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The Ten Commandments are a moral code from the Judeo-Islamic-Christian wisdom tradition. Nearly all religious and philosophical wisdom traditions have a set of ethical or moral codes to help a person live more skillfully.

Ethical codes serve as yet another way to point out when the falsehoods of the ego, or false self, has us in its clutches. Falsehoods confuse us. When lost in delusion, we become disoriented and convinced that unskillful and unhealthy acts are skillful, healthy, and appropriate. From the vantage point of delusion, unskillful acts seem like a reasonable reaction to our situation.

When we commit to follow ethical codes, we quickly run up against our ego, and using mindfulness and investigation, we see more clearly all of the ego’s cunning stories that it uses to confuse, delude, and lead us astray. In this way, ethical codes help us disentangle ourselves from the falsehoods and live with peace, harmony, and love for all life. This is why all spiritual traditions have ethical codes of conduct.

Other Benefits of Ethical Living

Ethical codes exist to encourage us to live in harmony with all life and to help us escape the prison of our ego and come into awareness.

Committing to live skillfully not only helps us identify egoic delusion in ourselves, but has several other benefits. When we live skillfully, we are free from regret and remorse. Skillfully living improves our relationships with all people, beings, and life. Skillful living enhances the quality, peace, and joy found in our own life.

We can also use ethical codes to discern the spiritual maturity of others, to help make wise decisions when selecting our political, religious, business, and economic leaders.

The Ego Uses Ethical Codes for Its Own Ends

Not surprisingly, the ego uses these ethical codes to its own ends. Instead of using them to deepen and grow spiritually, by willing participants, the ego uses them to judge, condemn, punish, and exploit others.

The ego uses ethical codes to create hierarchies of worth between life forms. It esteems those life forms deemed worthy, while hating, mistreating, and abusing those deemed unworthy. This aversive delusion of judgment ignores the truth that we are all one. To hate, abuse, or mistreat any life form, for any reason, is to set conditions on who or what we love, and cut us off from our unconditionally loving nature.

Therefore, use ethical codes to help you transcend your ego, not as an excuse to judge or persecute others or yourself. When you or others behave unskillfully, the appropriate response is wise understanding, compassion, kindness, peace, and forgiveness.

Article Overview

In this article, I provide a universal interpretation of the Ten Commandments that can apply to people of all faith and those of none. First, we will read a commandment. Then interpret it from a universal frame. Finally, I will explain how I translate this commandment into personal aspirations in my life.

As a side note, different faith traditions, break up the ten commandments differently. I needed to pick one version to work with, and this is the one I selected. Although this may not be how your tradition delineates the ten commandments, let me assure you, that I recognize the validity of all of the various versions of the ten commandments.

One: Make Spiritual Development Your Top Priority

The first commandment reads, “I am the LORD your God. You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.” We can translate this to mean: “Make spiritual development your first priority. Have all other goals, desires, and wants be subservient to your spiritual development.”

Here is how this advice looks in my life: I set a strong intention to put truth, love, and joyful service at the center of my life. I train myself to live in accordance with truth, love, and joyful service. I set this intention and do this training out of a love for all life, including my own.

Prior to prioritizing my spiritual development, I lived most of my life constantly under the spell of falshood, acting unskillfully, harming myself and others, and sabotaging all of my efforts. Spiritual development benefits every aspect of my life, so it makes sense to make this my top priority. When I prioritize other things, imbalance and unskillfulness return with a vengeance, and my ability to implement those top priorities suffer as a result. 

By prioritizing spiritual development, I am blessed with the courage and persistence needed to handle arising challenges. Those challenges include my unskillful conditioning and habit patterns, my ego, unpleasant emotions and sensations that arise, my addictions, my changing life situation, relationship issues, and more.

Prioritizing my spiritual development allows me to be an alchemist who takes the temporal lead of my ego-created “problems” and transform them into the spiritual gold of my awakening. In this way, I can use every moment to help me awaken, come out of delusion, and live in love.

Prioritizing my spiritual development is both worthy and challenging. I will not always live up to my high aspirations. In those moments of failure, I will treat myself with love, compassion, forgiveness, and understanding. Committed to love, love requires me to live with self-forgiveness and self-love. Even in those moments where I forget, and I find myself judging and condemning myself, I do my best to have compassion and understanding, and forgive myself for that too.

Two: Respect All Wisdom Traditions

The second commandment reads, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” We can take this to mean: “Respect all wisdom traditions for their many skillful teachings that encourage peaceful, loving, and skillful actions in service of all life.”

