. Whatever happens to the body also
happens to the mind. The sanity of they body is the
sanity of the mind; the violation of the body is the
violation of the mind. When we are angry, we may
think that we are angry in our feelings, not in our
body, but that is not true. When we love someone,
we want to be close to him or her physically, but
when we are angry at someone, we don't want to
touch or be touched by that person. We cannot say
that body and mind are separate. A sexual relationship is an act of communion
between body and spirit. This is a very important
encounter, not to be done in a casual manner. You
know that in your soul there are certain areas --
memories, pain, and secrets -- that are private, that
you would only share with the person you love and
trust the most. You do not open your heart and show
it to just anyone. In the imperial city, there is a zone
you cannot approach called the Forbidden City; only
the king and his family are permitted to circulate
there. There is a place like that in your soul that you
do not allow anyone to approach except the one you
trust and love the most. The same is true of our body. Our bodies have
areas that we do not want anyone to touch or
approach unless he or she is the one we respect,
trust, and love the most. When we are approached
casually or carelessly, with an attitude that is less
than tender, we feel insulted in our body and soul.
Someone who approaches us with respect,
tenderness, and utmost care is offering us deep
communication, deep communion. It is only in that
case that we will not feel hurt, misused, or abused,
even a little. This cannot be attained unless there is
true love and commitment. Casual sex cannot be
described as love. Love is deep, beautiful, and
whole. True love contains respect. In my tradition, husband
and wife are expected to respect each other like
guests, and when you practice this kind of respect,
your love and happiness will continue for a long
time. In sexual relationships, respect is one of the
most important elements. Sexual communion should
be like a rite, a ritual performed in mindfulness with
great respect, care, and love. If you are motivated by
some desire, that is not love. Desire is not love.
Love is something much more responsible. It has
care in it. We have to restore the meaning of the word "love."
We have been using it in a careless way. When we
say, "I love hamburgers," we are not talking about
love. We are talking about our appetite, our desire
for hamburgers. We should not dramatize our
speech and misuse words like that. We make words
like "love" sick that way. We have to make an effort
to heal our language by using words carefully. The
word "love" is a beautiful word. We have to restore
its meaning. "I am determined not to engage in sexual relations
without love and a long-term commitment." If the
word "love" is understood in the deepest way, why
do we need to say "long-term commitment"? If love
is real, we do not need long or short-term
commitments, or even a wedding ceremony. True
love includes the sense of responsibility, accepting the other person as he is, with all his strengths and
weaknesses. If we like only the best things in the
person, that is not love. We have to accept his
weaknesses and bring our patience, understanding,
and energy to help him transform. Love is maitri, the
capacity to bring joy and happiness, and karuna, the
capacity to transform pain and suffering. This kind of
love can only be good for people. It cannot be
described as negative or destructive. It is safe. It
guarantees everything. Should we cross out the phrase "long-term
commitment" or change it to "short-term
commitment"? "Short-term commitment" means that
we can be together for a few days and after that the
relationship will end. That cannot be described as
love. If we have that kind of relationship with another
person, we cannot say that the relationship comes
out of love and care. The expression "long-term
commitment" helps people understand the word
love. In the context of real love, commitment can
only be long-term. "I want to love you. I want to help
you. I want to care for you. I want you to be happy. I
want to work for happiness. But just for a few days."
Does this make sense? You are afraid to make a commitment -- to the
precepts, to your partner, to anything. You want
freedom. But remember, you have to make a longterm
commitment to love your son deeply and help
him through the journey of life as long as you are
alive. You cannot just say, "I don't love you
anymore." When you have a good friend, you also
make a long-term commitment. You need her. How
much more so with someone who wants to share
your life, your soul, and your body. The phrase
"long-term commitment" cannot express the depth of
love, but we have to say something so that people
understand. A long-term commitment between two people is only
a beginning. We also need the support of friends
and other people. That is why, in our society, we
have a wedding ceremony. The two families join
together with other friends to witness the fact that
you have come together to live as a couple. The
priest and the marriage license are just symbols.
What is important is that your commitment is
witnessed by many friends and both of your families.
Now you will be supported by them. A long-term
commitment is stronger and more long-lasting if
made in the context of a Sangha. Your strong feelings for each other are very
important, but they are not enough to sustain your
happiness. Without other elements, what you
describe as love may turn into something sour rather
soon. The support of friends and family coming
together weaves a kind of web. The strength of your
feelings is only one of the strands of that web.
