“Beyond Religion” Commentary & Summary
Ethics for a Whole World
As religion slowly gets replaced by secularism we must start answering definitely how to conduct ourselves moving forward. Universal ethics, as promoted by The Dalai Lama, can offer the antidote needed to replace the vacuum created by the absence of religion. I still believe that the fundamental elements associated with religion are still necessary such as purpose and hope. Even then, those can be replaced with critical thinking and rational thought. I was skeptically excited to dive into this book in particular, especially after reading his later book on achieving happiness at work. I found the contents to not only be reliable (of course) but also easily applicable giving instructions on how to apply his methods immediately with practice to yield a mindful outlook on reality.
Author
The Dalai Lama doesn't need much of an intro but I scraped this from wiki: (Tenzin Gyatso, shortened from Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso; born Lhamo Thondup; 6 July 1935) is the current Dalai Lama. Dalai Lamas are important monks of the Gelug school, the newest school of Tibetan Buddhism, which was formally headed by the Ganden Tripas. From the time of the 5th Dalai Lama to 1959, the central government of Tibet, the Ganden Phodrang, invested the position of Dalai Lama with temporal duties [1].
Summary
The book is about Secular ethics use in our everyday life. Those are ethics that can be used by both religious and non-religious people. There are many suggestions about getting rid of destructive emotions and helping other people. In this book, there is justified the importance of compassion.
Analysis
PART I A New Vision of Secular Ethics
Chapter 1 Rethinking Secularism
I believe it’s important to first understand the foundation of secularism:
sec·u·lar
/ˈsekyələr/
adjective
- denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis: “secular buildings” “secular moral theory”.
The Dalai Lama brings up a great point about humanity. Religion was used previously as a mechanism to create order when laws were feeble and promote altruistic qualities. However, as Dawkins suggested, religion is culture dependent [2]. So, we must rely on our basic interdependent human conditions to construct common human values and ethics.
Inner Values In An Age Of Science
Religious doctrine and faith may not be the sole provider of ethics and human values, as proposed by the Dalai Lama. Recent studies in human cognition suggest that human experience coupled with intentional practice can cultivate environments that nurture the growth of compassion and calmness.
Approaching Secularism
This section of the chapter is where personal idols like Krauss and Haris have extremely diverging opinions. The idea that secularism should be imposing antagonistic views on religion is straying far from His Holiness’ perspective on religion. Universal ethics should be for both nonbelievers as much as it is for believers. The foundation of ethics should be tolerance, even to those of faith.
Secularism in India
a·him·sa
/əˈhimˌsä/
noun
- (in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jainist tradition) respect for all living things and avoidance of violence toward others.
This Hindu/Buddhist word is the sole reason why such a diverse country like India can sustain immense (religious) diversity with impressive harmony, especially at the population of over a billion residents.
Tolerance In An Age Of Globalization
If we observe the world, objectively, we can notice that religion is still the major source of social tension. If we deconstruct our humanity to its most basic foundation and common human conditions we can easily construct a universal approach towards ethics.
Religion and ethics
The Dalai Lama reminds us that religious doctrine is not the only path towards achieving human spirituality. Although theistic traditions directly cultivate and implement inner values and ethical behavior universal human values can support “goodness and compassion” and “our underlying disposition toward love, kindness, and affection”.
Grounding Ethics In Human Nature
“The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.” — Mother Teresa
We are innately “sinful” in my opinion because we desire to serve the self. It is easy to see the atrocities that humans can create the malevolence that they can produce. However, the Dalai Lama prompts us to consider the kindness, love, and compassion that we produce for those who are “close” to us. Our natural instinct is to care and love those who are close to us by blood, proximity or assigned methods. Our ability to nurture with unmerited love (agape: Christianity) is what binds individuals to families, families to tribes, tribes into nations and hopefully at a global scale in the near future.
Two Pillars For Secular Ethics
For universal ethics to become feasible the Dalai Lama suggests that two axiomatic principles need to be implemented: shared humanity (vague) and interdependence. This section of the chapter lays the foundation moving forward for the rest of the book, and his argument.
Chapter 2 Our Common Humanity
He initiates this chapter with similar rhetoric to Johnathan Haidt [3]. Rather than fixating on our apparent superficial differences (race, language, behavioral cultural patterns), we should focus on our similarities. Seeking commonalities lays the foundation for a rational conversation to be established.
Unless mentally impaired, humans all share the abilities (with varying capacities) to think rationally, comprehend empathy (unless a socio/psychopath), experience pain/discomfort and seek pleasure/happiness.
