[CAxrrAYN]

I was just reading an excerpt from Thich Nhat Hanh's book - Freedom Wherever We Go: A Buddhist Monastic Code For The 21st Century - and it said this on the Precepts:

The Buddha said, “Although I have given you precepts for this particular time and place, if you come to a certain place and the laws of that land are different, you should not use the precepts that have been given to you here. You should not practice in a way that goes against the laws of the land where you are living.” The Buddha also said, “There may be precepts I have not yet devised, but if you come to a part of the world where they are needed then you have to devise these precepts.”

Where does this teaching come from? Are there other Suttas that mention the flexability of the Precepts?


Another Excerpt:

"THE GOAL of the Revised Pratimoksha is to respond to the current needs of the Sangha and protect the individual monks and nuns. This does not mean to say that it cannot be improved in the future. In fact, it is only by doing exactly this that we will be practicing according to the spirit of the Buddha, for the Buddha himself improved many precepts. Let us look at the precept not to kill. At first this precept prohibited monastics from killing people (Is this true? Only Monastics?), but when some monks killed themselves, the precept was revised. These unfortunate monks heard the Buddha’s teachings on the impurity and impermanence of the body, and they began to feel tired of life. Therefore they said very negative and pessimistic things like “What is the point of living? I might as well kill myself.” Responding to this situation, the Buddha added that if we encourage people to kill themselves, if we praise killing, if we have the idea that it is good to kill, then we are also breaking the precept. In other cases, sometimes the Buddha would eliminate a precept altogether if it no longer had a role to play. This is why it is important to allow the precepts to ripen over time, improving them constantly. We have to make them really serve the Sangha. Every ten or twenty years, they need to be revised. We should not be too proud and think that this Revised Pratimoksha is perfect. It still has weaknesses.In the future, people might say: “This precept was made by my teacher and by my elders so you cannot change it.” But this is going in the opposite direction from what your teacher wants, from what the high monks and nuns who made these precepts want. You have to continue this work and improve the precepts so that they are more applicable to the time and place in which you are living."