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I discussed exactly this issue with Stephen Batchelor when he was in town. He blames the "Two Truths Doctrine" for this idea that there's a different set of ethics for enlightened masters vs. ordinary schmoes. He's also discussed it with the Dalai Lama, who, on the one hand says the teacher should observe mundane ethics. But at the same time, he acknowledges that the tantric master plays by different rules.
But this idea of two sets of morality being explained by the master dwelling in the Absolute vs. our own mundane reality comes up whenever there's a discussion about unethical teachers. Lachs discusses it. The concept of "crazy wisdom" stems from that. Many Tibetans and Ladakhis accept this.
We could say that practitioners as well as masters are incorrectly extrapolating a "Two Moralities Doctrine" from the "Two Truths Doctrine". But isn't there a lot of lore in the Mahayana schools supporting this?
In any case, not even the DL has stated the case for masters holding to ordinary morality as cogently as you have. I'm grateful for this.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
I discussed exactly this issue with Stephen Batchelor when he was in town. He blames the "Two Truths Doctrine" for this idea that there's a different set of ethics for enlightened masters vs. ordinary schmoes. He's also discussed it with the Dalai Lama, who, on the one hand says the teacher should observe mundane ethics. But at the same time, he acknowledges that the tantric master plays by different rules.
But this idea of two sets of morality being explained by the master dwelling in the Absolute vs. our own mundane reality comes up whenever there's a discussion about unethical teachers. Lachs discusses it. The concept of "crazy wisdom" stems from that. Many Tibetans and Ladakhis accept this.
We could say that practitioners as well as masters are incorrectly extrapolating a "Two Moralities Doctrine" from the "Two Truths Doctrine". But isn't there a lot of lore in the Mahayana schools supporting this?
In any case, not even the DL has stated the case for masters holding to ordinary morality as cogently as you have. I'm grateful for this.
Yes, I think maybe it is a misinterpretation. In general TB has an extensive philosophical system so there is much that can be taken at a more superficial level and interpreted many different ways. Monks spend several hours each day hammering out these fine points to come to a correct understanding and much emphasis is placed upon getting an accurate explanation or' transmission' from a teacher who has correct understanding of a teaching.
I don't really get much into tantra except for some mantra recitations and some of its explanations for conventional reality, in terms of energy channels and nature of mind, so I can't really speak much to the lore of the ethics of a tantric master. You may want to read about Tilopa and his student Naropa which I think is the origin of some of this stuff, also the way Marpa treated Milarepa shows some of this behavior too.
The two truths idea is odd to me. Zen Buddhism as I know it does not teach Emptiness and Form, it teaches Emptiness/Form. There is no such thing as Emptiness.. only Emptiness/Form. Getting stuck in Emptiness is one-sided and ill. It means losing your moral bearings and even your empathy.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
The two truths idea is odd to me. Zen Buddhism as I know it does not teach Emptiness and Form, it teaches Emptiness/Form. There is no such thing as Emptiness.. only Emptiness/Form. Getting stuck in Emptiness is one-sided and ill. It means losing your moral bearings and even your empathy.
That seems like a good approach. You know how Tibetans love to philosophize, I think its a method so one doesn't get stuck in emptiness like you said. Maybe the whole thing is an unnecessary step, but having taken that step they need a safeguard?
I've never been able to relate to it myself. We had a thread on it, and someone said that it's just a tool for understanding the Bodhisattva principle of occasionally bending the precepts when one acts from compassion to achieve a noble end. (My editorializing, not a word-for-word quote.) Some teachers are able to get the point across without resorting to the two truths idea.
There are not two moralities, but rather, different distances from which to analyze existence--which includes morality and every other phenomenon.
Think of a psych patient and a psych counselor. In "mundane" reality, the psych patient hit another person. The floor nurse said loudly, "NO, John, that is BAD!" He's analyzing John from a very close distance.
However, in the counselor's office (let's call it semi-ultimate reality), where John the psych patient goes to try and figure out how not to be bad, he is not judged from the perspective of the Mean Floor Nurse; he is judged from the perspective of (say) Dr. Bill the Psychiatrist. Dr. Bill judges from a greater distance. He will not yell "BAD John!" but instead speak in soothing tones to help John figure out the source of his badness. To the uninitiated, it may appear Dr. Bill doesn't care about badness, or that Dr. Bill subscribes to a different set of morals.
In Two Truths (Two Realities), we acknowledge simply that there's a "BAD John!" reality, and a "Trying to heal John" reality. In the "trying to heal John" reality, we do not for one second abandon concern for badness; however we do acknowledge that there's a bigger picture. And in fact, if we are ever to deal properly with John's "badness," we must at some point get greater distance from the problem--we can't just keep yelling "Bad John!" because that will not fix John. Ironically, to fix John's badness, we have to judge it less, and look at John as a whole. This is an extremely difficult concept; our overly-narrow mind will keep nagging us, "You must judge John!" But in reality what is needed is to stop judging John long enough to figure him out, and to help him figure himself out. As Pema Chodron would say, "Drop the story line." But in no way, shape or form does suspending judgement imply we don't care about badness.
