Dhammapada Studies

By Sylvia Swain

Continued from part 1 and part 2

Ethics

Those who train themselves by day and night and are ever watchful will destroy their evil thoughts and approach Nirvana.

Dhammapada verse 226

So now we need to contemplate the psychological reality underlying those words with which we ended Part II. The message is all there if we look, not only into the meaning of the words, but to the conditioning within the minds of us who read the words, for it is through the conditioning of the mind that the true meaning becomes distorted. This is religion’s tragedy.

As the Bhikkhu Nanamoli so pertinently wrote in his notebook: “So much can be done by teachers for others — but what can others do for teachers? We might ask ourselves what would the teachers have us do?” Surely to uphold the integrity of the message. Another quotation from his is an indication of how distortion can arise: “If I insist on only having beauty before me, I know only horror will be behind me.”

To return to the Dhammapada and the problem of the destruction of evil, it is a psychological fact that “evil” repressed or evil evaded is not evil destroyed, but is in fact evil secreted and thus preserved. This is the horror behind us all, individually and collectively.

The most dangerous thing we can do is to live by a false ethic, which means to aspire to the beauty without addressing the horror. This insight, as many of us know, is also fundamental to the understanding of the psychology of C.G. Jung, which issued from his confrontation and penetration into the hidden reaches of the unconscious, both personal and collective, costing him much suffering, but producing much enlightenment in the process, and leading psychology into greater depths and fields of influence than had ever previously been conceived of by any other school. Jung penetrated to the religious wellsprings of the psyche from which our deepest ethics arise. The unconscious, he told us, is honest: it is the ego that colours and falsifies the facts. From an extensive and holistic view of the human psyche came the exposition of a new psychological landscape and ethic, a new truth of good and evil, not as independent absolutes but as relativities stemming from the discoveries of the mechanisms of repression and projection. The ego is our daytime companion, but by “day and night” unconscious procedures are at work, necessitating both honesty and watchfulness. Thus in their very different ways East and West have arrived at a common ethic.

In the beginning of religious practice, it is said, the more we look in, the more evil we find, but we need not despair or be too self-critical for this is everyone’s experience. Chapter 26, The Brahmin, verse 383 states:

Let the Brahmin struggle hard to stem the torrent of craving. Let him destroy the elements of being and realize Nirvana.

As we read this chapter we come to realize that “the torrent of craving” includes all the elements of the ego/shadow, that unit of “isolative self-consciousness” from which has issued our conviction of being someone, a someone whose craving, in addition to all the usual objects of human craving, includes the deceptively virtuous craving to be “good.” However this can only be a relative goodness, because to realize Nirvana involves the ending of all desire for being anything at all.

From verse 410 onwards the emphasis is put on all aspects of the emptying out of all selfness, as Phiroz sometimes put it. This means that we cannot free ourselves from evil whilst at the same time building up and harbouring ideas of being a “good” person for our own gratification. The good thing to do is to follow the Good Law, being no-thing in the ethos of competition between self and others.

In the early chapter of the Dhammapada, much is said about the righteous man and the evildoer (verses 16–17 onwards). Naturally we wish to identify with the righteous man and separate ourselves from that evildoer. This is as it should be. We need to respect dualistic values, since they were the opening by which humanity first evolved conscience and ethical identity. To discriminate between good and evil was a first indispensable step to the raising of standards of behaviour and to the passing of laws based on ethics. However, we cannot delegate responsibility for ethical behaviour to lawmakers, especially when laws are only imposed by stick and carrot.

So the lessons of selflessness and restraint, which are essential for the religious life, have to be learnt anew with each individual life. A baby needs to inherit instincts of greed and aggressiveness in order to survive to adulthood in the physical sense, of course, kindness and generosity have to come later from the heart in each case.

