Ethics, Religion, Spirituality

[dauer]

What is the relationship (if any) between ethics and religion? What is the relationship (if any) between ethics and spirituality?

Alternatively, what is the relationship (if any) between your ethics and your religion? What is the relationship (if any) between your ethics and your spirituality?

Does your religion, your spirituality, or your lack thereof in any way inform or influence your ethical decisions? How does the influence of religion or spirituality (if you maintain one of the two) on your ethical decisions influence you differently than your country/region or other communities that you are a part of which maintain an interest in the choices of individuals?

 

[Nick_A]

Hi Dauer

Morals and ethics are just attempts to intellectually and dogmatically compensate for a quality of our inner understanding that has been lost. Inner morality no longer exists for us so we rely on external morality and ethics.

The essence of religion seeks to regain lost inner understanding.

20th WCP: Plato's Concept Of Justice: An Analysis

Plato realizes that all theories propounded by Cephalus, Thrasymachus and Glaucon, contained one common element. That one common element was that all the them treated justice as something external "an accomplishment, an importation, or a convention, they have, none of them carried it into the soul or considered it in the place of its habitation." Plato prove that justice does not depend upon a chance, convention or upon external force. It is the right condition of the human soul by the very nature of man when seen in the fullness of his environment. It is in this way that Plato condemned the position taken by Glaucon that justice is something which is external. According to Plato, it is internal as it resides in the human soul. "It is now regarded as an inward grace and its understanding is shown to involve a study of the inner man." It is, therefore, natural and no artificial. It is therefore, not born of fear of the weak but of the longing of the human soul to do a duty according to its nature.

We don't know what this means. Collectively we've lost the "feeling" for it. Instead we rely on conditioned external ethics and morality which must fall victim to hypocrisy from our lack of inner understanding.

 

[Thomas]

Hi Dauer —

I agree with Nick, from a Catholic perspective.

For us Revelation is the invitation to partake in the Divine Life, and what could be better? What greater good could man enjoy but that?

And thanks Nick for that piece of Plato.

In the Christian Tradition the moral dimension is founded in the idea of Original Justice, that being the term used by the Fathers to describe Adam's relation to God prior to the Fall, or as you say Nick, "the right condition of the human soul" in its disposition towards God, neighbour, and itself.

Morality and ethics are a measure of how far removed we are from what we are (or who we could be) and a sure bearing of the way back.

Thomas

 

[Nick_A]

Hi Thomas

Morality and ethics are a measure of how far removed we are from what we are (or who we could be) and a sure bearing of the way back.

Perhaps you can help me to understand attitudes as they relate to what I've come to experience as a basic difference between people. I referred to it in the Interfaith and Transcendent Unity thread. We are removed from our potential and live as Plato described in his cave analogy.

Some are able to admit that they are far removed, not their inner potential, and psychologically "fallen" creatures of reaction. Others find this the most vile insult that can be asserted.

I've never been able to have a respectful on-line discussion on the New Covenant simply because it admits that our psychological condition has rendered the potency of the Law meaningless as it pertains to its objective of the inner actualization of the "good."

The distinction between what I call the seed of the soul that re-birth seeks to mature and the personality that normally lives its life and deprives it of its necessary experience has been largely forgotten. So since the programming of our personality lends itself to hypocrisy, the intent of the law is made possible by introducing the New Covenant based on consciousness as it relates to nurturing this seed of the soul. So what we ARE becomes the primary concern rather than what we DO which is the normal secular concern. Plato said the same.

It is a basic difference but why all the hostility? Why is it that this is so repulsive to consider for so many? Has your involvement with the Catholic tradition made it easier to admit your nothingness not as something bad or something to be elitist about but rather just the human condition that we can see as a beginning to becoming able with help from above to nurture the seed of the soul so that it can grow towards its potential?

"The seed of God is in us. Pear seeds grow pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seeds into God." Meister Eckhart

 

[Vajradhara]

Namaste dauer,

thank you for the post.

What is the relationship (if any) between ethics and religion? What is the relationship (if any) between ethics and spirituality?

i think that this would be dependent upon the religious paradigm in question but all of them that i am aware of posit a moral and ethical code for their adherents to follow. i think the relationship is multifaceted in that both aspects, religion and ethics, work together to help a human being lead a skillful life without any one side overwhelming the other.

Alternatively, what is the relationship (if any) between your ethics and your religion? What is the relationship (if any) between your ethics and your spirituality?

by and large my ethics are predicated upon my understanding of the moral imperatives inherent in my religious paradigm. to be sure ethics and morals were present before they were, however, far less consonant with the Dharma and more than likely, as a result, unskillful.

i don't know what my spirituality actually is other than a mental state so i would have to say that my religion does influence my mental state.. i suppose that an argument could be made that influencing mental states is one of the main points of my religion, but i digress.

Does your religion, your spirituality, or your lack thereof in any way inform or influence your ethical decisions?

yes, it does.

How does the influence of religion or spirituality (if you maintain one of the two) on your ethical decisions influence you differently than your country/region or other communities that you are a part of which maintain an interest in the choices of individuals?

it would certainly depend on the particular question, however, to attempt to answer the question... beings that make decisions based on the presumption of a soul or eternal aspect of being make very different decisions than i on those same topics.

metta,

~v

 

[Nicholas Weeks]

Ethics support all spiritual paths, as these few examples suggest:

On the destruction of impurity by the practice of the parts of Yoga, there comes enlightenment leading up to discriminative knowledge… The self-controls are: non-violence, truth, honesty, chastity and abstinence.
Yoga Sutras, 2, 28–30

The Five Precepts:
I undertake to observe the rule
to abstain from taking life;
to abstain from taking what is not given;
to abstain from sensual misconduct;
to abstain from false speech;
to abstain from intoxicants as tending to cloud the mind.
Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures (1959)

The Four Great Vows [of a Bodhisattva]:
However innumerable beings are, I vow to save them;
However inexhaustible the passions are, I vow to extinguish them;
However immeasurable the Teachings are, I vow to master them;
However incomparable the Buddha-truth is, I vow to attain it.
D.T.Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism (1950)

The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.
Isaiah, 11, 2

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.
Galatians, 5, 22

There are seven marks of a wise man. The wise man does not speak before him who is greater than he in wisdom; and does not break in upon the speech of his fellow; he is not hasty to answer; he questions according to the subject matter; and answers to the point; he speaks upon the first thing first, and the last last; regarding that which he has not understood he says, I do not understand it, and he acknowledges the truth.
Mishnah, Pirke Aboth, 5