Contemporary
Buddhism increasingly seeks to make itself understood in modern terms and to
respond to contemporary conditions. Buddhism's legitimation
in the West can be partially met by demonstrating that Buddhist morality is a
virtue-oriented, character-based, community-focused ethics, commensurate with
the Western "ethics of virtue" tradition.
The recent
past in Western Buddhist ethics focused on escape from Victorian moralism, and
was incomplete. A new generation of Western Buddhists is emerging, for whom the
"construction" of a Buddhist way of life involves community
commitment and moral "practices." By keeping its roots in a character
formed as "awakened virtue" and a community guided by an integrative soteriology of wisdom and morality, Western Buddhism can
avoid the twin temptations of rootless liberation in an empty
"emptiness," on the one hand, and universalistic power politics, on
the other. In describing Buddhist ethics as an "ethics of virtue," I
am pointing to consistent and essential features in the Buddhist way of life.
But, perhaps more importantly, I am describing Buddhist ethics by means of an
interpretative framework very much alive in Western and
My purpose in
this article is to speculate about the optimal, future development of
Buddhism in the West. To speculate about the future is, of course, to reach
beyond the narrow protections of expertise into the vulnerability of guesswork.
My guesswork about Western Buddhism's future takes the form of two hypotheses
for scholarly consideration by interested philosophers and ethicists, Buddhist
or not. The two hypotheses can also be viewed by Western Buddhists as
recommendations on the future course of their Buddhist practices and
communities.
The first
hypothesis and recommendation is that Buddhism must begin to demonstrate a far
clearer moral form and a more sophisticated, appropriate ethical
strategy than can be found among its contemporary Western interpreters and
representatives, if it is to flourish in the West. This hunch is to me almost
certainly correct, so I will treat it only briefly at the beginning.
My second
conjecture is that Buddhism's success in the West is most likely if Buddhist
ethics is specifically grafted to and enriched by the "ethics of
virtue" approaches of Western tradition, approaches recently revived in
Christian thinkers like MacIntyre and Hauerwas.[1] This second
guess is more specific, tentative, and provocative, and, therefore, more
interesting, so it will be my dominant theme.[2] Viewing Buddhist
morality and ethics in the light of virtues theory is, I believe, true to the
central core of Buddhism. The virtues approach also generates a wide range of
analytical comparisons with Western philosophical and theological tradition, and
helps us foresee and plan for the limits of Buddhism's Western pilgrimage.
Returning
for a moment to my first and most general hypothesis, I will begin by saying
that I am persuaded that Buddhism is on the threshold of a more significant
future in the West. It will increasingly play practical, heuristic, balancing,
and liberating roles in the lives of Western people and their societies. But,
in order for this to happen, philosophers, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, must help
more to clarify the moral and ethical terms of Buddhism's soteriological project, in ways coordinate with Western
intellectual tradition. For more than two decades, Buddhist philosophical
talent in the West has been focused almost exclusively on ontology and
hermeneutics. One result is that Buddhist philosophy in the West has ballooned
off into the clouds of "sūnyatā-focused
dialectics. I propose that our philosophical soaring needs the ballast
of Buddhist moral practices and the landmarks of a refreshed Buddhist
ethics to bring Buddhist philosophy more into a practical relationship with the
on-the-ground, everyday realities of people's lives. I am moved to this
recommendation by my deductive understanding of Buddhist teaching, but also by
the fact that American Buddhists, since the early 1980's, have increasingly
puzzled over moral and/or political choices and issues, without much help from
Buddhist philosophers and scholars who are also well-grounded in Western moral
and political thought.
When
Christians translated their Gospel into Chinese contexts, the Greek
"Logos" became the Chinese "Tao," a daring and radical
translation, transmuting the Gospel as it transmitted it. A similar translation
problematique faces us now as Buddhism
transmits the "Dharma" to the West. But, in the matter of that part
of the Dharma which can be called "Buddhist ethics," no proposal in
Western philosophical terms on the shape of Buddhist ethics currently commands
wide attention, much less agreement.[3] As a result, the
legitimization of the Buddhist Dharma as a whole is at risk in the West,
for no religious or soteriological philosophy without
a developed ethic can be fully and widely legitimized in Western culture.
A variety
of philosophical proposals relevant to the Western shaping of Buddhist ethics
can be seen across the spectrum of Buddhist thinkers. Happily, no one argues
that Buddhist ethics or morality are
Both in
theory and in practice, most Western Buddhists appear to look for and accept a
grafting or hybridizing process, assimilating Buddhist moral stock to a
plausible, compatible Western moral root. Some are tempted to confuse this
process, by reversing it, as if the task is to graft Western moral concerns to
a Buddhist root of compassion or, worse, transcendental wisdom. This confusion
is like "growing a lotus without planting it in the mud," or
"putting the spiritual cart before the moral horse." More simply,
this confusion assumes that ethics follows spirit or theory, a rather
un-Buddhist notion, given the
In the
1960's, Buddhist ethical reflection, and morality in the broad sense of "a
way of life," were grafted by Western apologists to the stem of
existentialism and to some branches of the human potential movement.[4] These early
efforts fell short of a satisfactory ethical development of Western Buddhism,
in my opinion, because they failed to include much critical, communal, or
practical guidance for would-be Buddhist existentialists (or existentialist
Buddhists?) and other Aquarians. Recently, more politically relevant splicings have been attempted by several Buddhists within
the peace, environmental, and feminist movements.[5]
Only a few
Western philosophers have attempted grafting work recently in Buddhist
ethics, usually by asserting and working out conceptual analogies between
Buddhist ethics in general and particular Western philosophers and theologians.
