Owl precepts Q&A part 2 - stealing

Question I think a lot of us have been concerned about exploitation and not wanting to be part of exploitation – and basically it seems that it is not really possible to live without taking advantage of someone somewhere – even if you don’t know about it. But it’s hard to see that as stealing, or if I did I would have to feel guilty about it all the time – and then how would I go about my life or relate to people?

Ngak’chang Rinpoche There is deliberate theft and there is adventitious theft. Deliberate theft seeks to gain through the direct loss of another person or group. Adventitious theft involves no intention to gain or to deprive – it is merely a fact of existence. You could almost call adventitious theft ‘original sin’ – but there is no sense in which guilt or shame is attached to it. There is no need to feel guilt or remorse concerning the adventitious theft of having been born in an affluent country to affluent parents. One simply needs to acknowledge that one cannot avoid being the recipient of stolen goods. As I am British, I cannot disassociate myself from the British Raj and the Amritsar massacre. I cannot disassociate myself from the exploitation of India which was part of what created Britain’s wealth. As I come to America to teach, I cannot disassociate myself from ‘Manifest Destiny’ whose principle sanctioned the massacre of Native Americans and the theft of Indian land. A substantial contingent of my life is based on the history of exploitation involved with these tragic phenomena. My financial and cultural advantages are based on the exploitation and theft connected with these world events. So I cannot say: I am not connected with British Raj policies or with Manifest Destiny. I know I am not directly connected inasmuch as I have not personally committed murder and pillage – but, nonetheless, I have benefited from the social movements who perpetrated such monstrous terrors. It would be parsimonious not to feel gratitude.

Q Parsimonious?

R Mean-minded, ungenerous, ungrateful, ungracious, miserly . . . The idea of theft here is that one is stealing one’s own experience of existence from others through not acknowledging them.

Q The precept in Sutrayana concerns stealing . . .

R Quite so – but in the teaching of the ’ug gDong mKha’ ’gro sNying thig mDo we are concerned with something slightly less obvious. Stealing, in this sense, concerns the theft of opportunity in terms of awareness. The ’ug gDong mKha’ ’gro sNying thig mDo is a Dzogchen teaching. As people who aspire to the practice of Dzogchen, to say that we are not thieves is no great spiritual claim. Naturally we are not thieves – so there is no need to consider the precept unless we are to consider it in terms of duality and non-duality. So, we are not merely concerned with the avoidance of stealing material objects – we are concerned primarily with stealing our own opportunities of non-dual experience, and squandering the proceeds on creating a more comfortable dualistic prison. We can extrapolate that into the avoidance of stealing the experiential time and space of other practitioners.

Q Or stealing their pleasant state of mind by introducing something unpleasant into it.

R Quite so.

Q So, the ’ug gDong mKha’ ’gro sNying thig precepts are not really concerned with the sphere of relative morality?

R No. The ’ug gDong mKha’ ’gro sNying thig precepts concern the sphere of non-dual awareness and the subtle dimension of all interaction. They are the practice of wisdom and compassion as sem’dzins. They begin with practice; and then move out from formal practice into every aspect of one’s interaction with the world. That is their style.

Q I am really glad that we have these. It is really hard for me, and I think for a lot of people, to relate with the moralistic style in which they are sometimes presented. These are really useful for me.

R However you will need to remember that there are people who find that Sutrayana approach valuable, because it is extremely clear – it is black and white. There would be some people who would be completely bewildered by the ’ug gDong mKha’ ’gro sNying thig mDo presentation or the precepts, and for them it would not be helpful at all. It is important to understand that the the ’ug gDong mKha’ ’gro sNying thig mDo is not appropriate for everyone.

Q It seems like it is hard in different ways. This is hard because it requires you to look at things in a more complicated way [interrupted]

R Complicated?

Q I mean . . . to put more responsibility on yourself.

R Certainly.

Q The Sutric approach is hard because, if you really think about it, you start to introduce contradictions; but they are not allowed by the paradigm. It’s supposed to be black and white. So you say: ‘What is the deal with passing meat through three hands? Is it black and white, or not? You want a black and white answer; but it’s not allowed.

R Splendid.