This wisdom causes me to hold these aspirations: I respect, honor, and appreciate the skillfulness of all wisdom traditions, be they religious, spiritual, or secular. At their core, all wisdom traditions, when understood from a wise view, lead us home to our formless essence of truth, love, and joyful service.

Of course, given the tenacity and omnipresence of the ego in human culture, wisdom traditions have also been corrupted by the ego, in both minor and major ways. At times, many wisdom tradition followers have lost their way, and used their tradition to justify war, torture, rape, terrorism, executions, exploitation, and the oppression of others. 

But just as it is unskillful to define other people by their ego, it is equally unskillful and to define wisdom traditions by those unfortunate times where they have been hijacked by the egos of its members. To write off an entire wisdom tradition because of their most deluded adherents, is to succumb to the delusion of judgment, and perpetuate needless conflict, polarization, and disrespect.

I am called to love and appreciate what is skillful, noble, worthy, and wonderful about everything. I am also called to have compassion, understanding, and love for all who behave unskillfully because they are lost in falsehood.

Three: Dedicate Time for Meditation and Contemplation

The third commandment says, “Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.” We can interpret this to mean, “Devote a significant amount of time to your spiritual practice. Guard, protect, and keep ‘holy’ that time by using it for its designated purpose.”

This guidance causes me to hold these aspirations: I devote time to nurturing my spiritual development every day. I consider the hour that I meditate to be my most important hour of the day, which is why it is one of the first things I do each day. On days that I skip meditating, I can tell. My delusional conditioning reasserts its dominance, my mind is less mindful, and more likely to get entangled in, trapped, and confused by the delusional stories in the mind. Therefore, I set aside time each day to meditate to support, reinforce, and recommit to moment-to-moment mindfulness throughout my day.

In addition to my daily meditation, I devote additional time to other spiritual practices: reviewing slogans, setting skillful intentions, doing mindfulness techniques, journaling, mindfully investigating my experiences, attending group meditations, reading uplifting texts, listening to uplifting texts, and more. I try to annually attend a meditation retreat (or do a home meditation retreat) which allows me to go much deeper, see more clearly, and let go of delusion more easily. 

Now, one question remains, how do I define a ‘significant amount of time’ in practical terms? The original commandment recommends one day a week, or one-seventh of our time. Not getting too dogmatic about which particular time I use, I translate that into 16 waking hours a week, or roughly 2 hours and 15 minutes a day. I use this amount as a guide, but also encourage people to start where they are, and take baby steps in that direction. As you use your “Sabbath” time to meditate and contemplate, you will grow your ability to stabilize your mindfulness from moment-to-moment. Every moment of mindfulness you experience during your day will become a holy and sacred meditation on love, truth, and joyful service. This mindfulness will continue to expand, until your whole life joyfully embodies love, truth, and joyful service.

Four: Unconditionally Love Your Parents or Guardians

Commandment four declares, “Honor your father and your mother.” We can understand this as, “Love your parents or guardians unconditionally.” If you can love those who birthed or raised you unconditionally, you will be well on your way to loving all beings and all life unconditionally.

The relationships we have with our parents or guardians can sometimes be our most difficult relationships. Having known them for so long, the ego has had a lot of time to generate, rerun, and solidify delusional stories about how they harmed or mistreated us, how they didn’t give us that we needed, how they should have done what they didn’t, how they shouldn’t have done what they did, and on and on.

This commandment inspires me to hold this aspiration: Out of compassion for my parent’s suffering, and out of gratitude for all the countless sacrifices they have made for me, I commit to doing the inner work required to unconditionally love, respect, and appreciate my parents.

Regardless of any perceived deficits my parents had, or currently have, they invested heavily of their time, energy, and resources, and made countless sacrifices to ensure my health and survival. I will remember that like me, they are subject to being confused by delusion and acting unskillfully. I will remember that like me, they do the best they can with the conditioning they’ve been given. I will remember that like me, their conditioning and the actions that arise from it are impersonal and impermanent, and that only the falsehood in me takes it personally and uses it to cause me to suffer.

Now, if your parents or guardians physically, sexually, or emotionally abused you, holding unconditional love for them does not mean you simply roll over and take their abuse. Out of love for yourself, you set and enforce healthy boundaries to keep yourself safe and protected. In extreme cases, this may mean you have to cut them out of your life entirely. Yet, if you do so, avoid doing this out of anger. Let the motivation for such actions be love for yourself, and to aid you in loving them.

