The following reflection originally appeared in the newsletter I sent out on June 11th, 2025.
Feel free to read just the bold words and skip the rest.
Introduction
If you’ve spent any time around Buddhists or meditation groups, you’ll know that they go on and on about mindfulness, aka present moment awareness.
Obviously, mindfulness is really important in meditation practice, but it’s also absolutely central to the Buddhist training in ethics & virtue.
To be clear, ethical training is not an inferior practice or simply a “stepping stone” to meditation. It’s an essential part of the Buddhist path, and can lead to incredible amounts of transformation and well-being
Today we’ll be diving into ethics, particularly emphasizing how it can be practiced as a mindfulness training!
Sīla In Brief
Sīla is the word usually translated as virtue, morality, ethics, or ethical conduct. Is it considered a “training,” as one can train their capacity for virtue similar to how one might train their body in a gym.
The sīla training includes a set of perspectives and practices that help us live with greater harmony, as much in our own being as with other humans, other living beings, and even the planet itself. In this way, sīla is really about relationship.
As all of Buddhist practices boil down to suffering and the end of suffering, the basic question of sīla is, “which actions lead to suffering, and which to well-being, for myself and others?”
If you keep this inquiry on your mind, maintain and refresh a deep intention to be a force of good in the world, and nurture a steady mindfulness that pays attention to cause and effect, you really know everything you need to know.
But as this is hard to do, the newsletter continues!
The Scope of Sīla
Internally, the training in sīla encompasses our physical, mental, and emotional health. It teaches us to swap self-criticism for self-kindness. It gets us to transform emotional imbalances and find more joy, awe, gratitude, and love in our lives. It may include going to therapy or being rejuvenated by nature.
Externally, sīla includes things like learning how to be an empathetic and compassionate communicator. It involves service, giving, and living simply. It points us our relationship with media and consumption. It may involve things like activism or even political engagement.
Of course, as I’ll discuss further below, there are more traditional, formal Buddhist trainings, but it’s important to note that sīla includes anything that has to do with transforming ourselves away from “that which is suffering” towards “that which is well-being.”
The Root Principle of Sīla
The training in ethical conduct is rooted in the principle of kamma [aka karma], which is a law of reality, like gravity, that says every single action we take has a consequence. I poetically define it as what you do matters.
Specifically, the Buddha notes how actions rooted in unwholesome motives like greed, aversion, and delusion, lead to suffering for ourselves and others. Alternatively, actions rooted in wholesome motives, like wisdom, love and compassion, lead to well-being for ourselves and others. And, importantly, which of the directions we go matters.
More organically put, the sīla training is rooted in paying close attention to our motivations, the actions that spring from them, and the consequences of those actions.
We do this not with a bunch of self-criticism and “shoulds,” but with a clear-seeing awareness. It’s like this. Every round of data we collect further informs our motivations and actions going forward.
It’s said that our mind is like a garden. Every action plants a seed in the garden. The wholesome actions are like beautiful flower seeds. The unwholesome actions are like spiky thistle seeds. If you spend most your time planting beautiful seeds, the garden of your mind and life will become easeful and wonderful. But if you spend your time planting painful seeds, the garden of your mind and life will be difficult.
Imagine spending ten minutes a day sitting and contemplating things you loved about the people you know. How might that have a “downstream” effect on your day/life? Maybe you’d be in a better mood. Maybe you’d be more inclined to give spontaneous compliments. Maybe you’d be a little kinder and more forgiving.
Conversely, imagine spending ten minutes a day, sitting and contemplating things you hated about the people you know. Consider the differing downstream impact.
Basically, how you relate to this moment informs how you relate to future moments.
One really interesting kammic exploration is internet usage.
For example, sometimes I use the internet to get my work done or attend to important life tasks. Other times I use it as a sort of escape from restlessness, boredom or feeling icky — I use it to “relax.”
With the first motive, I generally end up feeling harmonized in myself and in my life, as I’ve attended to what I genuinely felt to be important.
With the second motive, even when I manage to relax, the data I’ve collected is that I don’t feel quite as rejuvenated as when I go for a walk or meditate. Likewise, there’s also some underlying feeling that has me prisoner, as I’m caught in trying to avoid it by zoning out into a screen.
The more I see these two scenarios play out, I naturally incline towards forms of relaxation that lift me up more fully. With the internet specifically, I naturally steer my life to using it primarily when it is genuinely beneficial, and putting it down when it isn’t.
Beyond the in-the-moment exploration, when we zoom out, we again see that if we spend 100 evenings on social media vs 100 evenings meditating and walking, they lead to different impulses & inclinations on day 101 or even 1,001.
This is how kamma works; basically, when you see how everything is connected, using mindfulness to deeply notice the whole chain of motive, action, and impact — over and over and over — a great motivation kicks in to tend to your downstream self.
If you hear all of this and become self-critical about all your unskillful habits, can you recognize that’s just another seed being planted? Are you going to water that seed, so that the habit of self-criticism, shame, and feeling bad about yourself spills into the future? Or can you recognize, “self-criticism is here,” relax your muscles, relax your mind, breathe, and make a choice to not water that seed, to say, “no thank you shame.”
