CHAPTER V

Asian Ethical Traditions

Learning Outcomes
At the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

1. articulate the basis for ethical behavior for Buddhists;

2. analyze how the concept of the oneness of all things in the Brahma
serves as a basis for moral behavior; and

3. examine how Confucianism founds ideal human behavior on the

ideas of Ren and Li.

Introduction
This book has focused mainly on Western thinkers. It has articulated
the quest of thinkers from European traditions to articulate the good and
live in a way that realizes the good. The text follows the debate of Western
humanity regarding the grounds and norms of ethical self-realization. It
follows the rootedness of these norms on the natural law to their
grounding in reason and the eventual employment of discourse theory to
arrive at a shared conception of the good in a multiverse of society. In most
ethics courses, including this one, there is heavy emphasis on the traditions
of the West to train students to think about the ethical way of existence.
However, there is another tradition of thinking about the good that is
worth considering for a fuller understanding of how people orient their
lives to the good. This tradition comes from the great civilizations of the
East, particularly from India and China.
 The students of this course may not realize it but many people in the
Philippines are deeply influenced by or have great commonalities in their
ethical way of thinking with these traditions. For instance, people believe
that if they do bad things, they could be victims of misfortune because of
Karma. Others believe that one ought to live in a way that honors their
ancestors. Most people believe that the world is ordered by Heaven and
that if one wishes to have a good life, one must understand that order and
live one's life according to it. These are all beliefs that echo or are derived
from Indian and Chinese traditions. It would be profitable to study these
traditions because they are closer to Asian moral sensibilities and have
shaped them.

These Asian traditions share some general characteristics. Manuel B.

Dy identifies six common themes which can be drawn from the great Asian
spiritual and intellectual traditions. Firstly, one can immediately notice that
religious thought is intertwined with 'philosophical and ethical thinking.
There is no real separation of beliefs about the transcendent and the
cosmos, including the traditional mythical beliefs. Beliefs about Dharma
and Karma, the Dao and the gods, frame the critical understanding of the
great Asian Philosophical traditions regarding the good and the good life.
At heart, there is a quest to define what it means to live a good human life
and their reflections could not be extricated from their greater belief about
how the gods or the greater order of Heaven govern the universe and keep
order, or their intuition that there is a transcendent order that rules human
flourishing but is not and cannot be defined by the intellect. Also, at the
heart of this union of faith and critical thinking about the good is a quest
for emancipation. Dy says that at the heart of all Asian philosophical
thought is the quest for emancipation: "be it from moral degradation as in
the case of Confucianism, from misery as it is in Taoism and Buddhism,
and from finitude as in the case of Hinduism."

Dy then notes that a second theme which binds these intellectual

traditions is "love and compassion." Since every system seeks to realize
human emancipation and fullness, a human fullness that is rooted in the
transcendence of suffering, finitude, disorder, strife, and maybe even
death, it becomes important that people live with love and compassion.
Compassion and love, they intuit, are paths to tranquility, peace, and being
whole. Connected with this is the third theme which is the connectedness of
personal cultivation and social responsibility. Realizing one's goodness is
sometimes tied to fulfilling one's duty to one's family, one's clan, and one's
government.

Enlightenment is the fourth theme. Each of the great Asian traditions,

more or less, outlines a path to enlightenment. This means an awakening to
the true order of the universe which leads to an awakening to the order to
which human beings align their existence.14 Thus, these traditions give
human beings a path to awareness of the true order of all things,
unclouded by human desire and folly, in order to become what they ought
to be.

A final characteristic is that these great teachings offer paths of

"harmony with oneself, with others, with nature, with a Transcendent."
Because the fullness of human becoming is central to all these traditions,
they all have teachings related to the harmony of self with all beings,
especially the transcendent. For these traditions, the existing transcendent
order is the very basis of all forms of existence. Human suffering and
disquiet are rooted in the person's inability or inadequate participation in
the order of things. Thus, various Indian schools of thought speak of the
need for human beings to be enlightened in the ways of the one order of
the universe and align one's way of being to that order.

Examples of some of these great traditions are discussed here to give

readers sense of how their metaphysical, religious, and mythical
conceptions of the universe can be the foundation of an ethics.

The Vedas and Upanishads

Indian philosophy is not discussed extensively in this section.
Buddhism is the focus of this discussion but only because it is the aspect of
Indian thought most relevant and most useful to the local students.
However, the discussion begins with some aspects of ancient Indian
philosophy that give the reader the foundational thought of this tradition.