Human Consciousness And Empathy
As the human mind evolved our consciousness and ability for empathy grew as well. Our ability to recall memories to live in the past or imagine the future allows us to critically evaluate possible outcomes based on learned behavioral patterns engraved in our mind, over-time, personal experiences that mold our mental model of reality, or imagine potential futures with our creative abilities tandem with rational thought. This ability to think in both present, past and future differentiates us from our mammalian ancestors and cousins.
In addition to our increased capacity to think rationally we also have the ability to empathize with others; to feel their joys and sorrows.
Happiness And Suffering
We use symbolism to represent our unconsciousness emotions. We gravitate towards what is familiar and known. This is suggested by Peterson in “Maps of Meaning” [4]. We also fear and avoid the unknown. We homogeneously assimilate with the things we like and have abhorrence towards that which we dislike. The consequence of this naturally occurring phenomenology is that we inadvertently create prejudices and intolerance to things that don’t align with what we know or like. This negative emotion can be incubated as a result.
Fundamental Equality
The Dalai Lama argues that regardless of our fractionalized differences we are all the same at the human foundation. We all strive for happiness and fulfillment while simultaneously evading suffering. Unless they are mentally impaired we are all essentially the same.
Chapter 3 The Quest For Happiness
I loved this chapter as it helped solidify my understanding of His Holiness’ perspective on happiness and its sources. Proper health, monetary wealth, and nurturing friendships contribute significantly to achieving happiness. However, they are not ultimate sources of joy; they are usually transient and of an equal source of anguish and suffering. Genuine joy and satisfaction are only achieved and obtained with a “peace of mind” and continual practice towards shifting your paradigm of thought, tending towards compassion, kindness, and purpose.
Wealth, Health, And Friendship
He reiterates the importance of having healthy relationships and financial security tandem with proper health, but the true source of happiness cannot be derived from earthly things. Rather, finding purpose and continually practicing mindfulness is your only viable step towards obtaining true satisfaction and ultimate joy.
Two Levels Of Satisfaction
The Dalai Lama does a fantastic job at distinguishing pleasure and fulfillment. One is usually obtained with external stimuli. This is a superficial level of happiness. That temporary satisfaction usually becomes corrupted by some negative human emotion and ultimately transitions into suffering (think of wealthy people who are unhappy, healthy people who are unhappy, relationships that go sour and make them unhappy).
The second level of satisfaction is rooted in the fulfillment that is only attained by mental exercise. We must look towards mental composure, purpose, and mental resilience towards suffering (stoicism in my opinion).
Chapter 4 Compassion, The Foundation Of Well-being
In English, we are stuck with one word to represent love. In Greek love can be described in 4 (main) different ways, one of which is called agape. In Christianity, the word love commonly found in the bible is derived from this Greek definition of the word love.
Agape is to love unconditionally and in this chapter the Dalai Lama analogous the word agape, unconditional love, to that of the mothers’. Mothers have a propensity to selflessly sacrifice their own joy for their children. This is the unconditional love that both Christianity and the Dalai Lama are attempting to cultivate.
Recall Chapter 2 where we said that we have a tendency to have an affinity towards things that we know and like, and expressing love(agape) is no different. This chapter argues the need for extending the unconditional love to ALL sentient beings rather than those who are close to our personal lives.
I will admit, that my understanding of how to 1. Practice/achieve this, and 2 his definition of expressing agape to everyone is a rather challenging concept for me that I still struggle greatly with.
Levels Of Compassion
The end of this chapter is the Dalai Lamas plead for universal compassion using our new found understanding that all humans, like ourselves, desire fulfillment and desire to evade suffering.
Chapter 5 Compassion And The Question Of Justice
Compassion and tolerance often get positioned as passivity. This chapter explores how you should conduct justice, ethically, with compassion in mind. To many, this chapter can be extremely challenging to grasp and accept. I hope to properly portray what he was trying to express here.
The main element of his argument I believe is imperative to fully understand is his idea of distinguishing the actor from the action. We want to nonviolently reprimand the victimizer with compassion.
I agree with his suggestion that everyone (who isn’t mentally impaired, in my opinion) has the capacity to change and reform. He asserts that the desire for revenge (an eye for an eye) possesses negative consequences and emotions.
His argument for implementing forgiveness is the reason why I believe that the religious component is married to spirituality. His definition for forgiveness is the ability to recognize and understand that our personal experience varies from person-to-person, therefore, our conditioned negativity can determine our perception thus forging our reality. This takes enhanced mental cognitive capabilities to1. Understand that truth as an axiom, and 2. To empathize with the person because of that truth rather than inflict him with draconian punishments. So religion as a tool to symbolically represent and explain forgiveness is almost necessary as most people do not have the mental capacity to properly understand and act upon that truth. We must show tolerance and compassion to them as well.
