By Adéle Hulse

I don’t really have time to be in retreat (heard that before?), so my latest Dharma hobby is taking precepts, which is like retreat on the run and only for 24 hours. No killing, stealing, lying, sex, intoxicants, sitting on high beds (which I translate as self-promotion), no jewelry, perfume (which I translate as physical vanity, a gender-free term), no music and one vegetarian meal at midday. I figure if I can’t try such conduct for one day then I’m worried.

I saw an old friend a while back and was amazed – he looked 10 years younger and brighter. “What did you do to yourself!” I demanded tactfully. “One of our cats died and I dedicated a month’s precepts for it. It was the least I could do.” Wow! I thought that was so fantastic. “For a cat?” some people said, shaking their heads.

So here I am writing Lama Yeshe’s biography as clearly as I can (progress report next ish) and there’s really no time to put four hours into sitting still with my eyes shut, so last month I took the eight Mahayana precepts.

Gosh it was fun, but probably best to do in winter when there are less social opportunities. I found I could only get as far as 11 days before I had to take a day off – which usually meant I had social responsibilities to dine that night. Next morning I was on again. I got another run of 11 days and then it was just twos and threes with break days.

Needless to say I made the most of the break days, eating, drinking and singing advertising jingles (the base music of the Western mind) out loud.

The longer the run of days on precepts, that wonderful sensation arises of feeling the skin on your face climbing back up to your eyes and your heels standing firm on the ground. And really, if it wasn’t more fun than champagne why on earth would you bother?

I use a cut-down model of the morning ritual: alarm goes before dawn, hop out of bed thinking, “What’s bodhicitta?”, pee, clean teeth, wash face, light stick of best incense, three prostrations, kneel down, say ordination prayers, three prostrations, back into bed, put alarm on for reasonable hour, turn out light and drift into an hour of comfortable sleep-flecked consideration. Then up as normal and off you go. Brrm brrm!

Next morning you do the same thing. I never read anywhere you had to stay awake, stay out of bed, sit cross-legged, say along formularized prayer. Sleep-flecked consideration while snuggled in a warm bed in a silent house combing the soul for kindness can be a very fine thing.

There is a lovely story of a girl at Kopan: first morning of precepts in a November course, everyone turns up scrubbed and plain and in she skips dripping in perfume, jewelry and folderols. The stoic students pursed their Protestant lips, Lama Yeshe came in, took one look and grasped her in a hug. Whatever she was doing, it wasn’t physical vanity. We can be intelligent about dressing for work etc., we don’t have to be isolationists.

I gardened on break days too, for the killing thing. I know I can rationalize any behavior but I wanted to keep the on-days special, separate. Stealing, sex, food, music, etc. presented no particular problems, but what came out of my mouth was something else. Of course I don’t tell lies as such, I’m not a criminal, but somehow the precept mirrored my speech back to me and I counted exaggerations and diffusions like so many poppy seeds. I’m “a mouth,” it’s my profession, so all the more reason to keep it clean.

Not that we should be pedants. Remember that Robert Heinlein book, Stranger in a Strange Land we all read in the ’70s (arrogance of age: thinking everyone is the same as you) – they had “witnesses” who only spoke the truth, so you say to the girl what color is that house and she says red on this side. On a daily basis, boring, but surely the best thing to do with a runaway mouth is to start listening to it.

As my month went on and “real life” rushed in like the sea into a broken dike, it was so clear that the seriously training yogi should get right out of town, go to Shiné Land. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of fun to be had taking precepts city-style.

Afterwards I went to lunch with an old friend. “I’ve been so gooooood! How do I look?” “Huh? You look the same.”