The Vedas are some of the oldest philosophical writings in the world.
These series of hymns to the most ancient gods are a poetic articulation of
the structure and meaning of the universe. Here, there is a family of gods
for whom the hymns are composed. The hymns themselves are considered
direct revelations that speak of the most sacred knowledge about the
world, its creation, and the principles of reality. And the most basic insight
of these writings is that Rita is the foundational principle of all things. Rita
is the right order of the universe. Human beings experience this order
through the presence of the gods to whom they dedicate the performance
of the hymns embodied in rituals. Each god is a manifestation of a force or
principle of the universe and the singing of their hymns leads to the
realization of a good life aligned to the order of the cosmos and the forces
that keep it like the Rita. More popularly, this means the performance of
rituals
according to how priests define perfection. And unfortunately, most people
take the Vedas to be a handbook of prescribed rituals. The focus is on the
external rituals to realize good fortune, which leads to a rethinking of the
revelations of the Vedas collected in the Upanishads.

The writers of the Upanishads seek to understand the fullness of

human becoming by realizing the deepest insight about the true nature of
the universe. They seek to articulate why and how human beings could
come to fullness through enlightenment about the transcendent,
unchanging reality of being. The expression of the path to enlightenment is
through poetic deliberations on the nature of being and the human
realization of self in this universe.

Beyond rituals, the authors of the Upanishads share a path of spiritual

enlightenment. The first idea is Samsara or reincarnation. All human beings
are born repeatedly in different forms of life. It is not just a process of
repetition but one of purification. In each incarnation, a person has a
chance to live a more enlightened life. In the teaching of Karma or actions
and their consequences, the actions of persons have just consequences. The
way persons live their lives redounds on what happens to them, and more
importantly, it determines their reincarnation. Reincarnation is not a mere
repetitive process, where one is arbitrarily reborn without reason. The
process is one of enlightenment and liberation. One seeks to go beyond the
Karmic cycle of rebirth and, in a sense, entrapment in the life of the finite
body. The Upanishads teach that by living a life of meditation and
purification, one achieves a state of spiritual enlightenment that will allow
us to live in genuine accord with the order of the good. If one lives well,
Karma will lead one to a better life. Thus, one must live well according to
one's Darma, which is the duty that one has based on one's station or
station in life. There are duties given one's cast or status in the social order,
and if one fulfills all one's given duties, one can escape the Karmic cycle
which is the state of Moksha or liberation.
 To achieve Moksha, one must come to the insight that all things are
one in the Brahman. All things that exist are from the Brahman, and
ultimately all things return to the Brahman. That simple realization leads to
Moksha or the state of enlightenment that liberates persons from the cycle of
birth and rebirth to a state of stillness and a rootedness in the eternal. This
is because the direct insight into this truth allows one to lose one's egotism
and sense of the importance of the individual self. The fullness of human
existence is to find one's oneness which is one's eternity with the Brahman.
The realization that "all is Brahman" correlates to the greater insight that
"Brahman is Atman" and "Atman is Brahman." Atman is the self that
underlies all being. It is the eternal self which is all our selves. And so all
things are one being in Brahman and they are all one self in Atman. To
achieve Moksha is to come to the deepest awareness of this truth and to
realize it in one's way of being." This insight can be achieved if one purifies
oneself of material needs and desires and meditates on the truths revealed
through the Vedas and Upanishads. One needs direct access to this truth
through insight, thus the need for purification and meditation. All this
exercise aims to experience "the absolute within oneself." And with that,
one finds the eternal and still center of existence that is finite and comes to
an end.

Here we can see how the religious/metaphysical/mythical/ mystical

principles of Indian philosophy can be the foundation for an ethics. If we
ask the question "How does a good person live her life?", then the answer
is to live in a way that leads
to the insight that all things are Brahman, and Brahman and Atman are one.
This means a good human life is one of purification. One must act in a way
that does not detract from insight and enlightenment. Also, one must be
careful of one's actions so it does not incur negative Karma which keeps
one imprisoned in the cycle of rebirth. Indian philosophies and religions
seek to articulate how to live in such a way that one fulfills these basic
insights.

Buddhism is one development of this worldview.

