Sila and Soul (Part 7)

Let's go into this issue of the complexity of values, and the conflict between different values, and the oppositions. Let's go into that a little bit more. So in a way, it's obvious that a value is in a kind of oppositional, conflictual relationship with its opposite, with a disvalue. So these are obvious oppositions. So for example, kindness or the value of kindness is in an oppositional relationship with unkindness, which we call a 'disvalue.' It's an absence of a value. It's something that has a disvalue. Or loyalty with disloyalty, honesty with dishonesty, courage with cowardice -- those kinds of oppositions are obvious. And in a way, although they can arise in a way that the choice challenges us, the choice towards a value challenges us -- it may ask a lot of us in different situations -- still that opposition is kind of obvious and not complicated, not essentially problematical, or theoretically problematical.

But there are others, and we've already touched on them or thrown them out as examples at different stages of the talk. There are others that are more problematic, other oppositions, other conflicting duties and allegiances and relationships between different values that are more problematic. And Hartmann uses this word -- I'm not sure what the German is, but in English it translates as 'antinomy,' or antinomies in the plural. It's philosophical jargon, philosopher-speak for this kind of oppositional relationship. So anti- is anti-, like we know, and -nomy is from nomos, and nomos is 'law,' so two laws that pull in opposite directions -- anti + nomos, antinomy, antinomies. And as I said, we've touched on a few of these. We've mentioned a few -- some in passing, some in a little more detail.

So there is, which I've already mentioned, in a way, a curious antinomy between the actualization of a value -- that has value, obviously, so when a value is actualized, the actualization is valuable -- but there's also a value in its non-actualization, because its non-actualization, its non-presence, its non-existence allows us to, in our being, in our moral orientation and moral will and what we bring of our soul to a situation, that non-actualization of a value in a situation allows us to rise up morally, to discern, to cultivate our sensitivity, to choose, to gather our soul, and to grow morally, and through our intention, through our will, etc. So this curious oppositional relationship between the actualization of values and their non-actualization. But in a way, both are valuable.

And if we just look at that even a little more closely, we have in a value's non-actualization, or only partial actualization, we have there the value's beyondness. The beyondness is what's not completely actualizing, what's not completely manifest. And that's valuable for our purpose, from a soulmaking perspective, because of the eros. The eros needs those beyonds. It creates those beyonds, discovers those beyonds. It needs those beyonds. And those beyonds are part of its non-actualization. Those beyondnesses are also part of the dimensions, the unfathomability and the divinity and the mystery of a value. And as such, they are valuable to us because of that soul-sense that they give. So there's an oppositional relationship between the values' beyondness, so to speak, and their manifestation on the other hand.

There's also, then, the value of our moving towards something, as I said before, our engaging of our moral capacity, moral sensitivities, moral will, our whole organ of ethical sensibility and choice. There's a value in our moving towards something, our striving to actualize a value. And there's a value in our achieving it, our having actualized something, when there's no more striving there. [5:44] There's an antinomy, perhaps, between acceptance, the value, the virtue of acceptance on one hand, and the value, the virtue of, let's say, decisive action or effort towards a goal.

There's an interesting antinomy, as Hartmann points out, between what he calls the grade and the range. So I have to explain what those mean. The 'grade' is another word he uses for the height of a moral value, so that one can pursue single-mindedly and devotedly a single moral value, one can be absolutely devoted to one moral value, and kind of accentuate one's efforts towards that, one's sensibility towards that, one's targeting of that value, whatever that is. And in a way, there's value in that. There's value in that single-pointedness, in that effort, in that singling out and kind of streamlining of one's being and one's will and effort towards that one particular value.

And Hartmann points out that a lot of the kind of extraordinary achievements of not just individual human beings, but also, then, kind of with them, the cultures or the traditions that they found also follow from that kind of singleness of moral vision, singleness of moral emphasis, that it's really able to develop one virtue to a great extent, at the expense, often, of other values, a wider range. So he says grade versus range -- there's an antinomy there, because there's also a value in encompassing, being sensitive to, taking care of a broad range of values. So it's kind of like -- what should we say? -- depth versus breadth; something like that. [8:14]

And related to this, there are antinomies between simplicity and complexity. And we can even talk about some of these in relation to aesthetics and art. You know, both -- simplicity has a value, but complexity has a value. Unity and uniformity have a value. Again, whether we're talking about a single person in their ethos, or a community, or a structure, or an institution, unity and uniformity have a value. But also, diversity has a value. And again, if we refine that a little more, the perception of unity, the capacity to see oneness and not to focus so much on differences, that has a value. But so does, conversely and at the same time, the perception of diversity, what we might call discernment or differentiation. That also has a value.

