KALUPAHANA (2) ON BUDDHIST ETHICS
Kalup (2), 154: Good example of Buddhist virtue ethics. Difference between "becoming virtuous" (relative view) and "being made of virtue" (essentialist or absolutist view).
The latter found in Hinduism, Jainism, and Mahayana Buddhism. Jains, for example, thought that humans were nonviolent by nature. If this were true, then choosing the virtue of non-violence would not be intelligible. Also being praised for virtue, if it were not chosen, would make no sense.
Ahimsa is like patience--both are enabling virtues to avoid hatred and to achieve the substantive views of love and compassion.
Kalup, 154 bottom: Cultivation of patience, as an enabling virtue, is done through understanding not duty. Not through mere obedience to a rule, but by personal understanding (of causal conditions) and free decision.
Kalup: This is the meaning of the "perfection" of the virtues--leading up to wisdom--the highest virtue as in the Greeks?
155: Warring and peaceful paths. The latter is defined not by just eliminating lust and hate, but by also communication and cooperation with others (MLK quote and Ghandi). See top of p. 156.
Chap. X: Important distinction between the GOOD life and the MORAL life. The former is based on emotion and disposition and the latter is based on moral laws, often associated with divine laws.
In the western tradition this distinction is expressed by the VIRTUE ETHICS of the Greeks and the DUTY ETHICS of Christian and Kantian ethics. The first says BE THIS SORT OF PERSON while the second says FOLLOW THIS RULE.
In religious terms the moral life leads to eternal happiness in a spiritual realm, while the good life is temporary, for the earthly life only.
Primarily because there is no afterlife, the Buddha agrees with virtue ethics that the moral law should not dictate the good life.
THE BUDDHA AND ARISTOTLE. Many parallels with Aristotle: the doctrine of the mean and the B's Middle Way; the centrality of virtue rather than moral laws; and their rejection of an afterlife.
CONTRASTS, too: the B. would not accept Aristotle's elitism, culminating in pride as the next highest virtue; nor would he agree with Aristotle that reason is the essence of human being. Christianity agrees with the B. on the former and should, with its Hebrew background, agree with him on the second as well. But in so far as Christianity accepted duty ethics, and demoted the virtue ethics that Thomas Aquinas and others contributed to the Christian tradition, it and Buddhism are far apart.
EARLY BUDDHIST "EUDAIMONISM." Aristotle's ethics is called a "rational eudaimonism" in which reason leads us, by establishing the virtues, to "happiness" (eudaimonia). Eudaimonia literally means "having a good spirit" or better translated as long-lasting "contentment." If we see the Buddha's "good" as contentment without craving and attachment (=Nirvana), then we can see, as some commentators have, early Buddhist ethics as a form of eudaimonism, but without such emphasis on reason. Note: it is interesting that although Kalupahana sets us up for this connection to Aristotle, he does not make it himself.
112: Aristotle's eudaimonia and the Buddha's sugata as complete physical and psychological well-being have much in common.
101: "The B. seems to have realized that if the moral life meant conforming to an absolute moral laws that can override the good life, it could bring harm to human life."
The Buddha reached Nirvana not by following rules but by developing virtues and a moral character that did not involve attachment or craving.
IN SOME INSTANCES, HUMAN LIFE MUST OVERRULE THE MORAL LIFE. "HUMAN LIFE IS NOT MADE FOR MORALS; MORALS ARE MADE FOR HUMAN LIFE."
BUDDHIST PRAGMATISM: "The ideal must be modified when it comes into conflict with more concrete instances of good as human experiences continue to unfold."
112: "It is the very adherence to an absolute moral law that prevents a person from recognizing the moral content of certain forms of behavior that may be incompatible with such a moral law."
IS THE BUDDHA A MORAL RELATIVIST? The rightness of an act depends upon the situation and the context, but the most important factor is what the action does for the person concerned. The rightness of an act is found in the personal and societal growth that comes as a result of the act. Acting rightly is a process of self-discovery about you and your community.
Therefore, not every act is right, not because it fails to coincide with a universal rule--no act could possibly do that--but because it is a personal choice that fits your situation, a situation that most always includes other people, too.
ARISTOTLE: VIRTUE IS A STATE OF CHARACTER, CONCERNED WITH CHOICE, LYING IN A MEAN, THAT MEAN RELATIVE TO US, GUIDED BY A RATIONAL PRINCIPLE. The only reservation that the B. would have about this is "guided by a rational principle." The B. would probably saying "guided by knowledge of all the causes that have brought us to this point." HE WHO KNOWS CAUSALITY (I.E., INTERDEPENDENT COORIGINATION) KNOWS THE DHARMA.
Therefore, Aristotle's good life emphasizes reason, pride, and wisdom, while the Buddha's good life focusses on knowledge (of causality), humility, and compassion.
