Certainly each of the major religious traditions has a well-developed ethical system. However, the difficulty with tying our understanding of right and wrong to religion is that we must then ask, "Which religion?" Which articulates the most complete, the most accessible, the most acceptable system? The arguments would never stop. Moreover, to do so would be to ignore the fact that many who reject religion do so out of convictions sincerely held, not merely because they are unconcerned with the deeper questions of human existence. We cannot suppose that such people are without a sense of right and wrong or of what is morally appropriate just because some who are anti-religion are immoral. Besides, religious belief is no guarantee of moral integrity. Looking at the history of our species, we see that among the major troublemakers - those who visited violence, brutality and destruction on their fellow human beings - there have been many who professed religious faith, often loudly. Religion can help us establish basic ethical principles. Yet we can still talk about ethics and morality without having recourse to religion.
Again, it could be objected that if we do not accept religion as the source of ethics, we must allow that people's understanding of what is good and right, of what is wrong and bad, of what is morally appropriate and what is not, of what constitutes a positive act and what a negative act must vary according to circumstances and even from person to person. But here let me say that no one should suppose it could ever be possible to devise a set of rules or laws to provide us with the answer to every ethical dilemma, even if we were to accept religion as the basis of morality. Such a formulaic approach could never hope to capture the richness and diversity of human experience. It would also give grounds for arguing that we are responsible only to the letter of those laws, rather than for our actions.
From His Holiness the Dalai Lama 1999 Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for the new millennium. London: Abacus. p. 27-28 (emphasis mine).
Monday, January 16, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
January 15: C.S. Lewis on space and the faculty of recognition
Space-travel really has nothing to do with the matter. To some, God is discoverable everywhere; to others, nowhere. Those who do not find Him on earth are unlikely to find Him in space. (Hang it all, we're in space already; every year we go a huge circular tour in space.) But send a saint up in a spaceship and he'll find God in space as he found God on earth. Much depends upon the seeing eye.
...
Indeed the expectation of finding God by astronautics would be very like trying to verify or falsifythe divinity of Christ by taking specimens of His blood or dissecting Him. And in their own way they did both. But they were no wiser than before. What is required is a certain faculty of recognition.
If you do not at all know God, of course you will not recognize Him, either in Jesus or in outer space.
The fact that we have not found God in space does not, then, bother me in the least. Nor am I much concerned about the 'space race' between America and Russia. The more money, time, skill and zeal they both spend on that rivalry, the less, we may hope, they will have to spend on armaments. Great powers might be more usefully, but are seldom less dangerously, employed than in fabricating costly objects and flinging them, as you might say, overboard. Good luck to it! It is an excellent way of letting off steam.
Lewis, C. S. 1967. Christian Reflections United Kingdom: Fount Paperbacks. p 213, 215.
...
Indeed the expectation of finding God by astronautics would be very like trying to verify or falsifythe divinity of Christ by taking specimens of His blood or dissecting Him. And in their own way they did both. But they were no wiser than before. What is required is a certain faculty of recognition.
If you do not at all know God, of course you will not recognize Him, either in Jesus or in outer space.
The fact that we have not found God in space does not, then, bother me in the least. Nor am I much concerned about the 'space race' between America and Russia. The more money, time, skill and zeal they both spend on that rivalry, the less, we may hope, they will have to spend on armaments. Great powers might be more usefully, but are seldom less dangerously, employed than in fabricating costly objects and flinging them, as you might say, overboard. Good luck to it! It is an excellent way of letting off steam.
Lewis, C. S. 1967. Christian Reflections United Kingdom: Fount Paperbacks. p 213, 215.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
January 14: Bhagavad-Gita the Third Teaching: Discipline of Action
Krishna says:
Whatever a leader does,
the ordinary people also do.
He sets the standard
for the world to follow.
In the three worlds,
there is nothing I must do,
nothing unattained to be attained,
yet I engage in action.
What if I did not engage
relentlessly in action?
Men retrace my path
at every turn, Arjuna
These worlds would collapse
if I did not perform action;
I would create disorder in society,
living beings would be destroyed.
As the ignorant act with attachment
to actions, Arjuna,
so wise men should act with detachment
to preserve the world.
No wise man disturbs the understanding
of ignorant men attached to action;
he should inspire them,
performing all actions with discipline.
Actions are all effected
by the qualities of nature;
but deluded by individuality,
the self thinks, "I am the actor."
When he can discriminate
the actions of nature's qualities
and think, "The qualities depend
on other qualities," he is detached.
Those deluded by the qualities of nature
are attached to their actions;
a man who knows this should not upset
these dull men of partial knowledge.
Surrender all actions to me,
and fix your reason on your inner self;
without hope or possessiveness,
your fever subdued, fight the battle!
-- excerpted from the Bhagavad-Gita, the Third Teaching: Discipline of Action (21-30)
Whatever a leader does,
the ordinary people also do.
He sets the standard
for the world to follow.
In the three worlds,
there is nothing I must do,
nothing unattained to be attained,
yet I engage in action.
What if I did not engage
relentlessly in action?