The Question Of Justice
Compassion is often misconstrued as passivity, however, compassion engenders immense courage and strength. Compassion is not signifying surrendering to injustice and malevolence. The Dalai Lama suggests that proper justice is a byproduct of an attitude of calmness, almost like an objective scientist. Compassion simply means that you understand that a person’s reality is transfixed by their personal experience, including negative conditioning.
That is going back to my opinion above. Religion does a great job at inoculating the masses by using symbolism and ritual to manufacture compassion at scale. Secularism can spread over time as the mind evolves to orient itself towards a more rational reality.
Broad And Narrow Concepts Of Justice
The Dalai Lama starts his argument for compassionate justice by stating that fairness is based on the acknowledgment of human equality. For Law to be just it must reflect universal human rights, or else we are no better than the perpetrators' actions.
The Role Of Punishment
A challenging set of questions is proposed by the Dalai Lama regarding punishment’s role in society. The answers to questions may be enlightening.
1. Is punishment about making wrongdoers suffer as an end in itself, or
2. Is it about preventing further wrongdoing?
He reaffirms that justice, and its punishment, is meant to produce security for the society, act as a deterrent to prevent future crimes, and provide fairness when wrongdoings are produced. He appends to his statement by suggesting that a superior civilized society advocate for the possibility of change and reform for the person and recognizes that the desire for revenge has negative repercussions.
Distinguishing The Action From The Actor
Distinguishing compassion from approval is imperative for this section to be fully understood. Showing compassion towards the actor while condemning the actions is acceptance in understanding with kindness. This is a far contrast of approval and passivity. So, what do we do to punish them? This chapter up to know was a challenging one to accept, to be honest.
Altruistic Punishment
His prescription for a proper punishment is ambiguous and without direction. The high-level percept is that the punishment should benefit everyone, including the actor. I propose that he is the suggestion that you create proper mental refinement through mindful exercises — real rehabilitation.
Forgiveness
Remember, the space between our response to stimuli is where we grow. The past is fixed so fixating on the past is a futile use of your emotional energy. This does not mean that we do not remember the actions that occurred, it merely allowing us to part without angry resentful state so that we can address the situation like an objective scientist with immense compassion for the actor.
The Scope Of Ethics
Motivation is important. It is difficult to separate motivation from ethics. Cultivating a pure genuine motivation is how you can effortlessly start acting accordingly.
Chapter 6 The Role Of Discernment
Discernment is another keyword commonly found in Christianity. Proper discernment allows you to properly choose realistic and pure intentioned decisions. The Dalai Lamas perspective of discernment for the secular world is to simply think critically about the list of possible decisions. Choose actions that have compassionate intentions and objective thought to decide on the proper course of action. Like Dalio suggests in “Principles” try to objectively look at the problem from a higher level. In practice with nurturing your inner values we can, over time, learn to effortlessly make ethical choices that are beneficial to society as a whole.
Establishing Inner Values
I recently read a story on the Navy Seals suggestion for dangerous situations. He proposed that the probability of being able to think clearly during a tumultuous and life-threatening situation is highly implausible. So, He encouraged us to critically think about the situation before it occurred, iterating possible outcomes and the best plan of action with a clear rational mind. Similarly, the Dalai Lama suggests that we create generalized principles for situations that may evoke negative emotions so that we are acting with compassion, effortlessly.
Dealing With Dilemmas
This portion of the chapter just states that your principles may not be applicable across the board as situations tend not to be so binary. So, basically with practice, you should be able to naturally choose ethical responses.
Taking A Holistic View
Remember, life is interdependent in ways that are unfathomable by humans. So, it is important to look at the problem from a higher level and different perspectives. We all hear this, and may even say that, but to truly look at problems unbiased and form another perspective is something I admittedly suck at haha. Anyway, he is arguing for better decisions to be made when the holistic perspective is taken into consideration. Thinking only through your biased limited perspective restricts your ability to properly make proper and ethical decisions.
Inevitable Uncertainty
Basically, we don’t know the extent of the repercussions to arise from our decisions. So, analyzing the motivation and using discernment before speaking or taking action allows us to take control of the limited domain that we can.
The Fruits Of Discernment
Compassion infused with discernment is what allows for intelligible judgment to be made that’s imperative for ethical decisions to be made.