Constancy has a value, stability. Constancy and stability are values. Again, we talk about a person, an ethos of an individual or an institution or a community or a tradition. Constancy and stability have a value. On the other hand, change and dynamism also have a value. And these are opposing, antinomical values. There's a value in harmony, and there's a value in conflict. Again, we can talk about the harmony within oneself -- I'm not pulled in different directions in a way that's disharmonious -- or within a community. And we touched on already, in previous parts of the talk, the value of conflict, in different ways, in different areas. I'll just, again, read a short passage from Hartmann about that, and he cites Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher:

What Heraclitus called the cosmic "war" [polemos in Greek] and regarded as the "father and king" of all things [so Heraclitus said polemos is the father of all things], exists also in ethical actuality; the element of restlessness and of "flux" which carries all things, that inexhaustible productivity of new and ever new relations, situations and demands, with their endlessly new conflicts and puzzles. This it is which constitutes the infiniteness of content in ethical Being, its wealth, its eternal freshness and abundance. It is no exaggeration to speak in this sense of conflict as a value.^[1]

And he gave that example -- we talked about it before -- of a parallel in the domain of knowledge or research or theoretical research or understanding or insight, where a problem is a value. And he continues:

Conflict is that from which decision, intention, action are born; but the values of intention are the ethical ones. Conflict is that which keeps discernment and the feeling of value alive and opens up new vistas.

So again, there's this antinomy between the value of harmony and the value of conflict. And I'm going through these very quickly. They all bear quite a lot of meditation upon, reflection upon. They differ. Some of them are obviously related. Some of them are antinomical or antinomial -- whatever the adjective is -- in slightly different ways from each other. So for those of you that are interested in this, you can take this on and go into more detail, more richness of exploration of all this. [12:43]

There is also a kind of antinomy between our, let's say, duty to ourselves as individuals and our duty to the community -- whatever community we're talking about, whether it's a small community or a larger community of society. All kinds of interesting tensions and pulls can arise out of that antinomy.

There's also an antinomy between what Hartmann calls 'love of the nearest' (those that are nearest to us) and 'love of the remote.' And that's a particular phrase that Hartmann, I think, got from his friend and, in a way, philosophical predecessor, Max Scheler, who also wrote about ethics, I think, that phrase 'the remote.' We may come back to that later, because I find it quite an interesting one, to highlight issues around the complexity of ethics and the difficulties and problems we encounter.

But 'love of the remote,' very briefly, is a love and devotion to, and service of, and keeping in mind, and working for those in the distant future, those far away and in the distant future, and particularly those who one regards as, if you like, Hartmann says, 'the best' types -- it's a little problematic language, but those who one pins one's hopes for humanity on, or hopes for a tradition on, or hopes for certain deep understandings on, or certain capacity for a kind of extraordinary development of soul or insight or heart or courage, or whatever it is. And so some people are devoted in their work now to those beings in the future that they will never meet, that they will never know if their work is successful, if it lands, if it's received, if it's assimilated and digested and used as a platform, and as a support, and as an inspiration. And in that devotion, in that love of the remote, it, in a way, necessitates, to some degree, a pulling away, or to some degree, some level of neglect of the love of the nearest, of those that are around us. So maybe I'm not that available as a friend. Maybe I'm not that available as I could be for the everyday hanging out or whatever, or with my family or my children, because I have my soul's eye, and a sense of duty and dedication to those I may never meet, the fruits of which I may never know whether they ripen or not, and I will never enjoy, because they exist after I die. But is there an antinomy there, between love of the nearest and love of the remote? Hartmann would say yes. I would tend to agree.

I'm not sure about this one, but is there -- similar -- some kind of antinomy between the kind of love that one has towards, let's say, one's family, one's children, and the devotion to caring for them and making them happy and being interested in them -- is there an antinomy between that and the value of universal mettā, mettā for the far and wide? I'm not sure. What do you think?

And there are others. There are many others. As I said, this, to me, is a really rich and important area, both in terms of some of the general principles that are implicated in that consideration, but also in the details. Like I said, I'm going through -- I just rattled off a whole list there, and there are many others. And they're worth, I think, reflecting on, investigating on, feeling into, becoming sensitive to.

So I'm not sure if Hartmann was the first to point this out -- the fact of antinomies between moral values. I'm not sure. But certainly, going back to Plato, Plato's consideration of virtues and ethics was that a virtue -- his idea/positing was that a virtue cannot be in conflict with another virtue. It was almost axiomatic to his whole philosophy. "There cannot be rival goods at war with each other," to quote Alasdair MacIntyre's précis of Plato's position.^[2] And Aristotle -- his somewhat student, somewhat successor, somewhat foil -- held the same view: that virtue cannot be in conflict with virtue. And later, Thomas Aquinas, in the Middle Ages, took a similar view. I mean, there are differences between Plato and Aristotle and Aquinas, but had a similar view that there cannot be, really, conflict between one virtue and another. They cannot pull in different directions, really. Further, that all virtues kind of require each other as well. This goes back to what we mentioned about Aristotle and his idea of synthesis. Sometimes he calls it the 'mean,' like an average between virtues, that one virtue actually needs to have a counter-weight in another virtue, so that the true virtue is some kind of synthesis of two, if you like, lesser virtues or incomplete virtues. All virtues require each other in that system. And in some understandings of the Dharma, I would say, there's a similar thing: that all the wings of awakening that the Buddha talked about, all the thirty-seven wings of awakening certainly work synergistically, but may, to some extent, require each other.

So that's quite a common ancient view, probably in the Buddha, certainly in Plato and Aristotle, and in many ways, in Thomas Aquinas. And Alasdair MacIntyre reflects on this, and he writes that (if I can find the passage):

Aristotle's moral psychology has led him to misread Sophocles [so the playwright Sophocles].

He's really talking about the whole kind of genre of tragic theatre which was, you know, a big kind of artistic direction and manifestation in Greek and Hellenistic times. He says, because of his moral psychology, Aristotle just couldn't get tragic drama. It just made no sense for him, or it made very limited sense.

