Lam-rim 36: Thinking about Ethical Rules

We’ve seen that the main reason for understanding karma is to avoid destructive behavior – because that’s the main cause for rebirth in the worst realms. What we haven’t talked about yet are the mental factors that make an action destructive. These factors are defined differently in the different texts; however, according to Vasubandhu, two mental factors are always present. 

Vasubandhu’s Definition: (1) No Sense of Values (2) No Scruples

According to Vasubandhu’s definition, these mental factors are: 

• Having no sense of values (ngo-tsha med-pa, Skt. ahrikya). That’s referring to a lack of respect for positive qualities or persons possessing them. Think about that: You would act destructively if you had no sense of the value of these things.
• Having no scruples (khrel med-pa, Skt. anapatrapya), which means lacking any restraint, being brazenly negative (“brazenly” means boldly and unashamedly). In other words, you don’t care. You don’t restrain yourself at all; you don’t exercise any self-control. 

Asanga’s Definition: (1) No Moral Self-Dignity (2) Not Caring How Our Actions Reflect on Others

According to Asanga’s definition, they are: 

• No moral self-dignity, which means not caring about the effects of your destructive actions on yourself. 
• Not caring about how your actions reflect on others. In other words, you don’t care that if you act in a destructive way, people will think badly of your family, your country, or that, if you’re Buddhist, they will think badly of other Buddhists, and so on. 

Participant: Are the Sanskrit and Tibetan terms the same in both instances?

Dr. Berzin: Yes. 

According to Vasubandhu, every destructive action has these two mental factors, no sense of values and no scruples. Asanga agrees in terms of the way that he defines them. 

The Three Poisonous Disturbing Emotions

Vasubandhu says that destructive actions can also be and usually are motivated by one of the three poisonous disturbing emotions:

• Attachment ('dod-chags), longing desire, or greed, depending on the point of view with which you are looking at this disturbing emotion. In all instances, you exaggerate the good qualities of the object. Longing desire: you don’t have something, and you really want to get it. Attachment: you have it, and you don’t want to let go of it. Greed: regardless of how much you have, you want more. There are these three aspects of this disturbing emotion.
• The second disturbing emotion is hostility or anger (zhe-sdang). You want to get rid of or hurt something or someone you don’t like and whose negative qualities you exaggerate. 
• The third one, I translate as “naivety” (gti-mug). In the context, here, of destructive behavior, you are naive about cause and effect – either not knowing or knowing in an inverted or opposite way what the effect of your behavior will be. On a deeper level, though, it is not knowing or knowing in an inverted way how we and everything else exist.

According to Vasubandhu, an action can be destructive even if none of these disturbing emotions are present. An example of this would be forgetting to blow out a candle when leaving the house, and a moth flies into it and is killed. 

I think this is the thing to contemplate for a moment: What does it actually mean to act destructively? There is a general category of destructive actions, as asserted in common by Vasubandhu and Asanga. These are actions motivated by any of the three poisonous disturbing emotions. Asanga has many more sub-categories of destructive actions than Vasubandu – for example, actions that are destructive by virtue of the fact that they cause harm to somebody else. But that’s not the main criterion. The main criterion is the state of mind that we have when we commit the action. 

Let us think about it. The main factors involved in destructive actions are: 

• Having no sense of values, lacking respect for positive qualities or person possessing them 
• Not caring and not restraining ourselves from acting really negatively 
• Not caring about how our actions reflect on ourselves 
• Not caring about how our actions reflect on other members of whatever groups we might belong to or be part of 

Then there are the three poisonous disturbing emotions as well, but let’s focus on this first set of factors.

Obviously, part of the meditation is to reflect on ourselves and on our own attitudes. Do we have any of these? How much respect do we have for positive qualities and persons possessing them? Do we refrain at all from acting negatively when we feel like doing so? What type of morals do we have – and why, which is a deeper question? 

