In Buddhism, Zen, and our meaning here, what does "generate only thoughts with the right escort" and "actions that shoulder only wholesome intent" actually mean? The question comes up over-and-over and the upcoming article in folder #7 What The Buddha Said offers insights into the meaning of both, but before then an earlier clarification is being offered for you by reading the following:
Right View
The Commentary to the Discourse of Right View
Criteria for Judging the Unwholesomeness of Actions in the Texts of Theravada Buddhism
Zen master Dogen begins his chapter "Shoakumakusa" in the Shobogenzo by quoting a familiar passage which occurs in
several places throughout the Buddhist scriptures, but especially so the DHAMMAPADA XIV: Awakened; verse 183 (the verse is a summary from a talk called the Ovada Patimokkha, which the Buddha is said to have delivered to
an assembly of 1,250 arahants in the first year after his Awakening. Verse 183 is traditionally viewed as expressing the heart
of the Buddha's teachings)
:
The Buddha said:
Do not commit evil;
Do good devotedly;
Purify your mind.
This is the precept of all Buddhas.
Having stated his text, Dogen then isolates the
first part of it "Do not commit evil" and begins to expound on
its meaning at some length. He does the same, subsequently,
for each section of the verse, but here we are only going
to consider his treatment of this first line. Since this,
however, will produce the essence of his view about the
questions we have in mind, we can be satisfied.
Every Buddha, it seems, has left us this injunction against
evil. On the face of it, it seems both a trivial and
imprecise command and suggests the image of the faithful
Buddhist as a sort of simpleminded Oriental Puritan
preoccupied
with the negative function of avoiding whatever orthodoxy
disapproves. Dogen, however, sees this injunction in quite a
different way. It is important not because it is a piece of
good, if pedestrian, advice but because it is pregnant with
ontological illumination. To put the matter briefly, "Commit
no evil" is the self-expression of the Unborn, and the
practice of it is the Unborn itself in action. He says, "This
'Do not commit evil' is not something contrived by any mere
man. It is the Bodhi (the Supreme Enlightenment) turned into
words.... It is the (very) speaking of Enlightenment."
The significance of this is that the Enlightenment spoken
of here cannot be separated from Ultimate Reality itself. It
is an important Mahayana understanding that the Absolute
and the knowing of the Absolute are identical--the knowing
and the being are one. Consequently, to say that "Do not
commit evil" is the very speech of Bodhi means that it is the
self-expression of the Absolute. Having established this,
Dogen goes on: "Being moved by the Supreme Enlightenment one
learns to aspire to commit no evil, to put this injunction
into practice, and as one does so the practice-power emerges
which covers all the earth, all words, all time,
and all existences without remainder."
To understand this important sentence it is essential to
realize that for Dogen the "practice-power," that is, the
power by which a man performs what is good and attains
Enlightened understanding is not simply the power of the
individual ego, the sort of thing a man boasts of as his
"willpower." It is, rather, the Bodhi-power or Dharma-power,
the Absolute itself conceived as power.
While our last quotation,therefore, is rather unclear, it
seems to mean that the practice-power which is manifested as
the Buddhist applies himself to avoiding evil (the power not
to do evil) and the injunction not to do evil are united. "Do
not commit evil" is, in a sense, the verbal self-expression
of the Absolute and its fuifillment is the active
self-expression of the same Absolute.
The above section has been excerpted, edited, and modified for our purposed here from:
ZEN AND ETHICS: Dogen's Synthesis
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