Morality and Buddhist (or Other) Practice

All good questions, Chris.

I've taken in interest in Buddhist morality lately not just to answer "Who, or what, are we awakening for?", but also to take notice of how views and practices under the "morality" category actually affect my mind from moment to moment, and from day to day.

My going hypothesis is that, while there are certain benefits that only deep insight can bring, the same can be said for the benefits of moral action. Insight alone will not bring the kind of peace of mind that comes with developing good will, compassion, generosity, patience, etc. What's more, when practiced together, each aspect (morality, concentration, and wisdom) grow with respect to one another. I suspect that insight can be even greater, and more effective, when one's morality is highly developed.

I'm no Buddha, so I don't know this without doubts. But I've noticed changes in my practice since working toward the development of all three, rather than simply seeing morality and concentration as temporary supports for developing wisdom.

It seems to me (so far) that morality is intrinsically tied to overall practice in this sense: That any sense of ill-will, impatience, dislike, etc is always tied to defending a sense of identity, of there being something there that I think is "me" - some sense of fixed self-construct that needs to be fortified and protected. Though my practice has always focused on macro-investigation, I don't see why micro-investigation wouldn't work, though perhaps it doesn't (data from anyone out there?).

Being with events/activities that trigger aversion is one way to bring the stuff to the surface clearly enough to investigate it well. For instance, if the neighbor's loud music makes you think "I wish that f*cking hillbilly would get some taste in music! People like him don't deserve to live!" instead of pounding on the wall, sit with that aversion and apply your practice: being with those phenomena, perhaps recognizing what conditioning in your life experience has created that point of view, what makes it feel threatening (anger comes from fear, fear comes from a feeling of not being safe...) etc.

For me it's been really remarkable to uncover reaction after reaction after reaction that every single time were rooted in deep self/identity-defense. Every single time.

My sense is not so much that Daniel was saying that you have to have your moral, but your psychological shit together (though it's a long time since I've read MCTB). In other words, you need some kind of stability from which to operate, and many acts that are usually considered 'immoral' will impact on such psychological stability (though having said that, many people engage in many acts which I think are not particularly moral yet I certainly don't doubt they would have the stability necessary to begin dedicated insight practice, which points to the distinction).

And in light of that it's interesting that what people took from MCTB did seem to be the idea that simply applying a technique would lead to awakening and the moral 'stuff' could be discarded. That certainly wasn't my experience, indeed, what I seem to now need to investigate are all kinds of things bound to 'morality' in terms of ego, identity, psychological 'stuff' etc, though this may not be true at all stages.

It does seem, however, that certain things can be achieved using meditation with a morality that's very counter to anything in Buddhist teachings - for example, samurai zen. And that various people have certain levels of 'awakeness' yet behave in ways that are pretty 'immoral' (of course, some of these have no awakeness, but others seem to - e.g. Trungpa).

For my money, on the one hand, I wouldn't call anything 'Buddhist' that didn't include some dimension of morality, though it might be non-Buddhist mindfulness meditation (of course that would be influenced by Buddhist practices, but not in any meaningful sense 'Buddhist' as such). On the other, though, morality can be a straitjacket that needs to be loosened - but only for some people, and only in some circumstances, depending on tendencies and context, not universally! What I now look for in terms of a moral path or a teacher is someone who, as we say in AA, 'has what I want' - their morality may not be identical to mine but they live their lives in a way that I can respect and agree with in terms of fundamental actions and principles. If someone has woken up but they have what I would describe as extremely problematic morality, that's not the waking up that I want.

Of course, the line between acceptable human failings and unacceptable immorality can be hard to draw, but I feel like I know it when I see it. For myself, I can't imagine morality not having something to do with my spiritual path, but I think if anyone ever asked me for advice it would be a 'this was my path, you need to figure it out for yourself' rather than a set of binding principles - even the five Buddhist Lay Precepts, which I sued to try to live by pretty strictly and which in some ways are reasonbably straightforward, I now don't feel like are universalisable. The Golden Rule (do unto others) is always a good one...