Examples of this comparative work include
While I do
not find these proposals sufficiently developed to be compelling to Western
ethicists, they are thought-experiments that address some issues of interest to
Western philosophical and theological ethics, while taking interpretive risks
for the sake of Buddhist relevance. I regret that none of the proposals can
withstand the kind of friendly critique that comes quickly and easily from
ethicists grounded in Christian and Western ethical studies; Winston King, for
example, has long been helpful in raising a variety of critical and disturbing questions
about the strengths and weaknesses of Buddhist philosophy in a Western ethical
milieu dominated by demands for human rights and individual autonomy.[7]
Assuming the
under-developed condition of the domain of Buddhist ethics in Western context,
I now address at length my second, more tentative conjecture on the future
prospect of Western Buddhism. I propose that the most appropriate analogy, the
most fruitful grafting prospect for a Western Buddhist ethics, will be with the
Western tradition of the "ethics of virtue." By "ethics of
virtue" I mean simply an ethics that is character-based (rather
than principle-driven or act-focused), praxis-oriented, teleological,
and community-specific. More fully, I mean the complex tradition of
ethics that stretches in the West from
This
proposal does not originate with me. The conceptual and heuristic linkage of
Buddhist ethics with
Earlier,
a modern
Western culture that is destroying the natural habitat, undermining any kind of
social solidarity, and creating a conception of the individual person which is
utterly self-destructive.[10]
The utopian
spirit of his call for Buddhist-like communities of personal and civic virtue
suggests that these communities would almost certainly be
"marginalized," growing only at the edges of the dominant
socio-cultural structures of Western individualism or bureaucratic
nation-states. Its utopian character does not seem to dissuade Bellah from making his recommendation. Nor am I. Indeed,
such "contrast" communities already exist, however tenuous their
rooting in the Western "soul and soil."[11]
Before
taking up this proposal, that Buddhist "morality" and
"ethics" can be appropriately transplanted in the West by
assimilating them to our own virtues tradition, I need to define Buddhist morality
more precisely, in the terms of "awakened virtue." "Awakened,
compassionate virtue-cultivation" is a more accurate phrasing of what I
mean, but, for simplicity's sake, I will avoid using it. "Awakened
virtue" usefully describes the process and goal of Buddhist morality. It
affirms the intertwined correspondence of the moral and the spiritual, in fresh
language, by referring to Buddhist moral vision and praxis in the language of
virtues theory, and by retaining the Buddhist insistence on spiritual awakening
as a necessary, although not sufficient, condition of moral maturity. Second, I
will simply define Buddhist ethics as "philosophical reflection upon
Buddhist morality, including descriptive, normative and meta-ethical
reflections."[12]
My purpose
in this essay about "awakened virtue" is not to engage in historical
and textual analysis. I will not exegete the comparative analogies of "sīla or the pāramitās[13]
to phronesis, arete,
or virtus.[14] My aim is
more philosophical, practical, and even policy-oriented: to probe
constructively the implications of "awakened virtue," the goal of
Buddhist morality and the object of Buddhist ethics, in connection with the
future prospects of Western Buddhism. The effort to construct a Western
Buddhist ethics by means of a virtues approach is not without exemplars. For
example,
Aitken opens his chapter, "The Way and Its
Virtue," with a saying of his teacher,
At the
same time, "virtue," "the Six Pāramitās,"
"perfection of character" -- these are simply labels for an organic
process. Breathing in and out, you let go of poisons and establish the serene
ground of the precepts.[16]
Aitken here falls into a common pitfall in the
path of ancient and contemporary Zen interpreters, what I call "the
transcendence trap." The trap misleads them and us into portraying the
perfected moral life as a non-rational expressiveness, something natural,
spontaneous, non-linguistic, and uncalculating. This is a
"Taoist-like" view of virtue as "natural, intuitive,
skill/power" (Chin., te; Jap., toku), a view Aitken shares with
some influential, but late Mahāyāna sūtras. This ethical conception results in the kind of
ontological dismissal of morality and ethics preached by Aitken
at the end of his chapter: "Thus, in the world, too, there is nothing to
be called virtue."[17] The common
corollary, "there is also nothing to be called character," is
unstated by Aitken, although it is part of the same
syllogistic net of claims deduced ostensibly from "no-ego" and "sūnyatā axioms. The net is true and helpful only
within the "deconstructive" mood and context of sunyata
dialectics and metaphysics. When the net of "no-self" is thrown to
catch truth in an ethical context, villains laugh and demons thrive.
A good
beginning by Aitken, in taking a virtues approach to
interpreting Buddhist ethics, is later swamped by the "sūnyatā-weighted
dialectical anamorphisms of Mahāyāna
and Zen thought. Aitken is enmeshed in what I have
called "the satori perspective" in Zen
philosophy, the position most clearly seen in DṬ.
A clear
and egregious example of this spiritualizing over-emphasis on
"awakening," comes to us in the writings of Gerta
Ital, in her book, On the Way to Satori, where
she offers us this advice:
This is
something that cannot be repeated often enough: no one who has not completely
erased themselves as an ego can do anything to help liberate anyone else, and
the attainment of the goal is not easy. The journey is very long .... Until one
is liberated oneself one is simply not capable of helping anyone else.[19]
This is not a
complete Buddhism, I believe, and certainly not one that can expect a
significant future in the West, except as an individualistic, private, and
mainly "therapeutic" mysticism. Buddhism is far more and other than
that.
