Toward a “Wider and Juster Initiative”: Recent Comparative Work in Buddhist Ethics

Toward a “Wider and Juster Initiative”: RecentComparative Work in Buddhist Ethics

Maria Heim*Amherst College

Abstract

This essay considers some of the important trends in comparative approaches toBuddhist moral thinking, including early reflections on how and where to placeBuddhist thought. It argues that some of the formative gestures shaping thefield of Buddhist ethics sprang from contested efforts by historians of religion andphilosophical formalists to chart a comparative methodology. The essay describesthe methodological holism that characterizes important work in the field and arguesagainst it, pointing instead to more diffuse lines of inquiry that do not effaceBuddhism’s historical diversity and the distinctiveness of its moral discourses. Theessay begins to develop a different orientation in ethics that centers on the ethicalstudy of human nature. To this end, it offers a small exercise in comparative moralpsychology to explore the moral sentiment “sympathetic joy.”

An early pioneer in the study of Pali Abhidhamma texts, Caroline RhysDavids, wondered where and how far this knowledge, recently renderedknowable to Europeans, was going to go. She recognized in Abhidhammaa potential to contribute to many branches in the history of thought, andsuggested that had it been found “in the tombs of Egypt or the ruins ofGreece” it would be hailed as a discovery of “peculiar interest” for what itmight offer to students of psychology, ethics, and metaphysics. Impressedparticularly with Buddhist advancements in the area of psychologicaldescription and its contributions to ethics, which she compares favorablyagainst that of the Greeks, she asks:“Is it too much to hope that, when sucha work is put forth, the greater labour of a wider and juster initiative willhave been undertaken, and the development of early psychological thoughtin the East have been assigned its due place in this branch of historicalresearch?” (Rhys Davids 1900, xviii)

In some ways it does seem as if Rhys Davids set her hopes too high aswe glance back over the fields of Buddhist studies and ethics in the lastcentury since she wrote these words. If Rhys Davids hoped that the “greaterlabour of a wider and juster initiative” would mean that scholars of ethicswould recognize the centrality of psychological theory to their concerns,her hopes remain to be fully realized. Her wish that Buddhist psychology

© Blackwell Publishing 2006

Religion Compass 1/1 (2007): 107–119, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2006.00009.x

might be assigned “its due place” in this branch of human knowledge seemseven more remote. But if her guarded optimism at the beginning of thetwentieth century that other branches of philosophy and psychology wouldbenefit from the study of Buddhist Abhidhamma appears almost quainttoday, it is because the field of Buddhist ethics is still determining the extentand range of its subject matter. Necessarily forged out of comparativeprocesses (as there is no direct analogue of “Buddhist ethics” itself in Buddhisttraditions), the academic study of Buddhist ethics is subject to Westernphilosophical trends and fashions. Even the most descriptive accounts ofBuddhist ethics import philosophical assumptions from elsewhere inidentifying what counts as moral reflection. The later twentieth-centurysevering of philosophy from psychological inquiry has yielded a partialconception of what is possible for ethics, one that is beginning to be undonein recent work in Western ethics,1 and increasingly, in Buddhist ethics aswell. As this occurs, Buddhism’s distinctive perspectives on what it meansto be human will find a broader audience in diverse disciplines.

I wish to suggest here – after a very brief survey of the directions the fieldof Buddhist ethics has taken in the last one hundred years – several promisingareas of comparative work that are beginning to get under way, all of whichcenter around the investigation of human nature or the moral person. Theseare certainly not the only sites for important and significant work to be donein the field, but they are perhaps less visible and less heralded than otherareas of current work. Nevertheless, if we do suppose that Rhys Davids wascorrect to think that Buddhist moral thought can contribute to otherfields of human inquiry about human beings (rather than just to Buddhiststudies), it is worth setting forth some reflection on just how it might beginto do so.