For the conflicts of tragedy certainly may in part take the form that they do because of the flaws in [this or that character, or this or that other character]; but what constitutes those individuals' tragic opposition and conflict is the conflict of good with good embodied in their encounter prior to and independent of any individual characteristics.

In other words, it's not really that this person is flawed in this way, or that person is flawed in this way. The tragedy is, rather, this person is pulled between two antinomical values, between a sense that their allegiance is to two opposite directions, and they're, in a way, torn apart. They have to choose. They're forced to choose -- by a situation, or by the actual, deeper structure of the antinomies between certain values. And Alasdair MacIntyre continues:

And to this aspect of tragedy Aristotle ... is and has to be blind. The absence of this view of the centrality of opposition and conflict in human life conceals from Aristotle also one important source of human learning about and one important milieu of human practice of the virtues.

[22:00] So this is a point I want to emphasize. This is a part of our life -- these inevitable, unavoidable conflicts that arise, either from the structure of the situation or from the deeper kind of nature of the complexity of virtue, of any virtue, or the antinomical nature of those virtues. Remember that quote when we were talking about traditions and the necessity of conflict and argument in traditions, and John Anderson urging us

not to ask of a social institution: "What end or purpose does it serve?" but rather, "Of what conflicts is it the scene?"^[3]

So in a way, missing something there, Aristotle, of the complexity, but also the fact of our moral life, and perhaps even more so in modern society, where there's a wider divergence of the very sense of life and what it's for. There isn't kind of a unified idea of "Life is for this, and this is how it serves, or this is what it serves, and this is in the direction. We can kind of unite all our souls, energies, and our intellect and our ethical aspiration into that one stream which everyone agrees upon." But there is that view that a synthesis is possible, and virtue cannot really conflict with virtue.

But again, I would ask, is it possible, you know, if one might have that sort of integrated view over time, that values kind of work together, it might still be that on one occasion, or simultaneously, or in one situation, we're pulled in different directions? I think it came up as a response to a question on the last retreat,^[4] but I remember a period of time when I lived in the States, and it was shortly after the jhānas were kind of really -- well, it was in a period when the jhānas were really opening quite a lot for me. And I'd been on a solitary retreat, and I was practising a lot at home after that, while working and all. And what I noticed was that there were days when the samādhi went really well, and so the mind and the being had this kind of jewelline radiance to them, very bright, very sharp, very clear -- it's like, pristine, beautiful radiance to it. And there were other days where that was less there. The samādhi was there, but not to that kind of pristine depth and fullness, etc. But what was sometimes there instead was a kind of tender-heartedness, a real soft sort of pliability, availability of heart, tenderness, tears (in a good sense), being easily moved was very available. And what I noticed was that, on the days that the samādhi was really bright and kind of radiant, like a jewel the mind was -- on those days, there was less of this kind of tender-heartedness. And vice versa: on the days where there was tender-heartedness, there was less extent of this jewelline, kind of bright, almost diamond-like radiance of the mind. [26:14]

Are these antinomical values -- what I'm calling right now 'tenderness of heart' and that kind of bright samādhi mind/heart? They didn't seem to be able to quite exist in their fullness at the same time. So the being, the consciousness, the citta was kind of moving between them -- some days here, some days there, etc., or even within one day, sometimes.

Now, within the Dharma, you do get teachings about balancing different qualities. So for instance, in the teachings on the seven factors of awakening, the bojjhaṅgā, there are those three qualities of the seven -- let's see what they are: dhammavicaya (investigation of dhammas, investigation of mental qualities, or sometimes investigation of reality, depending on how you translate dhamma; the investigative quality), vīriya (the persistence, effort, determination), and pīti (rapture). These are all energizing qualities. And then you have three qualities: passadhi (tranquillity), samādhi (which we could translate as 'concentration' for now), and upekkhā (equanimity), which are all kind of pacifying qualities, calming in their affect and effect.

And so you do get teachings that say, pay attention to this balance. Where am I right now with the seven factors of awakening? And when the Buddha gives this teaching in the fourth foundation of mindfulness -- it's one of the kind of framework-lenses or lens-frameworks through which to regard one's experience, a way of looking -- he says to pay attention to the balancing. What do I need: more of these kind, or more of these kind right now, in regard to dispelling the hindrances, in regard to cultivating the whole kind of engine and movement towards awakening? So you get that partially, but I don't know if this quality of what I'm calling 'tenderness of heart' -- it's not mettā in itself; neither is it compassion itself; it's maybe more akin to empathy, which is not compassion, as I've taught about before in the teachings on compassion, years ago -- whether that quality of, let's say, let's call it 'tenderness of heart,' is antinomical with, say, the brightness and the adamantine quality of samādhi. But that quality of tenderness of heart isn't really highlighted, certainly in the Pali Canon teachings. So is there an antinomy there of a value that, nowadays, many people -- and certainly many people in the Insight Meditation tradition; less so in some other contemporary Dharma traditions, but I would place a value to it -- is there a way that, at the same time, it's hard for both qualities to have a kind of full blossoming? [29:47]