A fuller
and more finely articulated virtues approach to Buddhist ethics guides
The
emphasis in Buddhist morality is therefore on the cultivation of a personality
which cannot but be moral, rather than focusing upon the morality of particular
choices and acts. But, to repeat, it is not the will that can create such a
personality, no more than I can pick myself up from the ground by my collar. It
is to the training that the will must be applied, from which virtue will
naturally flow [emphasis mine].[23]
Jones's
disclaimer on the power of will may only be a rejection of Nietzchean
or Sartrean voluntarism. If so, he would be correct
from a Buddhist point of view, which dialectically affirms both the
deterministic weight of karma or character dispositions and our freedom from
them in the concomitant "emptiness" of "sūnyatā.
And he is certainly correct to assert that the will in Buddhist practice,
rather than serving a "creative" role in free self-creation, serves
mainly to restrain and hold oneself in the various forms of moral and
intellectual practice.
However,
the fuzziness of the phrase, "from which virtue will naturally flow,"
places
More than
Jones can or will admit, schooling in the forms of virtue is a social,
emotional, and cognitive process. Becoming good is hardly a natural process in
the sense suggested, of being the non-voluntary, non-deliberative unfolding of
a natural goodness.
Jones's
view of virtue echoes the Christian moral doctrine of "infused
virtue," but without dependence on St. Thomas Aquinas' transcendent,
theistic assumptions and absent his clear sense of the endurance of the
"natural" virtues in the perfected saints. I venture the guess that,
like Alan Watts and others who fall into "the transcendence trap,"
Jones devalues the will in preferring "natural expressiveness" (in
the sense of what we are born with, natus), in
his beliefs about learning to be good, because of things that have little to do
with Buddhism, the Diamond Sūtra, and Mahāyāna dialectics. I suspect that many a
Westerner's "Taoist-like" misreading of Buddhist ethics, as a form of
individualistic naturalism, is mostly and often a reaction to the West's
residual Victorian morality -- a morality characterized by and hated for its
conceived overemphasis on individual, rational self-discipline, strength of
will, rigidity of personality, and psychophysical repressions -- and from which
middle-aged and older Western Buddhists seem to be still trying to make their
escape. In their desire to escape, they share in a broader, late 20th century
Western shift to a moral outlook that prizes a rather passive, non-judgmental
tolerance of others, combined with a preference for the spontaneous or ecstatic
expression of impulses ... at least and especially in contrast with the much
maligned Victorians.
To disdain
the necessary roles of will and reason in the Buddhist moral process is to
overlook the importance of both in early Buddhism. Early Buddhism did not
abandon reason, although it did not rely on reason alone. Neither did early
Buddhists overlook the necessity of a steady will, even in the stages of
Buddhist meditation training. That will and reason were requisite
accompaniments of the good person is also evident in later additions to the six
pāramitās list, namely, the pāramitās of resolution, determination, strength,
and skillful means. Obviously, strength of will is necessary even in samādhi exercises, in making the Bodhisattva vow, or
in responding to exhortations of the Zen masters to throw one's whole self and
attention into zazen or koan.
Buddhist cultivation requires a constant dose of what
Now,
having by-passed the "transcendence trap" on the way to a Buddhist
virtues perspective, I wish briefly to describe what I mean by Buddhist
"awakened virtue" in the context of general virtues theory,
distinguishing it somewhat from traditional Western views. Following this description,
I will conclude by exploring some implications for the West of viewing Buddhist
ethics and the Buddhist "way of life" in a virtues perspective.
The
Why these pāramitās as the specific Buddhist virtues,
rather than others, invites a fuller treatment than I will give here.[27]
The pāramitās, as methods of attending,
energizing, pacifying and relating the self to others, work together to wean
the self from egocentricity. Beyond ego-weaning, the goal of the pāramitās is positive: to foster a character that
increasingly encounters each moment, each space, each being, as a
"mother" enjoys and protects her only child ... to use a traditional
simile attributed to the Buddha.
Since
moral intentions are always elastic, they need shaping by forms and
disciplines, taught by teachers and learned in communities. The virtuous
practices that in Buddhism characterize a good person were often defined as at
least the six pāramitās of generosity or
gift-giving (
These
practices, moral and otherwise, were more often than not "methodologized," that is, formalized, ritualized and
institutionalized in ways to promote habitual performances in a general program
of self-cultivation and character development, conceived to stretch over many aeons of time (thus requiring the pāramitā
of patience!). Methods would differ somewhat between monk and layperson, and
from culture to culture. Some practices were Buddhist adaptations of
pre-existing practices and rituals in the surrounding non-Buddhist culture, as Nath shows in her study of the Buddhist transformations of
Hindu
Buddhist
moral self-cultivation tends to encompass not only the formation of good
intentions in the heart and mind (reminding us of
Practice
of the moral pāramitās is said to create
and accumulate "merit," or favorable karma dispositions within the
psyche, that lead to a better life and higher rebirth. The "ethics of
karma," focused upon by
The
tension between moral and religious motives appears also in Mahāyāna
Buddhism. At one point the tension was reconciled in the bodhisattva image of a
virtuous layman-sage, Vimalakīrti. The Vimalakīrti Sūtra
affirms that a breach between moral effort and spiritual awakening constitutes
bondage and delusion.[31] The center of
Buddhist tradition affirms that moral effort, mainly through practicing the pāramitās, must be conjoined with meditative and
transformative practices to be ultimately effective for oneself and for others.
