If our practice of Buddhism discounts ethics to focus on meditation and special experiences, we may miss the point of all these practices. It's about how we develop our character and how we live with others.

Why Ethics?

Does sila mean ethics?

In this module we want to address the question, "Why ethics?" And the first thing I would want to start off with in this particular context is the fact that there is no direct overlap between this word that we use "ethics" and the word sīla, which is generally taken, certainly in popular Buddhist contexts, as being the ethical context. Many of you will be familiar of the division of the Buddhist path into sīla, samādhi, paññā (ethics, stillness, wisdom). This scheme has about one textual reference in the main body of the canon, and mostly then you find it in commentarial tradition.

So when we start to talk about ethics, the first thing to examine is whether sīla is directly mappable onto the notion of ethics. And why is this important? The importance of ethics being equivalent to sila is that we all have to live in a world. We all have to be with others. We all have to make decisions on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment, contextual basis. And I know sometimes it's difficult living with these messy things called other people! And when we do that, when we're living with others we are automatically thrown into an ethical/sīla-type situation.

The moment I ask myself the questions, "What do I do now? How am I going to live in this moment?" I've introduced ethical questions. I've introduced questions in the domain of sīla.

Now, sīla probably equates much more with a sense of morality: a shifting, changing morality that uses guidelines as a way of engaging with the context and the place that you find yourself in now. Whereas the word "ethics" has a broader spectrum of meanings. When we look at it in its original connotations, which are derived from Ancient Greek, the word derives from two words in Ancient Greek, which are ēthike and ethos. The word ethos is primarily the one I want to look at. It has many meanings. One of the meanings is "custom, habit", but it can also mean, more importantly, "character." It can also mean the way that we dwell in this world. So, when we think of ethos we think of a way of living. We're thinking of how the way we live develops and perhaps sustains character traits.

Putting ethics at the heart of Buddhist practice

So in our question, "Why ethics? Why sīla?", well, when we approach these terms, more often than not, we tend to think in terms of prescriptions: what we should do and what we shouldn't do. I don't know about you, but for me, when I hear a list of prescriptions, I'm actually not that interested. And in the Buddhist world in general, I think there's been a great lack of interest in ethics. Perhaps I'm over generalizing, but I think it's important to make this point, that often we ignore the field of ethics—of our behavioral activities—to move towards the more contemplative, perhaps, dare I say it, even mystical aspects of Buddhism, and use the notion of ethics simply as a ground to project us into these more quietist dimensions of Buddhist practice.

I'm raising this question of ethics and sīla—the moralities that are involved in Buddhist practice and the notions that we get of ethics arising out of the Ancient Greek understanding. If we put these two together, they actually become of fundamental importance to the ways that we direct our lives, on a day-to-day basis.

What is meditative awareness for?

I started the introduction by asking what is the awareness for that we have developed in that very basic, general practice that Akincano gave us. I still want to keep it open but if I'm answering that question... 

Perhaps that awareness I'm developing is in service of how I live with you, how you live with me, what I do in the world, and how I develop my character as an individual.

One of the things I think that we know is that any sense of an examined life will lead us to engaging in all sorts of activities that possibly in hindsight we might realize, "I didn't really want to do that. I didn't know that was going to cause X or Y or Z to happen when I engaged in that thoughtless speech or that thoughtless activity." And yet, actually, this is something we are doing quite a lot of the time: engaging in thoughtless acts of body, speech, and mind. We think certain things that have certain consequences; we engage in actions which have consequences; and we engage in speech which has consequences. And if we don't bring our awareness to bear on these ethical domains—domains of sīla—then we find ourselves in a state of forgetfulness. We then engage in behaviors that perhaps will lead to regret and certainly often damage to others, damage to relationships, damage to our ways of being with others in the world.

So when we raise that question of "Why ethics? Why sīla?" Perhaps instead of seeing ethics only as a starting place for our explorations of Buddhist practice, perhaps we can see it both as a starting point and something we're moving towards.

The practice itself becomes an unfolding of an ethical awareness. So awareness becomes in the service of living this more engaged life. We're really beginning to become aware and to remember what we're engaging in. And we'll unpack many of these terms as we go through.

