282 – Cutting Moral Corners: Is Buddhism Compatible with 21st-Century Life? (2 of 2)

This is part two of my discussion “Cutting Moral Corners: Is Buddhism Compatible with 21st-Century Life?” I address this topic in response to a question submitted by a listener, which I shared in its entirety at the beginning of the first episode. In Part 1 I talked about the moral stress that arises from living a modern life, where almost every decision we make becomes a moral choice. I discussed how home leaving – or monasticism – was early Buddhism’s prescription for avoiding moral stress, and then how the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal become a model for lay practice. In this episode I address the matter of moral stress and how we might practice in the midst of it in order to free ourselves from dukkha, or suffering.

Read/listen to Part 1

Quicklinks to Article Content:
The Moral Stress of the Bodhisattva
What Does It Mean to “Do Our Best”?
Practice While “Cutting Moral Corners”
Moral Stress Without Dukkha?

The Moral Stress of the Bodhisattva

It’s all well and good that legitimate and fruitful bodhisattva practice can happen in the middle of an engaged lay life, at least in theory, but how are we supposed to deal with the moral stress I was discussing earlier? Ideally, the bodhisattva doesn’t cause any more harm than a fully ordained monastic. In the passage from the Diamond Sutra that I’m fond of quoting (translated by Red Pine) it says:

“…those who would now set forth on the bodhisattva path should thus give birth to this thought: ‘However many beings there are in whatever realms of being might exist, whether they are born from an egg or born from a womb, born from the water or born from the air, whether they have form of no form, whether they have perception or no perception… in whatever conceivable realm of being one might conceive of beings, in the realm of complete nirvana I shall liberate them all.’”[i]

Surely, if you are making a vow to liberate all beings, the last thing you would want to do is hurt them, or allow them to be hurt, or to be complicit in their suffering.

The four bodhisattva vows are to liberate numberless beings, end inexhaustible delusions, enter all boundless Dharma gates, and completely embody the unsurpassable Buddha Way. The impossibility of these vows is built right into them. As bodhisattvas, we live by these vows without ever expecting to complete them, but they mean there is no situation in the whole wide world that we can conclude is “not my problem.” Even if it’s clear there’s nothing we can do to help, the beings who are suffering are not excluded from our vow. Rinzai teacher Genjo Marinello Roshi rephrases the first part of the bodhisattva vow as, “a Great Vow to care for all beings great and small, animate and inanimate.”[ii]

It seems to me that the path of a bodhisattva is inevitably one of moral stress. Situations change, decisions must be made, unpredictable living beings require a response. It’s an illusion that we might be able to attain a certain level of understanding and moral perfection and forever after feel perfectly at peace with all of our actions, knowing for certain our choices always maximize benefit and minimize harm. Much of the time, we can’t even predict what the outcome of our actions will be, especially when it comes to the responses of other people.

If a bodhisattva cares anyway, this means they will sometimes worry, doubt, or regret, and feel empathetic pain for those who continue to suffer. According to the story I shared in Episode 56, Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, once got so discouraged when he saw his eons of tireless service had not decreased the number of suffering beings in the world that his head shattered into a hundred pieces. The buddhas put the bodhisattva back together, but I take this as a comment on how the bodhisattva vows to care, and that caring can sometimes be stressful, or even overwhelming. No matter the level of our spiritual attainment, it will sometimes be stressful or painful to care. That’s just the nature of life. Our willingness to care anyway is our gift to the world as a bodhisattva.

What Does It Mean to “Do Our Best”?

Although we can never fulfill the bodhisattva vows completely, we have to do our best. Of course, what is our best? This is one of the main sources of stress for us in the 21^st Century. Because we are part of an infinitely complex global web of karma, almost every detail of our lives presents itself as a moral question. For example, should we buy water in a plastic bottle? Except in rare emergencies, the answer is no. Even when the bottle gets thrown into a recycle bin, chances are slim it will actually be recycled. Microplastics have pervaded our planet, even our bodies. However, when you put the decision about whether to add one more plastic bottle to the mountains of plastic used every day in the context of a thousand other exhausting decisions that we are called on to make, it begins to look less significant.

Most people I know who strive to live as purely as possible devote a huge amount of time and energy to their lifestyle. They are usually happy to do so – to forgo car ownership and only ride a bike, refrain from plane travel, eat only a plant-based diet, abstain from all plastic and disposable items, and research the origins of everything they buy. In many beautiful ways such a lifestyle also simplifies your life, and hopefully we will all live more like this in the future. In the meantime, many of these efforts can feel like streaming upstream against a strong current. In some cases, there are costs – financial, or in our ability to compete in the workforce or maintain relationships with family and friends. It can also be discouraging to work hard to reduce the harm we do in the world but see very few others making similar efforts.

Looking at it one way, we make lots of excuses for not changing our habits because we know the harm we’re doing but don’t want to make sacrifices. Looking at it another way, there are many reasons to have compassion and patience for people trying to navigate lives so fraught with moral complexity we can barely move without causing some kind of harm. Can we have compassion and patience for ourselves and the morally stressed people around us? Our sense of “the best” we can do is often synonymous with our ideals of doing no harm whatsoever, keeping the precepts perfectly, and acting completely selflessly in all circumstances, no matter the risk or sacrifice. What if the “best” we can do is much closer to what we actually end up doing?