It also affirms that the practices of awakening have little foundation and less
result, for oneself or others, without the frame, skills, and habit of moral
practice. Moral virtue without "sūnyatā,
or transforming liberation, may be shallow and weak; but "sūnyatā without moral virtue is blind and
dangerous. She who has accomplished awakened virtue, the merging of skilled,
well-disposed, rational moral agency with self-transforming spirit, is, in
contrast, deep, strong, ever-maturing, and rational, ... by her character and
deeds she reduces suffering and promotes friendliness, compassion, joy, and
peace.
In
contrast with Western virtues tradition, the Buddhist pāramitās
viewpoint tends, in matters of self and community, to be biocentric
and ecological. First, Buddhism does not begin with the premise of the
substantial, separable, and distinctive self of Aristotelian and
While the
moral saint as individualized hero, above and apart from others, is not unknown
in Buddhism, the open, relational nature of selfhood stresses the solidarity of
those who act virtuously with those for whom they act or, better, with whom
they practice the perfecting goods of generosity, patience, and so forth. For
Buddhist thought the self is fundamentally incomplete, evolving, and interpenetratively co-dependent with others. Since we are
imbedded in mutual dependent community, training in the pāramitās,
moral and otherwise, is necessarily a training with others and for others.
Because of this solidarity and because pāramitās
practice nurtures body, speech, and the mind-heart, the Buddhist believes her
moral efforts flow necessarily into the community on many levels, materially,
verbally, and mentally, in a subtle, looping reciprocity.
Second,
Buddhist tradition differs from the Western in defining membership in
the moral community, the "considered others" to whom pāramitās-defined practices are to be extended.
In the dominant traditions of Western culture, at least since
Given the
exurban settings of Buddhist monasteries and universities, and other factors,
Buddhist ethics did not elaborate itself often into urban, class-oriented
political theory, a theory of revolutionary change, or a theory legitimizing
divine rule... although Buddhist thinkers did propose all three. The community
scale imaged by the saṃgha was smaller
and more nurturing of personal development, perhaps that of a village set
within nature. Perhaps this goes to explain partially why even urban Buddhists
have tended to re-create or simulate in the grounds of their city temples a
contrasting, natural refuge, for people, animals, fish, birds, and even
insects. A Japanese tea ceremony garden and hut in the middle of
Like the
Aristotelian virtues tradition, Buddhist ethics tends to be ahistorical,
in that it regards human life as having an important and profound constancy in
its nature and goal, persistent amidst the general flow and struggles of actual
personal and historical forces. That constancy for the Buddhist lies not in a
substantial or eternal self, but in our common, almost irrefragable experience
of suffering and in our inherent capacity to work toward an awakened, moral
virtuosity, in wisdom and fellow-feeling.
With
respect to the question of historicity, I think that, in comparison with the
Christian virtues tradition, Buddhist ethics did not develop so extensive a
quasi-historical hagiography, a "sense of narrative," concerning the
lives of the virtuous and their exemplars, the saints. The Jātaka
Tales, while we classify them as "animal" fables, may be similar in
appearance to a "Lives of the Saints." But we should probably resist
calling them "narrative" because they display a narrow range of the
Buddhist reality picture, and we should hesitate to call them unqualifiedly
Buddhist, because the stories are from a pre-Buddhist tradition. This comparative
absence of emphasis on individual "drama," which may be more of
degree than type, applies even to the most obvious Buddhist saint, the
On another theme
of contemporary virtues theory, I begin by acknowledging without apology that
Buddhism makes moral claims that are universalistic. Buddhists have imagined
utopian times and settings for the virtuous, the perfected, the awakened ...
and projected a utopic future when "all beings
are awakened." But, like all ethical traditions centered on virtues,
So, while
espousing the general tenets and principles of a universal ethics, Buddhist
ethics tends, in practice, to define and effectuate pāramitā-cultivation
in community-specific terms. At the mind-and-heart level, the broad intention
"to help others" may be similar across many communities, but at the
levels of linguistic and physical practice, the pāramitās
have a local aspect, and in that sense display a modest "historical"
quality. For example, while the virtue of giving, dāna-pāramitā,
may show local nuances of expression in almsgiving rites, these local forms are
practiced with recognition of their universal applicability in their intention,
but not in their formal, material, local features. A tolerant awareness of
distinctions between inner and outer aspects of Buddhist practices may result
in much less zealous enforcement of verbal, symbolic, and physical conformity
in moral (and contemplative) practices in Buddhist contexts. The resulting
diversity, flexibility, and tolerance sustain the Buddhist tradition, at the
risk of appearing very soft and highly "contextual" in social ethics
and politics.
Nevertheless,
one does find conformity in the moral forms and practices within Buddhist
voluntary communities, of which the saṃgha
is the classical exemplar. Conformity is in keeping not only with the needs of
any community for the standardization and predictability of behaviors that
enhance trust and efficiency. Shared forms are especially necessary and
appropriate to a community guided by virtue ethics. The Buddhist's cultivation
of the pāramitās requires a community
designed to respond to awakened virtue practices with specific structures of
support and correction.
Each
Buddhist community has a distinctive shape and style, governed primarily by a
common goal, the awakened virtue of each member-in-community. This perfectionist
aim is universalized and idealized by extending it to encompass the awakening
of "all sentient beings." But, on-the-ground, the community's purpose
is realized in the details ... of distinctive forms of etiquette, and in the
characters of exemplary individuals; in shared schedules, and a common
submission to rules; in rituals of giving and receiving, and procedures for
correcting and expelling delinquent members. These are communities where one
learns and practices what it quite precisely means, mentally and physically,
morally and psychologically, to act as an "awakened virtue being."
