What Is Called Learning the Precepts

For example, when a young child learns to walk, before being able to walk normally without hindrance, they remain in the stage of learning to walk. While learning to walk, they often stumble and stagger, hands grasping at things for support, body leaning on objects, inevitably falling down at times and injuring their hands and feet. Only when their legs and feet become adept, and they can stride freely in all directions—east, west, south, and north—is the learning complete, and they are called one who walks independently. Yet they may still occasionally trip and fall; even adults sometimes stumble through carelessness. Likewise, a young child learning to speak babbles and coos, first one word, then two, then forming sentences, until finally being able to freely express the intentions of their own mind without obstruction—at that point, learning to speak is complete.

Bodhisattvas learning the precepts are also like this. Afflictive habits cling to the mind, and one is not consciously aware of them. Having newly received the precepts, one does not understand their meaning and does not know how to uphold them; month after month one recites the precepts in order to clarify their principles, yet from time to time one violates them—repenting as soon as a violation is discovered, correcting upon repentance, then transgressing again after correction—laboring painstakingly and in disarray, unable to keep the minor precepts, and even violating the major ones. Only when afflictions are eliminated—at the third or fourth fruit—does one become free and unrestrained, at ease according to conditions, with the mind bearing no burden, yet never overstepping the bounds. The major precepts are not violated, and the minor precepts can be kept, yet one still inevitably has occasional lapses: the minor precepts have flaws, but the major precepts are not violated. This is called upholding the precepts, corresponding to the first through the eighth bhūmi. After the eighth bhūmi, habitual tendencies are completely severed, and everything proceeds spontaneously and naturally; with regard to all precepts, there is neither upholding nor violating.

Those who violate the ten major precepts of the monastic bodhisattva precepts, or the six major precepts of the lay bodhisattva precepts, cannot be said to be upholding the precepts—they can only be said to be learning the precepts. If the minor precepts are difficult to keep and are frequently violated, this too cannot be called upholding the precepts, only learning the precepts. Learning the precepts is not easy—harder than an infant learning to speak or to walk—yet this is a stage that bodhisattvas must inevitably pass through in their growth. Beyond this stage, they are called great bodhisattvas, children of the Tathāgata, their minds liberated, free and unobstructed, galloping through the three realms, with principle and phenomena perfectly harmonized.