Chapter 7 Ethics In Our Shared World
Remember, cultural values are dependant on socio-cultural significance, however, mutual ethical and values are humanity based, which transcends superficial differentiators (skin color, religion, etc). Discovering and fostering universal ethics is an integral component needed for society as a whole to thrive as religious doctrine starts to become more obsolete in its training on ethical behavior.
Global Challenges & Responsibility
Most issues pertaining to the macro set of problems, globally, are associated with ethics. Therefore, to realize the interdependence of the world can be affected by your personal ability to think critically with discernment and compassion is integral for society to thrive at scale. Identify the problem and be the solution, rather than hoping or complaining for a savior.
The Challenge Of Technological Progress
We have ran social experiments often in history where power is accumulated to a select few and as a result, corruption tends to manifest. It is entirely possible that we can experience this fatal human flaw once again as technology develops at a faster rate than we can evolve with.
The Environment
All the social activists (which honestly should be each one of us) will have a true affinity for this chapter. He is simply talking about our contribution to the environment whether they are positive or negative. He asserts that a commonality between humans is our presence on the Earth. We can use this common goal (sustainability and restoration) as means for creating collective goals to unite us.
The Problem Of Greed Versus The Joys Of Philanthropy
Wealth should serve humanity and not vice versa.
Inequality, recognized by the Dalai Lama, is not inherently wrong — it’s actually natural for resources to accumulate to a select few (this is how evolution favors the fittest). However, when greed becomes the motivator for wealth accumulation rather than a byproduct of pursuing one’s interests then this can derive many problems as a result such as social tensions and violence.
New Challenges From Science
Here the Dalai Lama is stating that the advancement of science and technology means that we must discern decisions on ethics regarding inevitable advancement.
Educating Future Generations
Using a singular religion as the foundation for ethics in a country is a major disservice and bias for the students. He reaffirms the need for implementing and teaching universal ethics for the secular classroom.
Part II Educating The Heart Through Training The Mind
Chapter 8 Ethical Mindfulness In Everyday Life
The key understanding of secular ethics means distinguishing the difference between knowing and doing. The Dalai Lama offers three stages of ethics:
- Restraint: Not harming others,
- Virtue: Nurturing inner (universal) values, and
- Altruism: Dedicating yourself to others wellbeing (emotionally, physically, and fiscally).
Understanding these three stages allow one to be better equipped with demonstrating natural human values.
The Ethics Of Restraint
The Dalai Lama suggests that we use discernment as a tool to mitigate inflicting harm on others by being mindful of our behavior.
Harm Caused By Nonviolent Means
Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. — James 3:5–6
Physical wounds can heal more easily over time but verbal barrages can have a longer lasting impact. Be cognizant of your words before speaking, they carry more weight than you know.
Heedfulness, Mindfulness, And Awareness
He quickly defines almost indistinguishable words. For me it was hard to truly understand the distinct differences but here you go:
- Heedfulness: Embrace caution by remaining careful and attentive.
- Mindfulness: The foundation of heedfulness allows you to remember your inner values and motivation before acting.
- Awareness: Experiencing life as it comes with an objective lens.
- Self-respect and consideration of others: Addition measures used to give caution before acting.
The Ethics Of Virtue
Here we must cultivate and foster our inner values. This is something that I struggle with immensely still. Only through continuous effort will you be able to candidly actualize virtue.
The Ethics Of Altruism
This is where I suck the most. Damn, this book commentary is a massive confession of how terrible I am at secular ethics haha. I am trying but basically, we are seeking to benefit others well beings with proper motivation (i.e. no selfish motive).
Chapter 9 Dealing With Destructive Emotions
Emotional awareness is the ability to distinguish harmful emotions from beneficial ones. Remember, the objective is not to become a robot who does not feel. It is also important to note that feelings of pleasure, if not properly assessed can still be or become destructive.
The beautiful aspect of the Dalai Lama is that he encourages the exploration of modern psychology and neuroscience to reform Buddhism if needed. He promotes the idea that neuroplasticity and conscious effort can rewire the mind to change behavioral patterns and thus the habits that follow. He provides systems for us to apply in our life to restrict the production of harmful behaviors by remaining aware of our emotions.
The Possibility Of Self-improvement
Once again he emphases the neuroscience studies that suggest that conscious effort can effectively rewire out mind breakdown bad habit formations caused by LTP (“Long Term Potentiation”) then subsequently build and reinforce positive habits.
The World Of Our Emotions
Negative emotions degenerate the mental wellbeing into destructive behavior. He offers a clear understanding of destructive behaviors by dividing them into two separate sub-categories.