Buddhism
Buddhism was born from the enlightenment of Gautama Buddha
who lived between the 6th and 4th BCE. A sheltered prince, Buddha
sought the meaning of existence when he realized that human life is
suffering. The Buddha's lifelong search led him to extreme asceticism.
However, he discovered that enlightenment and salvation could be
achieved in the ordinary human life if people are enlightened about the
nature of suffering. People who seek to arrive at a higher level of
enlightenment, where one can see "beyond birth and death,"" need to
realize four truths called Chatvari-arya-satyani.

The first truth is that life is suffering or dukkha. In the cycle of death,
life, and rebirth, there is constant suffering.2' The second truth is that action
or karma is the cause of this suffering, particularly "nonvirtuous action, and
the negative mental states that motivate such actions." These are afflictions
of the mind such as desire, hatred, and ignorance which are rooted in the
wrong valuation of self or atman. The extreme valuing of the self, the desire
to preserve the I is the cause of suffering. People only need to awaken to
the truth that there is no self to preserve. And as long as people keep
believing that it is the human being's task to cultivate the self, people will
be trapped in egotism and selfishness.

The third truth is that there is an end to suffering and the path
beyond suffering is to transcend this illusion and enter the state of nirvana.
Nirvana is the dissolution of suffering which is the fruit of the surrender of
the ego. In this way, they surrender hatred and desire because hatred and
desire are the fruits of the fact that there is no individual self. The path to
this awakening is articulated by Donald Lopez thus:

One useful way to approach the topic is through the traditional

triad of ethics, meditation, and wisdom. Ethics refers to the
conscious restrain of nonvirtuous deeds of body and speech,
usually through observing some form of vows. Meditation
(Dhyana), in this context, refers to developing a sufficient level
of concentration (through a variety of techniques) to make the
mind a suitable tool for breaking through the illusion of self to
the vision of nirvana. Wisdom is insight, at a deep level of
concentration, into the fact that there is no self. Such wisdom is
said not only to prevent the accumulation of future karma but
eventually to destroy all past karma so that upon death, one is
not reborn but passes into nirvana.
 Clearly, the path to Nirvana offers a foundation for living a good life
and acting according to the good. It requires a disciplined form of life in
order to realize human fullness. This is explained in the fourth truth—how
human beings ought to live a life free from suffering by following the
Eightfold Path or Astangika-marga. Again, Donald Lopez provides a
concise description of this path:

In brief, the eight elements of the path are: (1) correct view, an
accurate understanding, of the nature of things, specifically the
Four Noble Truths; (2) correct intention, avoiding thoughts of
attachment, hatred, and harmful intent; (3) correct speech,
refraining from verbal misdeeds such as lying, divisive speech,
harsh speech, and senseless speech; (4) correct action, refraining
from physical misdeeds such as killing, stealing, and sexual
misconduct; (5) correct livelihood, avoiding trades that directly
or indirectly harm others, such as selling slaves, weapons,
animals for slaughter, intoxicants, or poisons; (6) correct effort,
abandoning negative states of mind that have already arisen,
preventing negative states that have yet to arise, and sustaining
positive states that have already arisen; (7) correct mindfulness,
awareness of body, feelings, thought, and phenomena (the
constituents of the existing world); and (8) correct concentration,
single-mindedness.

Clearly, Buddhism provides a way to understand what a good

human being ought to do to come to the fullness of human life. The
Eightfold Path provides guideposts to acting in this world. If one seeks to
act mindfully, these signposts are exactly a way to discern if one's actions
are creative and non-destructive to others. In fact, they provide a
framework for living in a way that avoids the destructive or evil ways of
human beings.
 With these examples of Indian thought, we can see that their ethical
tradition is not only a quest to articulate good action but a way to realize
genuinely human existence leading to the fullness of transcendence.

Chinese Philosophy
and Confucian Ethics
This section explores the fundamental ideas of Confucian thought as
a representative of Chinese ethical thought. Confucian ethics is not the
only or primary form of Chinese ethics. There are Daoist and Legalist
Chinese schools of thought that contribute equally to the development of
the traditional Chinese people's conception of the good. However, in the
interest of brevity, this 'book focuses on the most popular and
foundational theory to which all subsequent philosophies respond.

Confucianism is a system of thought attributed to the teacher

Kongqui known in the West as Confucius. He was an aspiring civil servant
who lived his life as a teacher of governance, ethics, and ritual, and was
able to gather a following around him. His main preoccupation was the
possibility of building a harmonious, ordered society. He took his
inspiration for building a just kingdom from the ancient sage rulers, King
Wen and King Wu and their virtuous regent, the Duke of Zhou.
 He believed that if people were able to internalize or take as their
own the ways of these virtuous people, then the state would be ordered
because it would reflect the order of Heaven. This is what he taught
people: the way to bear the order of heaven in one's conduct.

