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Dharmette: The Five Precepts 1of5 Refrain from Harm; Guided Meditation: Cultivating Gentleness - Maria Straatmann

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 08, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Cultivating Gentleness

Good morning. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time of day it is for you. Welcome to today’s sit and talk. My name is Maria, and I'll be with you this week, and particularly this morning.

I invite you to settle in. Find a place of comfort and ease—a place where you can just be here. Allow yourself to just be here. Find a posture, whether sitting, lying down, or standing, that is most comfortable for you and allows you to be present in this room: awake, alert, and at ease.

If it's easy for you, close your eyes. Take a deep breath and let it slowly out. As you breathe out, let that breath anchor you to all that is around you. Let it be a way of easing yourself into this time. Take another breath and slowly let it out. Allow the process of breathing to simply be the process of air moving in and out of your body. Allow the body to simply be here with the process of being alive.

Notice your body slowly settling, coming to rest in its position. Whatever that position is, you are resting, but also very much here. Feel yourself connected to the earth, to the surface you are on. Know that you are on this surface. Take note of your body on this surface: your toes, your feet, your knees, your hips, your bottom, your waist, and your shoulders. Let the shoulders sink down. Feel your elbows and your hands. Let your head rock slightly on the neck until it hangs suspended from the center of the top of your head. Soothe your forehead, the tops of your cheekbones, and the edge of your jaw. Just relax and notice your breathing again.

Allow this body to be here, unguarded by anything but the breath. Just the safety of breathing in and out. There is no need for any other thoughts. Just, "Here I am with my breath." This body and the breath, for now. Just this.

Are you still with your body? Are you still in the room? Still here in this space? If not, gently—oh, so gently—come back to here. It’s in this moment that we are most awake. No jarring. Just here. Just like this. Just as we are.

If there are troubles, we can just let them be there and just breathe. It’s okay for now. We’re safe right here because, right now, we’re just sitting, just standing, just lying, or just walking. Just this.

Has the breath become more shallow? Has it become more deep? Stay with the breath. Stay in the room. As the mind wanders, gently bring it back. Just for now, just be here. Know the "being here" part. Just be here.

And how is the breath now? Be with your breath like a loving parent with a child who cares what's happening. How are you breathing? Is the breath soft? Nurture your being here. Be gentle with yourself.

In the last few minutes of our sit this morning, bring to mind what it’s like to simply be here. No other worries, no other concerns. And if it seems difficult to just be here, be gentle with that. "Oh, it seems difficult to just be here. I'd like to be okay with just being here. This seems difficult."

Oh, I can breathe here, though. I can just breathe. There are no other expectations. The body knows how to breathe. No expectations. None. Just be. Know that you’re being. Be aware of just being. No judgments, no worries. Just be. Just here, just for these few minutes. Just now. Just for now.

Dharmette: The Five Precepts 1of5 Refrain from Harm

Hello again. I apologize for the phone going off—it is sort of the nature of things as they are. At least the internet stayed on, which was not a given when I began this morning. Thank you to the women who are guiding us on the recording and putting this out on YouTube, because my internet wasn't working when I got up this morning. It’s the nature of things, isn't it? We show up, and this is what happens. Just this, whatever this is. This is what's happening right here, right now.

This morning and this week, I would like to talk about the Five Precepts¹. Now, Diana [Clark] last week gave everybody a break from lists. This week, I’m going to be "listing" all over the place. But the truth is, all of the things she talked about—the leaning of the heart—are what matter. The lists are just ways for us to consider how we are in the world. How do we behave? How do we live? How do we move away from suffering? They are all just ways of thinking about it.

That is the spirit in which we’re going to examine the precepts. Often, the precepts are taken for granted or seen as a boring, lifeless topic. I’d like to put a little life in them. When we talk about suffering and the end of suffering—which is what Buddhism is all about—the way to that end is found in the Eightfold Path². The Eightfold Path breaks down into three sections: the Wisdom section (Wise View, Wise Intention); the Ethical Conduct section (Wise Speech, Wise Action, Wise Livelihood); and the Mental Discipline section (Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness, and Wise Samadhi³).

It is that section about ethical conduct—how we are in the world in relationship to one another—that we address through the precepts. It is a major part of how we bring an end to suffering for ourselves and others. The precepts can be a form of concentration or ritual, but primarily they are principles of conduct. What they are not is a list of commandments. They aren't cut and dried, telling you "this is right" and "that is wrong." Instead, they are about how we navigate the choices we make. They are about the mindset we bring to the world.

We mostly encounter the precepts at the beginning of ceremonies or retreats to set the tone. My husband and I even used them in our wedding ceremony. They are the conditions under which we want to conduct our lives. The Five Precepts cover the five basic ways we engage with the world, and they all have to do with non-harming—non-harming of self and others.

1. I undertake the precept to refrain from taking the life of any living being.
2. I undertake the precept to refrain from taking that which is not freely given.
3. I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual misconduct.
4. I undertake the precept to refrain from false and harmful speech.
5. I undertake the precept to refrain from consuming intoxicants and drugs that lead to carelessness.