- Inherently Self-Destructive: Greed, hatred, Malice; and
- Contextually Self-Destructive: Attachment, desire, anger, and fear.
Contextual self-destructive behavioral patterns are dangerous when the emotion exceeded the situation, disproportionately
Shared Features Of Destructive Emotions
Emotions act as a veneer, layering over our perception, thus constructing our reality. Therefore, it is easy to understand how negative emotions can easily warp our reality. As a result, our decision-making ability diminishes quickly as the emotional elephant takes control. Our rational judgment disappears and we fail to consider first order and second other consequences.
The Emotion Families
Emotions possess both negative and positive valence, therefore they are coupled together in their respected dichotomies.
Taking A Stance
Here the Dalai Lama us suggesting that our ability to take a stance lies simply in recognizing the destructive nature and commitment to overcome them with conscious effort.
Understanding The Causes Of Affliction
Remember, the response to external stimuli is our ability to grow. We are our worst enemy and only we have the ability to provide the innate goodness in our life.
Emotional Awareness
He fails to provide tools to create emotional awareness. However, he states the importance of becoming aware of (destructive) emotions when they arise, even if it's gradual over time. I presume he suggests gaining emotional awareness by practicing mindfulness and meditation. I’d suggest using anchors or other external sources like a significant other emotion checking you — so to speak.
Attentiveness
I spoke too soon, using behavior tracking you can more easily detect emotions arising and asses them based on the behavioral patterns that you are exhibiting. With a rational mind, you are more equipped with extinguishing and conquering destructive emotions.
Catching Oneself
This section is an extension of the last. You want to practice continued attentiveness so that you can more easily detect emotions as they arise.
The Question Of Moods
Remember the primordial mind created emotions for a reason. They offer insight into our conscious and unconscious as well as the situation at hand. Emotions have been created over millions of years to help our prehistoric ancestors to instinctively react for survival and reproduction. In secular ethics, we are merely using these emotions as a signal to asses the situation, our mood, and by extension adjust our attitude.
Chapter 10 Cultivating Key Inner Values
The last few chapters complete the requirements of cultivating inner values. He emphasized the importance of compassion and forgiveness, yet that’s an incomplete model. He mentions the need to practice and master patience, contentment, self-discipline, and generosity.
- Patience: Provides calmness so that we can rationally address a situation,
- Contentment: The antidote to greed,
- Self-Discipline: Cultivates confidence, integrity, and dignity to resist temptations that can otherwise be considered destructive behavior,
- Generosity: Self-explanatory. Altruism offers the ability to share the gift of giving, especially when you have the means to do so (usually fiscally). It’s similar to planting a tree and watering it daily to watch it flourish form your ability to give.
Patience And Forbearance
He further deconstructs the constituent elements that construct patience into three sub-groups.
- Patience Toward The Perpetrators Of Harm: Remember, we want to distinguish the act form the actor.
- Patience Through The Acceptance Of Suffering: Peterson talks about it as the universal theme in literature and religion. Life is tragic and the sooner we can accept that the sooner we can overcome it.
- Patience Through Contemplation Of Reality: I don’t remember which article I wrote it on, but the pain was studied to only affect someone for 6 months, after that the exponential cut off was dramatic. Pain and suffering are transient and once you realize that then you realize that life is not fixed, rather flexible, malleable and you are in control like a sculptor and his clay.
Contentment
This is one of the key inner values that I struggle with (among others). Actually, this should be an article called, “The Secular Ethics Angel Lacks and Fails In” haha. Anyway, he defines it as:
“a certain modesty of ambition or having limited desires.”
I want to believe that I am content as is, but I also have EXTREMELY ambitious goals. I’m more interested in the pursuit of interest, passion, and purpose rather than achievement and prestige associated with those goals. Maybe that’s my post-hoc justification for not being content, yet? Idk hah.
Self-discipline
This is something that I struggled with immensely. I’d say that over time with proper habit formation that I was able to slowly conquer my temptations (primarily laziness and sex). However, self-control not only benefits you but also others who surround you or indirectly benefit from your discipline. So, self-discipline has a purpose in that it benefits your future self and others.
Generosity
I oscillate between giving generously and frugally, but after reading this book I realized that generosity is more than just monetary. He divides generosity into 4 sub-categories:
- Material giving,
- Offering security,
- Offering Spiritual counsel, and
- Extending love (agape) at the minimum.
Joy In Giving
Learning to find the joy in giving is something that is slowly evolving in my personal life. I must admit that seeing others happy and benefit (with pure motivation) is truly rewarding in itself.