Tom Otvos wrote: While I want it to be otherwise, in the sense that by "just" doing the technique I can awaken to a be a better, more morally balanced person, the last month or so has clearly shown me that that is a pipe dream. Dealing with shit off-cushion goes hand-in-hand with formal practice.

It has been interesting to me to see how variable the engagement with this is, though. People start from a lot of different places, but the turning of attention to motivations for behaviors, the roots underlying anger, self-awareness and investigation being applied to interaction with other people etc - sometimes it seems to kick in early in the spiritual process, other times not til years after awakening, other times... well so far never. Why? I don't know. I would guess that the factors at play are very complicated. Some threshold of seeing clearly has to be reached, but also a threshold of finding what you are seeing really painful or ugly, so that the benefits of maintaining the self-justifications or defensiveness are no longer worth it?

It seems like a lot of my thoughts on this are definitional, it depends on how morality, ethics, responsibility, selfishness/selflessness etc. is defined.

I'm most interested in what Chris is calling wisdom. Wisdom to me includes perception, non-reactivity, and worldly knowledge. In contrast, so-called morality is often a formula that you can apply without any need for worldly knowledge-- good guidelines, true, but not the kind of foolproof get-out-jail-free actions that people hope they are.

The different timescales of wisdom are also very interesting to me. There is something interesting in the immediacy of one's own behavior, how we can tell the truth or lie in the subtlest of word choices body language, or in how much "space" we give to the people around us. This kind of wisdom is almost impossible to appreciate without sensitivity honed by psychological or meditative approaches.

There is also the timescale of multiple lifetimes... Honestly, I think meditation can overlook this dimension of wisdom. It's easy to forget about cultural, worldly wisdom, accumulated over generations and millenia, and dismiss it as Samsara. We never think about how our pants and shirts move with our bodies, we forget about how the cut of our clothes has been a grand experiment in how to turn flat cloth into three-dimensional clothing. We are surrounded by this kind of wisdom, but it's so easy to overlook. The wisdom (or lack) in modes of food, shelter, clothing, and entertainment probably effects the long term direction of humanity more that most of spirituality.

For me, identifying with Buddhist ethics or Christian ethics etc. seems to be a subtle way to limit the range of exploration of wisdom. Ultimately "methods of morality" are also crutches, morality has to become an immediate practice of no-method. We'll still fail/sin and we need to make room for that reality, for ourselves and others. But we have to get off the chairlift of practice and onto the slopes themselves and allow us to actually hit the bumps and patches of ice and learn how to ski in our own bodies and minds.

I think the problematic relationship many Westerners have with morality is based on the idea that one SHOULD be (loving, kind, patient, generous, fair, non-violent, etc.), and that if they are not, they are somehow fundamentally BAD. This leads people to repress and deny their unskillful/unhealthy thoughts, feelings, and habits, so they can put on a holy facade. We all know this kind of moral observance is unhealthy in itself, and is to be avoided.

Then people tend to make the step toward accepting that having unskillful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is the norm. This can bring a lot of relief. However, it gets taken too far most of the time. People think that because it's normal, there's really no point in trying to change. In fact, this morality stuff must not really have anything to do with insight at all. It's just about vibrations, and emptiness, and equanimity about what is already here. "Yay! Now I can get enlightened very quickly and not have to REALLY worry about how I am in the world. All is ONE anyway, right? It's not like any of this stuff is really real. Being upset with myself is just suffering, right?" One can easily slip into the view that if one is not sad, angry, jealous, or otherwise normally unhappy in regular life contexts, then they MUST be repressing these feelings, and therefore consider what may be healthy development to be unhealthy regression.

For me, the solution to both problems is to stop viewing morality in terms of a self that is either good or bad. It's more helpful (and therefore, true, as far as I'm concerned) to view the mind as neither good nor bad. There are certain types of thoughts and behaviors that lead to suffering. There are other ways of being and acting that lead to happiness or a release from suffering. A person can cultivate their attention to a degree where they can notice the effects of their thoughts and actions, and then choose to intentionally cultivate skillful actions in place of the unskillful ones.