It is helpful to think of love as an inner experience, rather than as a specific behavior or set of behaviors. How do you feel when you think about your parents? When you think about your parents and your mind is balanced, your heart is open, and your body is peaceful, and you wish them well, that means that you love them. Other metrics, such as how often you call or visit them, or how much money you spend on them, are less telling of your love, than how you feel about them when you think of them.

Even if your parents or guardians have already passed away, it is important to do the inner work required to relate to them lovingly.  Because once your mind tells you a delusional story about someone, like your parents, it often repeats the same delusional story about many other people in your life.

Five: Renounce Harming Self and Others

The fifth commandment states, “You shall not kill.” We can broaden this to mean, “Do not directly or indirectly harm or kill yourself, other people, other beings, or ecosystems.” Ultimately, we are all one. What we do to one another, we do to ourselves, and vice-versa. Show kindness, compassion, and respect to all life regardless of what they can do for you or how they treat you.

This guidance inspires me to hold these aspirations: Seeing the suffering in the world, I commit myself to not contributing to it. Out of love for myself and all life, I learn how my thoughts, words, and deeds impact directly and indirectly the people, animals, and wider environment. Using this knowledge, I train myself in how to live compassionately in a way that allows all life to thrive.

Out of love for myself and all life, I commit to cultivating good mental and physical health that I may better serve life. I pledge to only eat, drink, wear, and consume items that maintain the health, wellbeing, and harmony of this body, and the lives of all people, beings, and ecosystems.

Out of love for myself and all life, I vow to not abuse or misuse alcohol, drugs, unhealthy foods, shopping, gambling, the internet, porn, or other forms of sense gratification that may undermine my spiritual growth. I aspire to mindfully ingest TV, books, movies, internet, music, and other media to expose myself to skillful wisdom and limit the unskillful conditioning in my life.

Six: Renounce Sexual Misconduct

Commandment number six reads, “You shall not commit adultery.” Once again, we can broaden this to mean, “Do not engage in sexual misconduct.”

This wisdom motivates me to commit to these aspirations: Out of love for myself and all life, I use my sexuality in a way that safeguards the health and wellbeing of individuals, couples, families, all beings, and all life.

I only engage in consensual sexual activity and touch. This means I assess if my partner is old enough to consent, as well as if they are of sound mind. If they are unconscious or intoxicated with alcohol or drugs, they are not able to give consent.

Consent also means I ask their permission before engaging in sexual activity every single time, and I respect their right to say “no,” as well as their right to set other limitations or boundaries on our activities. I also respect their right to change their mind at any time.

And forgive me for stating the obvious, but sadly it is not obvious to everyone: consent also means that these conversations must be done in a context of mental, emotional, physical, and psychological safety, without unbalanced power dynamics, coercion, threats (implied or stated), or being held against their will. For more on consent, watch Cheryl Bradshaw’s excellent TEDx Talk.  

Renouncing sexual misconduct also means I keep my commitments to my partner or spouse. I abide by the fidelity vows and commitments that others have made with each other in their relationships. I mindfully use my thoughts, words, and deeds to create a wider culture free of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, rape, and gender-based-prejudices, or sexual-orientation-based prejudices.

This guidance to renounce sexual misconduct could easily fall under the scope of the “do no harm” commandment. However, this separate guideline exists to be clear that this aspect of life requires special consideration. Because sex generates intense euphoric feelings, and these feelings often become linked to delusional stories, we can easily become very confused and deluded in this area of our life. Therefore, another commandment was written to be very explicit about what is expected in this arena of our life. Moving on.

Seven: Renounce Stealing

The seventh commandment advises, “You shall not steal.” We can interpret this to mean, “do not take what has not been given to you.”

From wise view, ownership is an illusion. None of us can actually own or fully control anything, not even our own body or thoughts. According to wise view, everything in our life is a gift to us from Life. As such, Life can use them or take them away from us as Life chooses.

Despite knowing that everything is a gift from Life, we realize that most people live from the relative view of property rights. We have a culturally-based understanding of who “owns” what. Therefore, it is skillful to respect this relative view to foster order and harmony in human society.

This guidance inspires me to abide by these aspirations: Out of love for myself and all life, I do not take what is not given to me. Moreover, of what is given to me, I take only what I need. What I no longer need or use, I offer to someone who does need it.

