Ethics Are Impossible Where There's No Justice

Do the rules of ethics apply to everyone? Do they apply to everyone in the same way, and to the same degree? Should they?

 How can we contemplate the perfection of ethical conduct or even generosity, when our bellies or hearts are empty?

And what responsibility do those of us have,whose hearts and bellies are full?

Transcript

Wake Up Call #365: Are Ethics Impossible If There’s No Peace?

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 365. We’re exploring sila paramita, the perfection of ethics, or morality.

Here’s one interesting thing about ethics. We can talk all day long about keeping in mind the precepts of non-harming, not stealing, not engaging in sexual misconduct, not speaking unkindly, not using intoxicants to cloud the mind. 

We can do that. And by “we,” I mean those of us who have what we need to engage in an exploration of the mind and heart. If we start from Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we at least need to have our physiological needs met, for food, water, warmth, and rest, before we can engage in an exploration of ethics. Because without those needs being met, we are in survival mode and it’s not something a human being can necessarily do – concern themselves with ethics and morality when they’re trying to stay alive. 

Maybe we also need to feel safe and secure, the next level up on the pyramid, and already that may exclude some of us, or at least some of us some of the time. And going up another level, what about feeling like we belong and have intimacy and friendship in our lives? Or even higher to what Maslow called “esteem,” meaning a feeling of prestige or accomplishment?

If we’re looking at our society right now, especially American society, one striking element of many striking elements right now is income and safety disparity. I was listening to NPR – National Public Radio in the U.S. for those of you who are not in the U.S. – and a young man was saying he had been incarcerated for many years for making some terrible decisions as a youth. And, he said, he felt he had no choice but to make the terrible decisions he did, and specifically, to make the decision to join the gang which ultimately got him into really serious trouble. What he actually said was, “When you get jumped in the schoolyard, after so many times, you just need protection.”

Putting aside the question of how we can be the richest nation on earth and have such a large population of humans, or any humans, who have to make these terrible decisions, and suffer the consequences – and as lawyers we can’t really put aside these questions, but putting them aside for the moment – there is a question that comes up for me. If someone is living without their basic needs being met for food, water, warmth, and without their needs being met for safety and security, should they be held to the same ethical standards as those who do have those needs met, and more? 

In some ways, this is the easy question. In one way of looking at it, of course. If we don’t live by a set of rules for society, we’ll have anarchy. (Of course another question we might then also have to put aside is how to address the fact that we do seem to have one set of punishments for breaking the rules, for privileged folks, and another for marginalized folks.) But as to the main question of whether we need one set of rules, sure, we can’t have two sets of rules on the books, or no rules on the books.

But this makes me think maybe that’s one reason the great sages say, don’t think of sila-paramita as being about following a set of rules. Think about it as something inspiring, a way you’re inspired to be in the world, and in your life. 

I’m inspired to follow the precepts because it feels right, it feels good. If I’d been hungry for days and took a loaf of bread off of the cooling rack outside my local bakery last night, I imagine my inspiration would have been to feed my belly or my children. If I’m a nine-year-old being jumped day after day in the schoolyard and there’s no one at school or at home to help me solve this problem of feeling fundamentally unsafe, I imagine I’m inspired to do whatever my new “family” – my gang – tells me I need to do in order for them to keep me safe…even if that’s something terrible and even if the safety being offered is a complete illusion – especially since it’s no illusion to a nine-year-old boy. 

Fast forward to the day that nine-year-old is now 17 and is appointed a public defender, and the DA wants to charge him as an adult. 

Or fast forward to the day that nine-year-old is now 25 and because, all else being not so different but her family having had enough money to keep her in school and off the streets but she still grows up feeling emotionally unsafe. Does she end up able to contemplate sila, ethics, morality, or not, because she’s primarily seeking safety in her life?

Or fast forward to someone who is under so much stress, day in and day out – maybe it’s the stress of supporting a family at a level much higher than subsistence and yet still feels “necessary”; or the stress of trying to keep people from being incarcerated and losing, day after day; or the stress of being expected to work an impossible number of billable hours. What about that person? How does that person make emotional space to contemplate the perfection of morality, of ethics?

Many of us here are fairly well-resourced by virtue of our practice. The ability to come to the present moment for a few minutes each day, and here & there throughout the day, and see that in each present moment we can let go of stress, worry, concern; and we can even call up self-compassion when we need it: that is the treasure of mindfulness. From the perspective of sila paramita, mindfulness gives us the ability to see a more ethical path forward and, as Norman Fischer encourages us to do, imagine that path so that we can live into it. But not everyone has a practice, and for many folks, the conditions of their lives don’t lend themselves to cultivating one or even considering a more aspirational, ethical, framework for their lives. 

What we who are fortunate enough to have stumbled upon the dharma, mindfulness, can do, though, is still huge and powerful. What we can do, with our practice as a foundation and sila as a guiding light, is, set a good, loving, nonjudgmental, example. By treating every single being with the same loving and ethical approach. It’s on far too many t-shirts and coffee mugs, but what we can really do, more succinctly, is just be the light. 

 Let’s sit. 

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

Do the rules of ethics apply to everyone in the same way, 

and to the same degree?

What about those who are barely surviving,

whether physically and they’re a client in your clinic or courtroom,

emotionally and they’re the tyrant in your conference room,

or spiritually, and they’re slowly collapsing in the office next door?

How do we contemplate the perfection of ethical conduct 

when our bellies or hearts are empty?

And what responsibility do those of us have, 

whose practices are strong and whose hearts and bellies are full?