Supported by many elements, the couple will be
solid, like a tree. If a tree wants to be strong, it
needs a number of roots sent deep into the soil. If a
tree has only one root, it may be blown over by the
wind. The life of a couple also needs to be
supported by many elements -- families, friends,
ideals, practice, and Sangha. In Plum Village, the practice community where I live
in France, every time we have a wedding ceremony,
we invite the whole community to celebrate and
bring support to the couple. After the ceremony, on
every full moon day, the couple recites the Five
Awarenesses together, remembering that friends
everywhere are supporting their relationship to be
stable, long-lasting, and happy. Whether or not your
relationship is bound by law, it will be stronger and
more long-lasting if made in the presence of a
Sangha -- friends who love you and want to support
you in the spirit of understanding and loving
kindness. Love can be a kind of sickness. In the West and in
Asia, we have the word "lovesick." What makes us
sick is attachment. Although it is a sweet internal
formation, this kind of love with attachment is like a
drug. It makes us feel wonderful, but once we are
addicted, we cannot have peace. We cannot study,
do our daily work, or sleep. We only think of the
object of our love. We are sick with love. This kind of
love is linked to our willingness to possess and
monopolize. We want the object of our love to be
entirely ours and only for us. It is totalitarian. We do
not want anyone to prevent us from a prison, where
we lock up our beloved and create only suffering for
him or her. The one who is loved is deprived of
freedom -- of the right to be him or herself and enjoy
life. This kind of love cannot be described as maitri
or karuna. It is only the willingness to make use of
the other person in order to satisfy our own needs. When you have sexual energy that makes you feel
unhappy, as though you are losing your inner peace,
you should know how to practice so that you do not
do things that will bring suffering to other people or
yourself. We have to learn about this. In Asia, we
say there are three sources of energy -- sexual,
breath, and spirit. Tinh, sexual energy, is the first.
When you have more sexual energy than you need,
there will be an imbalance in your body and in your
being. You need to know how to reestablish the
balance, or you may act irresponsibly. According to
Taoism and Buddhism, there are practices to help
reestablish that balance, such as meditation or
martial arts. You can learn the ways to channel your
sexual energy into deep realizations in the domains
of art and meditation. The second source of energy is khi, breath energy.
Life can be described as a process of burning. In order to burn, every cell in our body needs nutrition
and oxygen. In his Fire Sermon, the Buddha said,
"The eyes are burning, the nose is burning, the body
is burning." In our daily lives, we have to cultivate
our energy by practicing proper breathing. We
benefit from the air and its oxygen, so we have to be
sure that non-polluted air is available to us. Some
people cultivate their khi by refraining from smoking
and talking a lot. When you speak, take the time to
breathe. At Plum Village, every time we hear the bell
of mindfulness, everyone stops what they are doing
and breathes consciously three times. We practice
this way to cultivate and preserve our khi energy. The third source of energy is than, spirit energy.
When you don't sleep at night, you lose some of this
kind of energy. Your nervous system becomes
exhausted and you cannot study or practice
meditation well, or make good decisions. You don't
have a clear mind because lack of sleep or from
worrying too much. Worry and anxiety drain this
source of energy. So don't worry. Don't stay up too late. Keep your
nervous system healthy. Prevent anxiety. These
kinds of practices cultivate the third source of
energy. You need this source of energy to practice
meditation well. A spiritual breakthrough requires the
power of your spirit energy, which comes about
through concentration and knowing how to preserve
this source of energy. When you have strong spirit
energy, you only have to focus it on an object, and
you will have a breakthrough. If you don't have than,
the light of your concentration will not shine brightly,
because the light emitted is very weak. According to Asian medicine, the power of than is
linked to the power of tinh. When we expend our
sexual energy, it takes time to restore it. In Chinese
medicine, when you want to have a strong spirit and
concentration, you are advised to refrain from having
sexual relationships or overeating. You will be given
herbs, roots, and medicine to enrich your source of
than, and during the time you are taking this
medicine, you are asked to refrain from sexual
relationships. If your source of spirit is weak and you
continue to have sexual relations, it is said that you
cannot recover your spirit energy. Those who
practice meditation should try to preserve their
sexual energy, because they need it during
meditation. If you are an artist, you may wish to
practice channeling your sexual energy together with
your spirit energy into your art. During his struggle against the British, Gandhi
undertook many hunger strikes, and he
recommended to his friends who joined him on
these fasts not to have sexual intercourse. When
you fast for many days, if you have sexual relations,
you may die; you have to preserve your energies.