The sun, sky, waters, forests, mountains, fields, and many friends, family members, and acquaintances give to me freely of their abundance. Out of love for them and all life, I cultivate gratitude for all their gifts. I take no more than is needed, so that all life may thrive. Out of gratitude for my own abundance, I commit to living a life of generosity and joyful service by sharing my time, energy, and material resources with those in need.

This guidance to “not take what is not given” helps us confront the delusion of greed in ourselves. When we want to take what is not given, we can see the delusion of craving, experience it, feel the suffering it causes, see the story of it, and notice how it wants us to behave unskillfully. By knowing how delusion of craving works, we can also learn the peace and joy of renunciation.

Eight: Renounce Unskillful Speech

Commandment eight states, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” We can expand this to mean, “Be impeccable with your speech. Let your words sow truth, love, wisdom, peace, harmony, compassion, and joy.”

This commandment inspires me to live out the following aspirations: Out of love for myself and all life, I commit to being mindful of my words. I vow to renounce the use of words to lie, judge, blame, complain, gossip, or denigrate others in any way. I pledge to renouncing the use of sarcasm as it typically contains the delusion of judgment. I renounce using my speech in ways that sow division and discord.

I encourage myself to listen deeply to others. I give myself permission to pause before speaking to ensure that when I do speak, my words point towards truth, embody love, and help heal and uplift all who hear them, as well as all who don’t. I commit to using a tone of voice that conveys love, compassion, peace, and joy.

To be skillful, we must live in two worlds: both the absolute and the relative. As we progress on our mindfulness path, we learn from our own experience that words cannot harm us. In the absolute world, words cannot harm us. Yet in the relative world of ego, where most of humanity resides, words harm people all the time. Thus, out of love and compassion for humanity, we train ourselves to be impeccable with our speech. Impeccable speech provides skillful conditioning and helps others come out of their egoic misery.

Sometimes the egos of practitioners cling to their understanding that “words cannot harm others” to justify saying mean or cruel things. But this is the delusion of fixed-view. In this case, a wise view, expressed as a thought, is rigidly applied to a far more subtle and nuanced reality, causing harm to others and the relationship.

To be wise is to live from the absolute understanding, while also honoring the relative understandings of others. The truths we understand, we cannot expect others to understand or live by. Out of love for all beings still trapped by delusion, it is preferable that we be flawless with our speech.

Nine: Renounce Lust

The ninth commandment proclaims, “You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.” We can interpret this to mean, “Do not lust after anyone whom it would be unskillful to have sexual relations with.”

This recommendation inspires the following aspirations: Out of love for myself and all life, I will not lust after or flirt with anyone in a committed relationship. I vow to support and encourage all relationships to thrive, and do nothing that would jeopardize them, unless necessary for the safety and health of one of the partners. Nor will I lust after anyone who is too young to engage in consensual sex. Nor will I lust after anyone who is not of the appropriate sexual orientation.

In addition, I vow to mindfully study lust in myself to learn how it works, how it confuses me, and how it leads me down unskillful paths. I commit to see the delusion in lust, the impersonal and temporary nature of it, and the harm it causes when it takes over.

When I study lust, I see that it disconnects me from my inner peace and joy. I learn that lust deceives me into believing I can obtain lasting happiness externally, where it cannot be found. Seeing clearly, I find that the lust itself, and its accompanying stories, are the source of my suffering. I use this wisdom to peacefully renounce love out of love for myself and all life.

I appreciate how this commandment is concerned about your state of mind, rather than just your outer behavior. Mental states drive all action. When you have skillful mental states, skillful actions naturally flow from them. When the mental state is unskillful, unskillful actions typically flow from them, or skillful actions become a stressful act of will and self-discipline. Thus, obtaining skillful mental states is ultimately more important than our behavior.

The final commandment also addresses our mental state.

Ten: Renounce Greed and Aversion

The tenth commandment urges, “You shall not covet your neighbor's goods.” When we covet our neighbor’s goods, we have a mental state of both greed in the mind over what they have and aversion in our mind towards our current situation. Thus we can interpret this to mean, “Renounce all greed and aversion.”

This wisdom inspires in me the following aspirations: Out of love for myself and all life, I vow to be mindful of my intentions, thoughts, and emotions to ensure that I am not seduced by, nor act on, the delusions of greed (also known as craving, clinging, and grasping) and aversion.

To this end, I vow to mindfully study the mental states of greed and aversion. Through this investigation, I learn that greed and aversion deceive me into believing I can obtain lasting happiness externally, where it cannot be found. Seeing clearly, I realize that the greed and aversion, along with their accompanying stories, are the true source of my suffering. Believing their delusional stories cause me to suffer the emotional afflictions of greed, jealousy, lust, envy, hatred, anger, sadness, and more. I also see that greed and aversion cause me to act unskillfully in ways that harm myself and others.

