The Image of Ethics (Part 2)

Okay, let's start with a shortish recap and then see how much we get to today. So we're basically putting forward and exploring, elaborating a little bit, soulmaking practice, Soulmaking Dharma, sensing with soul, as an approach to ethical practice and ethical philosophy, to working with but also thinking about ethics. Actually, I do feel that that was implicit in the "Sila and Soul" talks,^[1] but as I said, I felt I was a little too restrained there, and a little too held back, modest on behalf of Soulmaking Dharma. I think I also have a tendency to assume that what is implicit in what I say or write will be understood by anyone listening or reading, or by most people listening or reading. And that's really not a very good assumption. It's a naïve assumption. So it's kind of what I learnt from writing Seeing That Frees. A lot of stuff is just, I thought, obvious conclusions to make, or implicit, or we could make the connections by oneself; it didn't need me to spell them out. But that was clearly almost entirely not true, not the case for people. But anyway, just trying to redress that a little bit, and hopefully be more helpful in opening things up.

So, recapping: sensing with soul as an approach to ethical practice and philosophy, and putting that forward, and seeing what that might offer. And one of the things we started with in the last talk was, can we expand the notion of what we're actually talking about here -- what ethics is, what we need to do in thinking about ethics and approaching ethics? Because usually, or very commonly these days, ethics is thought of and approached as the philosophy or set of guidelines or laws or prescriptions for what to do: what should I do? What ought I to do in this or that situation? So we want to include that, of course, those kinds of questions and ways of approaching those questions: what shall I do here? What ought I to do? But include it in a much larger question and exploration, which is: what is of value?

I'm not the first person to kind of insist on this expansion. Just in modern times, Hartmann would say, you know, before you can answer the question of "What ought I to do?", you have to answer the question "What is of value?" Right? We need to understand this. This is really important. Think this through, if it doesn't make sense. What is of value in life? Not just what should I do, but what is of value? What should I love because it's valuable, or highly valuable, or ultimately valuable? And that will imply, it will suggest to me, it will direct me, in terms of what I should do, to a large extent. So we have Hartmann, and we have Charles Taylor, who I mentioned the other day -- he says, you know, about expanding the exploration from the 'ought to do' to the 'good to be' or 'good to love.' So not just "What ought I to do?", but what is it good to be as a human being? And what ought I to love? What is it good to love as a human being? What should I love?

So this is really, really important and crucial, I think, to opening up ethics, so that it becomes a much more fertile area, and more dynamic, instead of something that just sort of grinds to a halt, or two opposing parties just shouting louder and louder at each other from opposite poles of some ethical debate, whatever that is. So what's happened is that this question of, "What is it good to be? Or what ought I, what should I, what is it good to love? What makes life worthwhile? What is it to live a really worthwhile life?" -- that question became separated out from the question, "What is it right or wrong to do in a certain situation, or across the board in all situations?" So philosophy has stopped posing that first question: "What is it good to be? What is it good to love? What should I love as a human being? What is a worthwhile life?" And so it certainly can't give -- it doesn't even attempt to give any answers. We've stopped asking the question. It's deemed, that question, irrelevant to ethics, and it's not included in ethical philosophy, or very rarely. And then gradually, either philosophers or students of philosophy, and then ordinary people, people on the street -- it's hard for them to even see a connection between those two questions: "What is it good to be and good to love? And what ought I to do? What's right or wrong in a certain situation?" They don't even see a connection there. So if it's not obvious to you, think it through. Hopefully it will get more obvious as we're talking.

But as I was saying on a recent retreat: think on your toes, meaning engage. Actually, we learn a lot more when we think actively. So with all that, and as the years of modernity grew, went on, and then postmodernity, etc., if we call it that, then [it's] almost agreed upon in the cultures of modernity that we cannot, no one can impose X or Y, this or that, regarding what people should strive for or what they should aspire for. That cannot be imposed universally by anybody. It cannot even be imposed by anyone else. Not even that it can't be imposed universally -- it can't be imposed by any individual on another individual any more. That brings with it a great freedom. We're not all obliged to follow the same view about what is most worthwhile, what's the thing we really should be aspiring for: "This is really better, and if you're kind of not up to it, or a little bit weak, or a little bit stupid, you don't really get that, so you settle for a second-class life in some sense." So we have the gift of a great freedom these days because there's this, if you like, imposition of the rule that we can't, no one can impose what we should strive for or should aspire for, what is the best thing. So we have a kind of imposition about barring an imposition. And there's a freedom. There's a great freedom for us that's opened up, great space, multidirectional possibilities that have opened up for our life, for how we construe our life, because of that debarring and disallowing of any imposition from anyone, onto anyone.

Of course, in other religious cultures, some still around, that's much less the case. And there are a lot of in-between areas as well. But certainly in secular-dominated society, that is the case. But there are a lot of grey areas, societies that are sort of religious in some ways, or sort of religious in some ways, and very secular in other ways. This is quite common these days. So it brings a freedom, but also brings massive, massive problems, huge, wide, and deep problems. And I'll come back to that. But just to get a sense of this, if you're not quite sure that you understand this or you get what it's pointing to, just compare, notice how acceptable it is, and how common it is to argue -- for some people, or one person or a group of people to argue with another person or another group of people, argue and accuse them of doing something ethically wrong, and then the other person arguing back, or whatever. Now, that's -- okay, it's often unpleasant, but it's a perfectly acceptable thing to do in our society, and it's really quite common. It goes on all the time, of course.

But consider how unacceptable it is, and how very uncommon it is, to accuse another or others of living a life or lives that are not worthwhile. [10:41] I'm not allowed to do that! So I look at your life, and it's just, "Actually, you're really not living a life that has any deep meaningfulness. It's not a worthy life. It's not a worthwhile life." This is not acceptable to say to someone, and it's very, very uncommon to actually say it to someone. Even less, probably uncommon to even think it, because we're barred from that kind of view. It would be unheard of, someone saying, "Well, I see you have family, and you have kids, and you look after them, and you have fun, and you have lots of experiences, and you travel, and you're relatively kind. But actually, it's kind of meaningless. It's not a worthwhile life, what you're living." This is completely unacceptable in our society, and pretty much unheard of. This gives you a sense of the divorce here, and the division of these two questions, how far it's gone in our society.

So what happens is that this first question about a worthwhile life, about what it's good to be and good to love -- what ought I to love? What should I aspire to? What's the best thing to aspire to? This is actually forgotten, and often, then, it's not given attention. The question is forgotten, and it's not given attention to. And on a social level, what you then get is a kind of directionless society without any basis or substantial basis, deep soil, deep fundament of basis on which to erect an ethics or even decide about ethics. And as more and more the advances of technology, and consumerism, and global population, and globalization foist on us, thrust on us different ethical emergencies, dilemmas, situations that need response, we have less and less of a soil, of a foundation on which to grapple with such issues. So on a social level, on a societal level, we get a kind of rudderlessness. Not only are we without rudder; we are without even any training in how to use a rudder.

But it's generally said, "Well, people should decide that question for themselves, about what's worthwhile, what it's good to be, what it's good to love, to aspire for, to strive for, what's a really meaningful life." But what does that "decide for themselves" really mean? Is it something that they really, really ponder with all their heart and mind and soul? "Decide for themselves": we decide for ourselves. Or do we just kind of not think about it much, or think about it a little bit in our teens? And then kind of maybe get pulled by something, following something -- as a colleague said, just following the vedanā, following the pleasant vedanā, avoiding the unpleasant. What actually happens to that whole question? It's quite interesting. It's not black and white. [14:43] So some people, yeah, if you ask them, "What's a beautiful life?", as I asked in the "Sila and Soul" talks, when you think of a beautiful life or the good life, "Yeah, it's good to be rich. It's good to be handsome or beautiful. It's good to be popular, maybe even famous, if I can. It's good to have this and that and other material things. And it's good to have and get pleasant and interesting experiences and travel, and all that." That would be one answer.