As I said, might there be a kind of inevitability to this, our having to negotiate, to choose, to deal with these complexities, these conflicts, these antinomies, these impossibilities? In Mahāyāna teaching, a Buddha -- the Buddha-nature is said to have three bodies, three kāyas: (1) the rūpakāya, the sort of -- actually, you can interpret this. There are infinite hermeneutic possibilities here, but let's just very simply right now give them certain narrow slants, just for the sake of the point I'm trying to make. In the Mahāyāna teachings, the Buddha has the three kāyas, three bodies, if you like, of their being, of their essence of what a Buddha is. The rūpakāya -- the body of physical manifestation, if you like; (2) saṃbhogakāya, sometimes translated as the 'bliss body' or the 'enjoyment body.' It's also akin to kind of an imaginal body, and with its associated imaginal realm; and (3) the dharmakāya -- and we've touched this word before. And it can, it has had, in the Mahāyāna tradition, a whole wide range of translations. It's very fertile, and the hermeneutic opens out in all kinds of directional possibilities there. But I mentioned earlier that one translation of dharmakāya, and perhaps one of the earlier ones is kāya is 'body,' as in 'body of teachings,' 'body of water,' but also 'body of dhammas' -- *dharmakāya, '*body of dhammas,' meaning body of attributes or mental qualities or, we could say, virtues. And the Mahāyāna Buddha is really a kind of almost unbelievably transcendent entity, far beyond anything we encounter in our typical human lives and encountering other human beings.

So one translation of dharmakāya is a body of qualities, a body of dhammas, a body of virtues which actually can't manifest all at once because of their antinomic values, because they embody antinomic values. [32:21] So it points, again, to a kind of beyond, a kind of synthesis, a kind of Absolute, in that it synthesizes in a way that's beyond our grasp, beyond our ken, beyond our completely discerning or completely understanding. In what way can a Buddha who, in the Mahāyāna teaching, has all kinds of mysterious qualities -- for instance, being able to see thoroughly the emptiness of something at the same time as perceiving the form of that thing. But there could be a parallel here between the notion of dharmakāya as part of the Buddha-nature, as a body of qualities -- including antinomical values and virtues -- a body of qualities which actually can't manifest in human beings, can't instantiate all at once. So it kind of implies and suggests this transcendent Absolute.

And as I said, you get teachings in the Abrahamic religions about the names and the attributes of God. And they do talk about balancing -- for instance, balancing mercy with judgment, or balancing judgment with mercy, as one example, etc. But there are certain ones, as I said, that can't manifest at the same time. So it might be, when we consider this fact of conflicts, complexities, counter-weights needed, antinomical relations between different values, and the unavoidability of that, that it prompts us, or it prompts some people towards the consideration of the possibility of some kind of Absolute that we cannot know rationally, we cannot directly see. We can maybe intuit it. We can have a sense of its beyond. But it is transcendent. [34:28]

And perhaps, in some ways, we might construe the Buddha-mind in its ineffable transcendence, in its forever beyondness, really, in terms of what a Mahāyāna Buddha is, I would say, as kind of constituting and embodying -- in the kāya -- that kind of transcendent Absolute, that kind of transcendent synthesis that we ourselves can only get partial glimpses of. Remember that analogy with the maps -- the Mercator projection, the polar projection -- neither of them, in two dimensions, can capture the reality of the three-dimensional globe. Something gets distorted. Something gets shrunk. Something gets expanded, etc. So this, as we mentioned before, this is one solution, one way of thinking about it, one way also of tying it in with Buddhadharma and notions of Buddhahood, and notions of a beyond that we're aspiring to or have in our sight as an inspiration -- that of Buddhahood, that of the dharmakāya.

So listen also to John Findlay. And he talks about this with regard to Absolutes. He says:

The Absolute is not to be conceived as something which instantiates or exemplifies the highest values, since instantiation is necessarily one-sided and imperfect, and since the highest values also lie in different directions, and cannot be instantiated all together [a point often stressed by Nicolai Hartmann].^[5]

So there's those two points that we've been stressing in those talks. An instantiation is necessarily one-sided and imperfect -- we're talking about the impossible, the beyond of an image, the beyond of a value, and the instantiation being imperfect, just like with pi and all those mathematical notions we talked about. And also, since the highest values lie in different directions and cannot be instantiated all together -- so the point about the antinomies.

No, the Absolute [he says], rather, is all the highest values and is them all together, in a unity which transcends one-sided exemplification and one-sided comprehension. We are forced towards a Platonic solution as the only way to make the Absolute truly comprehensive and axiologically satisfactory.

So he is openly -- well, in some respects -- a fan of Plato (that's saying just that), and favours this idea of a mystical Absolute, and talks about it and develops it in terms of certain kinds of logic, which is interesting, but also in terms of his intuition, so that this Absolute, this Absolute synthesis, this transcendent Absolute -- which may have something to do with the nature of the divine, of the dharmakāya, of the Buddha-nature -- is really a kind of ideal. Again, we're back to that word, 'idea,' 'ideal,' the realm, the sphere of ideal being we got from Plato. It cannot fully nor exactly manifest. It's an ideal reality. But in some senses, it's not only the apex, the point of our kind of erotic gaze, or a point of our erotic gaze; it's also a kind of source in some philosophies. [38:36]

I can't remember how it landed on my desk, but I read an article by Jeffrey Kripal -- I think he's, let's say, a scholar of religions, I think. I want to read you a part of it, and the excerpt's quite long, but it's, I think, quite interesting, and I want to then comment on it. So he's writing -- I don't know if he's writing a book review or what here, but he's writing about the writings of another guy called Jorge Ferrer, who discusses the idea of what's called the perennial philosophy, the idea that all philosophy, all religions are sort of saying the same thing, they're different roads up the same mountain, etc. And Ferrer is not so naïve to buy into that, but he still makes the case for, there are differences, but there are also commonalities in terms of the liberation that issues from these different paths. And one of the commonalities that Ferrer kind of concludes or stresses between different religions and different spiritual traditions and approaches is that they all issue in a care for ethics. So awakening or liberation results in a transcendence of kind of self-centredness, egoism, and the care for altruistic concern, a care for others, and for ethics.