Using this wisdom gained from direct experience, and out of love for myself and all life, I peacefully renounce all greed and aversion. Rather than greedily envy or judgmentally resent another’s good fortune, I cultivate sympathetic joy at their good fortune and success.

I pledge to be content with all the blessing that Life has showered upon me. All of the joy, kindness, compassion, love, peace, and wisdom I need to thrive is already inside of me. I realize this whenever I mindfully hold my attention in the here and now, and don’t believe any of the impersonal, temporary, and delusional thoughts that arise from the mind.

May I Love Myself No Matter What

This ends our reinterpretation of the Ten Commandments in a way that allows them to be more universally applied to people of all faiths and those of none.

Gently feel your inner body and notice if you feel any emotional disturbance. Because of our conditioning, talking about skillful behavior can often trigger the arising of guilt or overwhelm. Let’s quickly look at each of these. 

If you feel guilt, the delusion of judgment is active in your mind. You use these codes to beat yourself up, and demean yourself. Remember the truth that you are not your ego, but the formless divine essence of boundless love that animates the body. If you have been unskillful, it is due to impersonal conditioning that you had no control over. Rather than responding to your skillfulness with judgment, offer yourself some blessings of compassion, kindness, love, and forgiveness.

“May I love myself no matter what. May I have the compassion to be close to what is unpleasant. May I know my inner peace, kindness, joy, and compassion, that I may always be skillful.”

Practice responding to your own unskillful actions with intentional love. With intentional love, you gently force yourself to say the blessings, even if you don’t feel it. You seek to feel and embrace the truth of those words, even when you don’t feel it. Intentional love is sometimes about “faking it until you make it.”

During intentional love, investigations help you notice the impersonal, impermanent, and delusional judgmental thoughts that get in the way of your boundless love. You see how judgmental thoughts cause your suffering and is the source of unskillful actions. When you see this clearly, it makes no sense to believe the lie of the story. When the story is no longer believed, your boundless love is what’s left. 

Drop the Stories of Overwhelm

Another egoic reaction to hearing these saintly aspirations of skillfulness is to feel overwhelmed. Overwhelm arises from the delusions of pasting, futuring and selfing. You remember all of your past unskillfulness, project it in the future, then believe a story of how you will need way too much self-discipline to make any headway, and then a sense of overwhelm arises.

If you feel a sense of overwhelm, notice all of those delusional stories floating around in your mind. Now imagine who you would be without those stories? What if you could never think, let alone believe, those stories ever again? How would your life be different? Would you feel more light, buoyant, free, and empowered? Experiment with this and find out for yourself.

Consider Your Adventures with Skillfulness to Be Training

Another way to hold off judgment and overwhelm, is to think of following these commandments as aspirational “skillfulness training.” When you train for a sport, you will make mistakes. Those mistakes are vital for your learning, and thus are not really mistakes at all. When you train in skillful actions, you will at times do unskillful actions. These unskillful actions, when done mindfully, are vital for your learning to be more skillful, and thus can be appreciated, held in kindness, and immediately forgiven. 

To the ego, this unconditional forgiveness is interpreted as a license to be unskillful. It will say, “I learn from unskillful actions too, so why bother being skillful this time?”

In response, you don’t need to indulge your unskillful actions. You will have ample opportunity to experience and investigate them whenever you are lost in delusion. Furthermore, when you have a sincere resolve to be skillful, offering yourself unconditional love and forgiveness for your unskillful actions, the better you become at allowing skillful actions to naturally and effortlessly flourish within you.

One Moment at a Time

Another tip to hold overwhelm at bay is to, “Be here now.” Don’t believe any stories about all of the unskillful tendencies that you will have to fight using limited willpower in the future. Just focus on the only moment that counts: the present moment. Wordlessly track what is happening now. Am I skillful now? And now? And now? It simplifies the whole skillfulness training process to the only moment that matters and helps free you from your overwhelm.

Focusing on being skillful in the eternal present moment is the quickest way to become more skillful.

Start with the Most Harmful Stuff First

But if that doesn’t work, another way that practitioners find useful is focusing on the most disturbing or harmful behaviors first. Mindfully pay attention to the stories running around in your head when these disturbing emotions and unskillful behaviors arise. Mentally Jiu-Jitsu them in your journal. Visualize how you will peacefully, calmly, kindly, and skillfully respond to future situations that trigger these same delusional stories.