An answer with more kind of consciousness, more from a life of consciousness, would maybe answer something like -- or it's not even an answer; it's more like a way one is living. It has become incorporated into the direction and the choices of one's life, to a certain extent. So one might say -- for instance, spiritual practitioners, Buddhists, etc., might say, "Well, it's good to be kind. It's good to be a warm person. It's not good to be arrogant. It's good to be helpful to the world in some way. It's good to be relatively confident, so that I can actually manifest that kindness and warmth and help." So what we recognize there is the language of values and virtues and the ideas. But they're only kind of half-anchored in a dimensionality. It's just good to be those things. It's appealing to be kind, warm, not arrogant, helpful, relatively confident. So the language of values and virtues and those kinds of ideas, but it's only half-anchored in dimensionality, and therefore it's only kind of half-hearted.

Yes, this person might appear kind, and warm, and not arrogant, and helpful, and relatively confident, and all those things. This person has done that, achieved that. It's good. Maybe it took them a little work, maybe not so much. But there's something, because it was only half-anchored, only half-rooted in a deep dimensionality, it's only half-hearted, their attitude to those values and virtues. It's only half-souled. And/or there may be a kind of dim or vague sense of the dimensionality and divinity of those values, virtues, qualities, kindness, warmth -- let's put it in the positive -- say, relative humility, helpfulness, confidence. There's maybe a dim or vague sense of their dimensionality or divinity, but neither the conceptual framework around their dimensionality, nor the eros in relationship to them (and those things are completely related, the conceptual framework and the eros) -- neither the conceptual framework nor the eros are allowed to operate fully, possibly for all kinds of different reasons: that block to the eros, a conceptual framework that one hasn't troubled to think through because one's just adopted bits and bobs of other conceptual frameworks, and sort of has a bit of a hodgepodge that remains a bit incoherent, and therefore not as powerful and as galvanizing and as delivering as it could be. This is actually relatively common, and relatively common among people who would consider themselves, for example, Buddhist practitioners, etc.

[18:44] What's rarer among Buddhists, certainly in the West, is another type or another kind of response to all this. It's rarer, but it exists in certain Abhidhamma-dominated schools of Buddhism. So if even a Western practitioner has kind of been saturated or kind of opened to that so much, it begins to really pervade their way of thinking, then they do think a lot, perhaps, about "What's the good life? What's really worthwhile? Well, the maximization of positive qualities of the citta, the maximization of mind moments of positive qualities: this mind moment of kindness, this mind moment of helpfulness, this mind moment of compassion, etc. And a minimizing of negative qualities, or minimizing of mind moments dominated by negative qualities as they're classified by the Abhidhamma." And the whole way of thinking about the thing is as if it's some kind of mechanical system. And so, these people are much less rare in certain insight meditation circles; in other insight meditation circles, you'll come across them quite a lot. So it depends what circles you move in.

But it could well be that someone listening to a person like that is actually a little -- it sounds almost scary. It sounds so one-dimensional, a kind of machine-like notion, logos of the human being. And this mechanical system of maximizing the positive mind moments and minimizing the negative moments is supposed to somehow deliver us to nibbāna. And a person can come away and feel like, "Whoa! They're making all the right noises, as far as Buddhist philosophy is concerned, I guess. It kind of gels with the teachings." But there's something almost ghoulish about it, ghost-like, almost, monstrous, inhuman, Frankenstein-like. There's something hollowed out in the human being there. This is somehow not a beautiful life. Somehow it's almost not quite human. And for all the sort of -- what sounds like carefully, precisely incisive talk, essentially about virtues, what sounds like a very careful, discriminating, precise intelligence at work, somehow also sounds sparklingly stupid in some way. [21:46] Or the whole thing, this whole talk about worthwhile life, and values, and virtues, and aspirations, striving, can just go, for a person, right into the inner critic. And the inner critic can just appropriate that whole set of ideas and that whole question, and just turn on oneself and attack one. The inner critic attacks the being in that way. And the whole thing just gets very tight, very contracted, very self-depreciating and self-destructive. Also not very soulful at all, just as certain kinds of Abhidhamma-dominated Buddhists might come across as what we would call 'extremely unsoulful.' Similarly, someone who's not even thinking that way, as I said, the inner critic can just hijack the whole conversation, and that's not soulful at all.

But this divorce, this split, and then, as I said, jettisoning and forgetting, or ignoring, or a kind of debarring from approaching this first question, "What is it good to be? What is a worthwhile life? What is a beautiful life? What is of utmost value, etc.?" As I said, this debarring from approaching that, the relegating of that, forgetting of that, or only kind of half-heartedly thinking about and including that -- this, I think, is a part of the wider and deeper, great crisis of modernity and postmodernity. [23:56] So we can easily talk, or nowadays, in our modernist and postmodernist culture, we can easily talk about the need to reduce suffering. But how do we calculate that? How do we compare different sufferings, different kinds of sufferings? What even are the different kinds of sufferings? That's related to, what are the different kinds of value, of meaningfulness? How do they stand in relationship to each other? And you can talk, again, and it sounds very good, wanting to reduce suffering. Or wanting to support human flourishing -- it's another kind of modernist and postmodern trope, even. 'Human flourishing' -- what on earth does 'human flourishing' mean? What does it mean? Unless you're talking about just biological survival. We can have a very poor understanding of what 'human flourishing' means, good as it sounds, and important as it sounds, and sort of wondrously enlightened and noble and modern as it sounds. But unless we actually go into this question of "What is of value? What is really good? What is the ultimate good? What makes a life really worthwhile?", we cannot possibly decide what human flourishing involves.

So that's one big need, is to expand the conversation. So there are two questions -- not just what I ought to do, but what it's good to be, and what maybe I ought to love, are included and put together, and the one as a subset of the other.

And the second thing we talked about was just, what would be a list of wishes or needs for an ethical system, to incorporate into ethical practice? And I ran through a list of -- depending on how you count, it's six or seven. So if we include this expansion of the domain of what ethics means, what we just talked about.

(1) And then there are also other needs for an ethical system, I would say. It needs to be more than a legal system. We need to be talking about something that's more than law and more than just 'rights': my rights to this, your rights to that, and combatting rights.

(2) It needs to include the possibility, secondly, of -- we were saying 'sins of omission.' What this really means is a sort of direction, the possibility, space for higher aspiration, for growth, ethically.

(3) Third, it needs to include and engage our emotions, the whole range of our emotional life, and our heart capacity. And that needs to be very much a part of what we bring to ethics and what ethics actually involves for us. But it needs to be also more than that, more than just our emotions, or just governed by emotions, more than just involving our emotions as instrument and guide.

(4) And we also said that another need is, we need to be talking about, thinking about, and practising ethics in a way that a love of ethics, and even eros for ethics or for values and virtues and living ethically comes, is allowed to come in, is given space, and is honoured. So it's not just natural for it to be there, but it's actually necessary, intrinsic -- intrinsic and necessary.

(5) And then we also talked about dimensionality, and that's mostly what I wanted to start talking about today, when I get to it. We need some kind of rooting in some kind of other dimension, some kind of sense of dimensionality to the whole notion of ethics. Ethics needs rooting in some other dimensions.

(6) And all this needs ontologies and epistemologies that ground it, and that make sense of it. And if we're Buddhist, that means our ontology needs to be more than just saying, "Everything's empty."

(7) And lastly, that all this -- again, another need is that it's related to the sense of what a human being is, and what a human being can be.

Okay, so all those (depending on how we count) seven or eight needs. And I said they're not -- I can't go through them in a linear order. At least, I can't see a way of going through them in a linear order. And they're not really separate. So they involve and imply each other, these different needs. For example, we talked about emotions the other day, and I talked about the example of a grief ritual. And there's a kind of a grief ritual conceived as and functioning as, effectively, a space where people can really let their grief rip, where they can cry or feel very deeply, feel emotions deeply, and not be shamed for that, maybe even be held for that. There's that kind of grief ritual, so conceived, so functioning.

And there's another kind of grief ritual which is more to contextualize the grief, and part of the way it puts the grief into context is by connecting levels. And that would be exactly -- connecting levels, for example, of human being and soulful being or spiritual being, connecting levels in the cosmos, etc., between matter and whatever we're going to say, matter and soul, whatever. But other rituals function to connect levels, and then even to transform levels. And partly what they do is, they contextualize. And such a grief ritual is conceived and probably won't function in the same way as the first kind of grief ritual. It won't give rise to such a great amount of emotion, etc., and tears. But it's still extremely important, I would say. So they're both important. But there's something about the second one that's easily overlooked.

