Morals and Inter-subjectivity | True Harmonious Community

Morals and Inter-Subjectivity True Harmonious Community Evangelos Legakis UID: 3035165603 [email protected] BSTC6058 Buddhism and Society Class led by: Venerable GuangXing Master Buddhist Studies Hong Kong University Date of Submission: 20/10/14 Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 1 Morals and Inter-Subjectivity Consider a true harmonious community that can be as small as a family but can represent a social circle as big as a city, country or continent. Literally speaking the word community comes from the Latin ‘commūnitās’, which mean ‘common’ so it relates to the group of people who have common goals or principles to coexist; to be together as a whole. But also, from a different perspective, the word community incorporates the words ‘com’ which in Latin means ‘with’, and the word ‘unity’ which all together signifies ‘with unity’. So it is clear that the signification of the word ‘Unity’ is inherently present to what a community is. Hence a full meaning of a true harmonious community would be: ‘the group of beings who have equal goals and values in life, for together evolving and living united, responsibly and in agreement’. True harmony here I mean the product of validation of all unique differences of coexisting beings. Within a community there should be a balanced inter-dependency from all its members, however different one might be, because being isolated and alone, as it is obvious, does not form a community; and as we know so well that no human being is self-sufficient living in isolation. In this essay I will comment on the basic morals of Buddhist tradition, the eightfold path, as well as will offer two fundamental states of being and three fundamental emotional morals that are vital and can contribute in a community’s well being. Furthermore, I will raise awareness of the importance of inter-subjective relationships and how significant maturity is in regards to the right decision making and consequently regarding to the eightfold path. It is very apparent when we observe people who live in unity they behave in peace, agreement and harmony, whereas people who live in disunity they experience anger, frustration, hatred, regular disputes and without having any consistent balance. All members of a harmonious community behave in such and such manner for living peacefully, and in the contrary, all members in an inharmonious community behave in such and such manner for living manically. So inferentially one can postulate that what one acts out as behavior is what one gets back as outcome. Acting out is for knowing our conducts after a reflective introspection, however the act of knowing is a behavior that embodies empirical transformation. How can this concept correlate with one of the most basic aspects of a true harmonious community; that of morality? Is morality Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 2 Morals and Inter-Subjectivity accounted as acting out or an act of knowing? Is it something to know out of an introspective reflection or is it a behavior that embodies empirical transformation? Morality can be seen as the attitude or behavior that delineates the right conduct from the wrong. There are rules and principles that when one embodies them, then we can rightly observe and talk about a moral being. Morality can be interpreted as the psychological feeling of praise if one will behave appropriately but the feeling of guilt will arise and punishment will occur if one doesn’t behave appropriately. Thus morality is usually associated with the feeling of guilt if one misbehaves and the feeling of virtue and praise if one behaves well (Shavell, 2002, p. 230). That is accounted whether one is self-aware or other people evaluate their acts to praise or condemn them. Hence there is a distinction on what is good and what is bad according to some set of parameters. We don’t find this dual-distinction only in moral law but also in legal law, which is indeed vital for a harmonious community. “It is evident that both law and morality serve to channel our behavior. Law accomplishes this primarily through the threat of sanctions if we disobey legal rules. Morality too involves incentives: bad acts may result in guilt and disapprobation, and good acts may result in virtuous feelings and praise” (Shavell, 2002, p. 227). Steve Shavell In his paper ‘Law versus Morality as Regulators of Conduct’ correlates the legal law with that of moral law, as means for taming one’s own behavior for doing good and helping each other. Further to this, Lord Edmund-Davies on legal law stated: “It is at this point pertinent to pause to consider why legal systems exist. The universal object of a system of law is obvious – the establishment and maintenance of order” (Harris, 1980, p. 51). Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 3 Morals and Inter-Subjectivity It is obvious that both the legal and moral law need to coexist and complement each other for a true harmonious community to work in tune. When one disobeys a law, punishment will take place by a government body, either that is the state police or a court-judge, or a government, or a religious institutional body depending on the offence one has conducted. Of course there are levels of punishment for misconducts, which is dependent on whether one is aware of their offence or not and also dependent on whether they had an intent to act as such. To have order, agreement and harmony in a social system as a whole, it appears that we should follow some systems of law. In both cases however, we do experience a sever duality between right and wrong in regards to some set rules and regulations implemented by certain individuals, who for better or for worse, they are knowledgeable, experienced, and their job is to care for the well being of the whole community that they represent. It is for better or for worse because in the vision of serving a common goal, we get attracted by pursuing ideals, even when one loses their individuality and integrity; and indeed it has been obvious that when human kind becomes possessed by a vision, then they abandon all human morals and values, tending to treat each other atrociously and disrespectfully (Storr, A. 1963, p. 25). There are numerous morals depending on the culture, religion and the beliefs of a particular group of people. A position held by Buddhist philosophers is that all sentient beings deserve to be treated morally. Not just human beings but any sentient being deserves moral regard because they are capable of suffering. Buddhist morals depict the eightfold path as one of the basic moral guidelines for one to cease suffering (Dukkha) and find liberation. Suffering, according to Buddhist teachings, exists when there is ignorance of origin of suffering and furthermore attachment or clinging on the particular situation or thing that causes the suffering; whether the situation is pleasant, unpleasant of neutral in feeling and sensation. We see that from all eight, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration, Buddhist moral life begins with right view which is the most important for all the rest values and virtuous to have a clear understanding and embodiment of one’s conduct. “The Buddha asserts that he sees no single factor so responsible for the suffering of living beings as wrong view, and no factor so potent in Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 4 Morals and Inter-Subjectivity promoting the good of living beings as right view” (Karunadasa, 2013, p. 74). Second to the right view is the right intention that again Karunadasa reminds us “it is not action but the intentionality of the action that is recognized as moral action per se” (2013, p. 77). One can clearly observe that all paths have the word ‘right’ as a complementary adjective; nevertheless, how can one know what is right and what is wrong? It is said that one needs to have the right view but what is ’truly’ right and what is ‘truly´ wrong? If there is a great attachment, one cannot see clearly what is truly right and what is truly wrong, then how can they discern their righteous conducts? Buddhist perspective on the right speech also mentions that one should not tell the truth if it is to harm someone. So inferentially, behavior is evaluated according, and is interdependent, to circumstances. Furthermore, if someone acts through delusional mental processes (ignorance), one of the three roots of moral evil, how can one discern right from wrong? “It is in fact the mental factor called absence of delusion that elevates itself to the level of liberating wisdom” (Karunadasa, 2013, p. 79). How can one acquire this so called ‘Absence of Delusion’ or absence of ignorance, and thus reach the level of liberating wisdom? It is most clear that killing is wrong and promoting life is right but when it comes to more personal affair disagreements and as long as we are living in duality of what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad as well as on the fact that there are people who set such parameters of what is right and what is wrong, wouldn’t that account as an endless struggle over inter-subjective dispute? It is thus vital to raise awareness in the smaller scale within the context of the individual’s inner peace and thereafter to a family, and a love relationship, for the smaller communities can easily form the larger ones; that of cities and continents. “We can never obtain peace or environmental stability until we create peace within ourselves”. Dalai Lama We can witness from Dalia Lama’s comment that as long as the smaller ‘parts’ of a community are harmoniously communicating, then the ‘whole’ community will be more likely to equally harmoniously communicate. B. H. Streeter stated: “The most conspicuous mark of the moral level of any community is the value it sets on human personality” (cited in Storr, 1963, p. 23). Henceforth, here it is pertinent to raise Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 5 Morals and Inter-Subjectivity awareness on the inter-subjective human personality correlated to the Buddhist