Chapter 11 Meditation As Mental Cultivation
This last chapter acts as the glue that binds everything stated above together into an application. The objective to cultivate, foster, and demonstrate compassion and discernment with a calm mind. This final chapter offers specific methods to be applied in order to establish and strengthen the practices of secular ethics over time until you achieve mastery of your own mind.
Understanding the immense difficulty associated with rewiring one’s mind, he gives solutions to potential problems as they arise.
A Process Of Transformation
The transformation process can be broken into three distinct steps:
- Intellectual understanding,
- Contemplation and sensitization of assumptions, beliefs, and expectations, lastly
- Iterative awareness in the present moment.
Forms Of Mental Cultivation
He suggests that you combine analytical and absorptive meditation daily to cultivate a state of mindfulness.
Dealing With Procrastination
You are at a distinct point in your life at this moment. You must take a leap of faith and start taking action. You must make the decisive moment to take action with courageous determination and discipline.
Planning Our Practice
Proper planning is the best way to make adherence to practice. Plan your meditations on a time and location with limited distractions.
Relaxing And Settling The Mind
The initial steps of your meditation should be focused on settling into a relaxed yet aware state (both physically and mentally).
Reflecting On The Benefits Of Mental Training
After considering the benefits of mediation it is healthy to consider the alternatives as well. Will you stay angry, upset, unsatisfied, unfulfilled and overall unhappy? Will you continue to negatively affect yourself and others?
Some Formal Practices
- Focused Attention: Scan the body for areas of tension. What works best for me is focusing on the face muscles then go from outer extremities of the body inward until you feel fully relaxed.
- Present-Moment Awareness: Observe the mental sensations that arise such as images, feelings, desires, etc. Simply observe them without intention to control them.
- Training in Compassion & Loving-Kindness: To establish and nurture compassion he suggests that you imagine a person you love and consider radiating compassion towards that person. Wish them well-being and for them to be happy. After you have done this to master consider expanding that same compassion to someone you don’t know well, then to someone you find difficult, then a group then humanity as a whole.
Cultivating Equanimity
Recognize your natural instinct to show affinity towards certain people and aversions towards others. We often characterize and generalize people we like and dislike together in their respective groups. Overtime with reinforcement we can fail to remember that each person, regardless of their categorization all shares the same basic human aspirations to cling to pleasures and flea from discomfort, just like you.
Rejoicing In The Example Of Others
This is the “What Would Jesus Do” example Find idols that you admire with qualities that align with your new sense of self-direction, and mirror them as prime examples on how to act, like Jesus or the Dalai Lama.
Dealing With Afflictive Attitudes And Emotions
The opportunity in discomfort is being able to analyze WHY we feel affliction and how those emotions arise, feel, and later can be resolved.
Obstacles To Good Mental Cultivation Practice
Agitation is derived by sensory overload and laxity is caused by, you guessed it, too much relaxation. Both are extremes of the same spectrum and the goal is to find a happy balance between the two.
The Question Of Progress
The greatest measure of progress is our ability to assess the compassion that we radiate to others. Obstacles will inevitably arise and we are responsible for maintaining a rational attitude of patience, tolerance, and humility.
The Joy Of Mental Training
A negative attitude is the byproduct of years of reinforcement. Your ability to choose to find joy is what is truly revolutionary. Similarly, you find joy in the “small wins” you make over time as you train your mind and its habits.
Impact On Daily Life
The true benefit of cultivating and nurturing the mind is found in everyday life. Remember the compound effect as talked about by Clea in “Atomic Habits” the small action over time can have a drastic impact in a lifetime. Practicing mindfulness does not only allow you to obtain ultimate enlightenment and fulfillment but also to directly or indirectly help others with compassion. Consistent dedication over time can allow you to unlock the full human potential.
Conclusion
I am starting to use the conclusion section to pull the most important lessons I learned from the article above. Enjoy
After spending a great setting the state for secular ethics and defining it, he states that secular ethics is comprised of two pillars: our interdependence and shared humanity.
He extrapolates the concept of consciousness as our ability to think critically, remember the past, and imagine (the future). Additionally, we have the varying capacity to feel empathy for others, particularly those who we relate to or are close with.
Our interdependence is self-explanatory, yet the shared humanity can be delineated by our ability to understand that like ourselves, others wish to pursue happiness and pleasures while simultaneously intentionally attempt to avoid pain and suffering. Unless they are mentally impaired we are all essentially the same.
Happiness
The Dalai Lama does a fantastic job at distinguishing pleasure and fulfillment. One is usually obtained with external stimuli. This is a superficial level of happiness. That temporary satisfaction usually becomes corrupted by some negative human emotion and ultimately transitions into suffering (think of wealthy people who are unhappy, healthy people who are unhappy, relationships that go sour and make them unhappy).