[31:46] So emotions are not always the most important thing. And again, in the absence of a place for dimensionality -- because that's what the second kind of ritual does, is it connects dimensions or gives dimensionality, and that's part of the contextualizing of grief, or contextualizing of matter, or contextualizing of life, or contextualizing of death, or whatever it is. But in the absence of a place for dimensionality, then our conceptual framework, again, implicit or explicit, whether it's conscious and explicitly spelled out or implicit, it can become limited and limiting, even when we're very well-intended: "Oh, I just really need to -- we really need to feel our emotions about species loss," or whatever it is, species extermination. It's very well-intended, but there's something I'm not understanding. There's more to this than my emotion of grief -- no matter how deep and bottomless the grief can feel. Actually, the bottomlessness of the grief may be a clue that another dimension is needed. And until that other dimension is conceived and sensed, even if both the conception and the sense are vague, until then, that grief will be literally bottomless, because it's not contacting another dimension. [33:28] So that would be an example, how these different needs are not separate. The question of emotionality and the place of emotions is very connected to the place of the need for dimensionality, etc. We could give a million different examples here. But they're really not separate. So I don't think there's a linear way through this.

When we come to, okay, thinking about, how could we approach ethics through sensing with soul, through Soulmaking Dharma and practice? First of all, a reminder regarding the Soulmaking Dharma approach: a reminder that this was all arrived at, or is being arrived at, through what we called a phenomenological approach -- in other words, through our experience. For some of us, it was arrived at through just the experience of appearances, of experiences, of perceptions, the whole ways of looking and fabrication notion, which is what I call the phenomenological approach, as far as it relates to emptiness -- just staying with that phenomenological approach, all the way to the Unfabricated, past the Unfabricated, and then opening out and legitimizing the possibility of imaginal practice.

So for some, the whole thing is just based on one phenomenological approach, or rather a thread that just evolves. Or the phenomenological approach in the sense, based on experience of having images, and then paying attention, "Hmm, these images sometimes feel a certain way, or I notice certain things about them, and that's what we'll begin to call ['imaginal']." That's what makes them imaginal: the twenty-eight elements, etc., and other things not included in the list of the twenty-eight. So I'm just going phenomenologically. I'm just going from my experience, including the experience of, "This is important. There's something about images when they come like this, when they're imaginal, that's important." So all this, just as a reminder, was arrived at through phenomenological approaches, together with a kind of just bold and vigorous questioning of typical assumptions that we have in our culture, or that we have in our sub-cultures, Dharma or otherwise, typical logoi. So it was really just arrived at through phenomenology, meaning through our experience, and through questioning certain inherited sort of indoctrinations. It was not arrived at through some kind of abstract metaphysical speculation. So I think it's important not to lose sight of that in this day and age, where abstract metaphysical speculation has, for hundreds of years now, such a bad press.

When we come to thinking about, okay, Soulmaking Dharma approach to ethics, and we said, well basically, you could say, broadly speaking, we could divide that in two: (1) one is through working with an imaginal figure, and (2) the other is through the sense of values or virtues becoming imaginal ideas, the ideational-imaginal. So two broad ways, and just very, very briefly, to say, okay, well, what does that mean in practice? So for example, what does that mean in practice with regard to ethics? How would I bring such a teaching and approach, such teachings and approaches to bear on ethics?

So very, very sketchily, let's say, either I feel drawn to do X, whatever it is, to express something, to write something, to do something, to refuse to do something, whatever it is, whatever X is. I feel drawn to do that, though I can see some ethical reasons why I shouldn't do that. Okay, so here's my ethical dilemma. Is there an image, an imaginal image related to doing X? And I mean, again, it might be the very crucible of the not knowing, and the heat of the situation, the pressure of the situation that I feel in the soul that gives birth, in the alchemy of the heat, and the pressure in the crucible that gives birth to an image, gives rise to an image. But is there an image related to doing X? It might be of doing it, or just related to doing X. Is it a soulmaking image? Is it what we call the authentic imaginal? Is it genuine imaginal? Are all the elements there? Are all the elements there? We have to be so careful with this, so careful. So is there a sense of duty in relation to that image? And what's the sense of the refraction of the duty? Am I taking it literally? Am I taking it concretely? Is there autonomy of self? Do I have a choice here? Is there humility? Is there fullness of intention? I'm just selecting some of the really, really obviously important elements there. Is there fullness of intention here? Why do I want to do X? Is there the fullness of intention? Okay, so that's really a question. I have to explore it imaginally. Is there an image? And is that really a truly imaginal image with all the elements there? And even then, that's not quite enough. What's the refraction, etc.?

And then maybe one thinks about not doing X, whatever X is, and maybe there is an image related to that. Or maybe, actually, there isn't an image, and that's partly why one feels not so called that way. One can still see that ethically, one could make a point, "Oh, but that's still important, to not do X." So maybe there's a sense of values there. So if there's not an image, it's like, well, what are the values that are related to not doing X? Not doing X expresses or upholds certain ethical values. And can I sense into those values with soul? Can I relate to those imaginal ideas, those values, those virtues, with soul? So even though doing X might be an actual imaginal figure, not doing X may be an imaginal figure, may be just a sense of the ideational-imaginal. But I have to really, really work the practice, with all the sophistication, and all the care, and all the subtlety of attention, and all that, attunement, and then compare the soulfulness. Compare the sense of soulmaking either way, and use that as a guide to ethical choice.

Or it might be that here's an ethical choice that I'm needing to make. Here's some situation in my life, and I can see values, both sides, in either branch of this forking of the road. Choose this, there are values. Choose that, there are values. There is what Hartmann would call an antinomy. There's a moral antinomy there -- exactly that. Actually, it might be a question of hierarchical difference. Either way, actually -- it doesn't matter. Can I sense with soul into each value and each choice, the imaginal idea, the ideational-image of each value and each choice, and do that very carefully? [42:11] I see, I sense the values on both sides. It's either an antinomy or maybe a hierarchy, hierarchical choice, but I sense what Hartmann would call 'antinomy' versus 'hierarchy,' or a hierarchy. But I'm sensing each of these imaginal ideas, these values, each choice -- I'm sensing it with soul as carefully as I can, again, and I'm comparing the soulfulness, soulfulnesses on each side. So very, very briefly, that would be a way to proceed, very sketchily. It's the kind of thing we're talking about as a basic idea, the kinds of thing we're talking about as a basic idea. But let's stay with, if we think about sensing with soul, as I said, we can divide it up as an approach, broadly, into working with -- well, if we think about the sensing with soul approach to ethics, we can divide it up broadly into an approach with an imaginal figure, and an approach with an imaginal idea, virtues or values.

So if we talk about the first, let's just not go too fast. Let's spend a little time with the first of those: working with an imaginal figure. An imaginal figure has an ethos. It has an ethos, and it has an ethical perspective. That's partly why values is one of the twenty-eight elements of the imaginal. An imaginal figure has an ethos, and it has an ethical perspective -- this figure, that monster, that snake, whatever it is, that flower, that tree. So there's another possibility for practice here that I would like to suggest and just, again, sketch some instructions. So we've talked about, you're familiar by now with the practice of -- sometimes we call it 'twoness,' sometimes we call it the 'balance of attention.' I'd like to introduce the practice of 'threeness,' okay? And a balance of attention within threeness. In a situation -- so let's just really talk about practice now here. It's in a situation. Here, maybe I'm with someone else, or I'm having some kind of dialogue with someone else, or they're saying something to me, or it's a difficult interaction, whatever -- some kind of situation. (i) There's an other, (ii) there's myself, and (iii) then there's a third, which is an imaginal figure that has come to me. [44:58] And it might be an old imaginal figure that I've known for years, or one that's just come very recently, or even in that moment, perhaps.

And can I play with the balance of attention, the sort of relative weighting of my attention between the three? So what is it? I'm here with this other person, in this situation, or here with this situation. 10 per cent of my attention, let's say, with the imaginal figure, and the other divided between myself and the other, myself as regular human being. Or divide three ways equally, 33 per cent each. Or 50 per cent with the imaginal figure, or whatever. So it's similar to the twoness balance of attention exercise, but now it's threeness. And the question is, what then happens to my sense of the situation? What then happens to my sense of the situation with this other person or some other situation?