If we let go of the whole attainment idea, this all gets very practical. Since I know there's work to do, I don't really spend time considering whether or not I'm "done" in some predefined sense. I just keep at it. And it doesn't matter that much whether or not perfection is possible, because I know from experience that improvement IS possible. That's good enough for me

Daniel nails it in MCTB--sila, samadhi and panna.
My kids are in a Webelos troop. They also get character education in school. If they practice that stuff (generosity, humility, work ethic, empathy, discipline, etc.) earnestly, they'll reap tremendous rewards--something close to the secret of what life is all about--but they won't have the insight piece, the 3Cs.
I've started doing volunteer work and now serve on the board of directors for a group that does things like give brand-new birthday presents and shoes to homeless kids in the local school system and distribute tents, sleeping bags, winter clothing and other useful items to people living in the woods off the interstate. It feels absolutely great to do this. What's funny is that if I think of it as being part of some kind of spiritual path, it starts to feel false and egoic. There's the quiet feeling of having done some good in society and made a contribution, like when I'm driving home from a volunteer day that I've taken my kids to and am not really thinking a lot about it, just kind of feeling good about it without too much reflection. And then there's the glomming on sort of thing where I'm concerned about whether I'm a good enough person or, on the flip side, am feeling super proud about the volunteer work.

Chris Marti wrote:

shargrol wrote: Wisdom to me includes perception, non-reactivity, and worldly knowledge. In contrast, so-called morality is often a formula that you can apply without any need for worldly knowledge-- good guidelines, true, but not the kind of foolproof get-out-jail-free actions that people hope they are.

... I agree that there word "morality" connotes a proscriptive kind of version of ethical behavior, a set of do's and don'ts that, to put things in a lesser light, a sort of "dummy's guide" to behavior. ...

One question this brings up is what if the morality "rules" were intended to be practice pointers, but because most people who interact with them don't have much wisdom (in the sense it's being used here, of insight), they can only comprehend them as rules, leading to what Jackson says "I should love my neighbor, but I don't, so I am bad." If it is taken instead as a practice pointer: "love your neighbor" is a pointer to something akin to metta practice. "There is one God, have no other gods before Him" becomes a practice pointer towards surrendering all attachment to other things including self. And so on. My sense is that for the majority of religious people in all traditions, the "these are the rules" understanding has so gutted the real intention of the teachings over time that the sense in which they point to how things are experienced in deep awakening is not only forgotten, but dismissed as something either not possible or only applicable in myths about long-dead saints, sages and heroes. Thoughts?

Chris Marti wrote:

My sense is that for the majority of religious people in all traditions, the "these are the rules" understanding has so gutted the real intention of the teachings over time that the sense in which they point to how things are experienced in deep awakening is not only forgotten, but dismissed as something either not possible or only applicable in myths about long-dead saints, sages and heroes.

Agreed! The Ten Commandments may have been intended to be practice pointers but they are not interpreted or used that way by most christians. Most organized religions, including non-medittaive buddhists, practice a rules-based form of morality. I suspect that the other kind is not commonly done. To put it another way, the wisdom version of ethical behavior is probably about as common as serious meditators

JMHO

Discussing the original nature of a given set of moral teachings is helpful, I think. As you note, I'm willing to bet that the Ten Commandments did not start out as something to be dogmatically followed, but were rather put into place to address specific issues for a specific time and place; and therefore, were more pragmatic in origin and spirit. The problem lies in saying, "These came from GOD (or THE BUDDHA), and therefore MUST be followed all the time, everywhere, and to do otherwise is bad, bad, bad!"

It's clear now that contexts change over time, and perhaps even more rapidly in current times due to the wide and rapid spread of information provided by new technology. Being sensitive to context is more important now than ever.

keep in mind too that there is a very strong anti-contemplative current and literalism in protestantism and modernism, which makes this sort of practice teaching not fit well.

ie if there is no sense of mystery, the divine, surrender, reverence, the sacred, etc. trying to use these teachings almost has to be twisted into exoteric dogma. they can't be esoteric if the people engaging with them have no place for that possibility in their worldview.

Ona Kiser wrote: keep in mind too that there is a very strong anti-contemplative current and literalism in protestantism and modernism, which makes this sort of practice teaching not fit well.

