Buddhists keep 8 Precepts for full moon

Dhr. Seven, Ven. Aloka, Wisdom Quarterly: EIGHT PRECEPT OBSERVANCE + COMMENTS

The Buddha: The way laypeople practice once a week, ascetics should practice all the time.

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It began as a kind of sabbath or seventh-observance. With each monthly (moonthly) lunar phase, the Buddha enjoined monastic and lay practitioners to gather, meditate, hear the Dharma, and keep the precepts.

Lunar Observance

Siddhartha striving under the bodhi tree

These are called uposatha or lunar observance days, the full moon being the most important of the four. Each week has 7 days, each month 4 four weeks, (7 x 4 = 28), 2 days, with 364 days a year. The arithmetic is easy: 13 moons or months (13 x 28 = 364). Add one New Year's Day for resetting and renewal: 364 + 1 = 365).

It was the system some sky-devas or impersonal nature set up, which we've gotten so far from. The Buddha taught that there is much benefit in observing this practice. Drop in at a Buddhist temple, particularly of the ancient Theravada school, and ask how they observe it. Or keep THE EIGHT PRECEPTS on your own:

Meditate. (Elena Kulikova)

1. I undertake the training to abstain from taking the lives of living beings (or encouraging anyone else to kill).
2. I undertake the training to abstain from taking what is not given (or causing anyone else to steal).
3. I undertake the training to abstain from taking sexual liberties (or inducing anyone else to cheat).
4. I undertake the training to abstain from taking the truth in vain (or getting anyone else to falsely speak).
5. I undertake the training to abstain from taking intoxicants that occasion heedlessness (or suggesting anyone else be negligent).
6. I undertake the training to abstain from taking food at the wrong time (or having anyone else do so).
7. I undertake the training to abstain from taking to dancing or singing or playing music, cosmetic beautification, or base entertainments (or recommending that anyone else do so).
8. I undertake the training to abstain from taking to high and luxurious seats or beds (or making anyone else do so).

Commentary

This will be the last lunar observance in Pasadena. The temple moves to Covina on 1/1/20.

I won't look; I won't be distracted.

These are different from the ordinary Five Precepts Buddhists undertake to keep all the rest of the time in these ways:

1. As in the Five Precepts, one avoids killing ANY kind of living being.
2. One does not steal or remove anything on this day, as it might be an offense and one is practicing letting go by all of these eight.
3. Ordinarily one only avoids "sexual misconduct" (i.e., sex with 10 types of people who are "off-limits," or using coercion, or harming anyone by our sexual or erotic activity/sensuality (abuse of the senses, such as the sense of taste through gluttony, etc.) as by cheating or ruining others' relationships.
4. This actually does not refer merely to lying but to all four types of "wrong speech" -- useless (idle or frivolous babble, "animal talk"), divisive, perjured, or harsh speech.
5. This specifies alcohol but one understands it to refer to any intoxicant that "occasions heedlessness," that is, whether pharmaceutical or natural, it causes one to be negligent or lose control and violate the other precepts.
6. The "correct" time to eat for purposes of keeping this precept is between first light, when first able to distinguish the lines of the palm, and noon.
7. These are unnecessary or vain distractions that may inhibit lucid mindfulness, clear comprehension, and meditation.
8. These are luxurious indulgences, which often give rise to sexual feelings, laziness, or impulsive consumption when we are striving for a free, unaddicted, undistracted/concentrated, ascetic attentiveness to simplicity. While these may not be harmful in and of themselves, for this 24 hour period, they undermine our efforts and strengthen dissolute (energy-wasting) habits.