You will be like an excavator, excavating layers of delusion in your mind. In the upper layers are the most gross and disturbing delusions. Once you have dealt with them, you will have the skill and expertise to excavate the next level where the delusions are more subtle. Yet these delusions will still be the most disturbing ones you have. You continue to go layer by layer into more and more subtle terrain, until finally you come to the bottom layer and see clearly how all delusions work and no longer become confused by them. Ta da! You are now enlightened!

This is the slower way to make progress, but it is equally valid and worthy.

Mindful Pause

Most of the moral codes of wisdom traditions encourage us to renounce unskillful behavior. Yet when we are lost in delusion, what is unskillful seems skillful and appropriate. Moreover, delusion often works on an unconscious level and in a fluid manner, moving quickly from a delusional thought in the head to an immediate unskillful reaction. For these reasons and more, we have the agape arsenal technique called the Mindful Pause.

The Mindful Pause works like this: Whenever you notice an emotional or mental disturbance you pause, stop what you are doing, and take several conscious breaths, as you do during breath meditation.

Once the mind and body are calm, and you are more mindful, then you can investigate what is happening. Mindfully notice the thoughts you were thinking. What delusions are in them? Who would you be without those thoughts?

Mindfully notice the sensations you felt. Mindfully notice the behavior these stories about these sensations want you to do. Is that behavior skillful or unskillful? Does it contribute to your wellbeing and the wellbeing of others? What would be a skillful, kind, peaceful way to respond to this situation right now?

All of this can be done in a few seconds. It stops the unconscious and automatic nature of the ego to take over your life. Sometimes this is enough to wake you up, and cause you to reconnect with your inner love, and respond more skillfully.

At other times, you may still find that the ego still runs its impersonal, conditioned, and unskillful habit pattern. This is to be expected. But now, you will mindfully see the delusion operate. You will peek behind-the-scenes of the delusion, and start to see how the illusion is made. When you see clearly how delusions work, they will lose their power over you.

Mindfully watching delusion and the unskillful actions they cause leads us to our second agape arsenal technique for the week: See the Unskillful as Unskillful. 

See the Unskillful as Unskillful

Judgment looms large in our lives. Because judgment devalues, debases, and justifies the mistreatment of others, and ourselves, our ego has responded to this delusion with many other (often fixed-view) delusions to justify our own unskillful actions. The ego had to do this to keep any sense of self worth and value. But the result of this is that we may be oblivious to our own unskillful actions.

That is where See the Unskillful as Unskillful comes into play. Now we have learned that whether we are skillful or unskillful, we are still worthy, whole, and valuable, and that life loves us unconditionally. Our unconditional love and compassion for ourselves, empowers us to now soberly reflect on our behavior. Out of love for all life, we desire to be more skillful, and the only way we can do that is to first compassionately acknowledge the unskillful actions we do.

See the Unskillful as Unskillful is just that. We simply ask of our behaviors, “does this directly or indirectly physically, emotionally, or psychologically harm someone?” When we ask this, the ego will flood our mind with a variety of justifications. We mindfully notice them, and then go back to contemplating the question: “does this behavior directly or indirectly physically, emotionally, or psychologically harm someone?”

If it does, we just note that, “yes, it harms someone.” We offer ourselves compassion and we offer those we harm compassion. We do not beat ourselves up or denigrate ourselves.

If you commit unskillful acts thinking that what you are doing is skillful, you remain lost in several layers of delusion. Therefore, it is better to do something unskillful knowing that you are doing something unskillful. Then, at least, you can honestly learn how delusion works to harm yourself and others.

We all have many unskillful habit patterns that are deeply ingrained in our nervous system. Sometimes these egoic habit patterns are so strong, that our mindfulness is not yet strong enough to stop them. In these cases, it is better to be mindfully unskillful. This is not a license to be unskillful, which is how your ego will see it. Rather, it is a skillful intention to be honest: if you are going to do an unskillful action, you lovingly admit to yourself that it is unskillful.

Use Ethical Codes to Grow Spiritually, Not to Judge or Condemn Others

Ethical codes exist in many religious and philosophical wisdom traditions. When used to judge, condemn, and persecute ourselves or others, the ego incorrectly uses them in service of delusion and unskillful actions. Instead, these ethical codes exist as a tool to help us better see when we are succumbing to delusion, so that we can more easily spot delusion’s presence and more effectively investigate it and weed it out.