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The Ethical Heart (2 of 5) For the Welfare of Others

Today I'll continue this conversation about Buddhist ethics. I like to think of it as the ethics that comes out of doing our practice, as opposed to the ethics that comes out of Buddhist texts, though I'll certainly refer to Buddhist texts today.

The first one I'll refer to, which I find quite instructive—more important than inspiring—is how the Buddha defines a wise person. It's interesting to see the difference between wisdom, how that's talked about, and the description of a wise person. Really, it's the person we're trying to transform in Buddhism, to be a different kind of person. It's not just abstract wisdom, or something that's out there in a sense, or just having knowledge; it's about really being changed.

To be a wise person of great wisdom, the Buddha said such a person is concerned with the welfare of themselves, the welfare of others, the welfare of both self and others, and the welfare of the whole world. In terms of ethics, to be concerned for the welfare of the whole world, the welfare of others, and oneself, is an ethical potential that we have. This is to be a wise person. That's the whole direction in which we're moving in Buddhism: to become a wise person. Again, it's not book learning, but rather it's defined by becoming a person who is concerned for the welfare of all beings.

That's the goal, and that points to what I'm emphasizing this week: that the path of liberation and the path of what we in the West call ethics are the same thing. Spiritual maturation in Buddhism is the same as ethical maturation. It's just that they didn't have that language in the ancient world of ethics like we have that word in English. So we don't find that word there in a clear way, but definitely, that's the direction the texts are going.

Interestingly, the Buddha also said that someone who is spiritually mature not only lives by the precepts^[1] in an ethical way, but also encourages others to live that way. Exactly what it means to encourage others to live this way is a fascinating topic. In different settings, it might look different. In some settings, it might mean to stand up for social justice. Where we're aware that people are killing each other or harming each other, we would stand up and encourage them not to do that. That encouragement might take the form of acts of civil disobedience, which could be quite strong and powerful. But that would be an expression of encouraging others not to kill, and it wouldn't be done with hostility; it would be done with real strength.

A wise person lives by the precepts and encourages others to do so as well. So becoming a wise person has this ethical component in part. Where does that expand from? It comes from a kind of ethical sensitivity. Mindfulness itself has an ethical component in that it cultivates the sensitivity to recognize within oneself what is harmful and what is beneficial. This ability to really refine one's capacity to understand in ourselves what is afflictive, what causes affliction, and what causes welfare is the primary criterion for understanding what is ethical in the Buddhist tradition.

There is a story of the Buddha teaching his son^[2]. As everyone knows, the Buddha had a son. The Buddha went off for about six years to practice and become enlightened—he went off to graduate school, in a sense—and then came back to his hometown, to his family. At that point, his son ordained at seven years old and became a novice monk. For the rest of the son's growing up, he was under the tutelage of his father. In a sense, the Buddha was the primary parent for much of his son's life.

There's a story in the Middle Length Discourses^[3] of the Buddha speaking in very strong terms to his son about how important it is not to lie. The text doesn't say exactly what happened, but most people who read it say it's pretty obvious that his child had told a lie and was caught. The Buddha then, without criticizing him directly, said something a little more removed about lying. He said something like, "The value of someone who lives a monastic life and lies is as much as turning a bowl upside down so all the water runs out. The amount of water left in the bowl is the worth of the monastic life of someone who lies."

That is strong language. The Buddha goes on to say that someone who consciously lies would probably be willing to break all kinds of other precepts as well; it's that important.

But what is even more valuable is what the Buddha said next. He said to his son, "When you're going to do something, before you do it, while you do it, and after you do it, you should reflect and consider whether what you are doing, what you did, or what you are going to do is going to cause harm or affliction to others or not." He used the metaphor of a mirror. He said to his son, "Do you know what a mirror is for?" The son answered, "A mirror is for reflection." In the same way, you should use reflection to look at yourself. You yourself are the mirror for yourself. The question, "Is this afflictive or not afflictive?" is the mirror to look into oneself.

It takes this ethical consideration and mindfulness to look at what is afflictive and what is not afflictive, to learn to recognize that. Does it lead to pain and suffering, or does it lead to happiness for yourself and for others? When he spoke of leading to affliction, he asked: "Does it lead to affliction for oneself? Does it lead to affliction for others? Or does it lead to the affliction of both self and others?"

Here he is talking to a young child, and he has the same kind of teaching as he does about a wise person—that the concern goes in all directions: to self, to others, and to both self and others. The criterion is whether it is afflictive. And how do we know it's afflictive? Through our powers of attention, through paying attention to ourselves. We ourselves are the standard. We have the empathy, the reference point for really understanding how others are hurt by us.

The more we can develop ethical sensitivity and feel how we experience stress, affliction, pain, and harm by our actions—or maybe by the actions of others—we wake up the capacity to be sensitive to these kinds of issues, and so we become more careful.

Placing this at the heart of Buddhist ethics means that we are the arbitrators of what is ethical, through the criterion of what causes harm and what is afflictive or not. It's not an abstract moral code or rules out there that one has to adopt. There is no one in Buddhism outside of you who has some kind of abstract moral code. The heart of it all is this capacity to recognize harm and benefit, and to do that is greatly strengthened by our capacity to be mindful, to be attentive, to be here.

We will make mistakes. We will do things that are harmful. The ways in which we cause little pieces of stress can be very, very subtle. But this attention to what's afflictive and not afflictive, to suffering and happiness—even though this is a teaching to a young child, I've heard Buddhist teachers emphasize how this little teaching is actually at the very heart of the Buddhist path, all the way to enlightenment. This simple distinction of seeing what is afflictive and non-afflictive, what causes suffering and what causes happiness, is the guide and support for the path to liberation.

Because it has to do with affliction, pain, suffering, and unhappiness, in Buddhism, the path of ethics—becoming ethically mature—and the path to liberation are one and the same. They're not distinct from each other. It might seem a little simplistic^[4] to begin ethics by looking at what's afflictive and what's not, what's suffering and what's happiness, but that's really the reliable criterion. If we learn to be skilled at recognizing that, we'll find our ways both personally and socially in very effective ways.

One of the things that means is that the way we are ethical^[5] also needs to be non-afflictive. The way we hold ourselves in an ethical way should not cause harm; it should actually be something that brings happiness and well-being. How do we experiment, like we did with the breathing today? How do we experiment with the way we behave in the world and how we speak, so that we can be resilient, learn from what we do, and not be weighed down by things? We want to be able to come back to an ethical way of being—a fresh way of being—that is nourishing and supportive.

That supportive and nourishing way then encourages further ethics, or if you prefer, an ethical approach to life. If you don't like the idea of an "ethical approach to life," it's completely fine to view it as a liberative aspect of life. How can you be more conducive to liberation, freedom, and wisdom? That is the direction you go. I can confidently say it's fine either way because they're one and the same; there is no difference.

One of the primary principles of early Buddhist ethics has to do with our capacity to be sensitive to what causes affliction and what causes welfare, what causes suffering and what brings about happiness. I'll talk more about this tomorrow. Thank you for being here.