The second level of satisfaction is rooted in the fulfillment that is only attained by mental exercise. We must look towards mental composure, purpose, and mental resilience towards suffering (stoicism in my opinion).
Compassion
Agape is his definition of compassion — unmerited love. Compassion is derived by recognizing basic truths in that a person’s reality is conditioned overtime by negative reinforcement and thus creates a distorted reality. The Dalai Lamas plead for universal compassion using our new found understanding that all humans, like ourselves, desire fulfillment and desire to evade suffering.
Justice with Compassion
Compassion and tolerance often get positioned as passivity. The main element of his argument I believe is imperative to fully understand is his idea of distinguishing the actor from the action. We want to nonviolently reprimand the victimizer with compassion.
I agree with his suggestion that everyone (who isn’t mentally impaired, in my opinion) has the capacity to change and reform. He asserts that the desire for revenge (an eye for an eye) possesses negative consequences and emotions.
His argument for implementing forgiveness is the reason why I believe that the religious component is married to spirituality. His definition for forgiveness is the ability to recognize and understand that our personal experience varies from person-to-person, therefore, our conditioned negativity can determine our perception thus forging our reality. This takes enhanced mental cognitive capabilities to1. Understand that truth as an axiom, and 2. To empathize with the person because of that truth rather than inflict him with draconian punishments. So religion as a tool to symbolically represent and explain forgiveness is almost necessary as most people do not have the mental capacity to properly understand and act upon that truth. We must show tolerance and compassion to them as well.
Compassion is often misconstrued as passivity, however, compassion engenders immense courage and strength. Compassion is not signifying surrendering to injustice and malevolence. The Dalai Lama suggests that proper justice is a byproduct of an attitude of calmness, almost like an objective scientist. Compassion simply means that you understand that a person’s reality is transfixed by their personal experience, including negative conditioning.
A challenging set of questions is proposed by the Dalai Lama regarding punishment’s role in society. The answers to questions may be enlightening.
1. Is punishment about making wrongdoers suffer as an end in itself, or
2. Is it about preventing further wrongdoing?
He reaffirms that justice, and its punishment, is meant to produce security for the society, act as a deterrent to prevent future crimes, and provide fairness when wrongdoings are produced. He appends to his statement by suggesting that a superior civilized society advocate for the possibility of change and reform for the person and recognizes that the desire for revenge has negative repercussions.
His prescription for a proper punishment is ambiguous and without direction. The high-level percept is that the punishment should benefit everyone, including the actor. I propose that he is the suggestion that you create proper mental refinement through mindful exercises — real rehabilitation.
Discernment
Discernment is another keyword commonly found in Christianity. Proper discernment allows you to properly choose realistic and pure intentioned decisions. The Dalai Lamas perspective of discernment for the secular world is to simply think critically about the list of possible decisions. Choose actions that have compassionate intentions and objective thought to decide on the proper course of action. Like Dalio suggests in “Principles” try to objectively look at the problem from a higher level. In practice with nurturing your inner values we can, over time, learn to effortlessly make ethical choices that are beneficial to society as a whole.
Remember, life is interdependent in ways that are unfathomable by humans. So, it is important to look at the problem from a higher level and different perspectives. We all hear this, and may even say that, but to truly look at problems unbiased and form another perspective is something I admittedly suck at haha. Anyway, he is arguing for better decisions to be made when the holistic perspective is taken into consideration. Thinking only through your biased limited perspective restricts your ability to properly make proper and ethical decisions.
Ethical Mindfulness In Everyday Life
The key understanding of secular ethics means distinguishing the difference between knowing and doing. The Dalai Lama offers three stages of ethics:
- Restraint: Not harming others,
- Virtue: Nurturing inner (universal) values, and
- Altruism: Dedicating yourself to others wellbeing (emotionally, physically, and fiscally).
Understanding these three stages allow one to be better equipped with demonstrating natural human values.
Heedfulness, Mindfulness, And Awareness
He quickly defines almost indistinguishable words. For me it was hard to truly understand the distinct differences but here you go:
- Heedfulness: Embrace caution by remaining careful and attentive.
- Mindfulness: The foundation of heedfulness allows you to remember your inner values and motivation before acting.
- Awareness: Experiencing life as it comes with an objective lens.
- Self-respect and consideration of others: Addition measures used to give caution before acting.