So I'll read you this passage. Sorry it's a little long, but it seems important for a number of reasons. So I'm going to read it and then say a little bit about it. This is Jeffrey Kripal on the necessity to reject the emancipatory, the liberating illusions in religion and mysticism. I think what he says is very important. I'm going to critique also what he says after I've read it. But I must say: I don't know if you can sniff, like I do, a little bit of that kind of almost tight and frightened allegiance to a postmodern debunking of everything in between the lines here. I'm not sure what year it was written in, but I kind of vaguely get the whiff of that. Nevertheless, I think he's making some really important points, very intelligent points, and there's more to say in terms of critiquing his critique. So he writes:

Ferrer ... ultimately adopts a very positive assessment of the traditions' ethical status ["traditions" in the plural], suggesting in effect that the religions have been more successful in finding common moral ground than doctrinal or metaphysical agreement, and that most traditions have called for (if never faithfully or fully enacted) a transcendence of dualistic self-centeredness or narcissism.^[6]

So Ferrer says, yeah, maybe people, different religions and traditions, can't agree on doctrine and dogmas and metaphysics or whatever, but they all kind of agree on and lead to -- or agree that they should lead to, in their best moments, in their best instantiations -- a care for ethics, and this transcending of self-centredness, etc. And then Kripal continues:

It is here that I must become suspicious. Though Ferrer himself is refreshingly free of this particular logic (it is really more of a rhetoric), it is quite easy and quite common in the transpersonal literature to argue for the essential moral nature of mystical experience by being very careful about whom one bestows the (quite modern) title "mystic."

It is an entirely circular argument, of course: One simply declares (because one believes) that mysticism is moral, then one lists from literally tens of thousands ([or perhaps] millions?) of possible recorded cases a few, maybe a few dozen, exemplars who happen to fit one's moral standards (or better, whose historical description is sketchy enough to hide any and all evidence that would frustrate those standards), and, voilà, one has "proven" that mysticism is indeed moral. Any charismatic figure or saint that violates one's norms -- and there will always be a very large, loudly screaming crowd here -- one simply labels "not really a mystic" or conveniently ignores altogether. Put differently, it is the constructed category of "mysticism" itself that mutually constructs a "moral mysticism," not the historical evidence, which is always and everywhere immeasurably more ambivalent.

Ferrer, as is evident in such moments as his thought experiment with the Theravada retreat [I don't actually know what that's talking about], sees right through most of this. He knows perfectly well that perennialism simply does not correspond to the historical data. What he does not perhaps see so clearly is that a moral perennialism [so this idea of a moral sort of congruence and coming together, agreement issuing from all these different traditions and practices and religions] sneaks through the back door of his own conclusions. Thus, whereas he rightly rejects all talk of a "common core," he can nevertheless speak of a common "Ocean of Emancipation" ["Ocean of Liberation"] that all the contemplative traditions approach from their different ontological shores [from their different presumptions about reality]....

Ferrer argues that we must realize that our goal can never be simply the recovery or reproduction of some past sense of the sacred, for "we cannot ignore that most religious traditions are still beset not only by intolerant exclusivist and absolutist tendencies, but also by patriarchy, authoritarianism, dogmatism, conservatism, transcendentalism, body-denial, sexual repression, and hierarchical institutions." Put simply, the contemplative traditions of the past have too often functioned as elaborate and sacralized techniques for dissociating consciousness.

So to me, these are very, very important points, and he's not pulling many punches when he says all this.

Once again, I think this is exactly where we need to be, with a privileging of the ethical over the mystical and an insistence on human wholeness as human holiness. I would only want to further radicalize Ferrer's vision by underscoring how hermeneutical it is [how it's particularly his interpretation], that is, how it functions as a creative re-visioning and reforming of the past instead of as a simple reproduction of or fundamentalist fantasy about some nonexistent golden age. Put differently, in my view, there is no shared Ocean of Emancipation in the history of religions. Indeed, from many of our own modern perspectives, the waters of the past are barely potable [barely drinkable], as what most of the contemplative traditions have meant by "emancipation" or "salvation" is not at all what we would like to imply by those terms today. It is, after all, frightfully easy to be emancipated from "the world" or to become one with a deity or ontological absolute and leave all the world's grossly unjust social structures and practices (racism, gender injustice, homophobia, religious bigotry, colonialism, caste, class division, environmental degradation, etc.) comfortably in place.