[meditation]

So, the first mental factor that makes an action destructive is having no sense of values, lacking respect for positive qualities or persons possessing them. 

Participant: Sometimes the positive qualities that people might have can be problematic – like always being nice to people. Sometimes people are too nice and, as a result, others take advantage of them. One needs to be able to say no.

Dr. Berzin: There are two points to that. One is that saying no doesn’t necessarily mean not being nice. We could say no in a nice way. Besides, are we really being nice to the other person if we always let them take advantage of us? The other point is, is being nice really what we’re talking about here? 

Why Do We Value Honesty?

I was thinking more in terms of our attitudes toward honestly, for example. Is that something that I value? Why do I value being honest with other people? I am not talking about honesty just in terms of ordinary things like not taking things from a store. I am also talking about honesty with regard to things like our feelings, our intentions – being honest with ourselves. Do I lie to myself? That’s more along the lines of what I was thinking about. What you said is perfectly valid – that being nice, being compassionate and kind has to be balanced with wisdom and understanding. But here I am talking more in terms of morals or ethics. 

Participant: But one has to be precise about what a good quality is.

Dr. Berzin: Right. One has to have a clear definition. It is defined within the context of destructive and constructive behavior. So, one could say a good quality is kindness, that’s true. But qualities such as kindness have to be combined with wisdom, don’t they? Wisdom (shes-rab) is discriminating awareness. That’s a more precise translation of the word that’s usually translated very loosely as “wisdom.” It’s the ability to discriminate between what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate according to a situation. 

Participant: A lot of problems in our society today are seen as coming from people growing up without a sense of values. So, the German education system started to teach that as a subject in school. In former days, it was religion that conveyed moral values. That’s how the older generations learned them.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Now the various religions play a smaller role. It’s what His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks about all the time: basic human values, secular ethics. That’s more in the area of compassion, kindness, and so on. But I’d like focus instead on Buddhist ethics since this is our topic.

Ethics versus Laws

I think there is a difference between having respect for honesty and having respect for the law. Do you see a difference? Why be an ethical person? Is it simply because I respect the law? “I respect that this is the way that things have been done, that these are the rules, and so I have to follow them.” These laws could be civil laws. They could also be rules regarding general social graces, social customs – for example, bringing a gift or whatever when you visit somebody. Or is it that, regardless of what the law is, I follow it because it’s the law, even if it makes no sense to me? 

Participant: I work for the justice department of the German government. For me, a law is something that is imposed externally. It’s like a fence around us – as if we were cattle and this is the boundary outside of which we can’t go. However, when we talk about honesty, we’re talking about personal relations with other people.

Dr. Berzin: I think we need to consider honesty as an ethical value. This is what we are talking about – having a sense of values, regardless of who the other person is, and being honest with ourselves. 

What I am wondering is that when we are thinking of respect, as in “respect for the law,” are we thinking more in terms of obedience – that obedience is the basis for ethics? Or is it that the basis for ethics comes from our own sense of values (sorry, I keep on using the same word). 

Participant: A law is something I have to do or should do. A value is something I want to live up to.

Dr. Berzin: That’s very good. Those are two very different things, aren’t they? We could follow the laws because we have to. We might not have any respect for them, but we don’t have much of a choice – for example, which side of the street to drive on. 

But, here, I think what we are really talking about is our own sense of what’s positive and what we consider to be worthwhile and important. This has to do with Asanga’s definition of the same term, which is having self-dignity. Can you see a relation between the two? “I think enough of myself not to act like a complete idiot or to act really negatively. I have a higher opinion of myself than to behave like that.”

To What Extent Are Ethical Values Determined by Society?

Participant: But ethical values are defined or at least influenced by the society in which I am living.

Dr. Berzin: So, if you lived in a society of thieves, would you become a thief? That would imply that ethics are completely taught and that you don’t have an inner sense of values. Where would a sense of values come from otherwise? From previous lives, Buddhism would say. Is it totally conditioned by our upbringing? 