That is, one learns to act, to perform, to talk, walk, sit, sort things out,
and take out the garbage like a
It should
be obvious by now that learning to act like a
Finally,
the Buddhist community, like any virtue-oriented community, is defined in the
characters of its persons, as well as in their stories and the forms of their
practices. Its continuation and success depend necessarily upon the degree to
which community members become successful practitioners of the community's full
repertoire of virtues. Thus, Buddhism will flower in the West only when Western
Buddhists take up a fully balanced Buddhist way of life, by cultivating both
the moral and the contemplative pāramitās
in proper balance. "Awakened virtue" is the balanced platform upon
which to practice the ultimate, transformative, Nirvanic
virtues constituting the flowering of the spiritual life of Buddhists.
If we accept the
propositions that Buddhist ethics is ineluctably and essentially an
"ethics of virtue" and, second, that the Buddhist life is necessarily
at every stage integrative of moral and spiritual practices, several
implications emerge for Buddhism as it grows in the West. Some of these
implications are corrective of recent Western Buddhist troubles, while others
may indicate real limits to Buddhism's success in and impact on the West.
Soon, with
the passing away of the pioneering, older generations of Western Buddhists, I
hope we will see Buddhism in the West turning from its role as a raft carrying
Westerners away from the eroding shores of Victorian -- or Judaeo-Christian
-- or technological -- or imperialist --or patriarchal culture. While the
function of Buddhism as a means of liberation from suffering and oppression is
a central one, it is not the only one. The other function of Buddhism is to
carry the suffering to the Other shore, to awakened virtue, to becoming a
One
corrective consequence of renewing the pāramitās
in Buddhist lives and communities will be the denial of authority to imbalanced
Buddhist teachers by the communities that support them. Too many Buddhist
teachers in the West in the 1980's have demonstrated that they cannot balance
well the moral and the spiritual.[36] However, a
virtues-oriented ethic has limitations in meeting problems caused by the vices
of individuals in the practicing community. This is because a virtue ethic
focuses on the person-as-agent developing over time, in a learning process
often of trial and error. This long-term focus devalues the moral significance
of particular acts, even transvaluing them into
"teachable moments," while often overlooking the consequences of
flawed or vicious acts for others and the community. A particular moral failure
is excused as "out-of-character." The result is a greater tolerance
of isolated acts of harming others, for example, unless the acts constitute an
intolerable "pattern" of vice that forces community or individual reaction
... perhaps too late.
Every
virtue ethics guides us to the good life by means of models of "the good
person." The model may be a living person or a narrative character (i.e.,
the
But rules,
however flawed, sometimes have a place. For example, a rule-orientation is
preferable in some circumstances and relationships to counter teacher-disciple
abuses and distortions. Traditionally, Buddhism depends heavily on its teachers
and on the belief that profound qualities of an awakened teacher can be passed
directly, through "mind-to-mind" transmission, to her students. Of
course, teachers are capable of transmitting the forms of the pāramitās, moral and contemplative, through
imitation, familiarization, direct instruction, and, I will grant, a kind of psychic
"osmosis." But, far more difficult to transmit to one's students and
friends are the all-important balance and integration of the pāramitās in a given person, because they are
partly contingent on the individuality of the novice's personality. It is wrong
to believe that this balance can be given to the student, rather than earned by
self-effort in the corrective view of a vital community.
Buddhist
tradition poses to each Buddhist a momentous question: "Who is
The pāramitās emphasis I am advocating will tend to
develop protective standards of a more public nature, to test those who seek to
join or lead communities. But a Buddhist virtues approach requires shoring up
with useful ethical strategies developed in the West both to assess particular
acts and to generate moral rules. The Western Buddhist milieu may also require
a heuristic recovery of the Vinaya tradition
of Buddhist monastic regulation. The Vinaya may have
strayed into the trap of legalistic casuistry, but it did define and set
procedures for adjudicating particular acts of monks that could not be
tolerated, that had to result in suspension or expulsion. Western Buddhist
communities are only now beginning to face up to this kind of decision-making,
for which a virtues-orientation is sometimes inadequate.
Having
said all this, I acknowledge that act-evaluations and rule-adjudications must
be secondary instruments in Buddhist ethics, necessary as they may be in
particular moments of particular communities. Essentially, Buddhist ethics is
centered in and on "character in community." This focus needs to be
kept, for upon it depends the future development of a Buddhist ethics more
aimed at relationships than principles, more interested in mutual support than
a defense of rights, more empathic than rational, more compassionate than just.
Ethical
strategies focusing on rational rules and judgments of particular outward acts
are the essential feature of groups so large that they constitute a society
of strangers, threatened by the Hobbesian shadows of
competition and governed by laws of contract, restraint, coercion, property,
and command.[37]Laws are
secondary to virtue in a Buddhist setting (and in this I agree with Western
Buddhists who resist "code" or rule-oriented moralizing as a dominant
approach to self- or community-discipline). Nevertheless, while secondary, they
are not dispensable.
