My first introduction to ethics was a few sheets of paper handed to me at my first meditation course. Rules… I didn’t know you needed rules to practice meditation… but hidden amongst the 20-some list for foreign meditators (such as no nude sun-bathing in the monastery, and so on) was a core set of ethics which came to be the most important thing on my mind after the course, besides meditating.
Ethics is perhaps the most important distinguishing factor between human beings and all other animals, though it is clear that not all humans live up to this (some it seems deserve not even the title!), nor do all non-human animals deserve the exclusion. The fact remains, though, that it is clearly a part of what is most human about us that we are ethical. One thing every society and every religion prides itself on is its ethics; from the ten commandments to the universal charter of rights and freedoms, as a race we most often give the highest place to ethics in its various forms, though we may rarely live up to its expectations of us. I am afraid I have been no exception to this.
It took me, on that course, thirty odd days of torturing my poor mind which had so recently come off a spree of marijuana, beer, and Godfather movies, to realize that I had been missing a very important building block in the construction of my self, that pretty much everyone I knew and cared for had as well, and that I was either going to have to go on pretending that what went into one’s self had no effect on what came out of it, or I was going to lose a lot of my old beer buddies.
As can be seen, I have resolved such issues in my own way, and ethics is indeed a very important building block of my life these days. It is funny now to think that one yet might ask the question, “why ethics?” Indeed, it would be much akin to asking “why breathe?” or “why drink water?” And the answer would be much the same in each case – that is, that the alternative would bring about a terrible amount of suffering for my person.
It is indeed amazing what a little reality can do to a person! Where I used to delight in squashing helpless ants on the pavement, I now cringe at the mere thought of their suffering – and I can assure the skeptic that it is not due to any intellectual exercise. It would be just as unbelievable to me that anyone could dismiss their conscience with thoughts like “Just a dumb animal” and thenceforth proceed to exact the worst in themselves upon their fellow beings, had I not once been that clouded myself.
Other rules came to me as less of a paradigm shift – I’ve never been much of a thief or a liar, though I admit to having been somewhat discomfited on learning of the rule against adultery. But the single biggest eye-opener lay in the fifth rule – suraamerayamajjapamaadatthaanaa veramanii – “to abstain from booze and beer and other things that are a cause for insobriety.” It made me aware of the fact that the discrepancy between reality as it truly is and my perception of it was due, of course, to my unwillingness to see reality as it truly is. For this is the chief rationale behind taking such rotten, poisonous or otherwise mind-troubling substances – reality, in a word, bites. And since I intend, in this short, meager life of mine, to bite back, I think I shall need my wits about me.
In the end, ethics has put me back on even footing with the beast – I may not be better off materially (though some might argue otherwise after seeing my new monastery!) but I have much less now that any wise being worth their salt might point a finger of blame at, should they be so inclined, and far less that I would otherwise have to feel guilty about, myself. And this absence of blame has the sweetest of rewards, for indeed, “of great fruit, of great benefit is the mental fortitude which comes from perfectly-fulfilled moral ethics.”
Tonight is the full moon, the last day of the Buddhist year. I listen to the fireworks and music from the village waft into my tent, as I sit in the cool forest alone and wonder at the need for noise on such a perfectly still night. I suppose it must drown out the noise of the drunken mind, for a time.
Yuttadhammo