We could discuss numerous other examples, but it’s all the same.
If you understand how kamma works, you can begin to pay close attention to your motives, actions, and impacts. Seeing this clearly can transform your life & the world away from suffering and towards well-being, bit by bit by bit.
Training Sīla
The primary way my teacher taught the training of sīla was with the process I described above — being mindful of cause & effect, and letting our observations shape our future actions. This is incredibly powerful and can take you very far if you’re diligent with it.
However, perhaps the most traditional way to train with sīla is through the Five Precepts, sometimes called “The Five Mindfulness Trainings.”
Usually, The Precepts are presented as five actions to abstain from, but in reality, they represent a spectrum from abstaining from unwholesome actions on one side, and engaging in wholesome actions on the other. Here is a version below (and a PDF):
- I undertake the training to abstain from killing living beings.
I will purify the mind through acts of goodwill, compassion, and joy. - I undertake the training to abstain from taking that which is not given.
I will purify the mind through acts of generosity and giving. - I undertake the training to abstain from sexual misconduct.
I will purify the mind by engaging wisely with the senses and by protecting the vulnerable. - I undertake the training to abstain from false speech.
I will purify the mind by practicing deep listening and loving speech. - I undertake the training to abstain from intoxicants that lead to heedlessness.
I will support an attentive, clear, and caring mind by taking in healthy nutriment.
I relate to these five trainings less as dogmatic rules, and more as guidelines or trainings. These are the learnings of many wise people who have come before us. If we do these things, well-being is likely to follow, for ourselves and others. The Buddha considered these five precepts to be five of the most incredible gifts we can give to others, as they result in a deep relational and societal harmony.
Anyhow, to practice with these, I recommend taking a period of time, such as a week, a month, or a year, where you simply read this list every morning. This in and of itself will mysteriously weave its way into your values and intentions, which trigger wholesome kammic cycles.
Beyond that, I recommend spending at least a week at a time focusing on an individual percept & turning it into a mindfulness practice. For example, notice when you follow it and when you don’t. Notice what motives were operating. Notice the impact. Notice how when you follow the precept, well-being seems to follow, and when you don’t, suffering seems to follow. Contemplate some ways you can engage in the positive side of the precept — challenge yourself to at least one of them each day. Journaling can be a great aid for this process.
If in the process, you see your unskillful actions and react with despair, frustration, and self-criticism, notice this too as something that has been conditioned and can be re-conditioned. You can change the kammic cycle.
If you do all of this, actively engaging with the training, you’ll start to see how it creates genuine wisdom, as opposed to a rule you blindly follow.
If you’re interested in taking on this five week experiment — one week, one precept — I’d suggest reading this fairly traditional guide to the precepts from Gil Fronsdal, and this more all-encompassing approach from Thich Nhat Hanh, which beautifully discusses both the “abstaining-from” and “engaging-in” side of the precepts. Visit here for an ultra condensed one-page summary of Thich Nhat Hanh’s approach.
Other Sīla Trainings
The Five Precepts are just the tip of the iceberg of formal Buddhist trainings in sīla.
Another foundational one is the practice of giving [aka dāna], which does not just mean giving money and physical items, but our time, energy, attention, service, or our embodied spiritual practice that helps bring harmony into the world.
An incredibly powerful training that I think everyone should focus on for at least a year of their life is the Brahma Viharas — intentionally cultivating the qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity.
One could also add in the training of gratitude, the paramis, or right livelihood.
Likewise, if we take this out of formal Buddhist trainings and embrace the underlying principle, we’ll find quite a bit of transformation can come through harmonizing our physical health, psycho-emotional healing, and work on our relationship skills. All of these contribute to lessening suffering and increasing well-being in ourselves and the world.
As it’s not possible to do all of this at once, it’s helpful to think of spiritual practice as a lifetime undertaking.
In turn, for different chapters, we work with different trainings — sometimes focusing on the above things for a time, like a month or year, and then when it seems we’ve really internalized something, taking on another training for a time. Maybe also the meditative practices are more the focus for a chapter or three. There’s no hurry. Patience is key!
Conclusion
One could relate to Buddhist Ethics as a set of rules, like the 10 commandments.
However, I think a more powerful approach is to relate to ethics as being composed of mindfulness trainings. We start from the ground of seeing that what we do matters, and setting a clear intention to use our life to move away from suffering and towards well-being. From there, we get interested in observing and learning about our kammic cycles— motive, action, and impact. If we are diligent with looking at this, harmonious and ethical action tends to follow.
However, to reveal our blind spots and help expedite the process, the Buddha suggested taking on formal trainings, like the precepts, giving, and things like the Brahma Viharas.
In my experience, being mindful of kamma and taking on these formal trainings synergize very well to create a life of harmony & ethical sensibility.
As a closing contemplation, what actions do you engage in that tend to create stress, tension or suffering for yourself and others? Seeing this, how could you steer the ship of your life towards more well-being?
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