Ethics For the New Millennium Part 2

ETHICS FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA

RIVERHEAD BOOKS                    1999

PART II

 

Chapter 2: No Magic, No Mystery

In calling for a spiritual revolution, am I advocating a religious solution to our problems after all? No. as someone nearing 70 years of age at the time of writing, I have accumulated enough experience to be completely confident that the teachings of the Buddha are both relevant and useful to humanity. If a person puts them into practice, it is certain that not only they but others, too, will benefit. My meetings with many different sorts of people the world over have, however, helped me to realise that there are other faiths and other cultures, no less capable than mine of enabling individuals to lead constructive and satisfying lives. What is more, I have come to the conclusion that whether or not a person is a religious believer does not matter much. Far more important is that they be good human beings.

• The influence of religion on people’s lives is generally marginal, especially in the developed world. It is doubtful whether globally even a billion are what I call dedicated religious practitioners, who on a daily basis faithfully follow the principles and precepts of their faith. The rest remain, in this sense, non-practicing.

• From this, it becomes clear that given our diversity, no single religion satisfies all humanity. We may also conclude that we humans can live quite well without recourse to religious faith.
• These may seem unusual statements, coming as they do from a religious figure. I am, however, Tibetan before I am Dalai Lama, and I am human before I am Tibetan. So while as Dalai Lama I have a special responsibility to Tibetans, and as a monk I have a special responsibility toward furthering interreligious harmony, as a human being I have a much larger responsibility toward the whole human family – which indeed we all have.
• And since the majority does not practice religion, I am concerned to try to find a way to serve all humanity without appealing to religious faith.
• If we consider the world’s major religions from the widest perspective, we find that they are all – Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Zorastrianism, and the others – directed towards helping human beings achieve lasting happiness. And each of them is capable of facilitating this.
• Under such conditions a variety of religions (each of which promotes the same basic values after all) is both desirable and useful.
• Especially after going into exile, I met people who, having dedicated their entire lives to different faiths – some through prayer and meditation, others through actively serving others – had acquired a profound experience of their particular tradition.
• Such personal exchanges helped me to recognize the enormous value of each of the major traditions and led me to respect them deeply.
• For me, Buddhism remains the most precious path. It corresponds best with my personality. But that does not mean I believe it to be the best religion for everyone any more than I believe it necessary to be a religious believer.
• In this book I want to try to reach beyond the formal boundaries of my faith. I want to show that there are indeed some universal ethical principles which could help everyone to achieve the happiness we all aspire to.
• Some may feel that I am attempting to propagate Buddhism by stealth. But while it is difficult for me to conclusively refute the claim, this is not the case.
• There is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality.
• Religion I take to be concerned with faith in the claims of salvation of one faith tradition or another, an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of metaphysical or supernatural reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or nirvana. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual, prayer and so on.
• Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit – such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony – which bring happiness to both self and others.
• While ritual and prayer, along with the questions of nirvana and salvation, are directly connected to religious faith, those inner qualities need not be, however. There is no reason why the individual should not develop them, even to a high degree, without recourse to any religious or metaphysical belief system.
• This is why I sometimes say that religion is something we can perhaps do without. What we cannot do without are those spiritual qualities.
• But let us be clear on this point. Religious faith demands spiritual practice. Yet it seems there is much confusion, as often among religious believers as among non-believers, concerning what this actually consists in.
• The unifying characteristic of the qualities I have described as ‘spiritual’ may be said to be some level of concern for other’s well-being. Moreover, the one who is compassionate, loving, patient, tolerant, forgiving, and so on to some extent recognizes the potential impact of their actions on others and orders their conduct accordingly.
• Thus spiritual practice involves acting out of concern for other’s well-being and also entails transforming ourselves so that we become more readily disposed to do so. To speak of spiritual practice in any terms other than these is meaningless.
• My call for a spiritual revolution is thus not a call for a religious revolution. Nor is it a reference to a way of life that is somehow otherworldly, still less to something magical or mysterious. Rather, it is a call for a radical reorientation away from our habitual preoccupation with self. It is a call to turn toward the wider community of beings with whom we are connected, and for conduct which recognizes others’ interests alongside our own.
• Here the reader may object that a revolution of spirit is hardly adequate to solve the variety and magnitude of problems that we face in the modern world. It could be argued that problems of violence, addiction to drugs or alcohol, or family breakup are better understood and tackled on their own terms, but they can also be characterized as spiritual problems susceptible to a spiritual solution.
• This is not to say that all we need to do is cultivate spiritual values and these problems will automatically disappear. On the contrary, each needs a specific solution. But when this spiritual dimension is neglected, we have no hope of achieving a lasting solution.
• Bad news is a fact of life, falling into two broad categories: natural causes such as earthquakes, drought, floods; and those which are of human origin such as wars, crime, and social, political and economic injustice.
• We are responsible for such behavior – from royalty, presidents, prime ministers, and politicians through administrators, scientists, doctors, lawyers academics, students, priests, nuns and monks, such as myself, to industrialists, artists, shopkeepers, technicians, pieceworkers, manual laborers, and those without work, there is not a single class or sector of society which does not contribute to our daily diet of unhappy news.
• Unlike natural disasters, which we can do little or nothing about, these human problems, because they are essentially ethical problems, can be overcome. The fact that there are so many people from every sector and level of society working to do so is a reflection of this intuition. Indeed, we are all, according to our own understanding and in our own way, trying to make the world – or at least our bit of it – a better place for us to live in.
• What is the relationship between spirituality and ethical practice? Since love and compassion and similar qualities all, by definition, presume some level of concern for others’ well-being, they presume ethical restraint. We cannot be loving and compassionate unless at the same time we curb our own harmful impulses and desires.
• Each of the major religious traditions has a well-developed ethical tradition. However, the difficulty with tying our understanding of right and wrong to religion is that we must then ask, “Which religion?” The arguments would never stop.
• Moreover, to do so would be to ignore the fact that many who reject religion do so out of convictions sincerely held, not merely because they are unconcerned with the deeper questions of human existence. Religious belief is no guarantee of moral integrity.
• Among the major troublemakers – those who visited violence, brutality, and destruction on their fellow human beings – there have been many who professed religious faith, often loudly.
• Religion can help us establish basic ethical principles. Yet we can still talk about ethics and morality without having recourse to religion.
• Establishing binding ethical principles is possible when we take as our starting point the observation that we all desire happiness and wish to avoid suffering.
• Ethical conduct is not something we engage in because it is somehow right in itself but because, like ourselves, all others desire to be happy and to avoid suffering. 
• Moreover, if it is correct that the desire to be happy and avoid suffering is a natural disposition, shared by all, it follows that each individual has a right to pursue this goal.
• Accordingly, I suggest that one of the things which determines whether an act is ethical or not is its effect on other’s experience or expectations of happiness. An act which harms or does violence to this is potentially an unethical act.
• There are other factors to consider including both intent and the nature of the act.
• It is not hard to think of acts which, though they may appear somewhat forceful and aggressive and likely to cause hurt, could yet contribute to other’s happiness in the long run.
• Again, it is not difficult to imagine a case where an individual may suppose their actions to be well intended and directed toward the greater good of others, but where they are in reality totally immoral.
• The factor which is perhaps most important of all in determining the ethical nature of an act is neither is content nor its consequence, however. It is the individual’s overall state of heart and mind.
• When this is wholesome, it follows that our actions themselves will be (ethically) wholesome.