Dealing With Destructive Emotions
Emotional awareness is the ability to distinguish harmful emotions from beneficial ones. Remember, the objective is not to become a robot who does not feel. It is also important to note that feelings of pleasure, if not properly assessed can still be or become destructive.
Shared Features Of Destructive Emotions
Emotions act as a veneer, layering over our perception, thus constructing our reality. Therefore, it is easy to understand how negative emotions can easily warp our reality. As a result, our decision-making ability diminishes quickly as the emotional elephant takes control. Our rational judgment disappears and we fail to consider first order and second other consequences.
Attentiveness
I spoke too soon, using behavior tracking you can more easily detect emotions arising and asses them based on the behavioral patterns that you are exhibiting. With a rational mind, you are more equipped with extinguishing and conquering destructive emotions.
Catching Oneself
This section is an extension of the last. You want to practice continued attentiveness so that you can more easily detect emotions as they arise.
Cultivating Key Inner Values
He emphasized the importance of compassion and forgiveness, yet that’s an incomplete model. He mentions the need to practice and master patience, contentment, self-discipline, and generosity.
- Patience: Provides calmness so that we can rationally address a situation,
- Contentment: The antidote to greed,
- Self-Discipline: Cultivates confidence, integrity, and dignity to resist temptations that can otherwise be considered destructive behavior,
- Generosity: Self-explanatory. Altruism offers the ability to share the gift of giving, especially when you have the means to do so (usually fiscally). It’s similar to planting a tree and watering it daily to watch it flourish form your ability to give.
Patience And Forbearance
He further deconstructs the constituent elements that construct patience into three sub-groups.
- Patience Toward The Perpetrators Of Harm: Remember, we want to distinguish the act form the actor.
- Patience Through The Acceptance Of Suffering: Peterson talks about it as the universal theme in literature and religion. Life is tragic and the sooner we can accept that the sooner we can overcome it.
- Patience Through Contemplation Of Reality: I don’t remember which article I wrote it on, but the pain was studied to only affect someone for 6 months, after that the exponential cut off was dramatic. Pain and suffering are transient and once you realize that then you realize that life is not fixed, rather flexible, malleable and you are in control like a sculptor and his clay.
Understanding the immense difficulty associated with rewiring one’s mind, he gives solutions to potential problems as they arise.
A Process Of Transformation
The transformation process can be broken into three distinct steps:
- Intellectual understanding,
- Contemplation and sensitization of assumptions, beliefs, and expectations, lastly
- Iterative awareness in the present moment.
Some Formal Practices
- Focused Attention: Scan the body for areas of tension. What works best for me is focusing on the face muscles then go from outer extremities of the body inward until you feel fully relaxed.
- Present-Moment Awareness: Observe the mental sensations that arise such as images, feelings, desires, etc. Simply observe them without intention to control them.
- Training in Compassion & Loving-Kindness: To establish and nurture compassion he suggests that you imagine a person you love and consider radiating compassion towards that person. Wish them well-being and for them to be happy. After you have done this to master consider expanding that same compassion to someone you don’t know well, then to someone you find difficult, then a group then humanity as a whole.
BONUS CONTENT! — Guide For Meditation As Proposed By His Holiness
Sit, either on the floor or a chair
With the back straight
The arms and hands resting in the lap With eyes open or closed
Turn the attention inward to the body breathing itself
Draw the breath in and down to the abdomen, slightly pushing out the lower belly. Experience the breath completely filling the body, like a balloon, until you feel the breath under your collar bones
Pause, for just a moment, and begin to exhale. Allow the exhale to lengthen, slightly tightening the diaphragm until the breath is completely exhausted…and pause…breath and attention are wide open without focusing on anything…
Allow the diaphragm to drop itself and initiate the next inhale.
Repeat this cycle as many times as you can without straining, forcing or getting dizzy
Natural Body
Can you feel the weight of your body on your seat?
Can you feel your contact with the earth?
Can you feel your head balanced on your neck and shoulders? Notice any tightness or tension in the body
Scan the body for any tension or tightness
Allow the body to relax itself
Natural Body — Just sitting, relaxing itself without having do anything
Natural Breath/Energy
Can you feel the way you are breathing?
Is there any tightness or resistance around the breath?
Notice the body relaxing itself on each out-breath
Natural Breath/Energy — The body breathing itself without our having to do anything
Natural Mind
Everything we experience is mind
Notice whatever is arising and dissolving in your experience
Notice the tendency to describe, label or tell a story about whatever is arising
Is there any space between thoughts?
Just sitting
Just breathing
Nothing to do or figure out
Honor what you feel without wanting to change anything
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Written by: Angel Mondragon.