Thich Tri Quang, my friend who fasted for one
hundred days in the hospital in Saigon in 1966,
knew very well that not having sexual intercourse
was very basic. Of course, as a monk, he did not
have any problem with that. He also knew that
speaking is an energy drain, so he refrained from
speaking. If he needed something, he said it in one
or two words or wrote it down. Writing, speaking, or
making too many movements draws from these
three sources of energy. So, the best thing is to lie
down on your back and practice deep breathing.
This brings into you the vitality that you need to
survive a hundred-day hunger strike. If you don't eat,
you cannot replenish this energy. If you refrain from
studying, doing research, or worrying, you can
preserve these resources. These three sources of
energy are linked to each other. By practicing one,
you help the other. That is why anapanasati, the
practice of conscious breathing, is so important for
our spiritual life. It helps with all of our sources of
energy. Monks and nuns do not engage in sexual
relationships because they want to devote their
energy to having a breakthrough in meditation. They
learn to channel their sexual energy to strengthen
their spirit energy for the breakthrough. They also
practice deep breathing to increase the spirit energy.
Since they live alone, without a family, they can
devote most of their time to meditation and teaching,
helping the people who provide them with food,
shelter, and so on. They have contact with the population in the village
in order to share the Dharma. Since they do not
have a house or a family to care for, they have the
time and space to do the things they like the most --
walking, sitting, breathing, and helping fellow monks,
nuns, and laypeople -- and to realize what they
want. Monks and nuns don't marry in order to
preserve their time and energy for the practice. "Responsibility" is the key word in the Third Precept.
In a community of practice, if there is no sexual
misconduct, if the community practices this precept
well, there will be stability and peace. This precept
should be practiced by everyone. You respect,
support, and protect each other as Dharma brothers
and sisters. If you don't practice this precept, you
may become irresponsible and create trouble in the
community at large. We have all seen this. If a
teacher cannot refrain from sleeping with one of his
or her students, he or she will destroy everything,
possibly for several generations. We need
mindfulness in order to have that sense of
responsibility. We refrain from sexual misconduct
because we are responsible for the well-being of so
many people. If we are irresponsible, we can destroy
everything. By practicing this precept, we keep the
Sangha beautiful. In sexual relationships, people can get wounded.
Practicing this precept is to prevent ourselves and
others from being wounded. Often we think it is the
woman who receives the wound, but men also get
deeply wounded. We have to be very careful,
especially in short-term commitments. The practice
of the Third Precept is a very strong way of restoring
stability and peace in ourselves, our family, and our
society. We should take the time to discuss
problems relating to the practice of this precept, like
loneliness, advertising, and even the sex industry. The feeling of loneliness is universal in our society.
There is no communication between ourselves and
other people, even in the family, and our feeling of
loneliness pushes us into having sexual relationship
will make us feel less lonely, but it isn't true. When
there is not enough communication with another
person on the level of the heart and spirit, a sexual
relationship will only widen the gap and destroy us
both. Our relationship will be stormy, and we will
make each other suffer. The belief that having a
sexual relationship will help us feel lonely is a kind of
superstition. We should not be fooled by it. In fact,
we will feel more lonely afterwards. The union of the
two bodies can only be positive when there is
understanding and communion on the level of the
heart and the spirit. Even between husband and
wife, if the communion on the level of the heart and
spirit does not exist, the coming together of the two
bodies will only separate you further. When that is
the case, I recommend that you refrain from having
sexual relationships and first try to make a
breakthrough in communication. There are two Vietnamese words, tinh and nghia,
that are difficult to translate into English. They both
mean something like love. In tinh, you find elements
of passion. It can be very deep, absorbing the whole
of your being. Nghia is a kind of continuation of tinh.
With Nghia you feel much calmer, more
understanding, more willing to sacrifice to make the
other person happy, and more faithful. You are not
as passionate as in tinh, but your love is deeper and
more solid. Nghia will keep you and the other person
together for a long time. It is the result of living
together and sharing difficulties and joy over time. You begin with passion, but, living with each other,
you encounter difficulties, and as you learn to deal
with them, your love deepens. Although the passion
diminishes, nghia increases all the time. Nghia is a
deeper love, with more wisdom, more interbeing,
more unity. You understand the other person better.
You and that person become one reality. Nghia is
like a fruit that is already ripe. It does not taste sour
anymore; it is only sweet. In nghia, you feel gratitude for the other person.