At some point, his followers compiled a book of conversations

known in the West as the Analects, the main source of Confucian teaching.
They are a series of conversations, anecdotes, and responses of the teacher
to his students' queries that are not arranged in any particular order. Later
disciples worked on his thought and systematized and deepened it. If one
desires to understand the foundations of this thought, there are three other
books that stand as a source for this: the Book of Mencius, the Doctrine of the
Mean, and The Great Learning.

There is one basic aspiration for any Confucian, that is, to be a person
who has the virtue of ren, to be a person who has internalized the way of
Heaven. Heaven here does not indicate the abode of God. It is the source
of order and balance, the way of life and nature, the way of justice and
proper relationships. It is the order that must govern one's way of being
for people to find their peace. A person of ren knows how to act properly
or with propriety in all situations giving all situations and things their
due, but it is also about being human and the relationships between
persons. Manuel B. Dy explains that "Ren is made up of two characters,
ren, meaning human being, and erh, meaning two, indicating thus that ren
is the virtue that governs interpersonal relationships. Ren is translated as
`benevolence,' kindness,' `human-heartedness,"humanity,' and when
Confucius was asked for its meaning, he said, Ren is to love human beings'
(Analects, 12:22).
 In order to realize the ethical nobility or human exemplarity which
makes one a person who bears the virtue of ren, it is necessary to live
according to the way of Heaven. And the path for the master was that of
ritual or Li. Confucius held the ancient ways sacred because for him, these
bore the wisdom of ancestors who still understood the ways of heaven.
These ancestors governed the state and acted in their personal life in ways
attuned to the order of Heaven or the Dao. The way to attunement is to
focus on traditional ways because "filial piety, a respect for and dedication
to the performance of traditional ritual forms of conduct, and the ability to
judge what is the right thing to do in the given situation"27 were codified
in rituals and customs. For Kongqui, the person aspiring to nobility must
master and follow these codes of conduct because as they are mastered,
one's nature becomes one with the Dao. Li or custom and ritual are not
only empty actions that are handed down from the ancestors but the
embodiment of the Dao realized in daily life so that a person who follows
Li can become one with the Dao. A person must be able to live according to
the way which is the very order of the universe which, among other
things, is the measure of what is appropriate, of what is just, and the
balance which is the basis of harmony. A person must cultivate
himself/herself so that he/she is upright and lives according to the true
order of all things.

For instance, much store is placed by the Confucians on filial piety.

This means being able to support one's parents and take care of them.
Keep close to them and support them. Do not despoil their name and
make sure that one's actions do not bring shame to their reputation. This
also means that one should make sure that when they die, one must carry
out properly the rituals that honor them in the prescribed ways. Many of
these rituals were important to Kongqui because they preserved harmony,
order, right relations, and were manifestations of respect. More than that,
they reflected the wisdom of the noble rulers regarding the relationship
with one's parents in a way that accords with the Dao.
 The perfection of the realization of the Li fully attunes oneself to the
Dao to the point that one no longer needs to think about it. One should aim
at realizing the rituals with what the master calls "harmonious ease" (1.12).
In the Analects, he says:

2.4 The Master said, "At age fifteen I set my heart upon
learning; at thirty I took my stand; at forty I became free of
doubts; at fifty I understood the Heavenly Mandate; at sixty my
ear was attuned; and at seventy I could follow my heart's desire
without overstepping the bound of propriety.

