Moving through the Three Doors
How clear seeing can help us navigate our words, actions, and thoughts
PRIVATE TEACHING | CALENDAR | PODCAST | WRITING
I was recently asked to write a short article on the “three doors” or “gates” of action, relating them to the three factors of right speech, right action, and right livelihood. Here’s my first stab at it.
There’s a helpful formula to keep in mind when considering our actions and their effects: what we think is what we say, is how we act, is what we live, is who we are. In other words, how we understand ourselves and the world shapes the self which shapes the world which shapes the self. Therefore the importance of training our minds, as the Buddha said. Therefore the need to see clearly how what we think, say, and do affects not just our own lives, but everything we touch. This is the main reason I like to think of sila—the “morality” category of the Noble Eightfold Path—in terms of clear seeing instead of virtue. Rather than lumping our actions under the categories “good” and “evil,” we can consider that skillful acts arise from a matching level of understanding, just as harmful action is rooted in confusion or ignorance. (There’s also a small matter of semantics. The etymology of the word virtue comes from the latin vir for man through the Old French vertu for strength or vigor. I suppose I like my sila to be a bit more inclusive.) By cultivating clear seeing we can give rise to clear action, which results in a clear life.
But how does clear seeing develop in the first place? The answer is slowly, as our understanding of how we create action grows.
The Buddha said that all karma, volitional action, passes through the “three doors” (kammadvara) of body, speech, and mind, and moves out into the world. Depending on how we cross each of these doors, we’ll create either positive or negative karma, skillful or harmful action. I can swing lightly through the speech door, for example, offering words of affirmation to someone I love, or I can barge into their “room” swearing and screaming. I can knock softly on the action door through a kind gesture, a look, an act of generosity. Or I can kick it down, literally or figuratively. I can open the door of thought, inviting into my consciousness both demons and friends, or sending out lovingkindness into the world. Or I can barricade myself and pretend that this is the way I’ll stay safe. How we walk through each door—and this is no mystery—will determine what we meet on the other side.
This isn’t an exact pairing, but let me match these three doors with the three factors of right speech, right action, and right livelihood in the sila category of the Eightfold Path to explore how we can cultivate clear seeing and skillful living. Right speech obviously moves through the door of speech. Right action corresponds to the body. And stretching a little, right livelihood can be coupled with mind, partly because the way we see ourselves is so often tied to our work. The “rightness” of these three factors—the skillfulness with which we approach them—is what results in clear action. It’s a little bit like having instructions for the operation of each door which, given its role as a gateway between us and the world, should be treated with great care, like the door of an airplane. You can’t just fling it open and step through any time you want—not if you’d like to remain in one piece. But by cultivating clarity of mind, we can learn to move through these doors wisely and easily.
The first factor, right speech (in Pali samma vacca), can be summed up as speech that is true, kind, necessary, beneficial, and timely. Applying clear seeing to our speech, we can ask ourselves before we talk, Is what I’m about to say factual? Will it help those I’m addressing? Is this the time to speak up? Does what I want to say need to be said? We generally speak so much yet say so little, filling up space or using words to shore up our fragile egos. Right speech, on the other hand, is neither mindless nor self-serving, but pithy and loving. It’s the right word at the right time, and when no words are necessary, it’s expressed as noble silence.
The second factor, right action (samma kammanto), encompasses the first three precepts of not killing, not stealing, and not misusing sexuality, but we can also think of it as actions that affirm life, that give generously, and that honor our and others’ bodies. The most important quality we can therefore bring to this factor is honesty. There are a thousand ways of killing that don’t involve the literal taking of a life. A look, a put-down, a dismissive gesture can diminish another’s life force. We can steal time or space, we can pilfer an idea, and we can even steal when we state another’s experience, robbing them of the opportunity to gain their own insight. Sexuality is wondrous but also incredibly fraught because it holds such potential for abuse, and it’s made even more harmful when that abuse is denied or defended. But if we study our motivations, investigating closely what’s driving our actions, and if we recognize that the self of a self serving action is nothing but illusion, then it becomes easier to honor instead of defile, affirm instead of deny, lift up instead of put down.
The third factor, right livelihood (samma ajivo), rests on a healthy balance—of energy, resources, profit, and sustainability. The sutras warn us away from professions that create harm, cautioning monks against earning a dishonest living by becoming soothsayers or palm readers, and lay people from becoming soldiers, butchers, wine sellers, or arms traders. Today, our understanding of right livelihood must be much broader, and more than ever, it must take into account the effects of our work on that larger being: our planet. Take our fascination with crypto investing or the development of artificial intelligence. A single bitcoin transaction uses as much energy as one American home consumes in a day. ChatGPT uses half a million kilowatts of electricity each day to respond to roughly two hundred million requests. By comparison, a US household uses only twenty-nine kilowatts. To say we need to carefully consider whether it’s wise to ask a bot to research the lifespan of an octopus or help us write our resume is true, but also an understatement. We need to be alarmed by the exponential effect of activities that have become commonplace—those of us who engage in them and those who’ve made them possible. Because although it’s always been true that every action affects the whole, today these actions have the power to destroy us.
The good news is that we too have more power than we think. We can determine to see as clearly that everything we do is connected. We can decide to use words well, creating with them worlds we’ll want to live in. We can take care of the world we have now, not assuming that what is true today will be true tomorrow. And we can vow to practice sincerely when we don’t see.
Annie Dillard once said, “I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.” Actually, there is more we can do. We can diligently cultivate clear seeing and realize that, in effect, we are the beam.
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Sangha Practice Group
Women in Practice
April 6 (Saturday)
12–2 PM EDT
Ocean Mind Sangha's peer-led practice group welcomes women practitioners of all spiritual traditions. Each monthly virtual gathering begins with zazen followed by discussion. Past themes include power, navigating relationships, working with anger, body image, spiritual friendship, and more.
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Thank you for this offering, Zuisei.
I am surprised to learn of how much energy certain digital / electronic tasks require. And I find myself wondering how much is consumed by my typing and posting this comment and whether it is necessary.
Perhaps it’s one more way in which practice invites us to continually adjust as conditions change, finding that “just enough,” which vanishes before we become too comfortable.
Thank you, again. 🙏