So one could do it in real time -- in other words, this is going on now. I'm putting myself in a situation and trying this. I think I gave an example, several times over recent years, of just that image that I have of me as a jazz musician. It was actually kind of -- it's real life. It's memory. I was a jazz musician. But it's become image for me in all kinds of ways, in very rich ways, and sometimes difficult ways, and sometimes just very beautiful ways. But I think I shared a couple times that sometimes that might come in. That image of 'jazz musician' -- just a tiny little bit in the very background, let's say, in an interview, in a Dharma interview. And it's just very much there in the background, but it's affecting my whole sense of the situation, and how I respond, and the whole dance of the interaction. It's very, very subtle. So that would be an example. That's using it in the now, because one could do this -- in other words, here's a present situation, and one's using an image. Okay, it's a past image -- one's resurrecting it deliberately, deliberately calling it to life in the moment, and then just having it be in the background, or more in the foreground, or whatever it is, for a situation that's happening now.

One can also do this with a memory of a situation, a memory, perhaps, of a difficult situation or a confusing situation, or one that we ended up feeling very contracted from, or we ended up judging ourselves, or whatever it is. So that's one thing: it's just bringing the image into the situation, if you like, then playing with the balance of attention, seeing: how does it affect the sense of the situation? Playing with the balance of attention three ways, and how do the relative balances affect the sense of the situation -- whether it's the memory of a situation or a situation in the present, live?

Then there's also the possibility here: can I sense into the imaginal figure's perspective, their feelings, their evaluation of things? So it might be the imaginal figure's evaluation of me, the imaginal figure's evaluation of my 'stuff,' or even my old stuff, the place where I trip up, the place where I get caught again -- how do they see it? What's their perspective on it, on my stuff, my difficulties, my mistakes? If I'm doing it from memory, I feel like I did make a mistake there. Can I get a sense of the imaginal figure's perspectives, feelings, and evaluations on me, my stuff, my difficulties, my blocks, my mistakes, etc.? [49:20] Can I get a sense of the imaginal [figure's] perspectives, feeling, and perspectives of the other? Can I get a sense of the imaginal figure's perspectives and feelings and evaluation of the whole situation, whether it's an obviously ethical situation or not? I think there's a lot of potential here. Can I enter into the imaginal figure, inhabit it, see through its eyes, sense through its senses, feel through its heart? Okay, might even be a stage further, really immersing there into that.

So this is more than seeing an image and seeing what it does in imaginal meditation. And it's also more than just an image's sense of me. So there are a lot of possibilities here. But an image, imaginal figure has an ethos and an ethical perspective. Sometimes what happens is we get blinkered or caught or blinded ethically. And sometimes an imaginal figure, because values is one of the elements of the imaginal, can shine a different light on a situation, an ethical situation, on ourselves, on an interaction, on our difficulties, on our mistakes, on all kinds of things. Again, very brief sketch of another kind of practice, but I think very, very -- certainly soulmaking, potentially, but also helpful in all kinds of ways.

One of the ways I'm thinking about is with regard to shame, because there might be, either in a situation or after a situation, and we feel inadequate, or our shame, our kind of habitual sense of shame locks in. So doing this kind of practice either now, live, or in memory can really open things up and actually begin to separate out what we might call a shallow kind of shame: there's nothing but dukkha there. It's not necessary. It's not serving any function other than creating dukkha and a binding for ourself. I don't like like this word 'ego' -- I really don't like it -- ego, shallow shame. Separating that out from what we might call a kind of 'soul-shame' or 'soul-level shame,' which may be more authentic, may have more necessity, may be -- will be -- more fruitful. [52:20] So there was a talk I think I gave on the Path of the Imaginal retreat. I think it was called something like "The Love and Demands of the Imaginal" or something like that.^[2] But deliberately in the title putting this kind of, what can seem like they don't go together: the love and the demands of the imaginal. Opening up that whole notion of duty to image, duty to soul. There's so much here that's potentially important, potentially healing, and healing at different levels, just in terms of dissolving or blowing away the kind of shallow shame, but also opening up to maybe a level of shame that is actually, in itself, healing. It's something we don't tend to think of: a healthy shame, a healing shame that connects us more with our soul-power, and soulfulness, and sense of duty, and meaningfulness, and redeems something, reconnects, again, recontextualizes something, or contextualizes it. So I think, a lot of possibilities here.

Let's linger -- again, let's not go too fast. I do want to talk about dimensionality, primarily, but I just want to linger a little bit on this whole question of shame and guilt. So just very loosely, I would say shame has to do with (at least the way I would define it) a negative view of how I am: "I am bad, or I am worthless," or whatever it is. "I am" -- it's a painful belief and binding belief about how I am. Guilt is a view or views about what I did or what I neglected to do. I mean, there's a connection here, because it's quite possible that, if I'm not careful with the guilt I feel in relation to what I did and didn't do, that I felt I should or shouldn't have done, shouldn't or should have done, it's possible that that guilt starts kind of congealing, mortifying, congealing in a kind of -- yeah, actually, like a kind of rigor mortis, into a sense of shame. It becomes something more pervasive, a conclusion that I then carry around, or walk around in, about who I am. It's quite possible that the guilt, if we're not careful with it, can lead to more pervasive and long-lasting shame about who I am.

[55:18] Of course, it's also possible the other way around: to the degree that I have a shame, and I carry around or I walk around in a shame about who I am, it's more likely that I will perceive situations and conclude, without much thought at all, that I am guilty of 'doing this wrong' or 'neglecting to do that, which would have been better.' So these are loaded subjects in our culture: shame and guilt. And a lot of us inherit -- of course, part of our inheritance around ethics and morals is quite a painful relationship with these ideas of shame and guilt, coming (some would say) through certain Christian teachings or interpretations of different teachings, different Christian teachings of original sin, or whatever it is. Of course, that's not the case with all people, and it doesn't have to be the case for Christian teachings. But I think a lot of people do feel that way, and so the whole area of shame and guilt is something that one just can't go near, those terms or those experiences, as human beings, in any way that's helpful at all, other than trying to dissolve them or dismiss them. And then a lot of people come to Buddhadharma because it seems that Buddhadharma doesn't talk in terms of original sin and guilt and that sort of thing. And indeed, a lot of the way it is taught now in the West is very free of such terms and such, even, suggestions as shame and guilt and all that.

But the Buddha did, in fact, talk about these kinds of things. And he talked about hiri and ottappa, two Pali words. And he called them "the guardians of the world." [57:26] Hiri and ottappa, the guardians of the world. He said, when these qualities wane, when hiri and ottappa wane, human society moves towards the animal realm. Humans become more like animals, and the human society becomes more like the animal realm.^[3] What's he talking about? Hiri is something, we could say, more -- I don't know if saying 'directed' is the right word, but it's really the innate sense of shame over a moral transgression. So we really feel ashamed for doing something wrong. And it's connected with our own self-respect. It's related to a sense of our personal sort of honour. (This is in the Itivuttaka, for those of you who are interested, among other places, I think.) And then ottappa is slightly more externally oriented. I don't think that's such a satisfying division. But anyway, it's a kind of 'moral dread,' sometimes it's translated as, or fear of the results of moral wrongdoing. So hiri is this innate sense of shame over a moral transgression. Ottappa is a moral dread or fear of the results of wrongdoing, which includes fear of the blame and punishment by others, so that one's actually -- that's included. And the Buddha says these are really important qualities. We need to be afraid of being blamed and punished by others in our community, in our society. It's also a fear of the karmic consequences of wrongdoing. And it's a fear that by wrongdoing I will scupper my chances of attaining nibbāna.

[59:22] Buddhaghosa talks about, gives an analogy: it's like having an iron rod. Hiri is the shit that is smeared on one end of the rod. So you wouldn't want to pick up the rod there. But ottappa is as if the other end of the rod has been placed in a fire, and it's red-hot, and you wouldn't want to pick up the rod there. So there would be hiri; there would be a kind of disgust, shame or disgust to pick up the rod at the end with the shit on it. And there's the ottappa, the kind of fear of picking it up at the burning end, the red-hot end, and completely burning your hand there.^[4] So shame or disgust and moral dread or fear of the results of moral wrongdoing.

