[Buddha-l] Buddhist ethics in a contemporary world

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Thu, 2005-03-10 at 09:38 +0100, jehms at xs4all.nl wrote:

> All right, but if you ask why anyone should do what's beneficial etc. or
> why one should try to become a bodhisattva, the answere is not that this
> is some general duty or a Godgiven command, but that this is personal
> progress which leads to true happiness and the ideal is to become a arhant
> or boeddha, which is a clearcut human ideal with specific qualities.
> The difference between kinds of ethics is not just a matter of definition.

With respect, I think you're wrong about this. Deontology is defined
simply as the study of moral imperatives. It is not built in to the
notion of deontology that the imperative is issued by God or President
Bush or by a body of lawgivers. The injunction of Buddhism "Do good,
avoid evil and and keep the mind pure" is an imperative. Indeed, it is
seen as the principal imperative from which all particular precepts are
derived. So one can study this imperative deontologically without any
commitment to a superhuman, subhuman or human lawgiver. It could be seen
as a kind of natural law. Indeed, I think most Indian concepts of Dharma
are seen as descriptions of the natural universe. "Eat too much and
exercise to little, and you will get fat." "Speak harshly to others and
they will resent you." "Act with kindness and you will enjoy happiness."
So I think the presupposition in India is that such imperatives
(attended by the consequences that go with ignoring them) are part of
the natural world, but they are imperatives all the same. So we seem to
have here a way of seeing the world that could be described as
deontology, as consequentialism and as eudaemonianism.

> Sin is not just becoming conscious of one limitations, but a feeling of
> guilt because one thinks of oneself as being responsible for them. 

Again, I think you are seeing this in too narrow a way. As you know, the
Greek word translated as "sin" means "missing the mark" or "failing to
reach the goal." In many discussions of sin, there is no call for guilt
at all. There is only a call for recognition that one has failed in some
way and that one can succeed by following some other way of acting. It
can be as straightforward as recognizing that something needs to be
changed if one is to succeed.

Incidentally, the Sanskrit word that is usually translated as "sin" does
not mean "missing the mark". It means "damage". So when one acts
incompetently, one causes damage. If one becomes aware of the damage and
wishes not to do damage, then one makes adjustments in one's way of
doing things. 

In neither of these views of sin is there any requirement to feel guilt.
Well, it's not quite that simple. Some psychologists (such as Jame
Hollis in his book Swamplands of the Soul) distinguish between healthy
guilt and neurotic guilt. Healthy guilt is just acknowledging that one
has made a mistake and then resolving to find a way to avoid the same
mistake in the future. A person who does not have THAT kind of kind may
be a psychotic. But distinguished from healthy guilt is neurotic guilt,
which is a feeling of deep-seated inadequacy and unworthiness that won't
go away even if one changes one's conduct.

> I'm not a fan of Kierkegaard in this.

>From what I have read of Kierkegaard, he had completely mastered the art
of cultivating neurotic guilt. But there are much more healthy ways of
looking at sin (whether the Greek, the Christian or the Buddhist
variety) than Kierkegaard's.

> And I've seen a lot of churchcommunities and sects who bury themselves
> in sin and certainly are not very conscious of their relatedness with
> others.

If they feel any sense of sin at all, they are at least aware of their
relationship with God. Now that doesn't count for much to a dogmatic
atheist. As a humanist, I would prefer that people have a sense of
relatedness to other people and to the environment than to God. But my
point is that having a sense of being related to God is already a very
big step away from Narcissism. Well, that depends on what kind of
Narcissism we are talking about. Freud's notion of Narcissism was a
state of complete self-absorption in which one sees oneself as the only
being in the universe who counts for anything. Jung saw Narcissism as an
intense sort of self-reflection that is actually the beginning point of
the healing process whereby one becomes integrated. So even "narcissism"
is not a word we can throw around without making it clear in which sense
we are using it.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico