Ethics for the Greater Good

Is it possible to be a fierce advocate, and at the same time not lie or be unkind, harsh, or derogatory? Not simply because of a set of rules, however compelling, but because of a commitment to the greater good? 

 What if we could practice a level of ethics that serves that highest possible good, and at the same time not compromise our advocacy or ferocity?

Transcript

Wake Up Call #364: Ethics for the Greater Good

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 364. We’re exploring sila paramita, the perfection of ethics.

Last week was about how, the stronger our mindfulness practice is, the more we get to choose our intentions. And how, when we do that, the more likely we are -  because we are fundamentally good at our core – to notice those moments when we’re not following the Five Precepts, of non-harming, not stealing, not misusing sexuality, not speaking unwisely, and not using substances to cloud the mind…and more like to choose kindness, generosity, and ethical conduct as our intentions so that eventually, they become habits of mind…so that our words and actions become more and more informed by that habit of mind, and infused with those good intentions.

In addition to the Five Precepts, there’s a list called the Ten Virtuous Acts. The first three are pretty much the same as three of the Precepts: no killing, no stealing, no sexual misconduct – the same except the first is “no killing” instead of “cause no harm.” The middle four are about communication: no lying, no slander, no harsh or derogatory speech, no frivolous speech. The final three are, no covetousness, no anger or malice, and no false views. 

In the first group, no killing, stealing, sexual misconduct: the only big difference I see is how explicit or narrow “no killing” is, versus the first Precept which is broad: to cause no “harm” at all, not to just not kill. I wonder if it makes this one easier or more difficult to contemplate. Is it killing for a prosecutor to ask for the death penalty? For a lawyer working for ICE to advocate for deportation for someone who may be killed back home? For a law professor to teach students how to do these things? What about non-work activities – is it killing to swat mosquitos? (The Dalai Lama is famous for saying he has a slight problem with mosquitos – he has a hard time not killing them, even though he doesn’t.) What about to eat meat, when someone else has killed the animal or fish? 

Then with the middle four Virtuous Acts, no lying, no slander, no harsh or derogatory speech, no frivolous speech, isn’t it interesting that the heart of the Virtuous Acts is all about communication? The texts these teachings come from are so ancient. Yet communication is still at the heart of the matter, just as it was in the India of 2,600 years ago. The way we communicate with each other is the heart of ethical conduct.

Lewis Richmond tells a story in Tricycle Magazine about being a young Zen student in 1968 in the San Francisco Bay Area and also an anti-war activist. One day he asked his teacher, Shunryu Suzuki, founder of San Francisco Zen Center, “What is war?” Suzuki Roshi apparently pointed to the rush mat in front of him where two people were sitting and said, “When two people sit down on one mat, each person smooths the wrinkles on their side of the mat. When the wrinkles meet in the. middle, that’s war.”

I take Richmond to say that Suzuki Roshi was pointing at the war that is most proximate, that is happening in our own hearts. The one Joanna Macy speaks about in the Shambhala Warrior prophesy, which you can read in the About section of the Warrior One website. From the perspective of sila paramita, it’s the war we have with ourselves once we wake up just a little bit – once our mindfulness practice is a little bit in place. The war between self-interest or self-protection, the interest of the system, and the greater good. 

The American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg outlined ethical development in just this way. He said that we each move along a continuum, from an understanding of right and wrong based on whether or not we’ll be punished for breaking the rules, to an internal agreement to follow the rules because our family, community, and society function better with a set of agreements, to a commitment to social justice – a set of ethics that lifts up everyone despite rules, possibly deeply embedded once like the unspoken rules of white supremacy and patriarchy, that say otherwise.

Take not lying, the first of the middle four Virtuous Acts. Of course lying isn’t ethical and in the first moral stage, we don’t lie because we don’t want to be disbarred. But then we conduct a settlement conversation and lie…and do we justify that by saying, it’s just how the system works? Or might we look at lying from the highest level of morality and say, can we create something different here, a system maybe like restorative justice, that lifts up everyone, not just the winner? So that something different can happen when a public defender negotiates a sentence with the prosecutor: could there be a way in which neither side has to lie?

Because if I conduct my work life duty-bound to lie, doesn’t that, too, become a habit of mind? And then do I hide the ball from my partner without even being mindful of that? Or from my friends? Or my kids?

The prohibitions against slander and harsh or derogatory words bring up a similar question for me. Legal definitions aside, how many times did I badmouth opposing counsel out loud, let alone internally? Or the difficult partners when I was a young associate? If you’re teaching, what do those behind-closed-doors conversations about colleagues sound like? And how much of that are we brining home? What about an ethics that looks not just at not slander or speaking harshly or derogatorily as “Virtuous Acts,” but also at these ethical commitments from the perspective of not wanting to harm anyone else? And also, from the perspective of Kohlberg’s third level of ethical development: a commitment to not slandering anyone or using harsh or derogatory words because it could point us in the direction of less bias, less patriarchy, less political division – or at least a greater ability to listen to and really see one another. Even with the prohibition against frivolous communication, the fourth of the four Virtuous Acts related to communication, what if we stopped trying to “hold the floor,” and spent 75% of our time doing that listening, instead of talking so much?

In the end, wouldn’t we also be healing our own hearts? In other words, isn’t this a circle? When I stop lying, using slanderous, harsh, or derogatory words, or holding the floor and speaking rather than listening, aren’t I acknowledging that after all, even in this deeply sanctioned adversary system, we’re all in this together? And I need to heal my own heart, or at the very least notice when aversion or hatred are running or even informing the things I say? Not only because there are rules against that, or because it’s better for society, or even only because it’s fairer and more just and more inclusive. But also because until my own heart is healed, I’ll continue to hurt others. 

As the saying goes, hurt people hurt people, and healed people heal people. Let’s smooth the wrinkles on our rush mats, all the way to the middle. Or better still, let’s smooth the rush mats for each other, all the way across.

Let’s sit. [Choose someone you care about and consider what truthful and kind words you can say to them when you next are with them. Choose someone more difficult and consider what truthful and kind words you can share with them. Commit to doing both.]

[Play the John Lennon Imagine video at the end of the Paramitas – whenever that is! (It’s bookmarked under Music.)]

Is it possible to be a fierce advocate,

and at the same time not lie or be unkind, harsh, or derogatory?

Not simply because of a set of rules, however compelling,

but because of a commitment to the greater good? 

What if we could practice a level of ethics

that serves that highest possible good,

and at the same time not compromise our advocacy or ferocity?