And the Buddha says, whatever evil arises, it springs from a lack of hiri and ottappa. And then he also says: all virtuous deeds spring from the sense of hiri and ottappa -- which I find a little problematic and limiting, because it leaves, again, no room for eros. All virtuous deeds spring from a sense of shame or a sense of fear.^[5] Where's the room for eros there? So, interesting. But anyway, these are there in Buddhist teachings, and you can hear just how much the Buddha emphasized them and how strong he was in his articulation of their importance. But it's interesting also because nowadays in postmodern society, postmodern understanding, let's say, or inquiry, we put a lot of emphasis on recognizing whether something is socially or communally constructed and contingent. And it sounds, to a large degree, like some of what the Buddha's talking about in hiri and ottappa is. So that's a whole other question: whether that's necessarily bad or debars it, or what it means for its reality status, etc. I'm not going to go into that now.

But going back to the "Sila and Soul" talks, you know, we talked about following Hartmann, the idea that there is a place, and there should be a place, for healthy shame and healthy guilt. It's what Hartmann mostly talked about: healthy guilt. And I wonder, too, whether there's a way of redeeming this whole area, in terms of our ethical practice, and our ethical sensibility, and our approach to ethics. After the Nuremberg trials, trying Nazi war criminals, they were named and shamed (and then executed, in fact, some of them). But they were named and shamed. Nowadays there's this sort of teaching like, "Don't name and shame." But they were named and shamed. And it may have to do with just what is deemed, in the society at the time, as outrageous enough to warrant naming and shaming. So there's maybe a place -- and there is a place, as I've written about and talked about, for certainly ending or dissolving feelings of guilt, thinking more about actions and the conditions that gave rise to actions rather than persons, etc.^[6] There is the importance of that. But maybe there's also the place for taking responsibility, for a healthy sense of guilt, etc.

So I was just reading -- actually, I wasn't reading. I saw a couple headlines in the newspaper recently about -- I think it was just in Dutch culture, in Holland (I think it was in Holland), that flight shaming is becoming more and more okay, that it's more and more okay to suggest to someone that they're flying too much and unnecessarily, and the ethical cost of that. Well, why should that not be okay? Or shaming someone for driving SUVs. Now, SUVs use so much more petrol. They used to be mostly diesel, I think. Now they're petrol cars (not diesel, in other words), but they use so much more, and they emit so much more carbon, and they take so much more, emit so much more carbon in their manufacture, etc. And they're the fastest growing strand or whatever, stream of the automotive industry -- so much so that the automotive industry is not at all reducing its overall emissions. It's actually increasing them, because of the increasing amounts of SUVs sold. I don't know. Maybe there's a place for shaming. Maybe it's a necessary thing, maybe. I don't know.

But in terms of flight shaming -- I didn't read the articles, but I do remember when I was first teaching, and around different groups of senior teachers, and sometimes I would hear them talking about just, you know, because they were flying all over to teach retreats, and about their (what's it called?) frequent flyer status. And sometimes the way people can talk about this almost just sounds like a subtle boasting in there, or identification with being important because one flies a lot. Maybe the culture and society will, hopefully in not too long a time, evolve to a point where that kind of subtle boasting or identification as being important will be about as okay as kind of subtly boasting how many slaves one owns. I've talked about this, so I'm not going to go into it, but it's just like, it's easy to [say], "Oh, but I'm flying for the Dharma, because I'm teaching Dharma. It's less suffering. I'm contributing to less suffering." Like the slave owner would say, "Well, I'm helping the economy, aren't I?" Sometimes this whole idea of what it's okay to shame, and what it isn't, is really socially deemed, based on where the kind of average or lowest bar of ethical views of right and wrong have reached in a society at any time.

[1:07:11] Anyway, it might be that, certainly with regard to the ideational-imaginal, imaginal ideas of values and virtues, there can be, as Hartmann said, a sense of guilt. And he said (we went into this in "Sila and Soul") there needs to be a sense of guilt. There needs to be place for that, and as something that's inevitable in ethical life, in practice. So maybe that -- I don't know. Also with regard to imaginal figures, it may be, you know, reverence is one of the elements of the imaginal. And when I was trying to find the right term, I remember looking up the word 'reverence,' and it's related, I think, from the Latin, to the capacity to feel fear and awe in relationship to something. So maybe, wrapped up in the reverence, there's a place for something like hiri and ottappa, whether it's imaginal ideas we're talking about, values and virtues, or an imaginal figure, and how we are or are not refracting that figure. Or there's a possible shame or guilt, a hiri, ottappa for not trying to approach something, a situation, a choice, an ethical choice, and not having tried to approach it with sensing with soul, and then feeling hiri or ottappa, some kind of shame or guilt for that -- but a healthy one, one that takes us forward, can decide and aspire to do something differently when the following situation comes, or the next situation comes.

But remember, all this, when we're talking about soulmaking and the imaginal, all this is in the context of the benevolence of an image, the love and being loved. That's an element of the imaginal. And I would say also, when you really get into the practice of the ideational-imaginal, the ideas also can love you. They will love you. They do love you. So the ideational-imaginal, there's a sense of the benevolence. We are in relationship with beings, figures, imaginal ideas that love us and place demands on us -- love and demands of the imaginal, love and demands of imaginal ideas. And that word 'benevolence,' again, from Latin, bene + vol. Vol is related to our will. It's wanting, bene, good, what's good. They want what's good for us. There's a beneficence. They want what's good for us. 'Benevolent' -- that's what it actually means.

Someone asked me a little while ago, what do I mean by this element 'dimensionality shading into divinity'? And partly in trying to sort of open it out a bit more with words -- well, it's pointing to a sense of benevolent mystery. So when I have a sense of an image having this dimensionality shading into divinity, I partly mean there's a sense of benevolent mystery there -- mystery, but also it's benevolent. And one senses that, even if it's only subtly and vaguely. Dimensionality is, to me, related to the word 'depth,' and one way of understanding what the word 'depth' means is: something is deep if it's not immediately apparent or immediately obvious. So that's the mystery. There's a benevolent mystery there. That's part of what 'mystery' means: depth, not immediately obvious. Something is not immediately obvious. Also, it's kind of hidden from immediate, obvious view. But the hiddenness there that's part of this dimensionality shading into divinity is not menacing. It's not like something I can't make out, and it's kind of sinister or menacing, or the fact that I can't sense what it is clearly is kind of ominous in some way. So this benevolence is very much part of what we mean by dimensionality shading into divinity. It also means, is related to having soft and elastic edges, which is another of the elements. The dimensionality and the divinity are not sharply defined, clearly delineated.

So, dimensionality -- I said that's what I wanted to begin talking about today. And I said in the last talk: ethics needs something. Or in order to ground ethics, in order to make sense of ethics, in order to evaluate between different ethical choices, in order for the whole thing to kind of really function with any power in our lives and any vitality in our lives, something needs to be sensed or granted as having higher or deeper dimension or order or level. And in that higher, deeper dimension or order, that's kind of naturally where (because of this deeper dimension, higher dimension) naturally, meaningfulness, value, purpose, sanctity (in the broadest range of that term) -- they naturally reside there. And without that, without a sense of giving, granting, or sensing dimensionality in something, ethics cannot really work. Or it really doesn't work very well.

I think I said, I can't remember where it was, but 'scientistic' scientific materialism -- in other words, a kind of way of thinking and enterprise that wants to, tries to explain everything, all phenomena and all experience and the whole of the cosmos, inner and outer, explain it through a reduction to just purely, let's say, material -- small material elements. That's scientistic. That means trying to explain everything that way, in the materialism, scientific materialism -- this reductionism to little bits and bobs of billiard balls. Scientistic scientific materialism as a kind of approach to or enterprise to explain the whole of existence and all our experience -- it implies that there isn't a reality to values. In other words, they're not grounded in anything; there's no possibility of grounding values in anything real. And actually, as I explained (whenever it was, whichever talk or series it was), this actually becomes very hard, in such an enterprise of scientistic scientific materialism, even to try and justify why we should try and reduce suffering in the world, because suffering itself is also scientistically and materialistically reduced. It's just the movement of particles in the universe. It's just, "What's suffering? Well, it's really a material thing. It's some neurological impulses. That's really what suffering is, because that's really what everything is. And neurological impulses can be reduced to neurotransmitters and molecules across neurological synapses, down to the molecules, down to subatomic particles, and really, suffering is just a shifting, a moving around of particles in the universe. It has no more or less worth than anything else." So even trying to justify why we should reduce suffering, and trying to make that as a basis of ethics, can have no grounding. If there's no dimensionality, everything's equal. It's just matter in this way -- everything.