Participant: I didn’t say it was totally conditioned. That’s why I said “influenced.”

Dr. Berzin: It is influenced. For example, what always surprises so many people who come here to Germany from foreign countries is how most people will not cross the street when the light at an intersection is red. Even when there are absolutely no cars around, they will wait for the light to turn green. That’s conditioned by society. 

Participant: But that’s not an ethical value.

Dr. Berzin: If it’s not, why do you stand there?

Participant: Because it’s the law and we are conditioned to follow it.

Dr. Berzin: So, that’s why I asked: What’s the difference between having respect for the law and having a sense of values?

Participant: If I lived in a society of thieves or one in which everybody cheated and nobody was honest, I would probably not hesitate to steal and cheat.

Dr. Berzin: But would you question those values? I’m thinking of the example of honor killings. Your sister, for example, had premarital sex with somebody, so she dishonored the family. So, then you have to kill the person who had sex with her. 

Participant: You also have to kill your sister.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Then there are a lot of these revenge killings. “You insulted my clan, so I have to kill you.” Let’s say you were brought up in and conditioned by a society like that. Would you ever question that type of killing? If you did, what would cause you to question it? Would it be because you “saw the light” or heard some teaching from someone outside the society? Or could it be because you had your own sense of values – which Buddhism would explain as having come from previous lives. Nothing happens without a cause. 

Participant: But, Alex, if I lived in that kind of society, I assume that my major value would be the honor of the family rather than the value of not killing.

Dr. Berzin: That’s very good! This is the other criterion: caring about how our actions reflect on others. So, we care about how the actions of the sister reflect on the family and, therefore, we have a sense of values, but what we value is the honor of the family rather than the life of the person we kill.

That becomes very interesting, doesn’t it? One has a sense of values and, so, respects positive qualities, but what are the qualities that one values, and what are the criteria one uses? 

Are Buddhist Ethics Universally Valid?

Participant: Throughout history, there have been many, many different views on morality. Some say it’s inherent in the nature of the man; others say it’s completely conditioned by society. There’s Milton’s view, Hume’s view, Kant’s view, and so on.

Dr. Berzin: Right. There are many, many different views. But, here, we are looking at the Buddhist view. Does the Buddhist view, whether defined by Vasubandhu or Asanga, make any sense to us? What about moral self-dignity, caring how my actions reflect on me? Well, that could mean thinking that “to be a ‘man,’ I have to go out and kill before I am certain age. If I don’t kill somebody before I am twenty-one, it means that I am a coward and a weakling.” What about that?

Participant: It doesn’t sound very Buddhist.

Dr. Berzin: Right. But does it fit the definition? You see, these definitions really need to be examined. And one debates them to see what the limitations are and what the strong points are. How do we understand these definitions? If we are going to refrain from destructive behavior because it leads to worse rebirths, to suffering and unhappiness, we need to understand what in the world destructive behavior is. 

Participant: I really don’t really like the point about no moral self-dignity, not caring how your actions reflect on yourself, because moral self-dignity means something really different in different times and different cultures.

Participant: When you engage in things like vendettas and clan warfare, you really feel, “Now I have done the right thing.”

Dr. Berzin: Right. And those kinds of actions would be rewarded and accepted by the society. People would say you did the right thing.

Buddhism does say everything is relative, but that’s a tricky subject. Can moral self-dignity be defined and explained in such a way that it doesn’t allow for just any actions deemed constructive by a society – for example, honor killings – to be considered constructive. Buddhism would say that those who believe that things like honor killings are constructive are being naïve about the effect of their behavior. But then, again, those other societies could say that Buddhists are naïve to believe in karmic cause and effect.  

Now we get back to the question of Buddha being a valid source of information about this. You see how difficult all of this is once you start examining it. Or is there something that you can feel quite definite about, namely that this is going to lead to happiness, and that’s going to lead to unhappiness; this is going to lead to suffering, and that is not? 