doctrine of the eightfold path, within the context of a true harmonious community. It is quite evident that often man experiences disputes, legal discriminations and personal affair conflicts without being able to discriminate what is right and what is wrong. Many factors can play crucial role for disagreements such as cultural differences, diverse reality interpretations dependent on subjective models and patterns, on past experiences and empirical knowledge as well as on what maturity can be accounted for. Maybe one is so arrogant that they cannot reflect upon themselves and thus it is so hard to change perspective or see clearer. Or one of the parties might be so angry, blinding their clear thinking by having their egocentric persona talking instead of their altruistic self. Or there might be mental impositions of what is right and what is wrong out of conditioning and thus developing habits out of numerous repeated times of the same behavior. It worth noting that a habit is a habit as long as one is not aware of it; when it leaps into our awareness it is not accounted as habit but as a pattern of preference or a choice of conduct. Thus for example if someone has a habit of smoking and knows that s/he smokes then there is an underlined conditional definition that s/he prefers to smoke. I believe this is important to note since we naturally say that I have this and that habit and that it is so hard to stop or change. We need to look deeper on what is the underlined conditional definition that still keeps us imprisoned in such limited state whether that is stop smoking or any other event. Instead of oppressing oneself within the very limiting and undeserved realms of a habit, it is in the end a matter of choice to change any habit. Within a dispute both or more parties have needs and wants that need to be satisfied but might differ vastly. It is wise thus to question what are our needs and wants when it comes to inter-subjectively communicate with others and how can we see these with receptivity and acceptance. It is true that ‘wants’ can be seen as an inner freedom or inner liberty for one can want whatever pleases them without accounting an other with respect (Skinner, 1971, p. 41). Conflicts, personal affair disagreements and disputes can arise when one cannot let go their ‘wants’ and keeps clinging on their personal subjective perspective, which could be also an illusory inner freedom. But what Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 6 Morals and Inter-Subjectivity if we are more open to what life brings us to experience, learn and evolve from? When we have an impure mind-set of what we might want maybe it is not what we truly need for harmoniously living and evolving. When we keep an open mind to the present life’s experiences having a receptive and reflective attitude with the right view and intention, then wants and needs are interchangeably well intertwined. By exercising such attitude one could demarcate and transform their egocentric behavioral patterns to a more altruistic and non-self state. This openness, receptive and reflective attitude is very well associated with what is described as maturity in inter-subjective relationships. This maturity demands that neither one-self nor the other shall lose their respect, integrity or their freedom, and each shall contribute to the affirmation and realization of the other’s personality. It could be stated that obsessive striving for power and authoritative personality – superiority over inferiority – is one characteristic of emotional immaturity. Thus for a more balanced communication we should get in touch with another person only by an attitude of unbiased detachment and not an obsessive attachment to control. Here Storr very well distinguishes four junctures of an unbalanced relationship that can easily be found in communities’ personal relationships, which if present, cannot construct a true harmonious attitude towards uniting a community and its members. • To incorporate another person is to swallow him up, to overwhelm him, and to destroy him, and thus to treat him ultimately as less than a whole person. • To identify with another person is to lose oneself, to submerge one’s own identity in that of the other, to be overwhelmed, and hence to treat oneself ultimately as less than a whole person. • To pass judgment, in Jung’s sense, is to place oneself in an attitude of superiority; • To agree offhandedly is to place oneself in an attitude of inferiority (1963, p. 43). When there is not any sign of these characteristics in a relationship and one behaves through the two states of being and three emotional morals that I will mention Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 7 Morals and Inter-Subjectivity further down, we can talk about a mature-pure-mind that can discern right from wrong without being conditioned and influenced by others’ points of view. In that sense there will be a responsibility of one another to co-support and together harmoniously evolve instead of swallow or lose oneself, or become inferior