These principles are not unique to Buddhism; all societies have principles that define their "tribe." One of the primary human characteristics that make us human is that we don't kill each other. Of course, as humans, we do kill each other, but to do so, we have to make "enemies" of those people. We have to justify it by making them "other." There is a very strong "we/they" component to the ability to kill.

I’m going to read you a short story by Naomi Shihab Nye⁴ called "Someone I Love."

Someone I love so much cut down my primrose patch. It looked like an oval of overgrown weeds to him in the front yard near the black mailbox on the post. He did not know that for weeks I’ve been carefully tending and watering it as a few primroses floated their pink heads above the green mass, unfurled their delicate bonnets. With dozens of buds waiting to shine, we were on the brink, everything popping open. Despite the headlines, all sweet flower beings from under the ground remembering what they were supposed to do.

He mowed it down with the old push lawn mower. I was out of town. He didn’t ask his father, who knew how precious it was to me. His father was in the back while it was happening and didn’t see. There wasn't a second thought. Why would we have such a tall patch in the yard? What does my mother do when she comes out here with the old shovel and bucket and the mysterious sacks of rose food and mulch, poking around in the earth, clippers in her pocket, bending to the wild tangle of jasmine on the fence, the Dutchman's pipe, the happy oregano, the funny cacti crowding together in complicated profusion like a family, the miniature chilies? What did she do? Why is this here?

He just cut it down. It wasn't easy. He must have pushed really hard to get it to go. When I stood outside in my nighty the next dreamy sweet morning at dawn after returning home on the midnight plane—watering my bluebonnets, snapdragons, butterfly bush, lantana⁵, wanting to feel tied to earth again as I always do when I get home, rooted in soil and stone and old bricks⁶ and bamboo and trees, a hundred years of memory in their trunks and bushes we didn't plant and the healthy Esperanza⁷ never losing her hope and the banana palms just poking out their fine and gracious greenery—when I finally saw what was gone... what wasn't there?

Impossible. I was so shocked I let the hose run all over my bare feet. The cold stun of fury filled me, sorrow rising and pouring into questions. Who could do this? Why? How could anyone? I thought of the time my daddy came home to find every head cut off his giant sunflowers right after they had opened their faces to the sky. Only the empty stalks remaining. His disbelieving sorrow as he went to his room and lay down on the bed and closed his eyes and thought, "I will not mention this. I am too sad to mention it. It is the pain of people everywhere, the pain this year deserves."

But at breakfast, I went a little strange, like the lady down the street who shows up at people's doors with a snarling dog and a hammer in her pocket. I went wild and furious, and he swore they just looked like weeds to him. Why hadn't I warned him? Why did I only tell Dad? "I pointed them out to you weeks ago," I said. He said, "I don't remember flower things like that."

And it was the season of blooming and understanding. It was the season of hiding from headlines, wondering what it would do if the whole house had been erased, or just the books and paintings, or the whole reckless garden. Or then it gets unthinkable, but we make ourselves think it now and then to stay human: the child's arms or legs... What would I do if I did not love him? Who would I become if I did not love him? Who would I become?

This is why we practice the precepts. It is not because we are likely to go out and murder people, but because we need to cultivate a spirit of reverence for all living things. The precepts are not about prohibitions; they are about cultivating the spirit of keeping live things alive. They keep us alive.

This first precept—refraining from killing—isn't only about murder. It’s about not killing people's spirit, not killing people's dreams, and not killing our own dreams or our own spirit. We need to contemplate what this means in our lives. What does it mean to have guns in our society? What does it mean in the vast realm of human interactions? What constitutes violence in your life? To some people, a riot of color is violence; to others, being in an enclosed space is violence.

What do we do with anger? Do we nurture it and justify it? Or do we say, "No, I don't want to hold that anger because if I didn't love you, what might I become?"

We can ask ourselves these questions and reflect. How does it feel when we are greedy or cruel? We might say, "Oh, I didn't really intend to hurt that person," but we must become aware of the unintended consequences of what we do. Can we see it and say, "Wow, I didn't intend that. I must be careful"? We review our intentions in the light of the wish to respect, promote, and nurture all living beings.

How do we engender that habit? Each day we are given so many gifts. As Naomi Shihab Nye writes in another poem: "I did it. I made friends with a fly." We practice with moments. We practice with tiny things. It becomes a habit of mind—an attitude that engenders peace and gentleness toward ourselves and others.

We don't start by simply saying, "Well, I'm not going to murder anybody." That’s nice, but we start by letting the ant out the door, or by not leaving sugar around so we don't have to deal with the ants in the first place. We chase the fly out the door rather than killing it, and we say, "Wow, that felt pretty good. I'm going to do more of that."

Decide what you are going to do more of. Cultivate the gentle in your life. The first precept of vowing not to harm living beings isn't just about vegetarianism; it’s about engendering respect for life. Take this precept. Reflect on it. Review your intentions in light of it. Let it become a part of who you are so that true gentleness lives in your heart.

Thank you. May you have a gentle day and a life full of life.