I don’t know how I find these things … well, that’s not exactly true, since they are, apparently, revealed in a pretty timely manner.
Exhibit A: Richard Wetherill writes in 1952 The Tower of Babel (free download) a description of human behaviour independent of religion that suggests we are responsible for distortions in our view caused by rationalizing wrong choices … Alpha Publishing gives away his writings. Irritating and enlightening, they remind me of the precepts and the 8-fold path, summarized splendidly by
Exhibit B: U Pandita in another freely offered work, In This Very Life, The Liberation Teachings of the Buddha. (1992) He begins by stating that the rock bottom foundation of buddhism and practice is sila, morality and goes on to artfully label this, “A Basic Sense of Humanity”
Bottom line here is that lying (especially to oneself) is what confines us to an experience of confusion. Our glimpses of the possibility of transforming various poisons often lead us to imagine that we can skip over this basic stuff and then wonder why our practice is often lost in a fog of distractions. Oy vey!
The first reference gives a stepwise description of unwinding the distortions we have built into our view. Mindfulness gives us a choice to operate such a process.
After sleeping on this I realize that I am making a judgment, but feel justified in doing so, a dangerous position, for sure … Exhibit A suggests there is an Absolute Right in terms of right/wrong (and that we know what it is) and we moderns/post-moderns recoil, but the buddha did describe a whole series of “rights” … the following paragraph illustrates CTR’s take on one of them: (arrived just in time forwarded by Jan Watson)
RIGHT SPEECH: In Sanskrit the word for speech is /vac/, which means /utterance/, /word/, or /logos/. It implies perfect communication, communication which says, "It is so," rather than, "I think it is so." "Fire is hot," rather than "I think fire is hot." Fire /is/ hot, automatically – the direct approach. Such communication is true speech, in Sanskrit /satya/, which means "being true." It is dark outside at this time. Nobody would disagree with that. Nobody would have to say, "I think it is dark outside," or "You must believe it is dark outside." You would just say, "It is dark outside." It is just the simple minimum of words we could use. It is true.
From "The Eightfold Path," in /The Myth of Freedom and the Way of
Meditation/, page 121 in the Shambhala Library edition.
1 comment:
Thanks for this post David.
I think one of our greatest gifts as humans is our capacity to do just that, to make judgments based on our deep inner sense of right and wrong - our inherent ability to discriminate. And I agree that especially in post-modern times, morality has become somewhat old-fashioned and suspect at best, at worst seen as something imposed from "outside" meant to oppress and control us - and nobody tells ME what to do!!
Morality need not be equated with judgment in the sense of good/bad - its manifestation is as basic as good manners, honesty, courtesy, respect and consideration for others - all that stuff our parents tried to teach us but we thought was so stupid.
And yes, making a judgment (aka taking a stand) is a dangerous position - but I have come to believe that sitting on the fence is even more dangerous, not to mention confusing, for ourselves and especially for others.
Part of what I find compelling in the work of Cohen & Wilber is their embrace of the notion of hierarchy, including acceptance of a truth that is higher than "my" truth. But as we've talked about before, that requires a surrender, which ego will resist with all its considerable power and resources.
I really enjoyed Tower of Babel - a fun read and he describes an enormously complex process in a way that's easy to understand and relate to. But of course he's talking about THEM, not about ME...
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