"Thank you for having chosen me. Thank you for
being my husband or my wife. There are so many
people in society, why have you chosen me? I am
very thankful." That is the beginning of nghia, the
sense of thankfulness for your having chosen me as
your companion to share the best things in yourself,
as well as your suffering and your happiness. When we live together, we support each other. We
begin to understand each other's feelings and
difficulties. When the other person has shown his or
her understanding of our problems, difficulties, and
deep aspirations, we feel thankful for that
understanding. When you feel understood by
someone, you stop being unhappy. Happiness is,
first of all, feeling understood. "I am grateful because
you have proved that you understand me. While I
was having difficulty and remained awake deep into
the night, you took care of me. You showed me that
my well-being is your own well-being. You did the
impossible in order to bring about my well-being.
You took care of me in a way that no one else in this
world could have. For that I am grateful to you." If the couple lives with each other for a long time,
"until our hair becomes white and our teeth fall out,"
it is because of nghia, and not because of tinh. Tinh
is passionate love. Nghia is the kind of love that has
a lot of understanding and gratitude in it. All love may begin by being passionate, especially
for younger people. But in the process of living
together, they have to learn and practice love, so
that selfishness -- the tendency to possess -- will
diminish, and the elements of understanding and
gratitude will settle in, little by little, until their love
becomes nourishing, protecting, and reassuring.
With nghia, you are very sure that the other person
will take care of you and will love you until your teeth
fall out and your hair becomes white. Nothing will
assure you that the person will be with you for a long
time except nghia. Nghia is built by both of you in
your daily life. To meditate is to look into the nature of our love to
see the kind of elements that are in it. We cannot
call our love just tinh or nghia, possessive love or
altruistic love, because there may be elements of
both in it. It may be ninety percent possessive love,
three percent altruistic love, two percent gratitude,
and so on. Look deeply into the nature of your love
and find out. The happiness of the other person and
your own happiness depend on the nature of your
love. Of course you have love in you, but what is
important is the nature of that love. If you realize that
there is a lot of maitri and karuna in your love, that
will be very reassuring. Nghia will be strong in it. Children, if they observe deeply, will see that what
keeps their parents together is nghia and not passionate love. If their parents take good care of
each other, look after each other with calmness,
tenderness, and care, nghia is the foundation of that
care. That is the kind of love we really need for our
family and for our society. In practicing the Third Precept, we should always
look into the nature of our love in order to see and
not be fooled by our feelings. Sometimes we feel
that we have love for the other person, but maybe
that love is only an attempt to satisfy our own
egoistic needs. Maybe we have not looked deeply
enough to see the needs of the other person,
including the need to be safe, protected. If we have
that kind of breakthrough, we will realize that the
other person needs our protection, and therefore we
cannot look upon him or her just as an object of our
desire. The other person should not be looked upon
as a kind of commercial item. Sex is used in our society as a means for selling
products. We also have the sex industry. If we don't
look at the other person as a human being, with the
capacity of becoming a Buddha, we risk
transgressing this precept. Therefore the practice of
looking deeply into the nature of our love has a lot to
do with the practice of the Third Precept. "I will do
everything in my power to protect children from
sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families
from being broken by sexual misconduct." Adults
who were molested as children continue to suffer
very much. Everything they think, do, and say bears
the mark of that wound. They want to transform
themselves and heal their wound, and the best way
to do this is to observe the Third Precept. Because
of their own experience, they can say, "As a victim of
sexual abuse, I undertake to protect all children and
adults from sexual abuse." Our suffering becomes a
kind of positive energy that will help us become a
bodhisattva. We undertake to protect all children and
other people. And we also undertake to help those
who abuse children sexually, because they are sick
and need our help. The ones who made us suffer
become the object of our love and protection. We
see that until the sick are protected and helped,
children are going to continue to be abused sexually.
We undertake to help these people so that they will
not molest children any longer. At the same time, we
undertake to help children. We take not only the side
of children who are being molested, but the other
side also. These molesters are sick, the products of
an unstable society. They may be an uncle, an aunt,
a grandparent, or a parent. They need to be
observed, helped, and, if possible, healed. When we
are determined to observe this precept, the energy
that is born helps us to transform into a bodhisattva,
and that transformation may heal us even before we
begin to practice. The best way for anyone who was
molested as a child to heal is to take this precept
and undertake to protect children and adults who
may be sick, who may be repeating the kind of
destructive actions that will cause a child to be
wounded for the rest of his or her life. by Thich Nhat Hanh In his book entitled "For a Future to be Possible" |
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