#non-harm

Jon Kabat-Zinn. Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life 

‘We can see that implicit in all the five precepts is the age old Indian principle of ahimsa: not harming - either others or oneself. We can safely extend this to the environment, the world as a whole and even to outer space. Nothing in fact falls outside the sphere of our moral responsibility. For instance, according to the Huayen school of Buddhist philosophy, which developed in medieval China, our every action affects the whole of the Universe.

The grave environmental problems we now face on Planet Earth stem directly from our ignorance of this fact. Yet, perplexingly, even as we begin to see what we are doing and what suffering it will bring down on both ourselves and our descendants, we find it very difficult to change our ways. Everyone is aware that it would be a good thing if there were fewer cars, but no one wants to give up their own!’

‘Practice can be stated very simply. It is moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others. That seems so simple - except when we substitute for real practice some idea that we should be different or better than we are, or that our lives should be different from the way they are. When we substitute our ideas about what should be (such notions as “I should not be angry or confused or unwilling”) for our life as it truly is, then we’re off base and our practice is barren.’