In this quote, one can see the whole objective of Confucian emphasis
on Li. To seek the harmonious realization of custom and ritual leads one to
live attuned to the ways of Heaven. As one becomes attuned to the ways
revealed by heaven to virtuous men, one becomes attuned to the workings
of the Dao. As one becomes more attuned to the workings of the Dao, one
no longer needs to think about the Dao or make an effort at living the Dao
because attunement means that one's self is open to and responsive to the
ways of Heaven. Thus, Kongqui speaks of his own development in the
way. His quest for truth is his deepening knowledge and practice of Li.
Then it becomes a stand, then it becomes intimate knowledge, which
eventually leads to perfect attunement such that his very heart, his will,
becomes one with Heaven. His heart will never desire to act in a way that
oversteps Heaven's order because it is completely one with it.
 To cultivate a greater realization of Ren, a state needs good education
and moral leadership. Good education for Kongqui meant an education of
the heart and virtues. This one could clearly receive from an education in
the ancient rituals and customs that leads to attunement with the Dao.
Moral leadership in a society is particularly important because people
need exemplars to live a life according to the way. The sage realizes that in
a corrupt society where the Dao is not practiced, there will be disorder or
people will only comply with the orders of the rulers because of fear.
However, if the rulers practice virtue and are people who have Ren, then
the people would be drawn to live according to the Dao because their
social order is founded on it. Also, exemplars show the people how to live
according to the Dao, which in turn inspires them to be virtuous.

As mentioned, there are other philosophies that respond to

Confucianism, like Daoism. Daoism puts more emphasis on the opening to
the Dao that makes itself present in the natural order rather than in the
ways of the state, the family, and rulers. It is a mystical philosophy that is
too deep and profound to explain in this short space. However, it is worth
noting that although it has a different path, its main concern is for the
human being to reach human fullness by living in attunement with the
Dao. Their path is one of meditation that leads one to full attunement with
the Dao such that one could act in a way that is Wu Wei. Wu Wei is to act
without effort, or in a way that is so attuned to the Dao that one acts
perfectly with its flow. No human action becomes contrary to the way of
Heaven once one is so attuned to the very order of the nameless and
unknowable Dao. But first, one must accept that the Dao transcends all
knowing and articulation, and with that realization somehow finds a way
to gain insight into that ground of all things.
 Here we see the heart of these ancient Chinese ethical systems. They
all seek perfect attunement to the Dao in order to realize genuine
humanity. Confucians spell out a system of rituals and customs so that
there is a frame that can guide people to that profound attunement.
Daoists offer a more complex path of mysticism that is worth studying in
depth because of its poetry and profundity. But to understand their insight
requires a lifetime of meditation and to understand the insights of
Kongqui requires some immersion into Li.

Conclusion
This section only seeks to give the student a sense of what the main
trends of Asian ethical thought are. Buddhism and Confucianism are only
two of the major traditions from this continent and its long history of
philosophizing. These two are the most relevant to the student given their
influence among the Filipino people.

They are also worth exploring in this chapter becallse they give a
general insight into the ethos of the great Asian traditions. And this is what
is most notable. When Asian thinkers philosophize about doing the good,
they do not think about rules or guidelines for deciding what is a good
action or what makes a norm universal. They are not so keen about
articulating rules and norms for autonomous persons to decide what is an
acceptable act for a rational, free, and autonomous person. Their main
concern is how to live a good life and be a good person by gaining an
insight into the transcendent and eternal order of the universe, and from
that insight how to attune one's life to that order. Whether it is the Dao or
the Brahma and Atman, one needs a deep intuition of the good and from
that intuition live in attunement.
 Asian ethical systems are less about becoming an autonomous,
rational legislator of one's own laws. Rather, they are a quest to articulate
human connectedness and oneness to the deepest order of reality. Thus,
much of their codes of behavior are concerned more with the process of
coming to attunement with the source of order and harmony. And the
good person, therefore, is a person in communion with his/her fellow
humans, with fellow beings, and with the ground of reality itself. Once the
communion is attained, one begins to act as a good person, a person
whose self-realization is immediately harmonious and non-destructive.

It is worthwhile for the student to explore some books that deepen

his/her understanding of Asian philosophy. These books are accessible to
most readers because they are written in non-technical or specialist
language. And so, anyone without training can understand what they are
saying. However, because they are poetic and symbolic, it takes years of
reflection and re-reading to begin to harvest their richness.

Study Questions
1. Discuss the similarities that bind the Asian philosophies discussed in
the introduction. As an Asian, do you agree that these characteristics mark
your thinking? Do they shape your ethical worldview?

2. Discuss how Hindu worldviews shape the Asians' conception of the

good and how it determines the way people act. Can you sympathize with
their conception of Karma and the necessity to come to a deeper insight
into the truth that all is Brahman?

3. Do you think that Buddhism is a good guide for free and autonomous
human beings to shape their, actions in the world? How does it shape
their conception of genuine human action?

4. Can you understand the need of Confucians to emphasize Li in their

ethical systems? How does it guide a person to becoming a person who is
Ren? Do you see any constraints to living a life bound by Li?