or superior to the other. “For our perspective on the nature of reality play a crucial role in how we conduct ourselves in our individual and social life, how we respond to the social environment” (Karunadasa, 2013, p. 74). From this context one can clearly observe how important it is to have the ability to respond to what happens in our social environment, whether that is individual or communal. Responsibility is a behavior that underlines the ability of responding appropriately (respond-ability), it refers to how we respond to something and not on what happens to us. In that sense we learn from empirical investigation by acknowledging the benefits and detriments of a situation. For a healthy inter-subjective relationship thus, we need to be firstly open and receptive to new learning possibilities. Every single experience can be accounted as a learning process however favorable or unfavorable it is. Human developmental learning is indeed a long process with all sorts of ‘colorful’ experiences. Learning has many diverse angles and approaches on how to learn in the most efficient manner. One of the many ways, we could postulate, is by experiencing extreme cases where we truly empirically learn and decide what is more preferable to experience and live. One way is from trial and error since at times we might blindly need to explore what is the most preferable state to live in. Here common sense and objective clear thinking plays a crucial role which again, common sense and objective clear thinking, or in Buddhist terms, right view and right intention amongst the other paths, are developed by also experiencing extreme empirical cases. It is the power of a paradox, which in itself has a lot of vital vigor for spinning the wheel of human evolution over and over again. For example, we have seen, and many people might have experienced, extreme periods of war. After years of many wars, killings and destructions, we inferentially know now that war is something evil and not worthy supporting at all times. From the other hand, if we never had war, would we have come to the conclusion that war is a destructive act for constructing harmonious communities? At least, in this current planet Earth that we are living in, we have had and still experiencing these contentions between war and peace, Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 8 Morals and Inter-Subjectivity good and bad, virtuous and evil, moral and immoral. Maybe that will be the case until one day we all human beings synchronize ourselves with the tune of inner peace, what is the most preferable and harmonious inner state for all. The tune of inner peace is poetically expressed here and I mean the following state of beings and emotional morals that are well intertwined and co-supportive. I expressed earlier my concerns on how to find common grounds when duality prevails on what is right and what is wrong. I find that acquiring inner peace can be accounted as a vital characteristic that can be undisputable and lucid. Thus the two emotional states are Unconditional Love, Fearlessness and the three emotional morals are Respect, Integrity and Freedom. First and foremost one should behave from unconditional love for all sentient beings and that is the reference point of all other emotional morals. It is well correlated with the compassion, love and kindness in the Buddhist teachings. Second, one should be fearless and always act out of love and never out of fear. For example if one walks in a dark alley at night, it would be much more constructive to think ‘I will not walk this dark and dangerous alley out of love for my life’ instead of thinking ‘I will not walk this dark and dangerous alley out of fear for losing my life’. Likewise, in many inter-subjective relationships we cling on one another because we fear of being alone or no-soon being settled or married, or fear of losing the other. There are many social fears associated with stability and settlement, especially when life, impermanent in its nature, is everchanging in fast and unpredictable ways. The rest three emotional morals are balance factors that of respect, integrity and freedom, which means that all of these need to coexist equally and harmoniously from both or all perspectives of the individuals involved in a relationship. The afore-mentioned four characteristics by Storr for an unbalanced inter-subjective relationship is a good example of losing integrity, respect and freedom of oneself. When there is a superiority-inferiority complex or a losing-swallowing oneself in the other, we cannot talk about any right view or right intention, or about any ‘right’ of all other paths out of the Noble Eightfold Path and most likely this is a state where all moral evils - Greed (lobha), Aversion (dosa) and Delusion (moha) - have the right foundations to grow. Greed includes all levels of egocentric desire, longing, attachment, clinging and grasping whereas aversion refers to different degrees of anger leading to Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 9 Morals and