The
primary focus on persons, character, and virtuous practices in Buddhist ethics
cannot be sustained without community, places where we know each other
well enough to call each other into the intimacies of an ethics of intention
and practice, as in a family. This means that Buddhist communities must ever be
small, small enough that people intimately know each other and the other
sentient beings sharing their life and death . I propose that they can be too
small, in that a group of four or six can hardly challenge and support the full
range of self-cultivation practices necessary to awakened virtue. The problem
of size for many Buddhists in the West lies at the "too small" end of
the spectrum. But that's better than to be at the "too large" end. I
cannot identify a practicing community that has become too large (say, more
than 200 active members), unless one looks at the large metropolitan
communities in
We know
from reading
In the
postmodern West, the
Acceptance
of the virtues approach in ethics presents specific challenges and advantages
to Buddhist thinkers and other scholars. For example, we need to develop a more
historical scholarship of the pāramitās
dimension in Buddhism. But, hopefully, we can also help people in today's
Buddhist communities to think through the tensions among the pāramitās, the problems of priorities, the
meanings of practicing in lay life, and a host of other on-the-ground issues.
We need to help Western Buddhists distinguish among therapeutic, aesthetic,
moral, economic, political, and spiritual practices and choices. What is the
optimum balance of attention and consideration between self and others? What is
Buddhist friendship? Does it include mosquitoes? How and why do Buddhists fail
morally after years of practice? How does a virtues orientation link up with
social justice issues and the development of a Buddhist social ethics? Far more
moral and ethical questions buzz in Western Buddhists' lives, awaiting
creative, practical inquiry by philosophers, new generation Buddhologists,
and others.
I have
been recommending the virtues approach. It needs a fuller development, in order
to carry Buddhist morality into an inevitable, serious and mutually
constructive dialogue with Western philosophers and theologians. My
recommendations may appear too straitlaced, or even atavistically Victorian,
but what seems clear to me so far is this. The most constructive future of
Buddhism in the West rests on its manifestation in the characters of people,
not in eloquent prose, fundraising efforts, temple-building, or incomplete life
modeling. Hopefully, a new generation will increasingly take the path of
balancing samādhi-exercise with pāramitās-practices. Put simply, the future
depends on a few good women and men who reveal a balanced, integrative life --
of "awakened virtue" practices, in families, jobs, and communities.
It is through good lives that the Buddha's Dharma can fully flower in the West,
transforming our sufferings and awakening in us, each and all, that which is
best, inch by inch, moment by moment, breath by breath.
[1]
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue 2nd ed.
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984; Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character (Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). Return
[2] For my judgment that Buddhism will fail to bear fruit in the
United States unless it develops moral practices and ethical reflection more in
concert with American realities, see James Whitehill,
Enter the Quiet (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1980),
60-74, and Whitehill, "Is There a Zen
Ethic?," The Eastern Buddhist (New Series) 20 (Spring 1987), 9- 33. Return
[3] A promising and brief sketch of the philosophical roots of
Buddhist ethics in the doctrine of "dependent co-arising" (paṭicca-samuppāda),
with a good discussion of "moral agency", is Joanna Macy's
"Dependent Co-arising: The Distinctiveness of Buddhist Ethics," The
Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 7 No. 1 (Spring 1979), 38-52. But Macy
did not explicitly acknowledge the commensurability of Buddhist ethics with
virtue ethics, in terms of key similarities with respect to the nature of the
self, dispositions (kamma, sankhāras,
etc.), and freedom. Return
[4] I think here first of the San Francisco Renaissance figures
of Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder, but also of Erich Fromm,
William Barrett, Alan Watts, Thomas Merton, and other writers who probed
parallels between Zen and their own home-grown existential concerns. Return
[5] Relevant sources include: (on feminism) Rita Gross,
"Buddhism and Feminism: Toward their Mutual Transformation," The
Eastern Buddhist 19 (Autumn 1986), 62-74; Sandy Boucher, Turning the
Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism (San Francisco: Harper
& Row, Publishers, 1988); (on environmentalism) Allan H. Badiner, ed., Dharma Gaia (Berkeley: Parallax Press,
1990); J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames, eds., Nature
in Asian Traditions of Thought (Albany: S.UṆ.Y. Press, 1989); James Whitehill, "Ecological Consciousness and Values:
Japanese Perspectives," Ecological Consciousness, eds. J. Donald
Hughes and George Schultz (New York: University Press of America, 1980),
165-182; (on the peace movement) Fred Eppsteiner,
ed., The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism
(Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1988). Return
[6] See David J. Kalupahana, "The
Buddhist Conceptions of "Subject" and "Object" and their
Moral Implications," Philosophy East and West 33 (July 1988),
290-304; Christopher A. Ives, "A Zen Buddhist Social Ethic,"
(Unpublished PhḌ. dissertation, Claremont Graduate
School, 1988) and Zen Awakening and Society (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1992); Robert A. Thurman, "Guidelines
for Buddhist Social Activism Based on Nāgārjuna's
Jewel Garland of Royal Counsels," The Eastern Buddhist (New Series)
16 (Spring 1983), 19-51. For a Kantian approach, see Philip Olson, The
Discipline of Freedom: A Kantian View of the Role of Moral Precepts in Zen
Practice (Albany: State University of New York, Press, 1993). Return
[7] See Winston L. King, "Buddhist Self-World Theory and
Buddhist Ethics," The Eastern Buddhist (New Series) 22 (Autumn
1989), 14- 26; "A Buddhist Ethic for the West?" (unpublished
manuscript, 1990). Return
[8] A large bibliography of contemporary writings in virtues
theory is in Robert B. Kruschwitz and Robert C.
