by Greg Goode
Perhaps because my parents were artists, they were always more interested in their art than in other people. They were psychologically insular; they had very few friends. People rarely visited us, and my parents were never comfortable if my own friends came over to the house. Because of this, my siblings and I failed to develop the usual social skills or interpersonal sensitivities that most people grow up with. It’s not that I stayed at home and had no friends. I had lots of friends and was always out and about. And I always went to very good schools. I received a great education. It’s just that I had no ideas about how to treat other people. Occasionally I would witness my high-school friends operate with a degree of skill or polish in social situations. I would wonder: How did he know to say that? To do that? It was perfect!
For much of my life, I’ve been sort of oblivious to other people. In a very important way, I just didn’t “see” people or their needs. They didn’t register. To this day I’m much more an introvert than an extrovert.
When I was in the army (in my early twenties), my insularity acquired a sort of official doctrine. I was reading a lot of egoistic philosophy. My first inspiration was Ayn Rand and her theory of rational selfishness called “Objectivism.” Later on, I progressed to something much more radical. It was a brand of hypertrophied selfishness based on the philosophy of Max Stirner. His book The Ego and His Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority (Dover Publications, 2005) is an extreme example of egoism, amoralism, and irrationalism. Stirner’s argument amounted to this: there’s no reason for me to put any kind of normative authority above my current interests.
I developed a rebellious, argumentative, nihilistic streak. Even though I was doing my military duties at the time, I didn’t accept any obligation to do so. My revolution was mostly internal. Still, that did nothing to increase my care for other people!
As a Stirnerite, I would take any opportunity to challenge proponents of ethics to answer a simple question: “Why should I be moral?” Since most of my contacts were proponents of dogmatic ethics, most of the answers boiled down to “You should because you should.” Even the sociobiological approaches or answers (“It’s good for the species”) could never convince me. This is because they all depended upon my capitulating to something other than my current interests. All these arguments failed to move me.
In my Stirnerite way of thinking, I rejected any argument to accept authority of any kind because it asked me to put something over and above my current self. So I categorically rejected all “shoulds,” including political, ethical, religious, social, contractual, and logical shoulds. No line of argument could convince me that any authority over me was justified.
I continued to feel this way for almost a decade. I even wrote graduate philosophy papers based on these ideas. And I got very good grades. But, needless to say, I wasn’t becoming any more ethically sensitive to others.
Over time, I began to feel lonely and alienated. The loneliness wasn’t a case of having no friends; it was a more cosmic, soulful feeling of separation. I felt cut off from what was inspiring and nourishing. I was still in graduate school and working full-time as well. One day, a Christian coworker who liked to proselytize invited me to a gospel concert. She promised that if I didn’t like it, she would never bring up the subject of religion again. So I went.
I loved it! The performance was at a local church, given by a local choir personally taught by the great Edwin Hawkins of “Oh Happy Day” fame. I was deeply moved. On the surface, it was a great performance. The songs were catchy and melodic. The music had a sort of jazzy rhythm-and-blues style that appealed to me in a way that didn’t require faith. And the singing was done with great heart and gusto. This was effusive gospel music of the Pentecostal type. I was clapping and swaying back and forth with the rest of the audience. But something more profound was happening too. I felt a kind of opening. I felt as if a kind of light was addressing the dark loneliness that had been creeping up on me for several years.
The next day at work, I unashamedly asked my coworker to suggest more of these events. Over the next few weeks, she kept me well informed of upcoming musical performances, all the while with a kindly and understanding gleam in her eye.
One evening at a gospel concert, I felt an earth-shattering change come over me. I felt shivers run up and down my spine. A sizzle erupted out of the top of my head and shot down the backs of my legs. Afterward, I felt like orienting myself more toward this light. Quite suddenly, even as a movie buff, I lost interest in horror movies. I stopped cursing, a habit I’d picked up in the army. I listened to more gospel music. I felt a yearning to be around its message. Nobody was telling me to do this. I totally lost interest in Max Stirner’s teachings. I joined a church very much like the one where I had attended that first concert.
For the first time in my life, starting in 1986, I began to value other people. In the church, I encountered a Christian vocabulary and a Christian set of teachings for all the experiences I was having. And as an active member of the church, I encountered ethical teachings. Looking back now, I would designate those teachings as the heart-centered ethics type, not the dogmatic ethics type.
Of course the Christian system can exemplify dogmatic ethics in an abusive way. But it’s also rich enough to have room for the heart-centered kind as well. Christianity engages heart-centered ethics in a way that encompasses thought, speech, and action. In Christianity, you learn through “precept and example,” which basically means theory, practice, and emulation. You learn specific ways of treating others, many of which are codified in rules. The rules in the Pentecostal Christian church to which I belonged in the late 1980s included the necessity of going to church at least several times a week; serving and giving generously to others; turning the other cheek when someone does or says something hurtful; refraining from lying, cheating, and stealing from others; and refraining from any kind of sex (even kissing) before marriage or outside of marriage.
