What Does It Mean to Learn the Precepts?

For example, when a young child learns to walk, before being able to walk normally without hindrance, they are in the stage of learning to walk. While learning to walk, they often stumble and stagger, holding onto things with their hands and leaning on supports with their bodies, inevitably falling down from time to time and injuring their hands and feet. Only when their legs 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, for even adults sometimes stumble carelessly. Likewise, when a young child learns to speak, babbling away, first one word, then two, then forming sentences, and finally being able to freely express the intentions of their own mind without any obstruction—at that point the learning of speech is complete.

Bodhisattvas learning the precepts are also like this: afflictive habitual tendencies cling to the mind, and one is not aware of them oneself. 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 to clarify their principles, yet from time to time one violates them—repenting as soon as one discovers the violation, correcting after repenting, then offending again after correcting, laboring painstakingly, finding the minor precepts hard to keep, and even violating the major precepts. Only when afflictions are eradicated—at the third fruit and the fourth fruit—is one free and unrestrained, at ease according to conditions, with the mind bearing no burden, yet never overstepping the bounds. Not violating the major precepts and being able to keep the minor precepts, though one still inevitably has occasional lapses—minor precepts may have breaches, but major precepts are not violated—this is called upholding the precepts, corresponding to the first bhūmi through the eighth bhūmi. After the eighth bhūmi, habitual tendencies are completely eradicated, and everything proceeds naturally and spontaneously; with regard to all precepts, there is neither upholding nor violating.

Those who violate the ten major precepts of the monastic bodhisattva, or the six major precepts of the lay bodhisattva, cannot be called one who upholds the precepts, but only one who is learning the precepts. If the minor precepts are hard to keep and one frequently violates them, one cannot be called one who upholds the precepts, but only one who is learning the precepts. Learning the precepts is not easy—more difficult than an infant learning to speak and to walk—yet this is a stage that bodhisattvas must inevitably pass through in their growth. Beyond this stage, one is called a great bodhisattva, a child of the Tathāgata, with the mind liberated, free and unobstructed, galloping through the three realms, with principle and phenomena perfectly fused.