I have never, ever met a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who does not care about morality, nor who uses Two Truths in some strangely un-Buddhist way to justify dual moralities within relative conditioned existence.
Now someone will inevitably say, "But so and so is behaving unethically and therefore Two Truths is bad," to which I'd answer it is of dubious value to incessantly raise the spectre of Anonymous-Bad-Teachers as if these hazy characters alone defined Buddhism. I would humbly suggest that we (apparently) need one thread in which to discuss "all the bad people in Buddhism we can think of," and then let the remaining threads exist to discuss the vast majority of Buddhist experience, free from the subtle yet disturbingly constant "Buddhist teachers are bad" oddness.
Most monks are not abusive. Most monasteries and nunneries are institutions of peace, hard work, and ethical intellectualism. Most teachers teaching Two Truths are not hypocrites.
There are not two moralities, but rather, different distances from which to analyze existence--which includes morality and every other phenomenon.
Everything we see is without inherent existence, yet this empty show, without inherent existence, is the only existence we have. The problem seems to be when we get stuck in "this is just a dream" type of perceptions of conventional existence that reify an unchanging absolute existence apart from form. The separating of Emptiness/Form, that says Form is unreal and Emptiness is real (reified as "The Absolute") is like a theistic impulse.... and off kilter.
...Maybe this is a bit much for Sunday morning.. I'm gonna go have a bowl of Empty raisen bran... with my Empty partner and Empty kid.. who's brattiness this morning is Empty.. as is my irritation.. :dunce:
Yes...as always, I think "empty" is problematic as an English translation term. We misinterpret it as "empty of meaning" or "empty of importance."
It could be that we'd struggle with the concept regardless. But empty doesn't mean empty of meaning. When the doctor chooses not to focus on John's harmful actions during the counseling session, it's not because he believes those actions were meaningless and inconsequential; but for the larger purpose of healing John, it's counterproductive to focus so closely on one bad act.
Someone passing by who knows John committed a bad act, and sees the doc "coddling" him, might well accuse the psychiatric field of blowing off John's heinous crime as "empty."
What John's crime is "empty" of, is "empty of only one interpretation" or "empty of misapprehension." This is a linguistic challenge to translators...in the Tibetan and other culturally Buddhist worlds, people are often so familiar with doctrine that one word is used as a shortcut to refer to a well-known concept or sentence. "The three" often means "the three jewels," and even "the three jewels" is a shortcut to a concept that could easily occupy a whole book.
If you say "empty," in context, in these cultures then, they often understand that that means "empty of inherent existence," which still sounds disturbing to us, and is then further explained as "empty of mistaken views" and so on.
No teacher I know of teaches a chair doesn't exist; but rather, it doesn't exist in the way we think it does. Even this bothers us right off the bat, and personally I find people sometimes work better with "doesn't exist in only one way."
I think when we hear teachers explaining the emptiness side of things, we for some reason start thinking Buddhism does't care about the relative side of things. I think it's really just that we all have tons of experience understanding conditioned reality, but very little exposure to the concept of ultimate reality. So naturally, a lot of discussions, questions and teachings focus on in, and it may seem as if no one cares about "everyday life."
The real tragicomedy here is that we misinterpret the lesson as "Everything's empty, so caring is unimportant," when the real lesson has always been, "Everything's empty, so caring is more important than ever."
One nice thing about thinking of phenomena and concepts as "empty of only one interpretation" is that it doesn't require anyone in the discussion to commit to any one interpretation. And nearly anyone, non-Buddhists included, would probably feel it's accurate to say "There are multiple ways to look most things."
And now for the other end of the spectrum, lol, here's the Rangjung Yeshe entry for "emptiness:"
stong pa bzhi
Four levels of emptiness. Emptiness, special emptiness, great emptiness, universal emptiness [RY]
four empties/ levels or degrees of emptiness [IW]
Four levels of emptiness; four empties / levels or degrees of emptiness. stong pa, stong pa chen po, shin tu stong pa, thams cad stong pa; Four levels of emptiness [RY]
four empties/ levels or degrees of emptiness [chn stong pa dang, shin tu stong pa, stong pa chen po, thams cad stong pa bcas bzhi, de bzhi ni rim bzhin snang ba dang, mched pa, nyer thob, 'od gsal dang sbyar ro] [IW]
Comments
But this idea of two sets of morality being explained by the master dwelling in the Absolute vs. our own mundane reality comes up whenever there's a discussion about unethical teachers. Lachs discusses it. The concept of "crazy wisdom" stems from that. Many Tibetans and Ladakhis accept this.
We could say that practitioners as well as masters are incorrectly extrapolating a "Two Moralities Doctrine" from the "Two Truths Doctrine". But isn't there a lot of lore in the Mahayana schools supporting this?
In any case, not even the DL has stated the case for masters holding to ordinary morality as cogently as you have. I'm grateful for this.