So like I said, a long passage. But I think there are a lot of important considerations there, and of course, part of them are the very reason why he's talking about ethics in the first place, in part. But it may be, given all that he said, that in part, he's missing something of Nicolai Hartmann's points about the nature of the realm of values, or the nature of the firmament of values -- one being that we can only, humanity is only capable at any time of shining a light and illuminating, and kind of making out or discerning, seeing, sensing, focusing on, and emphasizing a certain narrow radius there of the value or what Hartmann calls the value-firmament, the great panoply and range of all the values; and secondly that there are antinomies between values.

So in a way, I'm not sure if this is the case with Kripal, but it could be that he's operating also from a slightly, let's call it naïve or over-simplistic view of values -- certainly not in much of what he said, but it could be that lurking in there is that kind of narrowness and naïvety, because one might interpret things a little differently: for instance, that it is not emancipation, liberation, awakening is shown not to bring automatically a moral purity. It could rather be that our idea of morality does not take into account, as I said, the moral antinomies which Hartmann writes about and draws attention to. Awakening could -- I would say should -- bring with it a moral devotion. A moral devotion, I would say, is a part of the road to awakening, and should issue wholesale as part of the goal. So awakening could bring with it moral devotion, but you know, such moral devotion and faithfulness can never be devoted and faithful simultaneously to the totality of moral or value archetypes, or to, let's say, the figures of the moral zodiac. We talk about imaginal figures embodying different values, different moral values.

There is either a kind of soul-element or a cultural conditioning element, or both, involved in determining one's moral orientation, one's moral compass and bearing. And whatever that is, whatever that bearing is, that orientation is, at the same time, it will likewise be evaluated by some others who do not share that orientation, that compass, that bearing, that evaluation of morals. They're looking in a different place. They're evaluating the different values differently. [51:13] And if no one is kind of aware of the fact of the complexity and the kind of multidirectionality of this moral value-firmament, then we only have one way of talking about what is moral, one standard, one sort of true north. And Kripal's conclusion will be inevitable, regarding "there's no morality that comes out of mysticism; there's no connection between mystic insight and so-called 'awakening' and morals." But might be based on something, some assumptions that are not fully explored.

I'm sure I've said this already in the talk, but regarding, you know, the ethics and the morality, there's something in us that wants, often, a simple and unitary kind of easy answer or summary, if not to the complex particularities of ethical life and situations (whether they're actual or hypothetical) then at least to the theoretical sort of understanding, directionality, delineation, scope of the values. We want the simplicity. And partly due to the structure, or due to the range, the kind of transcendent range relative to our human capacity at any time, or our culture's capacity at the time, partly due to the antinomical structure that exists between values, that simplicity may not really be possible. [53:14]

And there are also considerations about the nature of the soul and the psyche here, as well, in terms of our individual tendencies. So James Hillman talks about a polytheistic psyche -- or polytheistic psychology, but also a polytheistic psyche -- in other words, that each individual being has, each of us has a kind of a range of moral allegiances, and they differ according to the ethos of the imaginal figures that call us and that speak to us, to which we have a duty. Or if we have a duty to just one or just a few imaginal figures that are kind of very central, then a person, over a lifetime, if they have a tendency to those few archetypes -- a calling to, a rapport with, a duty to those few archetypes -- they will display the corresponding moral lacunae, gaps, neglects, and transgressions in their behaviour.

So this is not at all to condone, I'm sure, some of the instances we've all read about or encountered of kind of gross, inappropriate action, behaviour, speech by some teachers and so-called liberated beings and mystics. But it's just to say that the whole consideration of this may be more complex in ways that Kripal doesn't actually consider. And if we consider that we have a polytheistic psyche that I've talked about before -- I'm pulled in different directions, with a sense of duties that I cannot possibly execute all those duties, I cannot possibly fulfil all those duties in my life, certainly not at the same time. I've talked about before this kind of calling or claim of the god of music that it has on me, and I cannot fulfil that at the same time as being a Dharma teacher, for instance, and plenty of others. And this is the nature, this is part of our existential finitude and fragmentation. But to me it has a kind of noble tragedy, and it has a beauty. It retains this beyondness as opposed to it's a kind of finitude and fragmentation that tends to then flatten, and render a kind of sense of beyondness and nobility in the fuller sense of the flourishing and the beauty of nobility and how it can grow -- flattens it.

So all this, to me, is interesting. You can hear the different tendencies in the way different people think about all this, or how they seek for a solution. It's possible, certainly theoretically, or if one wants to, or if one feels at any time, "Well, this way of thinking about it is soulmaking, or feels soulmaking -- I can feel it be soulmaking," it's possible to retain the notion of some kind of Absolute, some transcendent synthesis that's possible among these antinomies. We can't quite understand it or how it would manifest, but it's possible to retain that -- have an even prayerful, meditative, contemplative, intuitive kind of glimpse or sense or taste of that -- and at the same time recognize an impossibility in instantiation, an impossibility in certain situations, in the structure of the situation, or because of these antinomies, these kind of inherent, polarly opposite, differing directional pulls between values. And recognize the impossibility because of, if you like, the structure of our psyche, being what Hillman would call polytheistic in nature, poly-devotional, polytheistically devotional, polytheistically called -- different angels pulling us in different, conflicting directions, demanding different things of us. It's not actually possible for this human life to perfectly, adequately encompass all that, hold it all together at the same time.