117: PURE SELFLESSNESS IS AN EXTREME. The Buddhist should strike a mean between happiness for oneself and happiness for others. This means that pure selflessness--a virtue modelled in some Jataka tales and later Buddhism--is an extreme and not a mean. Therefore, compassion does not mean the giving up a self completely. Does this means that Christ's compassion on the cross is an extreme. Does this mean that Christian agape, total self-sacrificial love, is an extreme? The answers are probably "Yes."
103: THE 8-FOLD PATH. The "right" (samma; Sk. samyak) of the eight-fold path is not right in sense of following the right rule, but COMPLETE and COMPREHENSIVE. But in the context of the Buddhist pragmatism that Kalupahana has so expertly laid out, why not use "fitting," "suitable," "appropriate," or "useful." There is also Archie Bahm's awkward but innovative "middle-wayed" views, etc.
RIGHT VIEW=RIGHT PHILOSOPHY.
A middle way between subjective and objective views. A comprehensive view had to be both objective and subjective--i.e., everything that was an object had some subject in it; and everything that was a subject had some object in it. This follows because of interdependent coorigination.
The Middle Way between theses of Existence (pure being or spirit, i.e., Atman-Brahman) and of Non-Existence--the view of skeptics who totally rejected substance metaphysics.
Existence-->non-Existence-->existence as process and interdependence.
Substance metaphysics-->deconstructed as non-substance--> reconstructed as a world of dependent, changing things.
The Buddha's solution roughly corresponds to Hegel's dialectic, expressed by Fichte as
THESIS (BEING)-->ANTITHESIS (NON-BEING)-->SYNTHESIS (BECOMING, i.e., process)
But the B. would not accept Hegel's rationalism or progressivism, viz., that a divine reason was guiding the universe to greater heights of perfection in each "dialectical" synthesis.
Let us do this for the question of self:
THESIS (ATMAN)-->ANTITHESIS (NO SELF AT ALL)-->SYNTHESIS (PROCESS SELF).
The Buddha is not content with simply negation or deconstruction, but is committed to reconstruction. The second stage represents the nihilism of contemporary deconstructive postmodernism, while the third stage is the contemporary constructive postmodernism of process philosophers.
RIGHT CONCEPTION
A suitable concept must always have an object, either mental or physical (or somewhere in between!). The concept of Atman is an inappropriate concept because it has no object that can be found in experience. Conceiving the self as nothing at all is equally illegitimate, because we do experience the self in every moment as a flowing bundle of skandhas.
"A conception is a substitute for our experience, and its validity depends on its experiential reference."
RIGHT SPEECH
Right speech is well-spoken, based on experience, and is goal-directed. Suitable speech must be judged according to its truth-value, its pragmatic character, and emotive content.
Wrong speech is falsehood, slander, harsh words, and idle talk.
"That which does not lead to one's own torment nor to another's injury."
ARE WHITE LIES ALLOWED? Obsession with lying in Judeo-Christian ethics culminated in Kant's moral absolutism, in which even white lies were not allowed. The concept of right speech as "suitable" speech is found in Confucian ethics as well as in Buddhism. Confucius once told his servant to get rid of an especially irritating visitor by saying that he was not home. In Mahayana Buddhism the idea of fitting or appropriate speech is found in the doctrine of "expedient means." The loving father in the Lotus Sutra found that he had to lie to his children in order to get them to leave a burning house, symbolic of the fire of craving. In other words, not lying in this case would have intensified both the torment of the father and of his children.
"LYING" ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE WORLD. Those who insist on an absolute prohibition against lying are those who are secretly craving that the world should be different from what it is. As Bahm states: "Unwillingness to accept things as they are is the basis of lying, and any expression of that unwillingness is wrong speech." This is one of the subtlest forms of self-deception--lying to oneself about the nature of the world--which is obviously a deeper and more profound lie than the father's white lie in the Lotus Sutra.
Acceptance of the world as it is and not craving that it can be radically changed is fundamental for the pragmatism found in Buddhist ethics. This is one way of understanding the Mahayanist's provocative claim that Samsara is Nirvana and Nirvana is Samsara. Nirvana is not simply personal extinction at the end of life, but Nirvana, as freedom from craving, allows full commitment to this world as the focus of the spiritual life.
RIGHT ACTION
Action is comprised of the mental, the verbal, and the bodily. Indian materialists and the Jains emphasized physical action more than the others. The latter would correspond to "behaviorism" or "action theory" in the contemporary debate. Such a theory is deterministic and for the Jains it meant that one's past karma determined everything, including one's intentions, which are seen has having a physical basis in physical karma.
PSYCHOLOGICAL VS. PHYSICAL VIEWS OF KARMA. The physical explanation of karma in Jainism is graphically portrayed by the idea that evil souls actually take on the color of their karma--so good souls are white, whereas very evil souls are literally black. The Buddha had a psychological ("intentionist") view of karma, in which karma lay in free intentions, not physical karma from the past.