Participant: I think that we can use the word “values” only within the Buddhist context. 

Dr. Berzin: But, then, are the Buddhist teachings valid only for Buddhists? That becomes another difficult question, doesn’t it? If some people take revenge by killing their family’s enemy, and think that they’ll go to heaven as a result, does it mean that those who engage in revenge killings don’t have compassion? Maybe they have the idea that compassion is for the members of their own family who were killed. In order for their souls to rest in peace, they have to avenge their deaths; otherwise, their souls will never rest in peace. I’ve heard that before. We could say that’s compassion. 

This is serious question: Is everything in fact relative? And what do we mean by “relative”? 

Participant: If they kill someone, they don’t have the compassion for that person. 

Dr. Berzin: That’s true. But then they could say that if they don’t kill, they don’t have compassion for their relative who was killed. “Why should I have compassion for the one who killed my relative? I should have compassion for my own relative whose soul will not rest in peace.” This is difficult to argue isn’t it? What does our lawyer friend say? 

Participant: Law is all about what the convention is at the time. And conventions shift. 

Participant: I think that morals also shift.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, is there such a thing as an absolute ethical standard? There are these general principles that Buddha taught, for example, that if you have unhappiness, it is the result of destructive behavior. Now we are looking more carefully at what destructive behavior means. So, is that statement universally true, or is it true only within the Buddhist context?

Participant: Why does it matter?

Dr. Berzin: If it doesn’t matter, why should I avoid destructive behavior? That’s the question.

I’m reminded of something that a friend pointed out to me. I was telling her about how His Holiness believes very strongly in teaching Buddhist science (namely, Buddhist psychology) and Buddhist philosophy to those who are not necessarily Buddhist – he makes this division between Buddhist science, Buddhist philosophy, and Buddhist religion. He believes that non-Buddhists can benefit from the teachings on science and philosophy and be able to use them in a secular context within their own lives. One of the examples he always cites is of some Chinese lawyers who worked in China who had gone to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery (they do that particularly in Amdo (Qinghai Province and parts of Gansu Province) and had learned something about debate and Tibetan Buddhist logic (well, it’s Indian logic, but, anyway), which they then found to be very useful in their law practices. 

When I told my friend about that, she said, “Well, the danger here…” Now, I always talk about the “danger” of confusing Dharma-lite with Real Thing Dharma. However, she was pointing out something else, a different type of Dharma-lite: Dharma without ethics. She said that if you just teach the analysis of mind, the logic, and all of that, you run the danger of nullifying the ethics side of Buddhism. And the ethics side is so important, particularly when you want to adopt the analysis of the mind as a tool to help patients develop discriminating awareness and to make constructive choices. My friend is a psychiatrist, and her approach to psychiatry and psychology puts a strong emphasis on ethics. She’s not into just giving pills or analyzing whose fault something is or the reason for this or that in terms of what happened in one’s childhood. 

My point is that ethics is a very important part of Buddhism. Then the question is, is the Buddhist concept of ethics restricted to a Buddhist religious context only, or is it something that is more universally applicable? It’s a difficult question, as we have just seen with our discussion of these definitions.

Participant: There seem to be the same basic ethics in all the big religions: not to kill, not to steal, not to lie. 

Participant: And we find them in the secular arena as well.

Dr. Berzin: Right. These are what His Holiness calls basic human values or universal values. 

Participant: There seems to be something really universal in these ethics. They help society to function.

Participant: They might be universal in the West, but there might tribes and societies in other parts of the world that don’t have these same values. 

Dr. Berzin: I would say that they have these values of not killing, stealing, or lying but that they would apply them toward those within their own societies and not necessarily toward those outside their own societies. They might find it perfectly OK to kill people of the other tribe but not OK to kill people in their own family, clan, or tribe.

Participant: But I was talking about the big religions.

Dr. Berzin: Yeah, the major religions, the bigger religions, all have this. 