Also, the scientific method rules out (or at least it used to, for a long time) human feeling regarding anything, remember? We try, in the scientific method, to put my feelings, my affects, my desires and wishes, put that all aside. That's second-class citizen. It's a distorting thing, etc. Put that aside. So my feelings about anything, including my feelings about values and what's valuable and what's deeply valuable -- scientific method sidelines it. Or scientific method studies feelings -- it may even measure them, more recently, these days, but it's still going to have, it still can offer, no real grounding or basis for them. So I might, as a psychologist, behavioural psychologist -- I don't know, not behavioural psychologist, some other kind of psychologist -- decide to study human feelings. And maybe I measure them, whether that's in brainwave activity or from questionnaires or whatever it is. But I still can give no real grounding or basis for them. So scientific materialism -- it becomes impossible, from that basis, to root any ontology of ethics. There's nothing real to give any rooting for ethics. There's no recourse to something of value, to explain why we should do this and why we shouldn't do that, ethically.

I should point out, just while we're on this subject about reductionism and dimensionality. So a kind of scientific reductionism that is a reductionism down to, for example, billiard-ball-like particles -- everything goes down to that, or whatever goes down to that -- is a kind of reduction merely to smaller units of the same kind of stuff. And so it's a flattening reductionism. And certainly, if I start with something that feels rich, like my sense of value, and I reduce it down to billiard-ball-like particles, it's taking something that was dimensional and rich, etc., and reducing it to something that's very flat. It's a flattening reductionism. If I'm just talking about matter, and I reduce matter, this table, and I reduce the table down to billiard-ball-like particles, in my theory of it, then that's also a flattening reductionism. Or rather, it's a reductionism that doesn't introduce another dimension. Well, yeah, it's a kind of flattening.

If, however, my scientific reduction goes down, past such basic particles, down to the sort of quantum mathematical probability functions that I've talked about, which exist as these sort of complex mathematical functions, related to probability, but these equations or functions or geometries, they exist in a kind of multidimensional abstract mathematical space. So I've gone past electrons. Say, "What's an electron? Well, actually an electron is this." We can't point to a particle or a wave. All we can point to is this kind of abstract multidimensional mathematical -- I'm talking about mathematically multidimensional space -- entity. It's not even matter any more. We've reduced to something, then, of a different kind, a different order. Then we have given a kind of dimensionality. It's not a flattening, but we've actually dimensionalized. We've gone from something that it seems obvious, even if it's just small [knocks three times on hard surface] bits of solidity -- it's gone to something that we can't even really say it's the same kind or order of stuff. There's a different dimension there. So that's also reduction, but it's got a dimensionalizing in it.

Still, that second kind of reduction that is dimensionalizing: say, it's going down to these very abstract -- say, "What's really real? Not the table. Not even the electron or the proton. What's really real is these abstract, very complex, very sophisticated mathematical entities, mathematical functions, equations that exist in a strange, abstract, mathematically multidimensional space. That's what's real." Okay, that gives a kind of dimensionalizing, but it would still be problematic if that view attempts to 'explain' (put that in quotes) things like human love and sense of meaning through that reduction -- in other words, again, if it's scientistic, if it attempts a reduction of the totality of existence, of being, etc. It's still not a flattening, but it would be very problematic. [1:23:08] It's not capable of doing so. It's not capable of making sense that way.

Okay, so dimensionality is what I want to look at, start looking at dimensionality -- just touched on it already briefly. It's a complicated subject, and difficult to even find the right language to talk about it. But one way that a sense of dimensionality has historically kind of been ripped out of a question of our exploration of ethics is -- we can trace it historically, and one way, and one of its roots actually came from the Protestant Reformation. One way that came from that seed, from that revolution, really, ended up impoverishing the kinds of dimensionality that human beings could feel and conceive of and sense in existence, in relation to all kinds of things, and also, in time, in relation to ethics -- came through the Protestant Reformation, partly because one of the main things the Protestant Reformation set out to do was to abolish and reject any kind of mediation between a human being and God. So this was one of its central sort of attempts and thrusts and insistencies: to reject anything that was intermediate between the human being and God. So no priests, no priests with any kind of higher function, or who've served as intermediaries in any way. No sacraments either. No 'this holy ritual' or 'this holy or made-holy object, this sanctified object,' whatever it is, can mediate, is necessary to mediate between a human being and God. There was this attempt at completely getting rid of any intermediaries: priests, sacraments, etc.

And what that brought with it was also a kind of affirmation or elevation or emphasis on ordinary life. So it wasn't just the life in the church. It wasn't just the Eucharist. It wasn't just the life in the church; it was certainly not the Eucharist or the Mass or the priest who was needed as an intermediary. Not quite the same point, but they also kind of rejected monasticism, monks and nuns, for slightly different reasons -- probably connected -- but one reason that was given was just, basically, "There's nothing between you and God. And it's totally up to you and God, that relationship. And all of us need to have total commitment. There's no such thing as a person having more or less commitment. You either have a full commitment or you're damned." And a monastic, being regarded as someone who's decided, "Yes, I do want to give everything to God. I do want to focus wholeheartedly on that. That is the highest thing, and my commitment is total," in the Protestant Reformation, the view was, that's just not a healthy notion, because all of us need to have a total commitment. So no monastics. But, I mean, in a way, that's silly, isn't it? It doesn't really bear out, just looking around us, at humans. Clearly there are people with very different levels of motivation and commitment, even if we just talk about to their music or art or poetry, or whatever it is, or whatever. And we see it definitely as well in the world of Dharma and practice. There are people with very different motivations, and also different levels of talent. So there's something a little bit silly with that. But anyway, that's a side point.

[1:28:03] The principal thing I want to focus on now is this rejection of mediation: rejection of priests, of sacraments, but also a rejection of angels as intermediaries. Okay, so all this came with the Protestant Reformation: rejection of angels and saints and the Virgin Mary -- anything that was an intermediary, or could be seen or regarded as an intermediary between the human being and God. There was a rejection of angels, and including, therefore, the role of angels as reflecting and refracting, at different levels, the totally inconceivable nature or being of God. So we reject intermediaries, then angels get rejected, and their role of reflecting and refracting, at different levels, this totally inconceivable nature of God -- that gets rejected as well. Also rejected are angels as beings the human can, in turn, refract and mirror. So we talk about refracting the angel, reflecting, refracting the daimon, mirroring in our life the image. That gets rejected, thrown out as well. So rejecting angels as beings that reflect and refract at different levels the totally inconceivable nature of God, the transcendent, almost unknowable being in itself of God, and also the rejection of angels as beings that the human can, in turn, refract, reflect, mirror, and be called by -- and in being called by, come into more intimate relationship with and sense of the attributes of the divine, and in refracting and mirroring the angels, express and manifest, in human life, the attributes of the divine.

So all this has to do with a kind of hierarchy of being, a hierarchy of cosmic being: God, hierarchy of angels, human being, etc., nature. So we talk about -- I've touched on it before, but these Platonic ideas and forms, they're sometimes called, and they came to be regarded as the attributes of God. And we can think of them (as I said in I think it was the "Sila and Soul" talks), the ideational-imaginal -- they're related to these Platonic notions of ideas and forms and images, attributes of God, and angels. So ideas, forms, ideational-imaginal, and images all can be seen and regarded as the attributes of God and angels -- the same thing.

So there's a dimensionality here that was scrapped, was done away with, was outlawed, in fact -- a hierarchy of intermediaries, and that whole dimensionality that opened up with that, that was very much related to what was ultimately good. It pointed and drew us towards what was good. That enabled us to refract and be drawn towards what was virtuous, etc., embodied virtue, connected virtue with the divine and that ultimate dimensionality that way, connected virtue with holiness, with that whole scale.

When we talk about images in Soulmaking Dharma, and we talk about the ideational-imaginal or ideational-images, we can say that they are a dimension, as angels are in this old sense, pre-Reformation. They are a dimension. And we feel that. We're refracting, reflecting something of a different level. We can also say, and we do say, they have dimensionality. So experientially, it's as if the sense of an image is as if in itself, it has a dimensionality shading into divinity. So they are a dimension. Their very existence tells us of a dimensionality. But they have, in themselves, so to speak, or in our sense of them, their being has a kind of dimensionality shading into divinity. So they are and they have dimensionality.