Inter-Subjectivity wrath or rage and heightens the Ego’s wants and needs. Lastly delusion, or otherwise ignorance (avijjā), is the absence of clear comprehensive and objective interpretation of the facts, being blind and unable to see with clarity (Karunadasa, 2013, p. 79). Equanimity and inner peace thus, the antidotes of disturbed mind and evil, start from the core of the individual, what is referred to ‘peace within’ by Dalai Lama. It is an inner feeling that we can cultivate and healthily grow by exercising unconditional love, fearlessness, respect, integrity, and freedom for all parties in a healthy mature relationship. In conclusion, all morals, whether they refer to legal, moral, or emotional intersubjective ones, are acts out which is to know out of introspective reflection and thus to learn from empirical trial and error or theoretical investigation. It is true that we have many laws and regulations already implemented in our social systems, but all these have come out of trials and errors of many past years so as to control and guide our social and filial behavior. As we grow up we already have many laws to listen to and follow. Our morality is naturally constructed accordingly to theories about what one is told that is right and what is wrong, and that is dependent on our social and filial environments. Are we to suppress our inner feelings and natural dispositions for when one is told what to do by people who might not even know or discriminate the right view from wrong view? Clearly Freud and Jung addressed the fact that suppressing one’s own inner feelings can lead to psychosomatic troublesome mental states that can grow in the subconscious and rise to consciousness in unpredictable time. Thus, it is righteous that at times there is the need, for the sake of a greater good, to express out and experience for oneself, and from a personal subjective phenomenological perspective one can acquire right conclusions. Rules and laws are implemented for the greatest good, however, if we take a closer look at the aspects of creativity and innovation of the individual and/or a collective united group, rules and laws easily fall apart. When one behaves through a mature-pure-mind and embodies the aforementioned states of being and emotional morals, then equanimity, inner peace, the eightfold path values arise and no harm can be manifested but only unconditional love Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 10 Morals and Inter-Subjectivity can be present. Unconditional love is love without conditions; and it is relevant to say that conditional utterances and behavior indeed raise the barriers of the Ego. The Buddha also clearly states that one needs to come out and try for themselves to know what is right and what is wrong. Through empirical investigation and maturity of a pure-mind, behavior becomes acts of knowing which are embodiments of empirical transformations and can be well accounted as the selfrealization of a mature personality or in Jung’s terms ‘individuation’. To be mature is something vital for an inter-subjective relationship to work in synchronicity, moreover for a whole community to function well tuned. This mature state can be well linked with the Buddhist teachings of Non-Self as I aforesaid, however to make a clearer distinction, here I wrote it with a small –n and –s like ‘non-self’, which accounts for the Egoless altruistic state with respect and responsibility for all members of a true harmonious community to evolve. The Non-Self from the Buddhist perspective refers also to Nibbāna; a liberated state from all suffering and saṃsāra. Nevertheless, the mature Egoless altruistic state or ‘non-self’ can be experienced as a preliminary stage before reaching the unique Non-Self Nibbānic state. At this point having delineated morals from the Buddhist perspective, as well as accounted also the inter-subjective mature human relationship, I offered two states of being and three emotional morals that can be seen as vital aspects for the construct of a true harmonious community. In a great extent, the importance of maturity is an integral part to consider when one talks about right and wrong views or behavior in any relationship. When behavior is acts of knowing and is well balanced out of a mature-pure-mind, then there will not be a distinction between one’s own good and an other’s good. Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 11 Morals and Inter-Subjectivity Bibliography: BOOKS Harris, J.W., (1980), Legal Philosophies, Publisher: Butterworths Karunadasa, Y., (2013), Early Buddhist Teachings, The middle position in theory and practice, The Hong Kong University, Centre of Buddhist Studies Skinner, B. F., (1971), Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Publisher: Penguin Books Storr, A., (1963), The Integrity of the Personality, Publisher: Penguin Books JOURNALS Shavell, S., (2002), Law versus Morality as Regulators of Conduct, American Law and Economics Review, Volume 4, Number 2, 2002, pages 227-257 Evangelos Legakis │ True Harmonious Community Page 12