Also, I think what we are neglecting here, which is perhaps my fault because I didn’t emphasize it, is that, although the two mental factors – regardless of which of the two definitions we use – aren’t necessarily accompanied by the three root disturbing emotions, they usually are. Asanga says these two mental factors are always accompanied by the disturbing emotions. Vasubandhu categorizes them separately because he says there could be an example in which no disturbing emotion is present, even when these two other factors are present. But, usually, they’re in combination with the disturbing emotions – so, longing desire, attachment, greed, anger, hostility, naivety.

Participant: However, there are many societies that don’t consider lust, for example, to be destructive.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s also thought that greed is good for the economy, to want more and to compete – usually, with hostility. Although, in theory, competition is not supposed to be with hostility, it’s hard to compete without hostility, isn’t it? So, is that society an unethical one? Now we get into dangerous political ground. 

Participant: According to Buddhist ethics, yes.

Participant: According to Christian values, greed is a deadly sin. Yet, there are Christian societies that can be quite greedy, vengeful, and so on.

Dr. Berzin: I don’t think it’s our place here to analyze other societies. Let’s try to stick to the Buddhist point. Do we respect and follow Buddhist ethics simply because we are Buddhist – so, out of religious persuasion – or because it makes sense to us logically? 

Participant: I think it might not be possible to look at this outside the context of a society.

Dr. Berzin: That’s absolutely true. Nothing exists outside of a context, but the question is whether we can speak of a universal context or only limited ones.

Participant: I was just thinking about ancient times. The Japanese and Eskimo societies, for example, had very limited resources, so they put their elders out in the cold and left them to die. It was just because the society had to survive. They said, “We cannot feed all. The old ones are useless now.” So, they put them out, but it was not out of greed or something like that, not out of bad intent.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It was not based on cruelty or bad intent. How the old people felt about it, I don’t know. Some probably accepted it; some probably were not very happy about it.

Participant: The daughters or the sons must have been sorry.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Well, we will have an example later on: When you have to choose between letting your children starve to death or killing a sheep in order to feed them, what do you do? 

Participant: You kill the sheep.

Dr. Berzin: Well, then the question is, would that be a destructive action? You don’t have malice for the sheep. You probably even feel very sad to have to kill the sheep. Let’s say it’s your pet sheep… let’s say it’s your dog! Either we let the children – and the dog – starve to death, or we kill the dog and eat the dog. As I said, Asanga has many different categories, one being that an action can be destructive just by the nature of samsara. The suffering that would result from killing the dog would, in this case, be very small, but the action would still be destructive because it’s part of a no-win, samsaric, situation. With either choice, you are killing: either you deprive the children of food, so they starve to death, or you kill the dog. It’s in situations like this where these ethical issues come up. 

I think we can just leave these questions open to further thought and reflection. But I think it’s very worthwhile to consider: What is my attitude toward honesty? Do I value it? Do I value it in all situations? Do I always use discriminating awareness? One has to be diplomatic, of course. “What an ugly dress you are wearing. It looks horrible on you” – that’s not a nice thing to say to somebody, even though it would be honest. 

Participant: I notice with myself that though I have values, I don’t always act according to them. I think greed is not good, but, still, I’m greedy. 

Dr. Berzin: That’s very good. This is why we have this second mental factor of having scruples, restraining oneself from being brazenly negative. So, not only do I value what’s positive and good – or what Buddhism would consider “good” (although that word isn’t used in the Buddhist texts) – in addition, I restrain myself from acting in negative ways. The two mental factors have to be there. If only one is there, it becomes problematic. We could restrain ourselves from acting in negative ways simply because we want to be obedient and to follow the laws, not because we have a sense of values. So, if the law changed and dictated that we had to go out and kill all the members of an ethnic group, we might think, “Well, that’s the law; so, I’ll follow it.” 

Participant: What Marianne just said about not always living up to her values is, I think, the reason why ethics is sometimes called self-discipline: you need self-discipline to act ethically.