At the present time our animal instincts still counteract our spiritual aspirations very strongly, as we know, and yet we hear ourselves saying, “If only everybody could be honest and kind, what a difference this would make.” Indeed it would, but if we look closely at our own well-meaning lives, we see just how much we too are involved in collective activities, political, legal and economic necessities which advantage some and disadvantage others. However much we try, however carefully thought out the issues and choices in politics or business, we find that for sheer collective security we are a part of much that is less than fair or compassionate. So much for the evolution of social man.

At the beginning of the voluntary, individual path, we must respect simple collective “right and wrong” ethics, because they are our introduction to truth and compassion. Phiroz always emphasized the importance of observing the moralities as a foundation of the religious life, but said that for clarity it is necessary to review teachings for each generation to keep pace with new understanding and changing terminology, or perhaps; as Addison wrote, “Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”

As a current example of this we can take the western sacred right to free speech, our proudest value etched in stone as an indispensable guarantee of all the other forms of freedom. Over the years, particularly in America, it has come to be interpreted ever more loosely, and because it was an open-ended , unconditional “ideal”, no one could find any justification for curtailing its increasingly wide interpretations and expressions. So, when the recent scandal in the White House in all its sorry detail exploded from the airways across the world, seeing that freedom had indeed become incontinence, I wondered what the effect would be on the numberless millions whose tastes and moral laws were more restrained. I heard myself saying, “The Americans are corrupting the world with their free speech!” A very contradictory thing to say, until I realized that it actually illustrated a dilemma faced by many teachers of morality who are often accused of contradictoriness. The Bible is full of such “contradictions”, as is Buddhism if one looks for them; Jung also came in for such criticism.

Wherever the transcendent heart of morality is approached, we are confronted by the paradox, it is inevitable, we get it here in the Dhammapada verse 412: “He is a Brahmin who is beyond good and evil... ”, except that here is a rider to the effect that the Brahmin is “free from longing and suffering.” In other words, he has no axe to grind and thus will never claim that freedom from good and evil is an excuse to do anything he fancies and not be held to account for it. He is the one who has faced up his meditation to the ways in which the mind can become intoxicated with desire and aversion, and who understands how in extremis the psyche can swing without warning to its opposite polarity. This is why he renounces both good and evil, in order to reach that third transcending view. Until this is achieved there is always the possibility of instability and suffering for individual and community alike, which is why we cannot withstand modern pressures by depending on faith and will-power alone. It takes well rounded and stable people to benefit fully from a holistic teaching.

He is a Brahmin who is free from craving and understands the Law, is free from doubt and knows Nirvana.

Dhammapada verse 411

What a difference there is between knowing the law of the land when one is motivated by craving and liable to manipulate the law for one’s own ends, and understanding the Law of the Dhamma free from craving and doubt, but enjoying freedom from choice. Such is the new ethic. Until freedom such as this is gained, our whole lives are involved with the anguish of choosing good from ill, without being confident just what is the best course of action in any particular situation. What the conditioned dualistic mind sees as good is not necessarily harmless or free from potential to cause suffering.

In conclusion, it remains to draw together the common points in the life of the householder and the life of the Brahmin, which is of course the example of the religious life given as the ideal. We, the householders, are far from achieving that ideal, but the attempt does offer to modern people psychological possibilities for future development.

All manner of experiences and situations constantly enter our lives and then, in due time, pass away if we do not cling to them. At least the situations pass away, but the crucial question is, has the mind let go of their emotional detritus?

The Brahmin observes with detachment, what Krishnamurti calls “choiceless awareness.” Is our awareness as free? “That Brahmin the Buddha” taught the methods of awareness, patience, endurance, detachment and harmlessness. Such are the procedures through which the mind is liberated and purified. Such is the message of this book, small in size but great in wisdom. Many regard it as the teacher in their pocket. The teaching is rounded, open-handed; it is ahiṃsa, harmless, that renowned ethic of Buddhists everywhere, having no secret doctrines, pitfalls or penalties. It is up to the individual how far on its path they travel. It is described as “lovely in the beginning, lovely in the middle and lovely in the ending.” Majjhima Nikāya 27, 179.

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