So there's something really important in all this, I feel. Again, it matters what our attitude to it is. So again, the attitude would also be part of what would constitute a virtue. It's one thing to be conscious of these different kind of impossibilities. It's another then to let them touch the soul and the mind and the heart in ways that are ennobling, in ways that are vitalizing, difficult as that might be, challenging as that might be, complicating as that might be. There's something, I think, necessary for the soul there, to some extent. The attitude matters, and attitude to this very situation, or this kind of situation, is itself, or can be either virtuous or not so virtuous.

So again, let me read another passage from Hartmann, if I can find it. And he's talking about, I think, the antinomy between love of the nearest and love of the remote. And he criticizes Nietzsche, actually, who in his devotion for love of the remote, kind of pooh-poohed and neglected also in his life, I think, love of the nearest, to some extent. And he also makes the point that, you know, it sometimes falls to the founder, the discoverer, the adventurer, the one who opens up new territory first -- it sometimes falls to them, or goes with that role, unfortunately, to be a little one-pointed and therefore neglectful. We talked about this in Hartmann's antinomy of grade and range, this kind of concentrating on one ideal value, and the development of that, and the manifestation of that, to the neglect of others, and sometimes putting others down. So he criticizes Nietzsche for that. And he's talking about this, generally this antinomy between love of the nearest and love of the remotest, criticizing Nietzsche for praising love of the remotest at the expense -- a kind of almost total neglect -- of love of the nearest. [1:01:14] But there's a general point, a wider point about antinomies in general. And Hartmann writes:

The fact of their antinomy does not release us from the task of blending two values. In itself love of the nearest [for example] is right and must not be discarded.^[7]

So I cannot completely -- I have to give some care, some attention for those that are near, for my circle of immediate friends, the people I run into every day, my family, etc. I have to have -- I cannot "discard," as Hartmann said, that value.

If precedence should be given to a higher value, the lower at most should be restricted in its domination.

In other words, we don't totally neglect it, totally disregard it. We just restrict it at most.

The conflict [the antinomy] leads to a reciprocal [restriction] of both values ... In every synthesis the conflict must on principle be retained.

So retaining that conflict means retaining the sense of the conflict, retaining the sense of being pulled in different directions. I'm sure there's some mythical figure that was pulled in different directions. I can't remember who that was. So there's a tension here. There's an inevitable challenge, an inevitable tension, an inevitable difficulty of choice that we encounter regularly, and in different ways, and in all kinds of levels of ethical life, and all kinds of gradations of difficulty in our life. And we want -- we need -- Hartmann said we need to keep that conflict. We can't just choose completely in favour of one versus the other. But neither is it, as I said, this flaccid kind of "Eh, well, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that" -- this dull and a little bit soul-dead kind of middle-of-the-road tendency. I've got to live with and have the capacity for and the maturity for holding and navigating this conflict, and holding this tension. So when we talked about eros -- this is a very different kind of tension, but we talked about eros needing to "maintain the two" and not collapse into oneness, merge. A tension needs to be retained with eros, an erotic tension between the soul and its beloved erotic-imaginal other -- and a different kind of tension here, but again, for our soul's growth, for the building of our moral beings, Hartmann has it, for our creativity and discovery, the tension needs to be maintained to some degree. [1:04:40]

So often, we want simple answers, as I said, and a kind of simple code of ethics. And when we start to go into it in more detail, things are more complex. Things are not so easy, not so facilely unifiable. Again, a passage from Hartmann:

Goodness consists ... in selecting values, according to their relative height, from among the diversity which is always met with in any given circumstance.^[8]

So remember, we said that was his definition of 'goodness.' It's like the tendency to choose the higher. And this selection of the higher, the relatively higher among different values, is a

selection [he says] which cannot be made semel vitæ [it's Latin; it just means "just once in a lifetime"; you cannot just, "Okay, I've made that decision now, and that's done"; it cannot be made] purely theoretically [either, he says], once and for all, but must be made anew each time from the very foundation, out of an ever-living sense of value; there can be no diagram to assist us in this, no help from precepts or rules of life; it is selection not by way of contemplative deliberation [he means "not by way of rational thinking"], but through the intuitive element in our impulse towards the higher: an element which is always generated in our actions ([in our] dispositions, desires and behaviour) or, on the other hand, is sometimes lacking.

So we are forced to, we are asked to live ethical complexity. And that's hard. It's hard. So we do have precepts, we have Commandments, etc. And an interesting point is that they're simplified, and they're simplifying, and that's why a lot of people kind of can, you know, find the precepts, the Commandments, very helpful as codes of life. But they are simplified. And you get in the Jewish tradition, you know, these Ten Commandments, and then volumes and volumes of small print, if you like, regarding the nuances in different situations that comes in the Talmudic commentaries, encyclopaedic volumes. The Commandments themselves are very simple. This kind of simplicity is only possible for what Hartmann would call 'the lowest values' -- the lowest in the sense that they form the basis, they form the minimum.

So much as we would like, or sometimes we would like to just think, "I'm just keeping the precepts. That's it. That takes care of things." And in a way, as I said right, I think, at the start of this talk, they function for the sake of simplicity, those precepts, and the whole movement of sīla in Buddhadharma was originally taught because it simplifies our life, and purifies us from the kind of negative consequences of contravening those precepts, which would obviate and obstruct our path to liberation. But actually, they're a minimum. And those Commandments are a minimum. The Ten Commandments, the first five deal with human beings' relationship to God, and the last five deal with human beings' relationship with each other. Those last five are a kind of minimum. But as a minimum, they form the basis. They form the kind of minimal allegiance we must have.