We find that the more we succeed in transforming our hearts and minds through cultivating spiritual qualities, the better able we will be to cope with adversity and the greater likelihood that our actions will be ethically wholesome. So if I may be permitted to give my own case as an example, this understanding of ethics means that in striving continuously to cultivate a positive, or wholesome, mind-state I try to be of the greatest service to others that I can be. By making sure, in addition to this, that the content of my action is, so far as I am able to make them, similarly positive, I reduce my chances of acting unethically. How effective this strategy is, that is to say, what the consequences are in terms of other’s well-being, either in the short-term or the long-term, there is no way to tell. But provided my efforts are continual and provided I pay attention, no matter what happens, I should never have cause for regret. At least I know I have done my best.

My description in this chapter of th relationship between ethics and spirituality does not address the question of how we are to resolve ethical dilemmas. We will come to that later. Rather, I have been concerned to outline an approach to ethics which, by relating ethical discourse to the basic human experience of happiness and suffering, avoids the problems which arise when we ground ethics in religion. The reality is that the majority of people today are unpersuaded of the need for religion. Moreover, there may be conduct which is acceptable to one religious tradition but not to another. As to what I meant by the term “spiritual revolution,” I trust that I have made it clear that a spiritual revolution entails an ethical revolution.

 

Chapter 3: Dependent Origination and the Nature of Reality