ETHICS IN BUDDHISM

The fundamental ethical problem for the Buddha was how a person can live in such a way as to limit his pain and suffering, in light of the fact that so much of existence results in misery.

The first, and negative, principle in the Buddha's ethics is that quite simply one is to not indulge in any activities that he knows already, or even suspects, will cause him to suffer.

As obvious as this seems, it is amazing how people so often ignore it and just keep doing what is bad for them, what ultimately makes them unhappy.

But liberation from suffering cannot be attained by negative means only, by just not doing things.  Hence, the Buddha's second principle.  One is to indulge in those things which he knows from his past experience, or suspects from what he's seen, to be truly joy-producing.

It is by participating in these that one transcends and erases from his mind any of his inclinations to do what is bad for him.  Evidence of this is the Buddhist tradition and practice of altruism.

THE CULPRIT

The cerebral cortex in us humans is the most developed section of our brains and plays a critical role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness.

Our false perception that we are separate from everything else in the universe, rather than one with everything else, is the doing of the cerebral cortex.

The egoic self, a creation of the cerebral cortex, is the one seeing itself as apart from the rest of things.  The egoic self is an illusion, a psychologically and socially conditioned phenomenon whose purpose is dubious.

The fall of man, so-called, in religion can be put in the lap of the cerebral cortex as well.  The fall came with the emergence in humans of the discriminating mind.

THE PROBLEM WITH ETERNITY

The destiny of the Atman is to awaken into its source the Brahman.  This may take many lifetimes, in the form of many different sentient beings, including humans.

Spirituality evolves, grows, matures, until finally it is ready to blossom.  After this blossoming, termed awakening, takes place, the Atman will never again be born into the physical world.  Its task is complete.

The human life that the Atman occupied in this process may live decades longer, but this has no bearing on what has already occurred.

Like a drop of spray falling back into the sea, the Atman is now, once again, one with the Brahman.  It is tempting to say that the Atman has returned to eternity since the Brahman is said to be eternal.

But these words eternity and eternal are misleading, insofar as they imply time.  Brahman is timeless, as is now, too, the Atman.

But wasn't the Atman always timeless, since it is the personal aspect, or experience, of the Brahman?  The answer is yes.  But while in the physical world, the relative world of form, it is time bound.  It is not until it awakens into the Brahman that it frees itself of time.

IS VEDANTA FOR THE WEST?

T. M. P. Mahadevan, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Madras in India stated that Vedanta does not distinguish between race, color, climate, or country.

While it came to be discovered first in India, Vedanta is not meant for India alone.

The qualifications that make one eligible for the study of Vedanta do not include any particular place of birth or genealogy.

Vedanta addresses the thirst for the eternal.  It is true that at any given time in the world only a few may become aware of this thirst.

Those who seek Brahman, or God, are as rare as the seeking is difficult.  Those rare seekers, however, are not the exclusive products of any particular time or country.

They may be seen in the most unexpected places.  They may turn up in the least expected times.

IS BUDDHISM FOR THE WEST?

Buddhism is for anyone who suffers, and that is everyone.

Suffering is a central fact of life. Birth entails pain, decay is painful, disease is painful, death is painful. Painful, too, union with what is unpleasant. Separation from the pleasant is painful. Any unsatisfied craving is painful.

This suffering is not exclusive to Asia. It is common to all humans everywhere, including especially in the West. Action and achievement are high priorities in the West, and with such pressing motives comes inevitable frustration.  Frustration equals suffering.

The origin of suffering is the drive to gratify the senses or the craving for material gains, which is particularly pronounced in the materialistic culture of the West.

The elimination of suffering is the objective of Buddhism, and this is to give up, to get rid of, to be emancipated from the desires that cause so much distress.

The one Path that leads to freedom from all misery is the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism, and everyone the world over can benefit from it.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Present consciousness (now), anticipation (future), and memory (past) create the illusion of a self. Krishnamurti said, “Could it be that you identify yourself with a merely abstract ego based on nothing but memories?” There is this physical body, this happening, sure enough, but it is all that there is. There is, furthermore, no self separate from the rest of existence as our egos would have us believe. There is no little person sitting at a console in our head, "driving" our bodies. It is the difference between having a body and being a body.

Hormones contribute to the illusion of a self. This is the lie of hormones. It is not until testosterone recedes in men in their fifties, to give an example, that they realize the extent to which they have seen the world through a veil.

There is as well the lie of mental states. We are conditioned to view the world and ourselves in a certain light, which may be false. This includes the lie of symbolic thinking (e.g. thinking about thinking and the problems that thinking creates), and the lie of language (e.g. words about words and problems that words create). We don’t know what we are looking at half the time and then we go on to communicate about it using symbols which are merely approximations of what we mean. Alfred Korzybski noted, “Whatever you say something is, it isn’t,” with Alan Watts adding, “nothing is really describable.” Compounding this, we identify ourselves with our thoughts. We think we are our thoughts.

Also there is the lie of feeling states. We are conditioned emotionally to react to the world and ourselves in certain ways, which may be false. When one is lonely, he misses his family, friends, and God. Loneliness, though, like all other feelings, comes, as Krishnamurti explains, from thoughts, and thoughts are impermanent, transient, and unreliable. So, feelings likewise then are impermanent, transient, and unreliable. Yet we identify ourselves with our feelings. We feel we are our feelings. We feel we are our moods.

Our lives are just these smoke and mirrors, called “maya” in Buddhism, meaning to be enchanted, spellbound. What we actually are is just consciousness, the watcher, so-called. We are a conscious body. In Vedanta the watcher, or consciousness, is called the Atman, which is the immanent form of the Brahman.

Buddhism holds that the individual is merely a temporary collection of momentary events that are constantly in flux in their causal relationship to each other, with a consciousness that expires when the individual expires.  In Vedanta, relative consciousness expires, but transcendental consciousness, the Atman, does not.

THE HUMAN CONDITION

When we speak of the human condition, we are referring to such concerns as the meaning of life, the search for gratification, the sense of curiosity, the inevitability of isolation, or anxiety regarding the inescapability of death.

But these are all ideas, perceptions, psychological and emotional states.  Frames of mind.  They are experiences of the egoic, relative self.

Buddhism would say that these things are important, though, because they are mindsets that can cause us much unhappiness.

Vedanta's view, by contrast, is that this is not what the human condition truly is.  The purpose of human life, the real human condition, is the Atman fulfilling its destiny of awakening into the Brahman.

Vedanta does not deny that we are psychological beings and that we are subject to both happiness and pain.  These, however, are secondary to what we are actually here in this life for.  Everything other than our true purpose, awakening, is irrelevant.