In Soulmaking Dharma, again, this dimensionality, it's a connection, and this whole order of angels and angels as intermediaries is really something that connects. It's sometimes called a 'chain of being,' although that phrase became mixed up, and two very different ideas got mixed up in what that meant. But it connects with one thread, these different levels of being, different dimensions, so that if I pray to the angels in a supplicatory way, if I ask for help from the angels -- and sometimes I do. Sometimes I have a sense of the soulmaking angels, the angels of soulmaking, and being so ill and so unwell, and sometimes trying to give talks or whatever it is, and feeling, in myself, not able to, I will pray to the angels, my sense of the soulmaking angels, the image, the imaginal sense of Soulmaking Dharma angels. And in my sense of that, of these 'angels,' so-called, and the supplication to them, they are 'not me,' but they're also 'not not me.' They are not me, but they are not other than me. Or they are other, but there's this direct line from my being, from them to my being, and that somehow includes my being. Or to say it another way, I participate in the angels, and they participate in me. I participate in an image, and this imaginal figure participates in me. [1:35:58]

So historically, one of the things that happened, as I said, in the Protestant Reformation, one of the seeds there ended up having quite a devastating effect in all kinds of ways -- and a lot of really good things, obviously, as well -- but quite devastating effect on how we relate to, how legitimate, we feel, is the world of angels and any sense of intermediaries with divinity, or a sense of dimensionality, in all kinds of ways, in our existence. And we inherit that, partly, as also imaginal practitioners. We inherit the history of Western theology, in fact, and Western philosophy. And we can't help bumping into or being buffeted by or constrained by the different elements of that history of Western thought.

But again, what happens when we don't have dimensionality is that it affects our sense of ethics. So there's an illustration of one way it affects the sense of the imaginal, but also our sense of angels, again, as reflecting, as refracting the virtues, and the virtues being the ideas, the forms, which are the divine attributes of a God, of a divinity whose nature is actually completely transcendent and unspeakable, beyond any attributes. But what happens when we rule out dimensionality is, we actually limit what we can do with ethics. So I think human rights, which is something we've become so used to as a notion now, I think it was, you know, the roots of that notion are in Hobbes and Grotius and some others. So the notion of civil rights, I mean, civic rights, whatever, and the roots of that are in Hobbes and Grotius. But it's not because a human being or, actually, these kinds of human beings, or this portion of human beings -- you can see how fractional it was, partial it was -- it wasn't that a human being has these rights because, for example, they're made in the divine image, which would be calling on the divinity, and the fact of human beings being made in the divine image, to give a kind of dimensionality to justify the sanctity and the careful treating of human beings, because they're made in the divine image. So when we say, "Why should human beings have rights? Because they're made in the divine image," it's giving a dimension as an explanation, as a grounding. [1:39:46]

But the original movement and development of the idea of rights in society wasn't coming from the idea of divine image or that kind of grounding. It was coming, again, post-Reformation, as a kind of -- people were trying to figure out a basis for law. So it wasn't even a question of morality and virtue, really. It was trying to ensure stable society, stable societies, and it was devised, it came up as an idea in the times of the post-Reformation wars -- you know, enormous bloodshed and brutality in Europe at that time, and also the civil war in England, likewise very bloody and traumatic. It's like, "How can we have a sort of basis for law?" People started thinking away from kind of purely theological and soul-questions and dimensions to ground ethics to more legal ways of thinking about it, and contractual: what's the social contract? These were all ideas that were born then, post-Reformation, in attempts at a purely secular moral philosophy -- in other words, one that wasn't grounded, or was only very little grounded in recourse to the dimensionality of divinity.

Just as a complete aside (I don't know if I've mentioned this in another talk), I was reading a book called -- I think it's called Epistemologies of the South.^[7] It's a collection of kind of academic essays by postcolonial or anti-colonial thinkers, and one of them was pointing out the whole notion of human rights was a colonial notion and a Western notion, and they were rejecting it. So it's a very surprising thing to read, because we're so used to thinking -- I was so used to thinking about that as kind of, "Oh, this is a really basic and important, universal notion. Everyone could sign up to this." And this person was saying no, that's something created by colonial white guys. Anyway, that's an aside.

So when there's no dimensionality, then we very easily, it's very easy for ethics to slide into what really becomes just law, or this kind of trying to figure out, "Okay, what are people's rights?" And then you get this argument between rights which is very hard to adjudicate. But it's partly because there's the withdrawing or the ruling out of any other dimensionality, and it has consequences. So something needs to be sensed as or granted a higher dimensionality, a deeper dimensionality. It needs to be felt to be of a different level or order, and in that other level somehow naturally reside meaningfulness, value, purpose, sanctity, etc. And without that, we run into a lot of problems in our approach to ethics, in our trying to figure out ethical philosophies or practices. Something or other needs to be sensed or granted as being of higher, deeper dimensionality, level, order, whatever we're going to call it.

This is partly something I read in Charles Taylor recently; he uses very different language, and he's coming at things from a slightly different angle. But in the language we use, when there's no dimensionality, or when the dimensionality is kind of hidden or unconscious (or we could also say, in the language I've used in the past, when the soul-preferences, because what I give dimensionality has also to do with where my sense of soulmaking is), when the dimensionality and/or my soul-preferences are hidden or unconscious, it brings certain consequences to the philosophy. So we've talked about, I've talked about in other talks in the past: am I choosing a Dharma, am I choosing a notion of awakening and goal and all that based on really what my soul is desiring as a way of feeling myself and the cosmos? What kind of cosmos do I want to live in? What's my fantasy of self and cosmos? And then building the Dharma around that. And that not being admitted, that actually I want to see the cosmos this way, and I want to see myself in relation to the cosmos this way, and that's why I'm choosing this kind of version of the Dharma.

So when a dimensionality is refused, or it's hidden and unconscious, what you get is a kind of -- Charles Taylor says, in his words, "parasitic philosophies." [1:45:50] And I'm not sure whether he said this for all or at least some of what he calls "Enlightenment-derived modern positions." I don't think it's all of them, but I'm not sure if he actually says that. But they're parasitic in that they're actually relying on some already established moral assumptions about right or wrong, about what should be done or not done. But they're refusing to give a why. They're refusing, in other words, to give a dimensionality. There's no grounding in anything else. So they're parasitic on older philosophies or older notions, older currents in the society that are already established, these assumptions around ethics, and they just take the same assumptions. They don't change them at all. They just piggyback on them, but they withdraw the why. And they actually don't need to provide a why, because there's a current of people already established in those views, those moral assumptions about right or wrong.

[1:47:13] But also (and this is Charles Taylor) pointing out, they have, they provide no positive view, no constructive practice. And I would want to agree with this and actually elaborate: there's no positive view or positive framework of philosophy or practice, whether it's personal or, let's say, governmental. You can tell when a philosophy or even a Dharma or an approach is parasitic in that way, because it's characterized by mostly its polemic attack on other positions. Mostly what you hear, very little positive in the sense of constructing views, constructing practices, constructing philosophies, etc., coherent frameworks. Mostly what you would hear and read is polemic attack on some other view. Or if something is constructed, it's very thin soup. I was giving an example in some of those online seminars about trying to construct a Buddhist aesthetics just around the Buddhist notion of impermanence.^[8] And then art always has to point to impermanence, whatever kind of art. And it's terribly thin as an idea, or as a framework. It's very, very thin. Without something being given this, granted or sensed with a dimension, a deeper dimension, a higher, deeper dimension, order, level, actually it's impossible. It's impossible to ground ethics, impossible to make sense of it. It's impossible to even construct and give a why we should do this and not that.

So, talking in the "Sila and Soul" talks about Richard Rorty, and how, if you read his writings carefully, he would say we cannot ground it. He actually refuses. He's very -- there's no such thing as another dimension. There's no higher grounding. You cannot ground ethics in anything else, etc. But then it slips out, in the language that he uses, that he's using notions of what's good or bad, etc. But he has no way of explaining or justifying why that is, because there's no other grounding. And I don't know exactly who Charles Taylor meant, but somehow, in reading, I got a sense that he was referring to -- I think they're called the New Atheists (Is there a New Atheism movement? I think; I'm not sure), in terms of just, there's nothing there except polemic attacks on other positions, and actually in terms of what's being offered as coherent construction of frameworks, conceptual frameworks, what's being offered in terms of practice -- there's either nothing there at all, or very, very, very thin soup. There's no way forward offered, really.

