A monk asked Yun Men, “What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?” Yun Men said, “An appropriate statement.”
—The Blue Cliff Record
THE RESOLVE TO awaken requires the integrity not to hurt anyone in the process. Dharma practice cannot be abstracted from the way we interact with the world. Our deeds, words, and intentions create an ethical ambience that either supports or weakens resolve. If we behave in a way that harms either others or ourselves, the capacity to focus on the task will be weakened. We’ll feel disturbed, distracted, uneasy. The practice will have less effect, as though the vitality of resolve is being drained.
Ethical integrity is rooted in the sense of who we are and what kind of reality we inhabit. That we are isolated, anxious creatures in a hostile world may not be a conscious philosophical view but a gut feeling buried beneath the image of the compassionate and responsible person projected to the world. Only when one is frightened or overwhelmed by greed or hate is this underlying attitude revealed. Then each one experiences himself pitted against the rest of the world: one desperate soul struggling to survive among others.
There are many ways to hurt others when we feel like this: from killing or injuring them physically, or depriving them of what is rightfully theirs to abusing or taking advantage of them sexually; from lying to them, speaking unkindly about them behind their backs, or uttering cruel and barbed remarks to wasting their time with senseless chatter. Integrity entails not merely refraining from overt acts of this kind, but also recognizing how we contemplate such behavior in our thoughts, repeat it through fantasy, or prepare for it even though we lose our nerve before carrying it out.
THERE ARE ALSO moments when we experience ourselves not at odds with others but as participants in a shared reality. As empathetic beings in a participatory reality we cannot, without losing our integrity, hurt, abuse, rob, or lie to others.
Ethical integrity originates in empathy, for then we take the well-being of others to heart and are moved to be generous and caring. Our thoughts, words, and deeds are based on a sense of what we have in common rather than what divides us. But just because we feel deeply for someone’s plight and are motivated by the noblest intentions, this does not ensure that what we do will be for the best. Empathy alone will not prevent us from making mistakes.
While rooted in empathy, integrity requires courage and intelligence as well, because every significant ethical choice entails risk. And while we cannot know in advance the consequences of the choices we make, we can learn to become more ethically intelligent.
Ethical intelligence is cultivated by learning from concrete mistakes. We can discern when a reactive habit kicks in and prompts us to adopt the familiar path of least resistance. We can notice when empathy capitulates to fear or self-interest. We can be alert for face-saving words and gestures that give an impression of empathy while letting us off the hook. And we can recognize when we are evading the crises of risk.
How often do we refrain from acting, out of fear of how our actions might be received? To let such a moment slip away can be agonizing. To combat such fear requires the courage to live in a less self-centered and more compassionate way. However daunting a situation may seem, as soon as we say or do something, it is suddenly transformed. When the door of hesitation is unlocked, we enter a dynamic, fluid world, which challenges us to act and act again.
The most soul-searching meditation on ethics leaves the world intact; a single word or deed can transform it forever.
ETHICAL INTEGRITY REQUIRES both the intelligence to understand the present situation as the fruition of former choices, and the courage to engage with it as the arena for the creation of what is to come. It empowers us to embrace the ambiguity of a present that is simultaneously tied to an irrevocable past and free for an undetermined future.
Ethical integrity is not moral certainty. A priori certainty about right and wrong is at odds with a changing and unreliable world, where the future lies open, waiting to be born from choices and acts. Such certainty may be consoling and strengthening, but it can blunt awareness of the uniqueness of each ethical moment. When we are faced with the unprecedented and unrepeatable complexities of this moment, the question is not “What is the right thing to do?” but “What is the compassionate thing to do?” This question can be approached with integrity but not with certainty. In accepting that every action is a risk, integrity embraces the fallibility that certainty disdainfully eschews.
Ethical integrity is threatened as much by attachment to the security of what is known as by fear of the insecurity of what is unknown. It is liable to be remorselessly buffetted by the winds of desire and fear, doubt and worry, fantasy and egoism. The more we give in to these things, the more our integrity is eroded and we find ourselves carried along on a wave of psychological and social habit. When responding to a moral dilemma, we just repeat the gestures and words of a parent, an authority figure, a religious text. While moral conditioning may be necessary for social stability, it is inadequate as a paradigm of integrity.
Occasionally, though, we act in a way that startles us. A friend asks our advice about a tricky moral choice. Yet instead of offering him consoling platitudes or the wisdom of someone else, we say something that we did not know we knew. Such gestures and words spring from body and tongue with shocking spontaneity. We cannot call them “mine” but neither have we copied them from others. Compassion has dissolved the stranglehold of self. And we taste, for a few exhilarating seconds, the creative freedom of awakening.