Men retrace my path
at every turn, Arjuna
These worlds would collapse
if I did not perform action;
I would create disorder in society,
living beings would be destroyed.
As the ignorant act with attachment
to actions, Arjuna,
so wise men should act with detachment
to preserve the world.
No wise man disturbs the understanding
of ignorant men attached to action;
he should inspire them,
performing all actions with discipline.
Actions are all effected
by the qualities of nature;
but deluded by individuality,
the self thinks, "I am the actor."
When he can discriminate
the actions of nature's qualities
and think, "The qualities depend
on other qualities," he is detached.
Those deluded by the qualities of nature
are attached to their actions;
a man who knows this should not upset
these dull men of partial knowledge.
Surrender all actions to me,
and fix your reason on your inner self;
without hope or possessiveness,
your fever subdued, fight the battle!
-- excerpted from the Bhagavad-Gita, the Third Teaching: Discipline of Action (21-30)
January 13: Robert Frost Stopping by Woods
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-- I was reciting this poem to myself as I was biking home from a friend's house downtown, late at night, biking down quiet streets through the first snow of the year, thick flakes carpeting the pavement.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-- I was reciting this poem to myself as I was biking home from a friend's house downtown, late at night, biking down quiet streets through the first snow of the year, thick flakes carpeting the pavement.
January 12: Christopher Hitchens
In Sri Lanka once, I was traveling in a car with a group of Tamils, on a relief expedition to a Tamil area of the coastline that had been hard-hit by a cyclone. My companions were all members of the Sai Baba sect, which is very strong in South India and Sri Lanka. Sai Baba himself has claimed to raise the dead, and makes a special on-camera performance of producing holy ash from his bare palms. (Why ash? I used to wonder.)
Anyway, the trip began with my friends breaking some coconuts on a rock to ensure a safe journey. This evidently did not work, because halfway across the island our driver plowed straight into a man who staggered out in front of us as we were racing, too fast, through a village. The man was horribly injured and - this being a Sinhala village - the crowd that instantly gathered was not well disposed to these Tamil intruders. It was a very sticky situation, but I was able to defuse it somewhat by being an Englishman wearing an off-white Graham Greene type suit, and by having press credentials that had been issued by the London Metropolitan Police. This impressed the local cop enough to have us temporarily released, and my companiions, who had been very scared indeed, were more than grateful for my presence and for my ability to talk fast. In fact, they telephoned their cult headquarters to announce that Sai Baba himself had been with use, in the temporary shape of my own person. From then on, I was treated literally with reverece, ad not allowed to carry anything or fetch my own food. It did occur to me meanwhile to check on the man we had run over: he had died of his injuries in hospital. (I wonder what his horoscope had foreshadowed for that day.) Thus in miniature I saw how one mere human mammal - myself - can suddenly begin to attract shy glances of awe and wonder, and how another human mammal - our luckless victim - could be somehow irrelevant to Sai Baba's benign design.
Hitchens, Christopher. 2007. God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart. p. 75-76
Anyway, the trip began with my friends breaking some coconuts on a rock to ensure a safe journey. This evidently did not work, because halfway across the island our driver plowed straight into a man who staggered out in front of us as we were racing, too fast, through a village. The man was horribly injured and - this being a Sinhala village - the crowd that instantly gathered was not well disposed to these Tamil intruders. It was a very sticky situation, but I was able to defuse it somewhat by being an Englishman wearing an off-white Graham Greene type suit, and by having press credentials that had been issued by the London Metropolitan Police. This impressed the local cop enough to have us temporarily released, and my companiions, who had been very scared indeed, were more than grateful for my presence and for my ability to talk fast. In fact, they telephoned their cult headquarters to announce that Sai Baba himself had been with use, in the temporary shape of my own person. From then on, I was treated literally with reverece, ad not allowed to carry anything or fetch my own food. It did occur to me meanwhile to check on the man we had run over: he had died of his injuries in hospital. (I wonder what his horoscope had foreshadowed for that day.) Thus in miniature I saw how one mere human mammal - myself - can suddenly begin to attract shy glances of awe and wonder, and how another human mammal - our luckless victim - could be somehow irrelevant to Sai Baba's benign design.
Hitchens, Christopher. 2007. God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart. p. 75-76
January 11: giving in charity (hadith)
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "Every Muslim has to give in charity." The people then asked: "(But what) if someone has nothing to give, what should he do?" The Prophet replied: "He should work with his hands and benefit himself and also give in charity (from what he earns)." The people further asked: "If he cannot find even that?" He replied: "He should help the needy who appeal for help." Then the people asked: "If he cannot do (even) that?" The Prophet said finally: "Then he should perform good deeds and keep away from evil deeds, and that will be regarded as charitable deeds."
- Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 2, Hadith 524
... thinking more about giving and sharing today.
- Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 2, Hadith 524
... thinking more about giving and sharing today.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
January 10: Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1376
The Prophet Muhammad (s) said: “Do not turn away a poor man…even if all you can give is half a date. If you love the poor and bring them near you…God will bring you near Him on the Day of Resurrection.”——— Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1376.
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