Which is ironic inasmuch as the whole point of Protestantism was to have a personal and interior relationship with worship/the divine without the intercession of a professional class Great book on Christian contemplation and the squishing of it by institutional churches is Smoley's Inner Christianity.

But of course social control, with which mass institutional religion is intimately bound up (though this doesn't mean such religion is inherently a bad thing) is much better served by 'you must do this' rules than by practice pointers. Though, I do agree with Chris that I don't think these were intended to be completely psychologised but were also intended as guides for behaviour in the world.

One of the things I liked about Buddhist morality, and which I try to explain to people from majority-Abrahamic cultures when they ask me about it, but which they often find difficult to understand, is that these are not intended as rules that you are rewarded and punished for by something outside yourself - but rather, they're a guide to cause and effect, so if you do X thing you'll get Y consequence and you won't like Y consequence - accompanied by it being the case that behaviour harmful to others tends to incur Y consequence, so in one way they can be seen as completely 'selfish.' Of course, without the context of rebirth one can say, well, look at this immoral person who hasn't reaped material consequences, but still - and also, we never know someone's interiority as opposed to their external circumstances...

every3rdthought wrote: ...

Which is ironic inasmuch as the whole point of Protestantism was to have a personal and interior relationship with worship/the divine without the intercession of a professional class Great book on Christian contemplation and the squishing of it by institutional churches is Smoley's Inner Christianity.

That's interesting, thanks for the book reference. It does seem somewhat variable, but at least on the more Evangelical end of things there seems to be a great fear of anything resembling silent meditation (just gives the devil room to do stuff), any kind of mystical experience ('experiences' come from the devil) and similar. It does NOT seem to be the case in the Anglican and Episcopal churches, which are (or some are) more or less similar to Catholicism in many practices, just not in hierarchy and a few other details. I think there are even Anglican monastic orders?

every3rdthought wrote: But of course social control, with which mass institutional religion is intimately bound up (though this doesn't mean such religion is inherently a bad thing) is much better served by 'you must do this' rules than by practice pointers. Though, I do agree with Chris that I don't think these were intended to be completely psychologised but were also intended as guides for behaviour in the world.

Not just for the laity. Monastic contexts are very rules heavy in part to create a standard of routine and practice. The nuns I know, for instance, have an extremely structured life, down to exactly how to walk, bow, cut up their fruit, hold their hands, stand, sit, etc. Some of these things are just designed to eliminate having to have constant discussion (in a silent convent!) about how to do everything. It's just done This Way. Some of them are intended to cultivate mindfulness, prayerfulness, etc. Obedience to the monastic rules is considered a form of surrender practice, too. A very interesting read is John Cassian's The Conferences. He was a 5th century guy who went with a companion on a grand tour of ancient Egypt, interviewing hermits in the desert. The book is a collection of the conversations he and his pal had with these hermits. It was then the source for his second book, The Institutions, in which he proposed rules for monastery life based on the hermits' lives. This then became The Rule of St. Benedict, which is the guidelines for monastic living which are still used not just by the Benedictines, but as a resource for most Christian monastics.

every3rdthought wrote: One of the things I liked about Buddhist morality, and which I try to explain to people from majority-Abrahamic cultures when they ask me about it, but which they often find difficult to understand, is that these are not intended as rules that you are rewarded and punished for by something outside yourself - but rather, they're a guide to cause and effect, so if you do X thing you'll get Y consequence and you won't like Y consequence - accompanied by it being the case that behaviour harmful to others tends to incur Y consequence, so in one way they can be seen as completely 'selfish.' Of course, without the context of rebirth one can say, well, look at this immoral person who hasn't reaped material consequences, but still - and also, we never know someone's interiority as opposed to their external circumstances...

Yeah. From my perspective, except for the language of agency, the function is the same, but that can be hard to grok. If you reframe it mystically, Union with God (enlightenment) is heaven; lack of Union with God (non-enlightenment) is hell; the spiritual journey is Purgatory, the purification process. If you do XYZ selfish/immoral thing, you incur suffering because XYZ is not in line with enlightened behavior, thus not in harmony with moving towards divine union, thus equivalent to being in a hell realm... etc. Your mileage may vary as to whether playing with the language like that works for you or not.

