Monster Media 1994 #2/Monster Media No. 2 (Monster Media)(1994).ISO/text/bbessays.zip/ESSAY_23.TXT

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              BPS Newsletter Cover Essay #23 (Spring 1993)


                       THE GUARDIANS OF THE WORLD

                            by Bhikkhu Bodhi




   Like the Roman god Janus, every person faces simultaneously in two
   opposite directions. With one face of our consciousness we gaze in
   upon ourselves and become aware of ourselves as individuals
   motivated by a deep urge to avoid suffering and to secure our own
   well-being and happiness. With the other face we gaze out upon the
   world and discover that our lives are thoroughly relational, that we
   exist as nodes in a vast net of relationships with other beings
   whose fate is tied up with our own. Because of the relational
   structure of our existence, we are engaged in a perpetual two-way
   interaction with the world: the influence of the world presses in
   upon ourselves, shaping and altering our own attitudes and
   dispositions, while our own attitudes and dispositions flow out into
   the world, a force that affects the lives of others for better or
   for worse.

   This seamless interconnection between the inner and outer domains
   acquires a particular urgency for us today owing to the rampant
   deterioration in ethical standards that sweeps across the globe.
   Such moral decline is as widespread in those societies which enjoy a
   comfortable measure of stability and prosperity as it is in those
   countries where poverty and desperation make moral infringements an
   integral aspect of the struggle for survival. Of course we should
   not indulge in pastel-colored fantasies about the past, imagining
   that we lived in a Garden of Eden until the invention of the steam
   engine. The driving forces of the human heart have remained fairly
   constant through the ages, and the toll they have taken in human
   misery surpasses calculation. But what we find today is a strange
   paradox that would be interesting if it were not sinister: while
   there appears to be a much wider verbal acknowledgment of the
   primacy of moral and human values, there is at the same time more
   blatant disregard for the lines of conduct such values imply. This
   undermining of traditional ethical values is in part a result of the
   internationalization of commerce and the global penetration of
   virtually all media of communication. Vested interests, in quest of
   wider loops of power and expanding profits, mount a sustained
   campaign aimed at exploiting our moral vulnerability. This campaign
   proceeds at full pace, invading every nook and corner of our lives,
   with little regard for the long-term consequences for the individual
   and society. The results are evident in the problems that we face,
   problems that respect no national boundaries: rising crime rates,
   spreading drug addiction, ecological devastation, child labor and
   prostitution, smuggling and pornography, the decline of the family
   as the unit of loving trust and moral education.

   The Buddha's teaching at its core is a doctrine of liberation that
   provides us with the tools for cutting through the fetters that keep
   us bound to this world of suffering, the round of repeated births.
   Although the quest for liberation by practice of the Dhamma depends
   on individual effort, this quest necessarily takes place within a
   social environment and is thus subject to all the influences,
   helpful or harmful, imposed upon us by that environment. The
   Buddhist training unfolds in the three stages of morality,
   concentration and wisdom, each the foundation for the other:
   purified moral conduct facilitates the attainment of purified
   concentration, and the concentrated mind facilitates the attainment
   of liberating wisdom. The basis of the entire Buddhist training is
   thus purified conduct, and firm adherence to the code of training
   rules one has undertaken -- the Five Precepts in the case of a lay
   Buddhist -- is the necessary means for safeguarding the purity of
   one's conduct. Living as we do in an era when we are provoked
   through every available channel to deviate from the norms of
   rectitude, and when social unrest, economic hardships, and political
   conflict further fuel volatile emotions, the need for extra
   protection becomes especially imperative: protection for oneself,
   protection for the world.

   The Buddha points to two mental qualities as the underlying
   safeguards of morality, thus as the protectors of both the
   individual and society as a whole. These two qualities are called in
   Pali //hiri// and //ottappa//. //Hiri// is an innate sense of shame
   over moral transgression; //ottappa// is moral dread, fear of the
   results of wrongdoing. The Buddha calls these two states the bright
   guardians of the world (//sukka lokapala//). He gives them this
   designation because as long as these two states prevail in people's
   hearts the moral standards of the world remain intact, while when
   their influence wanes the human world falls into unabashed
   promiscuity and violence, becoming almost indistinguishable from the
   animal realm (Itiv. 42).

   While moral shame and fear of wrongdoing are united in the common
   task of protecting the mind from moral defilement, they differ in
   their individual characteristics and modes of operation. //Hiri//,
   the sense of shame, has an internal reference; it is rooted in
   self-respect and induces us to shrink from wrongdoing out of a
   feeling of personal honor. //Ottappa//, fear of wrongdoing, has an
   external orientation. It is the voice of conscience that warns us of
   the dire consequences of moral transgression: blame and punishment
   by others, the painful kammic results of evil deeds, the impediment
   to our desire for liberation from suffering. Acariya Buddhaghosa
   illustrates the difference between the two with the simile of an
   iron rod smeared with excrement at one end and heated to a glow at
   the other end: //hiri// is like one's disgust at grabbing the rod in
   the place where it is smeared with excrement, //ottappa// is like
   one's fear of grabbing it in the place where it is red hot.

   In the present-day world, with its secularization of all values,
   such notions as shame and fear of wrong are bound to appear
   antiquated, relics from a puritanical past when superstition and
   dogma manacled our rights to uninhibited self-expression. Yet the
   Buddha's stress on the importance of //hiri// and //ottappa// was
   based on a deep insight into the different potentialities of human
   nature. He saw that the path to deliverance is a struggle against
   the current, and that if we are to unfold the mind's capacities for
   wisdom, purity and peace, then we need to keep the powderkeg of the
   defilements under the watchful eyes of diligent sentinels.

   The project of self-cultivation, which the Buddha proclaims as the
   means to liberation from suffering, requires that we keep a critical
   watch over the movements of our minds, both on occasions when they
   motivate bodily and verbal deeds and when they remain inwardly
   absorbed with their own preoccupations. To exercise such
   self-scrutiny is an aspect of heedfulness (//appamada//), which the
   Buddha states is the path to the Deathless. In the practice of
   self-examination, the sense of shame and fear of wrongdoing play a
   crucial role. The sense of shame spurs us to overcome unwholesome
   mental states because we recognize that such states are blemishes on
   our character. They detract from the inward loftiness of character
   to be fashioned by the practice of the Dhamma, the stature of the
   ariyans or noble ones, who shine resplendent like lotus flowers upon
   the lake of the world. Fear of wrongdoing bids us to retreat from
   morally risky thoughts and actions because we recognize that such
   deeds are seeds with the potency to yield fruits, fruits that
   inevitably will be bitter. The Buddha asserts that whatever evil
   arises springs from a lack of shame and fear of wrong, while all
   virtuous deeds spring from the sense of shame and fear of wrong.

   By cultivating within ourselves the qualities of moral shame and
   fear of wrongdoing we not only accelerate our own progress along the
   path to deliverance, but also contribute our share towards the
   protection of the world. Given the intricate interconnections that
   hold between all living forms, to make the sense of shame and fear
   of wrong the guardians of our own minds is to make ourselves
   guardians of the world. As the roots of morality, these two
   qualities sustain the entire efficacy of the Buddha's liberating
   path; as the safeguards of personal decency, they at the same time
   preserve the dignity of the human race.

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