The Three
In Buddhist culture, there are three main mental poisons. In some nomenclatures they are referred to as anger, greed, and folly, while in others, the words ignorance, aversion, and attachment are employed.
Ignorance is considered to be the source of the other two. At its essence, it is identification to a self that exists independently of everything else. From this belief stems the dualistic view of I and not I. This discrimination gives rise to attachment and aversion, as phenomena are perceived as threatening or comforting, desirable or unpleasant.
Buddhist ethics are thus established on the underlying idea that there is no such thing as a self that is apart from everything else. On this ground, it is easy to realize how actions which are hurtful to others are in fact self-injurious, and hence fundamentally erroneous.
The Five
The basic Buddhist code of ethics comprises five precepts that laypeople undertake to uphold. These behavioural guidelines consist in commitments to refrain from harming living beings, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and intoxication. They are traditionally formulated as training rules, as follows :
[source : F ive Precepts entry in Wikipedia ]
Some lineages have different lists which vary in number and phrasing. There are also more elaborate lists for novice monks and nuns, and for laypersons who wish to practice a more ascetic lifestyle.
The Dust Cloud
For my own part, taking the five precepts has brought about a definite improvement in the quality of my experiences. Whereas, prior to that decision, disarray had more or less been a constant companion in some form or another, from that moment on many things gradually became much clearer, allowing me to make sense of circumstances that used to bewilder me, and to eventually escape them. That revealing education inspired me the analogy presented below. In this metaphor, the consequences of not keeping the precepts are likened to a cloud of dust surrounding an individual who cannot elude it, as their every attempt only sustains the hazy hindrance :
« Know, O foremost children of Buddhas, most deserving of beings, that it is like the condition of one who finds themselves in the middle of a dense cloud of dust, not being able to see past a few paces, trying to go this way or that way, but never leaving the dust cloud, or trying to keep walking in one direction until they escape the dust cloud, or trying to outrun the dust cloud, or trying to blow the dust cloud away with their breath, or trying to wave their hands in the hopes of clearing the dust away, or trying to wave a piece of cloth in the hopes of clearing the dust away, or trying to jump over the dust cloud, or trying to crawl under the dust cloud, or trying to dig a tunnel under the dust cloud, or trying to throw more dust at the cloud so as to scare it away.
So it is, O most faithful ones, with one who is not upholding the precepts, trying all sorts of things to gain clarity, oblivious to the fact that their own activity creates the conditions depriving them of clarity, just like the one who finds themselves in the middle of the dense cloud of dust doesn't realize that their many attempts at eluding it only raise more dust up in the air.
And so it is, O most venerable of beings, that upholding the precepts is like sitting still and waiting for the dust to settle naturally, so that clarity can emerge, and so that one can realize what had been sustaining the cloud all along. »
Decoherence
From my own experiments, it appears that breaking the precepts is also hamartia. It seems important to stress that I can't distinguish whether the error is the result of breaking the precepts themselves or rather of breaking my vow to uphold them. Nevertheless, for me, violating them gives rise to the conditions that lead to metanoia.
Via recent one-hundred-and-forty-character-long interactions with a remote friend, it has come to my attention that some practitioners consider that transgressions are function of amount. More accurately, the friend in question claimed that smoking euphoriants merely once in a while wasn't against the precepts, and that in fact represented his saving grace as it afforded him temporary evasion from frequently hellish circumstances wherein he was the victim of recurrent beatings.
My own experiences of breaking the five precepts and other Buddhist rules of conduct, such as refraining from eating meat, indicate that it is instead a matter of intention and not of number. In this respect, it looks to me as if the act of transgressing corresponds to events known as decoherences in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Within the context of that framework, essentially, all the possible histories and futures of a process already exist, and it is through decoherence that only one of these combinations remains, to be inspected by the local observer. The act of transgressing thus equates to the selection of a particular continuum, and indeed translates to being metaphorically reborn therein. Insofar as I can remember, it was actually the case that even the first hint of a sip of fermented drink was enough to catapult me into a hamartian reality, which I propose as adjective to qualify a flawed spacetime wherein the requirements for metanoia hover about, ready to intervene.
Further communications with my distant friend have tended to confirm my position, albeit non-equivocally, that his habit was effectively provoking the terrifying situation.
For those who at this juncture might wonder which substances are covered by the fifth precept, a variant phrasing refers to « intoxicants that cloud the mind and cause carelessness, » implying that its scope is not restricted to beverages, as the traditional formulation suggests, but includes any kind of substance that induces the aforementioned states. Moreover, some commentators have asserted that it also denotes being impassioned by an occurrence or an idea to the degree of being rendered reckless.
The Seven
In the following section, I will offer a brief overview of sin in Christian culture, again as a means of providing examples to help the interested reader debug some of their scripts they suspect might be erroneous.