Again, with the Soulmaking Dharma, there's both -- we've tried to really create and discover a coherent conceptual framework that has depth and range, possibility of elasticity, but also practice. So conceptual framework and practice. And when we talk about ways of looking: practice, practice. It's not just the idea of ways of looking -- it's the practice. As we've said, so many of these modern philosophers completely lack any practice. They might talk like Richard Rorty does about, you know, 'open to different ways of looking' (well, he doesn't use that phrase), 'different views,' 'keep the conversation going.' But they have no way (as I've said this before) of actually practising different ways of looking. So it's all just kind of empty rhetoric. And again, you find there's actually very little offered. So Richard Rorty (and I think I've probably said this) -- okay, so he's deconstructed this and that, and it's very good, excellent deconstruction of things to a certain extent. Then he says, what we really need to do is keep the conversation going, keep the conversation going. And that's his ethical standpoint -- keep the conversation going -- or one of his main ethical standpoints. But there is no conversation. There's just nothing to discuss. There's nothing offered. I can't take on other viewpoints to really engage in a conversation, and I'm not really offering anything of myself, because I have no framework, because I have no dimensionality. All this is connected.

I'm not a historian, but when we look back historically, you can kind of see (I'm not sure it's the right word), we can kind of see different attempts, or maybe different ways (that's a better word) in which ethics has been provided with a dimensionality, or different attempts at providing ethics with dimensionality. Dimensionality would make sense of things, offer reasons for why, orient, help to adjudicate, give justification, etc. So I just want to briefly mention them now, and then -- I've said enough for today, so we'll come back to this, hopefully, in the next talk. But very briefly, to run through, we could separate them out into four, looking historically. But again, these are not separate, actually, nor are they simple. I'm not presenting them in a chronological order, nor, in fact, are they really even chronologically divided. It's more like they overlap, and you get different versions of this one, different variations, sort of arising on different timelines. There are modifications, all kinds of stuff. And you get combinations as well. But just very briefly, I'd like to mention them, so four kind of ways or attempts at providing a dimensionality, or something that dimensionalizes, provides dimension for ethics, another level, recourse to another level, order, dimension.

(1) One is what we might call rationality. And so this goes back to Plato, maybe even Pythagoras, really, and who knows where before that. Let's call it rationality, but the thing I want to say right now is that that's not a simple word. Okay, so a grounding of ethics in rationality, because if you take four philosophers -- Plato, Locke, Kant, and Hegel, that word meant very different things. So for each of them it was central in their way of thinking about ethics -- Plato, Locke, Kant, and Hegel. Rationality was central, but it meant something very, very different, or at least there are two main sort of ways it was thought about, at least -- lots of others as well, even within those four, or some others within those four. But two main ways.

(2) And those ways, the main different meanings of the word 'rationality,' were connected with the second way of giving dimensionality to ethics, or providing a dimension which would make sense of ethics and help us orient, and that is cosmic order, the order of the cosmos. So one old way, the ancient way, and actually, up to the Middle Ages, certainly, one way of conceiving but also sensing the cosmos, the world we live in, and the whole cosmos, was that it had a hierarchical, a kind of vertical order, of which that hierarchy of angels that I briefly alluded to earlier -- that would be part of it. And there's a kind of hierarchy or vertical order from the sort of ultimate levels of the Godhead, so to speak, and the mystery of the divine, all the way down, so to speak, down to the barest matter or whatever. So we can talk about things being closer to the divine or further away from the divine. It's complex, loads of different variations. So that's one way of thinking about the cosmic order.

Another way of thinking about cosmic order, which came later, has a much more horizontal structure. So more like the co-functioning of parts, like the way an ecosystem works, or a machine works, actually, or a clock works. It has these different parts, and they're all kind of at the same level, and they function together -- the way they move together, the way they perhaps feed off each other, or whatever. Functions -- it's more of a horizontal, let's say, order. So we can have two ways of thinking about cosmic order, and in relationship to those two ways, two ways of using either notion of order to ground a sense of dimensionality of ethics. I'm going to come back to this in a lot of detail. I'm just mentioning it now.

Going back to the rationality as a kind of attempt at dimensionalizing ethics, or giving a dimension to support ethics: what rationality meant to Plato meant more like seeing and sensing and knowing, uncovering that vertical cosmic order, and putting one's life in relationship to that (how should I say?), like orienting one's life toward that order, and toward the hierarchy in that order, so it's clear what is the highest good, and it's clear, the kind of scale or stairway that leads to it. And to be rational means to uncover that, to see it, to sense it, and to think and to live one's life in accordance with what it naturally kind of suggests and demands. That's what it means, for Plato, to be rational.

For someone like Locke, it meant something very different. It means something more akin to what we mean by it these days. It means just being something like logical. And Hegel, slightly different, Kant also different. We'll maybe go into this, or we will go into it more. So, different kinds of rationality, different kinds of cosmic order, and what they suggest about ethics, and how they work in different ways to give a kind of support and dimensionalizing and sense-making to ethics.

(3) A third way of giving dimensionality to ethics is, we could call -- well, it has been sometimes called voluntarism, which is just basically saying, "Well, this is ethical because God said so, because God said it in the Bible, or in the Bible it says that God said so." And so there's a dimensionality there, just because God is, by definition, a being of a different order, of a different dimension, of a different level. And if God said so, then it's God's will, God's voluntary. God has completely free will in this view, and so, in the pure view, all that is grounding ethics is just because God said so. It has nothing to do with the structure of the universe. It has nothing to do with human rationality, or our logic being able to discover what the most ethical thing is. It's just, God said so. God's at a different level, God's a different dimension, therefore it gains its dimensionality through God's will, the voluntarism, it's called, philosophy: God said so.

(4) And a fourth is basically suffering, or turn it around and say, happiness, and the kind of attempt to calculate or estimate, really, how much suffering this or that action would cause in comparison with another action, how much happiness, and try and ground ethics really in a notion of suffering and happiness.

So do you see how each kind of makes its appeal, or had its appeal as a dimension (by what I mean by a dimension)? There is an appeal in each of these to something kind of intrinsically sacred, meaningful, good, valuable, true, higher. Actually, not the last the one -- I'm including it right now, but not the last one. It's not really a dimension, and that's part of its problem, this utilitarianism, just thinking, "Oh, well, suffering's the most important thing. Reducing suffering is the most important thing. Increasing happiness is the most important thing." We'll come back to this, I hope. But at least the other three, and in some way, this fourth one -- reducing suffering, increasing happiness -- tries to kind of mask itself as if it were another dimension. So each of them kind of -- there's an appeal to something intrinsically, as I said, sacred or good, ultimately valuable, meaningful, true, higher in some way. And that implies or gives a why and a basis for ethics, whether it's an ethics of wrong or right or an ethics of what it's good to love, good to be.

But each of these -- (1) rationality, (2) cosmic order, (3) voluntarism, (4) whether we call it reduction of suffering, increase of happiness -- each of these four has problems, ran into ways that it failed in the history, or -- well, there are places where it fails. Let's put it that way. Some would say they have failed, historically or philosophically, or whatever. But each of these brings problems, has problems. There are places it's easy to find where it just doesn't function, or it no longer functions, where something becomes impossible.

Let's see how we're doing for time ... I think I'll stop there for today. And we'll go into them. I just want to mention these. These are the kinds of things that have been attempted as ways of providing a dimensionality, or assumed to provide a dimensionality to ethics. I mean, an example of a problem or a failure or impossibility was just that that notion of cosmic order, after the Protestant Reformation, then even more so with the Scientific Revolution, that that idea of a hierarchical order and an order of angels -- it was either theologically brought into question, and then it became more and more impossible to take it seriously as a reality, as the Scientific Revolution grew. So that would be an example of the crumbling and the disappearing of that as a possible dimensionalizing, or giving dimension to ethics. But I want to return to that as a possibility, in fact, in a different way. But as I said, each of them (we could go through each of them) brings different problems. But let's stop there for today.