Read or heard somewhere the other day, 'the gate to Hell is locked from the inside...'

Here's another tangent for the topic: what is the place of Metta? For those whose practice is mostly Theravada-derived, where Metta practice is considered (as far as I am aware) an important foundation practice - do you make that a part of your regular practice? How do you understand its purpose? Can wisdom without metta be complete wisdom? And so on.

This came up in part because I'm recalling in (I think) Tibetan Buddhism that enlightenment encompasses both insight into emptiness and compassion (and is incomplete without both); and in Christianity there is Paul's famous speech about how it doesn't matter how much wisdom you have, or powers, or whatever, if there's no caritas ("love"), it doesn't count for anything. Metta seems, off the top of my head, the closest equivalent in Theravada-style practices.

Thoughts?

My paradigm for metta practice is somewhat a mutt of different traditions ideas... Mostly it is about building capacity for enduring the physical sensations of kindness, both being kind and receiving kindness. I've kinda bought into a model which says that early psychological wounding, which also is necessary for developing a sense of separate identity from the beloved, are the main limits to our ability to experience and express positive emotions. It has to do with our own innate sense of worthiness. If we experience more love than we feel worthy of, then our old wounds actually get triggered and we will find ways to limit it, to redefine a sense of boundary and resistance, including self sabotage. This seems to be an accurate model for my own personal experience.

I purposefully used beloved and love above, because it is very easy to see how this could work in similar ways for theistic spiritual models.

And now for today's wild thought: what if theistic religion, when done right, is essentially the necessary worldview and practice to ameliorate the dysfunctional aspects of our childhood relationship to authority and power and dependence?

I think it's interesting how invested religious belief gets WITH exactly that sort of fraught relationship to the father: My dad was mean, therefore God is mean, or other variations. It's at once completely understandable and yet at the same time sort of bizarre. (I mean, i certainly have identified beliefs and patterns in my own life that were formed in childhood and still mysteriously powerful in adult life, it seems to be how we operate, but if I do the anthropologist on Mars thing, it seems like a very remarkable tendency. What is it about the structure of our psyches that leads to this sort of reaction defining us for so long?)

In relation to that "unworthy of receiving love" thing, I was taught an exercise on a nuns' retreat that addressed exactly that point.One is to imagine Jesus washing ones feet, as a meditation/visualization. Everyone I've ever suggested the exercise too has found it intensely difficult, and that was my own experience of it too. Even people who pride themselves on being generous and loving often discover that they are pretty walled up inside and not remotely interested in ceding control, offering the vulnerable heart, and being given unconditional love (as represented by a manifestation of the Divine tenderly caring for you as if you are completely worthy, which you always already were anyway). That was eye opening.

(PS - the unworthiness thing seems to be a stage/phase, not directly related to whether one has particular issues with family relations, being loved, etc. If one has particularly vivid instances of those issues, they probably get highlighted during that stage, but I know many people who do not have particularly problematic family backgrounds who express the same feelings, and it seems to come around when deepening of insight is going on, perhaps just being related to a fear of vulnerability and loss of boundaries.)

Interesting!

I was thinking about this some more as I was cleaning up the house... it seems like the reaction might stay with us, because we are the reaction. By that I mean, the original birth of our identity was caused by awkward differentiation. Practice is the re-integration of this differentiation. And remaining reactions are identities that have yet to be integrated. So really, only reactions >can< persist. I don't think this stuff even needs to be caused by a family member/situation, it can just be how we initially made the immensity of experience into something manageable for our developing minds. Luck as much as anything.

The stage/phase thing is very true and humbling. I might think I resolved all of issue "X" but then some curious trigger will send me right back into the midst of it.

Yes, it seems a bit like that. The more deeply awakening pervades us, the more it runs into/reveals unresolved stuff still being held to, but not able to be recognized until the other "grosser" stuff was seen through. So then the familiar reactions comes up again (dark nighty stuff, resistance, thoughts of dying/extinction, unworthiness, fear, etc), and then when that is integrated/resolved, something else is revealed that is being held as separate that you weren't even aware was there, etc etc.