This was all new to me. My parents had never covered anything like this. I began to comply with the rules and recommendations as best I could. It’s not that I started to believe that these particular rules were the best of all possible rules or that God preferred them to all others. What happened to me wasn’t a matter of belief. It was more an inclination of the heart. This was a kind of development I’d never encountered before.
I began to see that the specific heartfelt ethical teachings, even the rules, had their place. Even though my change of heart at the gospel concert had given me a spontaneous yearning to do good, it had given me no concrete ways of putting it into practice. I had no idea of what to do in specific life situations. The bright and open benevolence I began to feel after the concert wasn’t enough in and of itself to bring my behavior in line with the Christian view of life. In other words, for me to behave respectfully and graciously toward others and toward God, as directed by Christianity, I needed specific ethical teachings. These teachings became very much a part of my entire Christian experience. I noticed that the heart-centered ethics teachings I learned in church (in combination with the transformational experience itself) made me feel happier and more closely connected to other people than I had ever felt in my life. Since that time, I’ve never felt lonely or alienated again.
After graduate school, I found employment in another city. My commitment to Pentecostal Christianity turned into a broader spiritual search. In the church, I had not integrated my thinking mind with my heart-centered spiritual experiences, and I felt an urge to do so. So after I moved, I became an avid spiritual explorer.
I looked into many paths. Several paths—among them Rosicrucianism, Zen Buddhism, traditional Advaita Vedanta, Pure Land, and Madhyamika Buddhism—included robust heart-centered ethics components. And several paths—among them the teachings of Ramesh Balsekar and the direct path of Shri Atmananda—had no official ethical component to speak of.
Among the paths that included heart-centered ethics teachings, I saw that the lessons I had lear
ned in Christianity about the importance of ethics were confirmed. Not that I found other systems to agree perfectly with Christianity on what they recommended or prohibited; rather, I found that other paths regarded heart-centered ethics as an essential part of the package. I found that when I followed the heart-centered ethical recommendations, I experienced a more open heart and a greater overall feeling of happiness. And it occurred to me, based on my experience in various spiritual paths, that paths actually need some sort of heart-centered ethical teaching. I felt that paths need ethics to help with two related goals that paths usually have. One goal is to articulate a vision for how life should be lived. The other goal is to inspire students to work toward that vision. Even if the vision is something vague like “live in a free, enlightened way,” I thought my chances of freedom and enlightenment would be much better if the path also had an ethical component.
It seemed that the ethical components of these paths weren’t a side issue. The ethical component seemed intrinsically necessary to each path’s spiritual goals.
Here are some specific examples of the spiritual benefits of ethical teachings. In my time with various Rosicrucian groups, I noticed an emphasis on loving one’s neighbor. In the Zen temple I attended most frequently, there was a lot of emphasis on compassion and deferring to others. Compassion and deference were enacted in many concrete ways. In the traditional Advaita Vedanta school where I took weekly classes for several years, there was an emphasis on treating all beings as manifestations of the highest deity. Sometimes the teachings would advise us to treat all women as we would treat our own mother and to treat all men as we would treat our own father. In Tibetan Madhyamika Buddhism, I noticed a constant emphasis on putting compassion (defined as the altruistic aspiration to achieve the highest enlightenment for the sake of all beings) into practice by making vows and by developing generosity, discipline, patience, perseverance, meditative concentration, and wisdom. Thanks to the heart-centered ethics component of each of these paths, my self-concern softened; I adopted a more engaged, concrete, benevolent way of interacting with people; and I experienced a warm, expansive joy. I only hope that, as a result of these changes in me, people found me more pleasant to be around!
Ethics as Preparation for Non-dual Realization
Both Advaita Vedanta and Madhyamika Buddhism teach that cultivating an ethical outlook in life is preparation for the deep insights required for what they consider non-dual realization. These paths also define realization in a holistic way that incorporates an ethical orientation toward others. According to these paths, if a person has had deep insights and yet treats others poorly, that person hasn’t yet reached the highest possible realization. Both of these paths are heavy with formal inquiry (called jnana yoga in Vedanta and “emptiness meditation” in Madhyamika). Both of these paths teach a form of heart-centered ethics and relate it intimately with inquiry. There are traces of this ethical approach in the direct path as well.
As these paths see it, an ethical orientation is needed for two reasons. First, living life in accordance with ethics makes life more pleasant for everyone. As I mentioned above, my experience agrees with this reason to embrace ethics.
The other reason is spiritually pragmatic and bears more directly on inquiry: living life in accordance with ethics prepares the mind to be more open and subtle. This openness helps enable the deep insights required for non-dual insight. There’s even what one might call an official ethical gatekeeping moment, in which students are urged to internalize the ethical teachings before proceeding with the radical, penetrating non-dual investigations. In a manner of speaking, ethics are a prerequisite to the highest forms of realization these paths teach.