Roberts, ed., The Virtues: Contemporary Essays on Moral Character
(Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1987), 237-63. For a discussion
of the translatability and commensurability of one ethical tradition (e.g.,
Buddhist) with another (e.g., Western virtues tradition), see Stephen E. Fowl,
"Could Horace Talk with the Hebrews? Translatability and Moral
Disagreement in MacIntrye and Stout," The
Journal of Religious Ethics Vol. 19 No.1 (Spring, 1991), 1- 20. Return
[9]Damien Keown, The Nature of
Buddhist Ethics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992). See especially Chap.
1, "The Study of Buddhist Ethics," and Chap. 8, "Buddhism and
Aristotle." Return
[10] Robert N. Bellah, "The
Meaning of Dogen Today," Dogen
Studies, ed. William R. LaFleur (Honolulu:
University of Hawai'i Press, 1985), 157-8. Return
[11] "Soul and soil" because a complete virtue ethics
not only refers to the capacities of "human beings in general," but also
the particular limitations for expressing those capacities in terms of the
"soil," literally and metaphorically, in which those capacities for
"humanity at its best" are grown. Virtue is formed by
"place," and a change of place or soil requires appropriate
transformation of the virtues. Ivan Illich and others
have called for a "philosophy of soil," because "our generation
has lost its grounding in both soil and virtue. By virtue, we mean that shape,
order and direction of action informed by tradition, bounded by place, and
qualified by choices made within the habitual reach of the actor; we mean
practice mutually recognized as being good within a shared local culture which
enhances the memory of a place." See, "Declaration of Soil," Whole
Earth Review, No. 71 (Summer, 1991), 75. Return
[12] By "awakened," I mean the process and state of
an empowering liberation of the self, by means of ego-transforming praxis. By
"virtue," I mean the ideal cultivated set of rational discernments,
personal skills, and dispositions of character regarded as ideal and relevant
to relations with self and others in a known and shared community, in this case
the Buddhist community. In Buddhism as I understand it, moral virtue and
spiritual awakening are coordinate and mutually necessary; neither alone is
sufficient for attaining Buddhahood. Return
[13] "Sīla, "custom or
manner," but usually referring to the Five Precepts, avoidance dicta, such
as, "Avoid harming living beings," etc. Pāramitā,
"high," "complete," or "perfect," but usually in
the context of a list of "perfections," akin to the virtues,
characterizing the praxis and character of those pursuing the Buddhist goals of
selflessness, insight, compassion, and liberation or "salvation." Return
[14] Several works can provide historical and textual framework
for Buddhist ethics, including H. Saddhatissa, Buddhist
Ethics (New York: George Braziller, 1970, and Gunapala Dharmasiri, Fundamentals
of Buddhist Ethics (Antioch, Calif.: Golden Leaves Publishing Company,
1989). Lopez's recent discussion of virtues and sainthood from the Mahāyāna bodhisattva perspective, with
comparisons to Roman Catholic tradition, is detailed enough to be helpful;
Donald S. Lopez, Jr., "Sanctification on the Bodhisattva Path," Sainthood,
eds. Richard Kieckhefer and George S. Bond (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988). Return
[15] For a classic discussion of the pāramitās,
"Sāntideva, The Path of Light,
trans. LḌ. Barnett (AMS Press, 1990). A more
recent translation of "Sāntideva's Bodhicārya-avatāra is Marion Matics'
Entering the Path of Enlightenment (London: Macmillan Company, 1970). Return
[16] Robert Aitken, The Mind of
Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics (San Francisco: North Point Press,
1984), 158. Return
[17] Aitken, The Mind of Clover,
159. Return
[18] See Whitehill, "Is There a
Zen Ethic?" Return
[19] Gerta Ital, On the Way to Satori: A Women's Experience of Enlightenment, trans.
Timothy Green (Dorset, England: Element Books, Ltd., 1990), 276. Return
[20] Ken Jones, The Social Face of Buddhism: An Approach to
Political and Social Activism (London: Wisdom Publications, 1989). Return
[21] Dharmasiri, interestingly,
argues that Buddhist ethics is best understood as a peculiar, non-hedonic form
of act utilitarianism; Fundamentals of Buddhist Ethics, 26-27. Return
[22] Much confusion in thinking about Buddhism in the West
results because the Asian cultures from which it comes focus morality in the
"roles" people play in hierarchical, organic relationships, while
modern Westerners who have taken up Buddhism are often urged by their
traditions to view morality from the perspective of the autonomous, isolated
self, understood as an expressive "personality." This cross-cultural
difference needs to be more carefully used and understood by Buddhist
interpreters. On the contemporary American shift of interest from
"character" to "personality," see Anthony Quinton,
"Character and Culture," in Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life,
ed. Christina & Fred Sommers (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovic, Publishers, 1989), 613-22. Return
[23] Jones, The Social Face of Buddhism, 157. Return
[24] Robert H. Scharf, "Being
Buddha: A Performative Approach to Ch'an Enlightenment" (unpublished manuscript, 1989). Hee-jin Kim, Dogen Kigen: Mystic Realist (Tucson: The University of
Arizona Press, 1987), 172-3. Martin Southwold argues,
in the instance of Sinhalese Buddhism, that ethical behavior is the focus and
vehicle of the "ritual impulse" for Buddhist laypeople in Sri Lanka.
