Your Inner Gyroscope

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From a talk at Providence Zen Center on August 6, 2000

First, congratulations to all of you who took precepts today. And second, congratulations to all the rest of us who reaffirmed our commitment to these precepts once again during this ceremony.

These precepts provide us with something of a roadmap, leading to an ethical, moral life. In our world today, following that kind of life -- while declining to resort to some rigid fundamentalism or to hedonism -- can be tricky. One bit of advice on how to meet that challenge was offered by the Sixth Patriarch when giving instruction to a monk. He said, simply, "Don't make good and bad."

"Don't make good and bad," of course, does not mean there is no good and bad.