Traditional Advaita Vedanta
Advaita Vedanta speaks of prerequisites as qualifications for one’s suitability to study Vedanta. Adi Shankaracharya’s Tattva Bodha lays out what are called the Sadhana Chatushtaya, or fourfold qualifications, to be a suitable student of Advaita Vedanta.8 The four qualifications (which involve ethics as well as character traits) are as follows:
Discrimination (viveka)—the capacity to tell apart the real and the unreal, or the permanent (Brahman, awareness) and the impermanent (everything else)
Dispassion (vairagya)—detachment or the absence of desire for the enjoyment of sense objects
The six behavioral traits (shamadi shatka sampatti)—the fruits of spiritual practice, described below: Control of the mind (shama)—an attitude of tranquility and contentment, in which the mind doesn’t get caught up in the signals of the senses
Cultivation of the senses (dama)—an ability to keep the body free from getting involved in what the senses may find appealing (This amounts to using your senses and body for the good of others and for your own spiritual development.)
Withdrawal (uparati)—a condition of the mind in which the mind isn’t influenced by sensory objects (This is achieved through wisdom, in which you realize that sensory objects can’t bring about lasting happiness.)
Forbearance (titiksha)—the ability to endure sorrowful states and events without anxiety, resentment, or indignation
Faith (shraddha)—unwavering conviction about the elements of the path, including the scriptures, the ethical guidelines they contain, the teacher, and the self
Concentration (samadhana)—the ability to focus benevolently and single-pointedly, especially on the Absolute
Desire for freedom (mumukshutva)—desire for self-knowledge, in order to be liberated from the bondage that comes from identification with the body and mind (This is not a desire for any kind of spiritual status or acclaim, but rather a sincere and intense desire for freedom.)
How are ethics involved in all of this? These four qualifications aren’t ethical statements, but ethics become involved when you carry out the actual practices of which these are the fruits.
Here’s an example from my own life. Before I encountered the direct path, I studied Advaita Vedanta for several years with the Chinmaya Mission. This prominent school of traditional Advaita Vedanta, with teaching centers in India, the United States, and Canada, emphasizes ethics very strongly. Ethics are taught as important for living in society and as an essential precursor to the difficult subtleties of self-inquiry.
Our small class comprised mostly Western students. As such, we weren’t asked to perform many specifically Hindu spiritual practices. But we were encouraged to respect ahimsa (non-harming) and to do karma yoga and bhakti yoga every day to benefit our character in general, as well as to reduce our egocentrism and self-concern.
Karma yoga was explained as service to others in which, instead of expecting personal reward, we would dedicate the fruits of our actions to Brahman (or our chosen deity) or to the good of all. We were told the service must be sincerely other-directed—we were encouraged not to perform karma yoga for the express purpose of preparing ourselves for liberation, because that kind of motivation subtly reasserts egocentric concerns. As I practiced karma yoga, I noticed that my mind became more able to function without needing to catalog the benefits accruing to me. This opened my mind and my heart, and it helped with my contemplative self-inquiry when it got subtle or abstract.
Bhakti yoga was explained as devotion to the self (Brahman, awareness). Our teacher pointed out that it would be easier to focus our devotion if, for each of us, the self had some sort of phenomenal representation. Toward this end, our teacher recommended that we take up one of the Hindu deities, such as Krishna, Shiva, Shakti, Vishnu, or Brahma. The Hindu deities have different aspects, personalities, and abilities, and we were encouraged to review the various deities with an eye to how they could assist in our Vedantic study. Our teacher was particularly fond of Durga, who’s frequently depicted as an eight-armed female warrior. Durga’s ability to assist in Vedantic study is due to her destroyer character. She destroys the ignorance that prevents us from knowing our true nature.
I felt a natural attraction to Durga’s powerful goddess aspect, which reminded me of La Virgen d
e Guadalupe, the Black Madonna, and Kwan Yin. So I set up an altar with her image. I meditated on her image and prayed to her to destroy ignorance. I felt sweetness and an expansion of my heart and goodwill. What was important for me was that I was devoting my energies not toward a particular image or entity but toward a symbol of everything. Durga’s symbolic nature was able to universalize my devotional energies, carrying them beyond the image itself. This had ethical consequences. In doing my daily devotions, I felt a sweet, oceanic broadening of loving feelings, which remained with me for hours. It grew into a constant sense of benevolence. I felt I could understand in an intuitive way the Vedantic ethical guideline to treat all beings as manifestations of the Absolute.
The ethical teachings in traditional Advaita Vedanta, at least in my own urbanized Western experience of it, were a good example of heart-centered ethics rather than dogmatic ethics. There was no uncompromising set of rules that we were threatened with. Instead, the teachings were given in a kindhearted way, in which we students sincerely felt that the teacher and the teachings supported our spiritual quest. I felt the effects of these ethical teachings in my daily life. My thoughts, speech, and actions became more observant and caring of others. I also noticed how I was able to remain steadier with self-inquiry.
Madhyamika Buddhism