Practice While “Cutting Moral Corners”

Moment after moment we have moral choices to make. Hopefully, as bodhisattvas, we won’t willfully or carelessly cause harm for mean or selfish reasons. Often, we will make deliberate choices that allow us to do less harm in the world, even if it requires sacrifice, adaptation, or more money.

Other times, we will let ourselves “cut moral corners:”[iii] Avoiding disheartening information about the effects of our actions, indulging in the cheap and disposable, enjoying an item while trying not to think about how it was made or where it came from, or engaging in activities that enrich our lives – like plane travel or pet ownership – even though we know they have a significant negative impact our environment. Sometimes we will find ourselves feeling compelled to do something that seems morally questionable in order to look out for ourselves or our loved ones, such as indulging anger, competing with others for jobs or resources, doing work that involves a level of duplicity, or selling shoddy or harmful products.

Can we practice even while we’re cutting moral corners? At first “practice” and “cutting moral corners” may seem mutually exclusive. Surely, when we’re making a moral compromise for our own comfort, convenience, safety, advantage, or enjoyment, we are turning our back on practice, aren’t we? Ordinarily, we make a quick excuse for ourselves – this isn’t a big deal, it’s not really harmful or self-serving, I don’t have any other choice – and then try to put the matter out of our mind as quickly as possible. Or we watch ourselves make a choice inconsistent with our own ideals and become strangely divided within ourselves: One part of us stubbornly cutting a moral corner, another other part of us uncomfortably stewing in a sense of guilt. When we find it impossible to live a completely pure life, what other options do we have?

What if we were to mindfully cut moral corners? This would mean maintaining awareness of what we’re doing and the choices we’re making. It would mean making a decision about what we’re going to do in a given situation and taking full responsibility for our actions – without making excuses or feeling guilty. Carrying feelings of guilt about a choice we continue to make can end up being a moral cop-out,[iv] allowing us to remain in denial about our behavior; we figure that as long we feel bad about our behavior, it doesn’t reflect our true moral character.

Instead of taking refuge in excuses or guilt, we can open ourselves up to the whole situation: The morally questionable action, our motivations, our ideals, the likely repercussions of our actions or whatever results unfold before us, our fears, guilt, sadness, and empathy. We feel the plastic of the water bottle under our fingers, the refreshing coolness of the water, we take note of the bin full of single-use plastic where we dispose of it, and the plastic bottles in the gutter others have left there. When images of plastic pollution or statistics about how much plastic we just ingested come to mind, we don’t push them away or dwell on them, just as in zazen.

In the midst of mindfully cutting a moral corner, we would continue to care. This might sound a little crazy, but it’s possible. If the whole situation sounds morally ambiguous, it is – but no more ambiguous than doing the same action while justifying it with excuses or guilt. If we still care, openly and without defensiveness, we are more likely to perceive the effects of our actions. Such perceptions may affect our future choices. If we act while caring, we may find ourselves experiencing sadness, regret, and gratitude. This is exactly as it should be. We are taking something from the world for ourselves, and this often causes damage to beings great and small, animate and inanimate, or deprives others in some way. When we do this, we should acknowledge the situation and appreciate and care for what we have taken. After all, we are one of the beings, great and small, who are under the bodhisattva’s loving care.

Moral Stress Without Dukkha?

In conclusion, let’s return the central question posed by Sofi (see Part 1 of this episode): How can we rid ourselves of dukkha – dissatisfactoriness, dis-ease, or suffering – even while cutting moral corners? It may sound exhausting and miserable to mindfully cut moral corners in the way I have described, but a profound and authentic peace is possible in the midst of such an effort.

Reality-with-a-capital-R is just what it is – not so discouraging, stressful, or depressing when we let go of attachments to our views, including:

our belief that it’s possible to live as a bodhisattva without moral stress, and therefore that we should be without moral stress if we’re living and practicing correctly;
our hope that someday we will finally summon the moral strength to live a completely pure life and our moral stress will end;
and the belief that living a life which inevitably involves cutting some moral corners means we can’t practice fully and sincerely.

If we can even temporarily set aside these views and perceive Reality without the filter they impose, dukkha disappears. Dukkha arises because of our resistance to how things really are – a level of suffering added to whatever pain, sadness, or stress we are experiencing. The pain, sadness, and stress are not the problem in and of themselves. We don’t enjoy feeling these things, but when we do, they are the natural consequences of living and are balanced with gratitude, joy, and wonder. When we allow ourselves to feel pain, sadness, and stress without holding on to an idea that, somehow, we should be able to live without discomfort, our experience is simpler, cleaner, less troublesome, even poignant. It isn’t easy living a modern, 21^st-century life as a bodhisattva, but it’s a whole lot easier if you can free yourself from the conviction, “this is not how things should be,” even if you can only taste that freedom from time to time.

Remember, though, there’s all the difference in the world between mindfully cutting moral corners and giving ourselves license to be sloppy, careless, and selfish. We still do our best to minimize the harm we do, let go of selfishness, and benefit all beings. Adopting the practice of mindfully cutting corners is not a way to avoid hard choices, karmic responsibility, or moral stress. Instead, it’s a way to inhabit those experiences fully. Mahayana Buddhist practice is not about achieving purity, it’s about caring about everyone and everything.

Read/listen to Part 1