Thought
“Right View is not an ideology, a system, or even a path. Right View is living insight that fills a person with understanding, love, and peace.”
—Thich Nhat Hanh
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Application
Today, we’ll consider ethics from the perspective of Buddhism. So far we’ve looked at care as an ethical framework, then love through the teachings of Jesus, and here we consider ethics through what can best be understood as mindfulness.
As we approach Buddhist ethics through the lens if mindfulness, it’s helpful to leverage the Noble Eightfold Path as a foundation. The Eightfold Path is as follows:
Right Action (not harmful to others, acting mindfully)
Right Speech (truth-telling)
Right Livelihood (earning a living in a way that does not cause suffering)
Right Mindfulness (aware of personal and collective emotions)
Right Effort (Effort on right things, like lovingkindness, compassion, and meditation)
Right Concentration (Developing focus for meditation)
Right View (Being mindful of actions' consequences)
Right Intention (Being clear about following this path)
It’s easy to see “Right” listed 8 times and view this as a list of rules to follow. Rather, one of my favorite podcasters and proponents of secular buddhism Noah Rasheta encourages us to replaces “Right” with “Skillful.”
In this way, we no longer see a list of “dos,” but a map of encouragement showing us the way to our deepest intentions.
The Buddha said of his teaching,
My teaching is like a raft that can help you get to the other shore. Don’t grasp at the raft and think that the raft is the shore.
When we read the Eightfold Path, it’s easy to assume we’ve found the shore when we’ve only found the means to accessing our deepest selves.
At the core of unlocking the Eightfold Path in our lives is mindfullness—better said, the foundation of each path is deep mindfulness in some form.
Like the quotation above reads from Thich Nhat Hahn, Skillful living fills a person practicing the path with the states we all desire—love, peace, and kindness.
Backstory
Not having been raised a Buddhist or exposed much to its ideology until recently in life, the sense of overwhelm in approaching Buddhism period, let alone understanding Buddhist Ethics feels a bit daunting.
At the same time, this freshness produces a natural beginners mind—known as Shoshin in many Zen traditions—which allows one’s mind to be clear and open capable of receiving new information.
In this way, whenever we approach a new topic we can be encouraged because our lack of knowledge is not a hindrance, but rather a gracious gift that allows us to achieve a rare mental state.
A famous Taoist parable quips,
The value of a vessel is its emptiness.
So with a mind like a wide open space ready for new information we humbly approach.
What impresses me about the Eightfold Path as one who was brought up in a classical, western view of the world is the encouragement to see the outcomes of our behavior as the ultimate ethical end.
In many ways, in Western ethics we can become easily concerned with virtue, notions of the good, and being right. However, in the lens of Buddhism we are largely concerned with engendering states of compassion, and being mindful of the effects our behavior has on others.
That distinction is both elegant and radical for my classically trained brain.
At its core, the Eightfold path asks us to consider how our live feels in each aspect of our daily routines.
How does our job feel, especially in the way it effects others. Are we satisfied with the effect it has on their lives?
How does our speech feel in the way it effects those around us, do they trust us, do they enjoy our company or recoil and resist us?
The radical notion left for me is, what would I stop doing if I was mindful enough to consider how it made me feel, and how it effected other people?
In many respects, our short overview leaves us with many more questions than answers, but I am grateful for these questions because maybe it means we are truly on our way to the other side, to the shore of kindness, compassion, and care.
Until tomorrow friends, be well.
-TPP
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References:
https://www.mindfulnessbell.org/archive/2016/02/dharma-talk-the-eightfold-path-2*
https://secularbuddhism.com/
https://spiritualengineering.us/the-value-of-a-vessel-is-its-emptiness/
Image:
Image by truthseeker08 from Pixabay
Ethics