Dr. Berzin: Definitely. And why do we discipline ourselves? Well, it could be that we are afraid of the consequences or because we have a sense of what’s right. It could also be a combination of them both.

Participant: I think that it also has the connotation of training.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Well, there is, of course, the training in higher ethical self-discipline. It’s clear that that’s a big topic. 

Buddhist Ethics Have to Do with Avoiding the Causes of Unhappiness

What just came to my mind was this first law, or principle, of karma – that if we are unhappy, it’s because of our past destructive behavior. So, the issue isn’t so much about what’s right. That’s a very Western way of thinking, isn’t it – what’s right, what’s good. Plato was always talking about “the good,” etc. Rather, we want to avoid unhappiness, and destructive behavior is the cause of unhappiness. And Buddha said so. We examined what the connection between unhappiness and destructive behavior could be – exaggerating the qualities of things, etc. But maybe having a sense of values is not really an issue of what’s right. Maybe our sense of values and what gives us a sense of self-worth is, as you say, relative. 

Self-worth, here, is defined as “I want to be happy; I don’t want to be unhappy.” So, if I take myself seriously and if I know what the causes of unhappiness are, I’ll avoid them. My sense of self-worth is that I care what happens to me; I don’t want to be unhappy. 

Let’s think about all of this. We haven’t taken any time to digest what we have been talking about. 

[meditation]

Let me give a concrete example to reflect on. Let’s say you buy something in a store or pay a bill in a restaurant and you are given the wrong change back – you are given too much. What would you do? Would you give the money back? If you would, why? And if you wouldn’t, why? Think about it. 

Participant: That is, I think, an easy one. I would give it back because I wouldn’t want the other person to suffer.

Dr. Berzin: So, you would do it out of compassion for the other person.

Participant: It would depend where it happens. Cashiers in a store, for example, always have to pay for their mistakes.

Dr. Berzin: Ah! So what if it happens with a big company, say a bank? 

Participant: Or if the finance department says you owe less tax than you actually do, do you tell them? 

Dr. Berzin: If you know that they made a mistake, do you inform them and pay the rest of what you actually owe? That’s a very good question, isn’t it? That’s a difficult one. That’s why the finance department here in Germany has so many people controlling and checking. 

Anyway, these are various issues to think about. How far does our sense of ethics go when we think you can get away with something? From a Buddhist, karmic point of view, can we get away with anything? I think that’s really the question. From a Buddhist karmic point of view, no. That was the fourth principle of karma – that the negative potential built up from having committed a negative action is not going to go away by itself. It’s not going to not count, in a sense. 

Participant: But the tax situation seems so abstract. It doesn’t seem as though you are actually cheating anybody. It feels so normal. You don’t feel anything like guilt in this situation. I think that the example of the cashier is different. I know he’s accountable, so I would give the money back.

Participant: Nobody thinks about the fact that a university has to be paid for.

Dr. Berzin: Right, or that the police force, the garbage collectors, etc. have to be paid for. 

Anyway, these are things to think about. Are there limits to our ethics? Are the limits drawn just in terms of what we think is convenient for us? And do our ethics change when we go to a different society? There are some people who are very well behaved when they are in their own country but behave horribly when they are on holiday in some other country. “Now I can let my hair down,” as we say in English. “Now I can be naughty because I am not in my society and I don’t care about the people who live in this place where I am on vacation.” 

These are some of the issues. I don’t think we are necessarily going to resolve these questions, but I think it’s quite important to examine our ethics and why we have the ethics we do.

I think the main point that Buddhism makes about following ethical guidelines is not to come under the influence of the disturbing emotions because they lead to destructive behavior. To do this requires having a sense of values and so on. The reason to avoid destructive behavior is that everybody wants to be happy, nobody wants to be unhappy. And we are naive about the true cause of our unhappiness. That’s the second noble truth, the true cause of unhappiness, of suffering. That is the Buddhist context. OK?