And is it enough? Is it complete? Is it too simple? So again, I'll read you -- I mean, I'm reading a lot of Hartmann, but. He's talking about justice, but the point is similar. And he said that, he previously said that Socrates and Plato put justice as the highest moral value. But he says, actually:

Among the virtues proper, justice is to be classed not as the highest, but rather as the lowest.

This is seen in the fact that in justice the Ought-to-Be puts forth not the maximum of moral demand, but quite evidently the minimum. Its claim upon a [person's] conduct is purely negative: not to do injustice, to commit no transgression, not to encroach upon another's liberty, not to injure another or anything that belongs to him.

And same in the last five of the Ten Commandments: not to murder, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to bear false witness, or covet what is not yours. And he says:

If that is the whole meaning of morality, its tendency is merely conservative, not constructive. The one concern is the protection [the conservation] of the lower, the elementary goods: [in other words] life, property, family, [etc.]. If that is the whole of justice, then it is only a means to those goods-values.

So if that's the whole of ethics, then it's only a means to those kinds of things. But he says:

[That doesn't exhaust] the essence of justice. [Because in] the first place, behind those goods-values is hidden something of positive moral value, the sphere of personal freedom. Justice merges into respect for this [he says]. But beyond it there rises something still greater.... The higher spiritual, the communal and cultural values one and all can flourish only where body, life, property, personal freedom of action[s], and the like, are secured. There only is scope found for the higher purposes.

So in other words, we need these basics -- body, life, property, personal freedom of action, to a certain extent. Where they are there, then on that basis, the higher purposes of life, the more beautiful reaches of ethics are based -- but they bring with them complications.

Justice, then [he continues], makes room in the sphere of actuality for the higher values. The more diversified moral life cannot begin, till the simple conditions are supplied. Justice is the moral tendency to supply these conditions. It is the prerequisite of all further realizations of value.... Justice is the minimum of morality that paves the way for all the higher forms.

And when we get into those higher forms, again, that's where a lot of the complexity comes in, and a lot of these antinomical, antinomial relations come in. And we meet with them, and we encounter them, and we have to grapple with that. We have to choose. Again, I can't remember if I've said this before, but in having to choose, the situation forces a choice on us, presents us with a choice. We can try and avoid that choice, but that itself is not a virtue. It's a kind of moral cowardice. So we're presented with a choice, and in many situations -- either because of the structure of the situation, or because of the actual antinomical relationship between values in it that are called for as responses to that situation, that life situation -- we will end up choosing one pair, one side of a pair of antinomial values over another. And it is impossible to avoid that. So he says:

[Someone] who is in such a situation cannot avoid making a decision [what I just said]. Every attempt to remain neutral only makes the difficulty worse, in that he thereby violates both values.

So in other words, to try and refuse to make a choice, to do nothing, to withdraw, to shrink back from the situation -- you end up with neither value, if there are two there in opposition, an antinomial or structural opposition. You end up not devoted to, not manifesting either value. You

thereby [violate] both values [he says]; the attempt not to commit oneself is at bottom moral cowardice, a lack of the sense of responsibility and of the willingness to assume it; and often enough it is also due to moral immaturity, if not to the fear of others.

So how often are we afraid of what other people think of us? But also, there's this fear of the consequences of our choice, which in many situations will be: I have to relatively neglect one value for the sake of my devotion for, my expressing or manifesting, caring for another value. [1:15:37]

What a [person] ought to do, when [they are] confronted with a serious conflict that is fraught with responsibility, is this [he says]: to decide according to his best conscience: that is, according to his own living sense of the relative height of the respective values, and to take upon himself the consequences, external as well as inward, ultimately the guilt involved in the violation of the one value. He ought to carry the guilt and in doing so become stronger, so that he can carry it with pride.

Real moral life [he continues] is not such that one can stand guiltless in it. And that each person must step by step in life settle conflicts, insoluble theoretically [conflicts which -- you can't actually solve them to the satisfaction of both, the demands of both antithetical moral values -- and that each person must step by step in life settle conflicts, insoluble theoretically], by his own free sense of values and his own creative energy, should be regarded as a feature of the highest spiritual significance in complete humanity and genuine freedom. Yet one must not make of this a comfortable theory, as the vulgar mind makes of the permissible lie, imagining that one brings upon oneself no guilt in offending against clearly discerned values. It is only unavoidable guilt which can preserve a man from moral decay.

So even a Buddha must choose and be confronted by certain situations in life where this value gets chosen, gets emphasized, gets cared for to the neglect of some opposing or conflicting value. Both are valuable. Both have a legitimate claim. But even a Buddha must choose. And there are consequences. So I don't know. Maybe Siddhartha Gautama, at 28 or whatever he was, and leaving his family -- he had a very young son, a wife -- and he left them to strive for awakening and the possibility of awakening which he intuited. He's choosing one value, the value of awakening, over another value, the value of caring for his family, the virtue of being a loving and responsible husband and father.

Sometimes, as I said, we want some once-and-for-all answer to sort it all out. We want some simple code. We want some rational idea of how to navigate it all. And we want to be simple and guiltless. And these things may not be possible. In fact, they're not possible. There are some other elements to consider in all this, which I think I'll come back to next time.