Following up the last post -- a reader who appeared to know what he was talking about (although I have no way to know) said that Michael Roach's prohibition on criticizing clergy is based on the 6th Precept, not the 13th, as I had guessed. If so, this makes Roach's interpretation even more out of whack.
The Mahayana 6th usually is boiled down to "do not discuss faults of the assembly." Here is a rendering from Wisdom Quarterly:
"A disciple of the Buddha must not broadcast the misdeeds or infractions of bodhisattva-clerics or bodhisattva-laypersons, or of monks and nuns, nor encourage others to do so. One must not create the causes, conditions, methods, or karma of discussing the offenses of the assembly."
So, it applies to criticism of laypeople as much as to clerics, a point the alleged Michael Roach version leaves out.
In practice, the Mahayana 6th Precept must be handled with caution. I think it's misguided to interpret it to mean that one must never criticize others, whether layperson or cleric. But let's talk about what the 6th does mean.
The Bodhisattva Precepts of Mahayana, sometimes called the Ten Grand Precepts, are taken from a Mahayana sutra called the Brahmajala or Brahma Net Sutra. There is a Theravada Brahma Net also, in the Pali Canon, but it is considerably different. For the record, the Theravada 6th Precept is a direction to eat only one meal a day, before noon. This is a Uposatha precept, followed by laypeople only on observance days.
I've learned that current scholarship says the Mahayana Brahma Net was written in the 5th century CE, possibly by a Chinese author. Whether it was based on an earlier oral tradition or text that is now lost I do not know.
I know of no Buddhist tradition throughout history that strictly prohibited all criticism of everybody. Going strictly by the letter of this precept, we'd have to assume, for example, that a senior monk may never correct a novice or a teacher may never chastise a student. In real-world dharma practice, that has never been the case.
Here's another take on this precept, from the late John Daido Loori. He was discussing how the precepts apply to the environment.
The Sixth Grave Precept is "See the perfection--do not speak of others errors and faults." For years we have manicured nature because in our opinion nature didn't know how to do things. That manicuring continues right here, on the shores of our river. We have concluded that the river is wrong. It erodes the banks and floods the lowlands. It needs to be controlled. So we take all the curves out of it, line the banks with stone, and turn it into a pipeline. This effectively removes all the protective space that the waterbirds use to reproduce in, and the places where the fish go to find shelter when the water rises. Then the first time there is a spring storm the ducks' eggs and the fish wash downstream into the Ashokan Reservoir and the river is left barren. Or we think there are too many deer, so we perform controlled genocide. Or the wolves kill all the livestock, so we kill the wolves. Every time we get rid of one of species we create an incomprehensible impact and traumatize the whole environment. The scenario changes and we come up with another solution. We call this process wildlife management. What is this notion of wildlife management? See the perfection, do not speak of nature's errors and faults.
See the perfection. Mahayana Buddhism teaches us that we are all fundamentally perfect and complete. All of us. This is true of your nitwit boss or the kid who used to bully you in school or the politician you don't like.
Yet the world is full of ignorance and bullying and corruption, and sometimes if we don't speak up we are enabling ignorance and bullying and corruption. The notion that we must always keep silent, no matter what, is a nonstarter.
On the other hand, seeing the perfection can mean seeing the perfection in imperfection. We're in different places on the path, stumbling around through our fog of fear and ignorance, wounds and conditioning. And because we come to the dharma through different sets of life experiences and abilities, our stumbling around can take different forms.
Behavior that seems wrong-headed and annoying to us could be someone else's way of finding the path through the fog. If we're seeing the perfection, we respect that this annoying person is groping his way to awakening the best way he can. Then try to be sensitive to when you might be able to help and also when it would be better to stand aside and let this other person work through things his own way.
Obviously, the 6th Precept is about group harmony. A habit of negativity, of excessive complaining and fault-finding, can spread disharmony like a virus spreads the flu.
On the other hand, sometimes if something is eating at us it's good to talk it out with someone. Keeping silent can easily turn into a habit of ignoring our own inner voice when it's telling us something is wrong. We must not do that.
I wrote awhile back that many people want to run away from conflict and are upset by disagreements in their sangha. Quoting Lewis Richmond, "Western Buddhists are often conflict averse and averse to expressing negative thoughts and feelings. This can give Buddhist communities an unreal patina of peace and harmony, masking a deeper current of resentment, anger and frustration."
What can happen -- individually or collectively -- is that people tend to repress their discomfort with something until it is no longer bearable, and then something snaps. And the bleep hits the fan, so to speak.
There is a natural reluctance to criticize our teachers. We've seen in recent history that sometimes teachers need to be criticized. A few genuinely abusive teachers have done a lot of damage to people, and often the abuse was allowed to continue for a remarkably long time because people were uncomfortable about speaking up.
So when I hear about a teacher allegedly having his students vow to not criticize clergy, and only clergy, alarm bells do go off.
Recently there have been allegations of sexual abuse of minor girls by monks in American Theravada temples. A senior monk at a temple in Chicago said that the temple had decided to keep quiet about the allegations to "not upset the community." Does anyone here think that was the right decision?
In short, practice of the 6th Precept requires walking a very thin middle way. It's not easy.
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