The purpose of receiving the precepts
is to remind us to be alert of our own thoughts and conduct.
When we repent over any and every transgression,
we are keeping the precepts.
— Master Kuang-Ch’in
Receiving & Keeping Precepts
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Receiving and keeping of precepts is a type of behavior therapy suitable for every body. 🙂
Keeping precepts means to refrain from committing the transgressions. To commit the transgressions and then to repent/regret/ ask for forgiveness is not keeping precepts.
If ‘to commit the transgressions and then to repent/regret/ ask for forgiveness is not keeping precepts’, what is keeping the precepts for one after breaking some, after realising they have been broken?
The answer is repentance, which leads back to keeping the precepts – better this time, hopefully.
No one is expected to be perfect once the precepts are committed to, but it also doesn’t mean it is alright to be unmindful, as ‘The purpose of receiving the precepts is to remind us to be alert of our own thoughts and conduct.
True keeping of precepts is knowing when it is open and when it is closed. Precepts are for protection, not to restrict one from correct actions.
For me to repent/regret/ask for forgiveness
is just an aid, a facilitation not the actual thing. Keeping precepts prepares us for the next stage purification of mind.
Repentance for breaking of precepts is part of the actual practice. It is impossible to separate it from keeping of precepts as no one can keep them perfectly straight away. Thus, repentance is part of purification too.
You better make sure your repentance is going to save you from your kamma of committing transgressions.
The point is the need to repent IF one breaks any precept; not that it’s perfectly okay to break any precept.
What do you do if you do break any precept? Do you not repent? You better make sure your NON-repentance is going to save you from your karma of committing transgressions. And yes, as long as not even a Arhat, we DO break precepts, whether we like it or not. The precepts in detail encompass ALL aspects of living.
I did not say don’t repent. My earlier comment reads “to repent is just an aid, a facilitation.”
The wording “When we repent over any and every transgression, we are keeping the precepts” implies breaking precepts and repenting is the same as keeping precepts. Obviously they are not. They are poles apart.
Repentance is PART of the practice too, not just facilitation. As an analogy, rubbing away MANY wrongly sketched lines is just as important as drawing actual lines in the process of creating a masterpiece, here representing perfection of morality.
Why read only half of the quote? The first half says, ‘The purpose of receiving the precepts is to remind us to be alert of our own thoughts and conduct.’ This obviously is keeping the precepts defined.
There is no mention that repentance ALONE is keeping the precepts, but that as an extension, repentance is as important as being ‘alert of our own thoughts and conduct’, as part of the practice of keeping the precepts, after realising mistakes done. Rubbing away wrong lines is part of the path to allow right lines to be drawn.