Absent a transcendent focus of religious worship and ritual reference,
Buddhists have made of ethics and the Dharma the object of ritual activity. Of
course, the form of ethics most congenial to ritualization
is, of course, virtue ethics. See Southwold, Buddhism
in life: the anthropological study of religion and the Sinhalese practice of
Buddhism (Dover, NḤ.:
Manchester University Peress, 1983), 162-80. Return
[25] Nicomachean Ethics,
Book I I, Chap. 4. See M.F. Burnyeat,
"Aristotle on Learning to Be Good," Essays on Aristotle's Ethics,
ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980),
69-92. Return
[26] I am taking a rather casual approach to the spelling of these terms, choosing between the Pali and the Sanskrit renderings on the basis of which seems easiest to pronounce and remember in English. I am casual with an excuse however, for I think it must soon be necessary to coin English phonetic neologues for these terms, and I am merely choosing those I like (e.g., I think paññā is weak-sounding in English when referring to a powerfully transforming insight, or prajñā-insight.Return
[27]
I hope someone with perseverance can attempt an analysis of the pāramitās, in comparative light, akin to Lee Yearley's arduous study of the theories of virtue in Mencius and Aquinas. Yearley
takes the study of virtue deep into comparative terrain, marking assiduously
more distinctions between Aquinas and Mencius than I
care to know, because I can't see readily what difference they make. Lee Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1990). Return
[28]
Vijay Nath, Dāna: Gift
System in Ancient India (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1987). Return
[29]
See Melford Spiro, Buddhism
and Society (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1970); Winston L. King, In the Hope of Nibbana (LaSalle, Ill.:
Open Court, 1964). Spiro and King, while admiring many of the personal
qualities of Buddhist laypeople, tend to diminish their moral achievements as
self-regarding, because lay Buddhists link good deeds and good character with
favorable rebirths. Scholars from Christian cultures that have given the
highest moral value to self-sacrificing altruism, agape, are not likely to
regard the Buddha's injunction, to avoid the extremes of self-indulgence and
self-mortification, as the most heroic spiritual advice. Return
[30]
Some scholars believe King and Spiro make too sharp a distinction between
layperson and monk, between kamma-motives and Nibbāna-motives, in Theravāda
Buddhism. See, Harvey B. Aronson, "The Relationship of the Karmic to the Nirvanic in Theravada Buddhism," The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 7 No. 1
(Spring 1979), 28-36; Donald K. Swearer, "Bhikkhu Buddhadasa on Ethics and
Society," The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 7 No. 1
(Spring 1979), 54-64. Southwold makes his argument
against this "elitist" and "modernist" interpretation of a
dualistic Buddhism the center of his work, Buddhism in Life. See also, Damien Keown, The Nature of
Buddhist Ethics, 83-105. Return
[31]
Robert A. Thurman, trans., The Holy Teaching
of Vimalakīrti (London: The Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1976). Return
[32]
This self-concept gives trouble to ethical systems, like Kant's, and
social-political traditions, like Western liberalism (of progressive or
conservative varieties), that function in terms of rights-claims, human rights,
etc. Buddhist ethics, insofar as it is grounded in the processional, ecological
self-in-community, and articulated teleologically in
terms of the specific pāramitās and their
cultivation, must be in tension with Western tradition on this issue, so long
as Western ethics and legal structures are primarily designed to serve
individual and corporate property interests. This is not to claim that Buddhist
ethics overlooks or radically discounts individual human rights. The origins of
Buddhism clearly reflect a vision of human life that is prejudiced toward
individual release from social, as well as psychic, oppression of the human
spirit. Buddhist ethics supports democracy and human rights protection as a
preferable arrangement of social, legal, and religious tolerance. However,
Buddhist ethics views such tolerance and protection as only two of the
conditions for a good human life. Return
[33]
See Joanna Macy, "The Ecological Self: Postmodern Ground for Right
Action," Sacred Interconnections, ed. David Ray
Griffin (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1990), 35-48. Return
[34]
David E. Shaner develops the Japanese Buddhist
connection between cultivation of character and a "biophilic"
experience of nature in an excellent article, "The Japanese Experience of
Nature," Nature in Asian Traditions of
Thought, ed. J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989),163-82. Return
[35]
See Shaner's review of recent biographies of the
Buddha, in which he discusses the nature and limits of Buddhist hagiography;
David E. Shaner, "Biographies of the Buddha"
Philosophy East and West 37 (July 1987),
306-22. Return
[36]
Helen Tworkov's Zen
in America: Profiles of Five Teachers discusses moral concerns in
connection with the behavior of some American Zen teachers, but avoids using
the words "moral" and "ethical" and makes little use of
Buddhist moral tradition to clarify the concerns discussed. Tworkov,
Zen in America (San Francisco: North Point Press,
1989). Sandy Boucher reports moral concerns of many American women growing out
of their experiences in American Buddhist centers; Boucher, Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism. Return
[37]
Frank Kirkpatrick and I have ventured a comparative philosophical discussion of
Buddhist and Christian models of community in our "Mutual/Personal
Community: Buddhist and Christian Models" (unpublished manuscript, 1990).
See Kirkpatrick's Together Bound: God,
History, and the Religious Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Return
[38]
See, for example, Alasdair MacIntyre's much referred
to chapter, "The Virtues, The Unity of a Human Life and the Concept of a
Tradition," in After Virtue. His emphasis on
the "narrative" quality of life is not common to all virtue
theorists. The Buddhist notion of "narrative" is, I presume,
sufficiently different from the Christian notion to offer a useful test of MacIntyre's claims. For example, is the story of Jesus'
life, death and resurrection more "plausible" (MacIntyre's
criterion) than the story of Siddhārtha Gautama? Return