The importance of intention and free reflection in the Buddhist conception of karma.
RIGHT LIVELIHOOD
Asceticism and the priesthood is not the "right" vocation for everyone. The Buddha revoked the rules of discipline (vinaya) whenever he saw that they were not suitable for any monk or nun (109, end).
One does what is suitable and appropriate as long as it leads to a life free of craving and attachment. Because of temperament business may be suitable for one person, but wholly unsuitable for another person.
Whatever one's vocation there should never be any fraud or trickery, illegal acquired wealth, debt, or blame.
RIGHT EFFORT
Hindu (Upanishadic, Vedantist) views of self (Atman) and universal moral law (Brahman) led to the paradoxical conclusion that individual effort was an illusion. The determinism of both materialist and Jain views recognized the reality of the individual, but the freedom of effort was still an illusion.
The Buddha's Middle Way eliminated the impossible ideal of every true "effort" being based on absolute knowledge.
107-8: The B's Four Efforts.
RIGHT MINDFULNESS
This consists of careful reflection and a realization that one can never know how things are really are in themselves apart from our experience of them.
DEFINITION OF "RADICAL" EMPIRICISM. This is a phrase taken from William James. it means "the recognition that experience is not atomic but a flux whose content is invariably associated with past."
SCIENTIFIC ATOMISM. This means that scientific atomism--physical atoms are totally independent from one another--must be replaced by "process" physics--the recognition that the universe is in flux but that all its parts are interrelated in an organic whole that goes all the way back to the Big Bang.
HUMEAN ATOMISM. This means that Humean (David Hume) atomism--experiential atoms (Hume called them "impressions") that are externally related to one another--but be replaced by the B's view that all experience is internally related. Hume also said that the only connection to the past we might have is due to the principle of "vivacity"--the only difference between the past and the present is that the present is more "vivacious" than the "past."
RIGHT CONCENTRATION (SAMADHI)
Concentration on any past event will reveal in more fully the interconnected of all things and the inadvisability of dogmatic pronouncements about our nature or the nature of the universe.
How ironic that Hindu yogis misused the state of samadhi to "verify" the existence of Atman-Brahman.
Concentration of course will lead, with the right spiritual discipline, to the four lower Jhanas and then on to the four higher Jhanas, in which all of experience can be checked and verified for its impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and nonsubstantiality.
Note: see Saddhatissa, Buddhist Ethics: see his coverage of 8-fold path and the five precepts.
BUDDHIST ETHICS AS VIRTUE ETHICS, by Nick Gier
To my mind the ethics of Gautama Buddha can best be interpreted as a virtue ethics. Confucius' view of the moral person as an artistic creation resonates well with Plato's view of the unity of reality, the good, and the beautiful. Agreeing with his Greek contemporaries, the Buddha also established an essential link between goodness and truth on the one hand and evil and untruth on the other. Both the Buddha and Christ, however, would have asked for two major changes in Greek virtue ethics. In both Buddhism and Christianity pride is a vice, so the humble soul is to be preferred over Aristotle's "great soul" (megalopsychia). (Aristotle's megalopsychia may even be too close to megalomania for the comfort of most contemporary persons.) Both the Buddha and Christ would also not accept Aristotle's nor Confucius' elitism. For Aristotle only a certain class of people (free-born Greek males, to be exact) could establish the virtues and attain the good life. (Greek eudaimonism has been called "an ethics of the fortunate.") In stark contrast, the Dharmakaya and the body of Christ contain all people, including the poor, the outcast, people of color, and women. For Buddhism we will perhaps have to change the definition of virtue ethics from "the art of making the soul great and noble (megalopsychia)" to "the art of making the soul balanced and harmonious."
Like Greek virtue ethics, Buddhist ethics is also humanistic and thoroughly personalist. The Buddha started with individual people and the condition of their souls. Society can set the rule "kill not" and threaten punishment as a deterrent, but people, said the Buddha, will not stop killing until they learn to "hate not." The Buddha focused on hate and other disturbances of the soul more than any ancient philosopher. The Buddha believed that most people do evil out of fear; in other words, evil is primarily done defensively, not offensively. Such a personalist ethics concludes that external peace will not happen unless there is internal peace.
The Buddha's virtue ethics is also as flexible as Aristotle's. If David J. Kalupahana is correct in describing early Buddhist ethics as a contextual pragmatism, then the traditional translation of the moral imperatives of the eight-fold path is wrong. Translating the Sanskrit stem samyak- that appears in each of the words as the "right" thing to do makes them sound like eight commands of duty ethics. Instead of eight universal rules for living, they should be seen as virtues, i.e., disposition to act in certain ways under certain conditions.