So the basic answer or the basic response at this initial stage as to "Why ethics?" is because it opens up a field of engaged awareness. When we're engaging in practices commonly known as vipassanā, the development of insight; when we're engaging in quieting the mind, focusing the mind, sometimes referred to as samatha: we're always looking to develop them in a way that allows us access to a field of awareness of our being with others and engaging with others in our day-to-day situations. 

And this becomes a response to those initial questions: "What do I do? How do I live now?" I do it with a heightened sense of awareness and stability of mind. And so the heightened stability and presence of mind and quietness of mind is not simply an end, but is in service of this ethical/sīla-based practice of life.

This doesn't sound easy

So, John, let me let me play devil's advocate here. I want to know about ethics and I hear that the word for ethics in Buddhism is sīla. And you seem a tentative about a straight equation of the two. You say it's about becoming more aware of how I live. Somehow you make it sound easy but there is a lot of stuff in there. It means, where is my intention? What is my behavior? How about my relationships? What is my responsibility? There is quite a lot in there. You make it all sound a lot easier somehow!

This is a rich field of inquiry

And that's certainly not the intention. The intention is not to make it sound easy at all, because I think what we're engaged has a degree of complexity. 

Coming back to your initial devil's advocate position about the difference between ethics and sīla, I don't think the terms map on entirely to each other. But sīla seems to be concerned with aspects of behavior. And sometimes it's directly prescriptive, or we can read it as prescriptive. For example, most Buddhists will be familiar with a set of precepts that are often given on retreat. "This is what one should do." That's only one way of reading them, but they sound very much like a moral code that one lives by.

The precepts

The precepts that people might be familiar with when they go on retreat are...

These become really good containers. But they are a nice set of prescriptions and you see these listed in popular books on Buddhism: "Don't kill, don't steal, don't engage in sexual misconduct, don't lie, and don't take drink and drugs on retreat." It sounds very moralistic.

Is sila ethics or morals?

If I've got you correctly, then you've used the Greek notion of ethos closer to character and the notion of morals closer to convention. Character is something you develop, so there is a lot of responsibility and choice in there. But you don't have much of a choice other than to follow the conventions or not follow the conventions of your society. You don't actually make up the conventions, you grow in to the conventions. 

So if we have ethics and morals, where exactly is sīla on that spectrum?

Sila is both ethics and morals

If I'm looking at the more complex role that I think sīla plays and I think it oscillates between both. I think it oscillates between a set of conventions which enable us to function together. You perhaps feel safer if I don't engage in some of these behaviors that the precepts tell us we shouldn't engage in.

Then sila is more than development of character

Then you're saying it's not enough to just equate with ethics and development of character. And it's not enough to identify, sīla with morals and convention and the respect for conventions that are prevalent where I live and with whom I live.

Sila is more than following rules, too

It oscillates between the two traditions. I think the word ethics is very powerful in the West, and a very offputting word for a lot of Western people. When we start talking about ethics, they often go towards, "Oh, it's just a list of rules that I have to follow", without bearing in mind that the kind of behaviors we engage in—for better or for worse—are going to form our character over a protracted period of time.

We're talking about an interaction between the moral customs and conventions of our societies that sometimes need to be questioned and sometimes just need to be followed. Sometimes they are actually just rules of etiquette, behaviors that help me not to annoy you, for example, which I can easily do!

Is this a happy life?

When I listen between the lines of what you've said, this is about an engaged life, an aware life, a reflective life. Is it also a happy life? If I want to be happy, do I need to be ethical? Is this one of the statements of Buddhist teaching?

The path is all about ethics

I'm going to actually be quite upfront about that. I think that is absolutely the point of what we're doing. If you ask yourself the question, "Do I want to be happy? Do I want to be contented?" Then the whole realm of ethics is of vital importance.

And in many ways, if I'm being very contentious about this, I would say actually a lot of contemporary Buddhist practice misses the point.

It becomes much, much more about self reflexivity, "How I am...", "How I'm feeling..." about periods of passivity, quietude, which of course have their value. I'm not trying to devalue that. What I'm trying to put across is that those experiences are not the point.

The point is that when you come out of your meditative samādhi (gatheredness)—your focused state of mind—you still have to engage in the world. We still have to relate. You still have to go out and be with your family and in your workplace. That requires ethics.