I don't really get much into tantra except for some mantra recitations and some of its explanations for conventional reality, in terms of energy channels and nature of mind, so I can't really speak much to the lore of the ethics of a tantric master. You may want to read about Tilopa and his student Naropa which I think is the origin of some of this stuff, also the way Marpa treated Milarepa shows some of this behavior too.
http://www.newbuddhist.com/discussion/12791/s-batchelor-on-relative-truth-vs-absolute-truth
Think of a psych patient and a psych counselor. In "mundane" reality, the psych patient hit another person. The floor nurse said loudly, "NO, John, that is BAD!" He's analyzing John from a very close distance.
However, in the counselor's office (let's call it semi-ultimate reality), where John the psych patient goes to try and figure out how not to be bad, he is not judged from the perspective of the Mean Floor Nurse; he is judged from the perspective of (say) Dr. Bill the Psychiatrist. Dr. Bill judges from a greater distance. He will not yell "BAD John!" but instead speak in soothing tones to help John figure out the source of his badness. To the uninitiated, it may appear Dr. Bill doesn't care about badness, or that Dr. Bill subscribes to a different set of morals.
In Two Truths (Two Realities), we acknowledge simply that there's a "BAD John!" reality, and a "Trying to heal John" reality. In the "trying to heal John" reality, we do not for one second abandon concern for badness; however we do acknowledge that there's a bigger picture. And in fact, if we are ever to deal properly with John's "badness," we must at some point get greater distance from the problem--we can't just keep yelling "Bad John!" because that will not fix John. Ironically, to fix John's badness, we have to judge it less, and look at John as a whole. This is an extremely difficult concept; our overly-narrow mind will keep nagging us, "You must judge John!" But in reality what is needed is to stop judging John long enough to figure him out, and to help him figure himself out. As Pema Chodron would say, "Drop the story line." But in no way, shape or form does suspending judgement imply we don't care about badness.
I have never, ever met a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who does not care about morality, nor who uses Two Truths in some strangely un-Buddhist way to justify dual moralities within relative conditioned existence.
Now someone will inevitably say, "But so and so is behaving unethically and therefore Two Truths is bad," to which I'd answer it is of dubious value to incessantly raise the spectre of Anonymous-Bad-Teachers as if these hazy characters alone defined Buddhism. I would humbly suggest that we (apparently) need one thread in which to discuss "all the bad people in Buddhism we can think of," and then let the remaining threads exist to discuss the vast majority of Buddhist experience, free from the subtle yet disturbingly constant "Buddhist teachers are bad" oddness.
Most monks are not abusive. Most monasteries and nunneries are institutions of peace, hard work, and ethical intellectualism. Most teachers teaching Two Truths are not hypocrites.
...Maybe this is a bit much for Sunday morning.. I'm gonna go have a bowl of Empty raisen bran... with my Empty partner and Empty kid.. who's brattiness this morning is Empty.. as is my irritation.. :dunce:
It could be that we'd struggle with the concept regardless. But empty doesn't mean empty of meaning. When the doctor chooses not to focus on John's harmful actions during the counseling session, it's not because he believes those actions were meaningless and inconsequential; but for the larger purpose of healing John, it's counterproductive to focus so closely on one bad act.
Someone passing by who knows John committed a bad act, and sees the doc "coddling" him, might well accuse the psychiatric field of blowing off John's heinous crime as "empty."
What John's crime is "empty" of, is "empty of only one interpretation" or "empty of misapprehension." This is a linguistic challenge to translators...in the Tibetan and other culturally Buddhist worlds, people are often so familiar with doctrine that one word is used as a shortcut to refer to a well-known concept or sentence. "The three" often means "the three jewels," and even "the three jewels" is a shortcut to a concept that could easily occupy a whole book.
If you say "empty," in context, in these cultures then, they often understand that that means "empty of inherent existence," which still sounds disturbing to us, and is then further explained as "empty of mistaken views" and so on.
No teacher I know of teaches a chair doesn't exist; but rather, it doesn't exist in the way we think it does. Even this bothers us right off the bat, and personally I find people sometimes work better with "doesn't exist in only one way."
I think when we hear teachers explaining the emptiness side of things, we for some reason start thinking Buddhism does't care about the relative side of things. I think it's really just that we all have tons of experience understanding conditioned reality, but very little exposure to the concept of ultimate reality. So naturally, a lot of discussions, questions and teachings focus on in, and it may seem as if no one cares about "everyday life."
The real tragicomedy here is that we misinterpret the lesson as "Everything's empty, so caring is unimportant," when the real lesson has always been, "Everything's empty, so caring is more important than ever."
And now for the other end of the spectrum, lol, here's the Rangjung Yeshe entry for "emptiness:"
stong pa bzhi
Four levels of emptiness. Emptiness, special emptiness, great emptiness, universal emptiness [RY]
four empties/ levels or degrees of emptiness [IW]
Four levels of emptiness; four empties / levels or degrees of emptiness. stong pa, stong pa chen po, shin tu stong pa, thams cad stong pa; Four levels of emptiness [RY]
four empties/ levels or degrees of emptiness [chn stong pa dang, shin tu stong pa, stong pa chen po, thams cad stong pa bcas bzhi, de bzhi ni rim bzhin snang ba dang, mched pa, nyer thob, 'od gsal dang sbyar ro] [IW]