A translation of samyag- more appropriate to Buddhist pragmatism would be "suitable" or "fitting." So we would have "suitable or fitting" view (samyagdristi), "suitable or fitting" conception (samyaksankalpa), "suitable or fitting" speech (samyagvak), "suitable or fitting" action (samyakkarmanta), "suitable or fitting" livelihood (samyagajiva), "suitable or fitting" effort (samyagvyayama), "suitable or fitting" mindfulness (samyaksmriti), and "suitable or fitting" concentration (samyaksamadhi). It is only fitting, for example, that a warrior eat more and more often than a monk, or it is suitable that the warrior express courage in a different way than a monk would. Both are equally virtuous, because they have personally chosen the virtues as means, means relative to them.
A. J. Bahm's more literal translation of samyag- as "middle-wayed" view, "middle-wayed" conception, etc. brings out the parallel with Aristotle's doctrine of the mean even better. Bahm observes that the Buddha's mean "is not a mere, narrow, or exclusive middle [limited by strict rules or an arithmetic mean], but a broad, ambiguous, inclusive middle." Therefore, the virtues of the eight-fold path are seen as dispositions developed over a long time, and they are constantly adjusted with a view to changing conditions and different extremes. Bahm acknowledges that the translation of "right" is acceptable if, as it is in both Buddhist and Greek ethics, it means
that which is intended to result in the best [i.e., the summum bonum]. . . . However, right, in Western thought, tends to be rigorously opposed to wrong, and rectitude has a stiff-backed, resolute, insistent quality about it; right and wrong too often are conceived as divided by the law of excluded middle. But in samyag- the principle of excluded middle is, if not entirely missing, subordinated to the principle of the middle way."
Neither the Buddha nor Aristotle give up objective moral values. They both agree, for example, that is always wrong to eat too much, although "too much" will be different for each individual. It is also impossible to find a mean between being faithful and committing adultery or killing and refraining from doing so. But even with this commitment to moral objectivity, we must always be aware that the search for absolute rightness and wrongness involves craving and attachment. Besides, developing the proper virtues will make such a search misdirected and unnecessary.
The Buddha's famous statement "a person who sees causation, sees the Dharma" implies that we know how to act, not because of abstract rules, but because of our causal past and circumstances. The "mirror of dharma" is not a common one that we all look into together, but it is actually a myriad of mirrors reflecting individual histories. Maintaining the essential link between fact and value, just as Greek virtue ethics did, the Buddha demonstrated that the truth about our causal relations dictates the good that we ought to do. As Kalupahana states: "Thus, for the Buddha, truth values are not distinguishable from moral values or ethical values; both are values that participate in nature." This is the same ethical naturalism that we find in contemporary virtue ethicists such as Philippa Foot.
Bahm also draws on the meanings of samyag- as "evenness," "equilibrium," "balance," and "equipose" to emphasize another Buddhist insight: viz., the Middle Way will always bring equanimity to the virtuous soul. This allows us to correct a common understanding of Nirvana as complete emptiness or quiescence. Buddhist Nirvana, however, is more like the contentment of Aristotle's eudaimonia, the inner peace of Epicurus' ataraxia (lit. "unperturbedness"), and Stoic indifference. The cessation of craving does not mean extinguishing all wants and desires. Good Buddhists can still desire all that can be attained. Craving is a desire for things that cannot be attained: unlimited power, wealth, and sexual conquest of all those whom we find attractive.
Let us look at some issues regarding "right" speech. The Buddha explained that "suitable" speech means not to lie or slander, but this is not to be taken as an absolute prohibition. Obsession with lying in Judeo-Christian ethics culminated in Kant's moral absolutism, in which even white lies were not allowed. The concept of right speech as "suitable" speech is found in Confucian ethics as well as in Buddhism. Confucius once told his servant to get rid of an especially irritating visitor by saying that he was not home. In Mahayana Buddhism the idea of fitting or appropriate speech is found in the doctrine of "expedient means." The loving father in the Lotus Sutra found that he had to lie to his children in order to get them to leave a burning house, symbolic of the fire of craving.
Those who insist on an absolute prohibition against lying are those who are secretly craving that the world should be different from what it is. As Bahm states: "Unwillingness to accept things as they are is the basis of lying, and any expression of that unwillingness is wrong speech." This is one of the subtlest forms of self-deception--lying to oneself about the nature of the world--which is obviously a deeper and more profound lie than the father's white lie in the Lotus Sutra. Acceptance of the world as it is and not craving that it can be radically changed is fundamental for the realism and pragmatism found in Buddhist ethics. This is one way of understanding the Mahayanist's provocative claim that Samsara is Nirvana and Nirvana is Samsara. Nirvana is not simply personal extinction at the end of life, but full commitment to this world as the focus of the spiritual life.