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IS IT UNETHICAL TO DEFINE ETHICS AS THE FIVE PRECEPTS?

Christopher Titmuss

If you are reading this article, it is probable that you have participated in a Buddhist meditation retreat. You will have probably received instructions at the start of the retreat to observe the five precepts. You may have got the impression that the Buddha has decreed that five precepts is THE definition of Ethics (Sila in Buddhist language).

You may believe you observe the Sila or that that you rarely require to give real attention to a precept since you don’t 1. Kill 2. Steal 3. Sexually violate others 4. Lie. 5. nor are addicted to intoxicants. You may place the priority of your spiritual practice on greater meditative depth or finding wisdom.

Did the Buddha mean exclusively the five precepts when he referred to ethics? The answer to that question is an unequivocal NO. It could even be considered unethical to define and limit the five precepts (panca sila) to ethics. Panca sila serves primarily as a basic practice for those who engage in the most destructive forms of human behaviour.

We can count on one hand the number of times where the Buddha listed together the five precepts in his 5000 or more recorded discourses. Yet the Buddha made frequent references to ethics –showing his determination to place sila at the forefront of his concerns for humanity. He said that inquiry into our ethics on a wide-ranging number of mattes serves as the basis for depth of meditation, and knowing true reality.

He refused to settle for five precepts as THE definition of ethics. There is no remorse for those who live an ethical life, he declared. Here are some examples of the Buddha’s teachings on ethics. In the Noble Eightfold Path, he stated that ethics consisted of not only Right Action and Right Speech (usually translated as ‘right,’ samma literally means to be ‘properly connected to’ the Dharma), but also Right Livelihood. The Buddha firmly places our livelihood in the field of ethics, namely forms of skilful employment clearly in accordance with wise intention, deep values and beneficial results for one an all.
The Buddha also taught sila as

a) restraint of the senses (indriya-samvara-sila),
b) wise use of food, clothing, shelter and dwelling place (paccaya sannissita sila).
c) wholesome action (kusala sila) of body, speech, mind and livelihood.
d) not clinging to ethics, codes of morality, rules, methods of practice and rituals (silabbata-paramasa). He regarded such clinging as a major block to realisation of Noble Truths.

If we break out of our limited view of ethics as precepts, it would open our minds to an exploration of sila in its wider sense. We would then inquire into

a) the ego of desire for sense satisfaction and impact of suppression on our consciousness
b) obsessive behaviour around basic needs; pursuit and ownership of more requisites, as well as the time, money and energy devoted to acquisition,
c) neglect of a lifestyle in accordance with deep Dharma values
d) private and public moralising around precepts, behaviour, practices and rituals.

We would not end our inquiry into ethics at that point either. Consciously or unconsciously, our ethics influence our thinking, beliefs and actions. Buddhists, whether laypeople or ordained, have often treated ethics simply as a code of personal morality. Since many issues do not fall strictly into the mental construct of the five precepts, it easily leads to neglect of exploration of other ethical issues.

We introduce precepts, laws, commandments, legislation, born of the view that what we perceive as ‘bad’, ‘wrong; or ‘evil’ must be stopped. Adopting a narrow view of ethics from some texts from another millennium, such as the Five Precepts in Buddhism, the 10 Commandments in Judaism or the American Constitution, we gain a bizarre self-assurance to our claims to morality.

Why is that precepts, commandments and constitutions, that seem universally good, become an instrument for self-righteousness or worse? Grasping onto rules generate rules within the rules, and rules within those rules. “Trifling and insignificant are the minor details of ethics” the Buddha said. No wonder he rarely reiterated the Five Precepts in 45 years of solid teaching. None is able to keep rules, and amendments perfectly, nor able to observe such a high moral standard. Being subjected to precepts and rules, they act like a shadow over our humanity. The culture of the time often determines which rules matter more than the others, what rules generates more personal and public wrath then others.

The priority for our ethics can become based upon our projected interpretation of events. The accusers can violate ethical issues as much as the accused. The one who points the accusing finger can forget that he or she has three fingers pointing towards themselves. Ethics examines our intentions in the treatment of others. In religious and secular life, the concept of what is right also becomes an instrument to slag off individuals, to adopt a name and shame policy, to initiate control over others. Hardly ethical. Are more rules an ethical or unethical response to difficult issues?

People’s lives are changed through awareness, making personal and public issues more conscious in a skilful way, and deep insights. That is the heart of the Buddha’s message.

We transmit the authority for ethics to the Book, the Tradition, the Law, the Founder of the religion or the Constitution. The subsequent interpretation is then imposed upon others and ourselves. Perhaps the time has come for us to live with a radical non-acceptance of narrow identification with this box of precepts, commandments and constitutions. Inspired by the Buddha, we need to open our mind to the profound significance of ethics in daily life. The Buddha said that wisdom makes conduct shine and conduct makes wisdom shine.

POLITICAL ETHICS

In a major conflict, we may endeavour to respond through wise action as a public statement of our ethical standpoint. Or we may ignore such a situation. That unwillingness to respond also reveals our ethical values since other matters have our priority. If so, what are they?

We may not know how to attend to conflict between human beings. Right View, the first link in the Noble Path , then means sitting on the fence fearing to be decisive. Right View then becomes Right Indecision. Some Buddhist teachers believe in the notion of armed intervention (a euphemism for making war and supporting acts of terror by the nation state). Some Buddhists believe it might be necessary to take military action in some situations, such as after 9/ll. Of course, others, namely soldiers and pilots, acting under orders from their senior officers and politicians, have to do the killing and maiming. Is that ethical?

We have often adopted the view that ethics focuses on right and wrong, good and not good or good and evil. Conventionally speaking, we would probably agree there is what is not good going on in the world. There are acts of evil. There is terror. There is war To keep labelling individuals, organisations or leaders of nation states as ‘evil’ blocks the inquiry into causes and conditions that trigger expressions of ‘evil. Are ethics absolutely inseparable from our mind’s constructs of good and evil? Is such a view an oversimplification? At a deeper level, are ethics free from belief in good and evil?

Carrying the arrogance of claims to Western civilization, we bring to bear on others around the world our ideology of liberal democracy, secular culture and consumer values as the only fitting way to live. Imposing our version of what is good for others, we act upon the belief in differences between ourselves and others, as if differences revealed true reality. We believe we know what is good for an individual, a community and a non-Westernised nation. That is an ethic. We split our inner life into two, namely self and other or us and them and act on the belief. When we attack others do we also attack ourselves? When we act to defend ourselves do we also act to defend others (standpoints)?

We can barely see each other since people or their traditions, religions and cultures have become so highly politicised. Take words like American, Arab, asylum seeker, black person, Christian, European, Jew, immigrant, Muslim, white person. We can’t see clearly the person or group of people since we have placed them in the category of other. To put it bluntly, an American is not an American. A Muslim is not a Muslim. A black person is not black and a white person is not white. These labels are inventions of the mind. ‘They’ are not who we think ‘they’ are. ‘We’ are not who they think ‘we’ are. Labels are not true reality. Those who believe in labels do not live in the real world.
The media hides behind the self-delusion that it is only reporting the facts rather than openly revealing it uses language to define the world. Seeing clearly what we all have in common generates a different ethic.

ETHICS BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

That is not the end either to an inquiry into ethics. The Buddha states ‘Having abandoned formal practice and actions both ‘good and evil’, neither longing for ‘purity nor ‘impurity,’ one wanders without adhering to either extreme.’ Not a statement that is music to the ears of conventional Buddhists! The radical voice of the Buddha here reveals our primary ethic is an inquiry into the nature of non-difference and non-duality (self and other). It is a single pointed concentration (samadhi) that keeps the focus on such a noble truth without compromise.

With formal practice, we can become bogged down in notions of purity, good or right. Depending on our belief in what is good., we have to fix what is not good. Identification with the mental construct of the ‘good ‘precedes’ the ‘not good’, the ‘not right.’ In other words, evil emerges from belief and identification with the good. Living in fear, we build up our mental construction in order to attack others and/or to defend ourselves, either verbally and/or militarily. ‘You have hurt me (us) now I (we) are going to make you suffer to stop you hurting me (us).’ Is that good? Is that right? Is what is perceived to be good and right ethical? Can fear and hate of others really serve as the basis for ethics? Or do ethics begin when we step outside of our conditioned and reactive mind.

Truth cuts through the conditioned and divisive inner world. In true reality, there is no ‘other. Ethics means the willingness to stay true to what we perceive as real, authentic and free from subordination to beliefs in separation of self and other. Realisation (i.e. making real) of noble truths transforms our lives, all the rest in our mind is mere opinion. Our primary ethic is full engagement with what is real, stripped of differences, projections and socialised layers of opinion.
Let us abide free from any constricted, fragmented and defined sense of the world. Our ethics challenge us to the very roots of our remarkable existence. WAKE UP!

Appreciation to Schlomzion for
introducing me to the writings of Alain Badiou,
the contemporary French philosopher

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