Previous Comparative Ventures

Although the initial impetus provided by the early translators of the PaliText Society pointed to future promise in Buddhist ethics, and earlierstudents of Buddhist thought often made comparative overtures, theythemselves did not articulate a new field. Early scholars such as CarolineRhys Davids and Shwe Zan Aung2 were asking in quite pointed ways abouthow to frame and categorize Buddhist knowledge: What sort of thought isit? Where do we place Buddhist systems in the history of ideas? How doBuddhist theories stack up to systems of moral thinking we already knowabout? How will knowing about Buddhism change what we know aboutother fields of inquiry? The comparative impulses implicit in these questionsfound more formal treatment when Buddhist ethics was first framed as acoherent field largely in the context of emerging work in comparativereligious ethics in the 1970s. In this context, Buddhist thought was deemedsufficiently alien to constitute a challenging “other” to compare with moreknown systems of Western religious ethics; at the same time, that so much

108 . Maria Heim

© Blackwell Publishing 2006 Religion Compass 1/1 (2007): 107–119, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2006.00009.x

of Buddhist thinking appeared to be concerned with matters recognizablymoral in nature made the possibilities for comparative work quite promising.

Two varieties of scholars took part in these early ventures in what weresometimes quite spirited debates about comparative methodology andmeta-ethics. On the one side were scholars trained in Western ethics whoapproached Buddhist sources with distinctive ethical categories in mind.These scholars sought to engage in “ethical translation” of the principlesand values of one tradition into the language of another, with the helpof “conventional ethical categories” (Little 1990, p. 77). For these scholars,ethical knowledge comes from identifying key moral principles and theoriesas discerned through ethical language already developed in Western ethics.Part of this kind of project has been to determine what kind of ethical theoryBuddhist ethics can be said to belong – of bringing the unknown (“Buddhistethics”) into the realm of the known (deontology, consequentialism, virtueethics, or other Western theories of moral reasoning).

On the other side were historians of religion who did not identifythemselves as philosophers or ethicists but as historians committed to thecontexts and histories in which Buddhist moral thinking is embedded. Theirapproach was more empirical and descriptive, and they worried that thephilosophical ethicists were in danger of becoming “so enmeshed in abstracttheoretical discussions that they are distracted from their empirical researchand their responsibilities as practicing historians” (Reynolds 1990, p. 60).These scholars not only contributed valuable interpretations of distinctivelyBuddhist moral discourses, such as biographies of the Buddha, cosmologies,etc., but they were open to the full spread of religious phenomena – ritual,lived traditions, popular practices, and so forth – as potentially offering formsof moral thinking worthy of scholarly investigation (Swearer 2005,p. 139). Adistinctive element of the historical approach is this camp’s insistence on amethodological holism. Reynolds argues for a “holistic understanding” ofthe tradition in which ethics is embedded, arguing that “the distinctiveconfigurations of elements that constitute each tradition must be taken veryseriously into account when the interpretation of any particular element isbeing considered” (60).

While the ethicists were not likely to object to the historians’ quest forbroader, more contextual knowledge about the ethical traditions understudy, some did balk at the holism. The trouble with holism, as a numberof scholars have pointed out, is that it disallows “the study of any elementof a tradition in isolation from the rest, and this means that broad generaliza-tions about a tradition as a whole will be required whenever any facet ofthe tradition is under study” (Sizemore 1990, p. 89; see also Little 1990).When the broad generalizations become too broad, as they invariably mustwhen the entirety of the vast historical tradition of Buddhism is taken intoaccount, the much vaunted careful attention to historical and empiricalparticularity slips away. Moreover, what is to count as the “tradition as awhole” or, as Reynolds puts it, “the distinctive configurations of elements


Recent Comparative Work in Buddhist Ethics . 109

that constitute each tradition”? The risk here is that what is selected to representthe whole tradition or its distinctive elements bears a suspiciously tidy fitwith the author’s argument about the nature of Buddhist moral thinking.

Interestingly, while certain philosophical ethicists have critiqued thehistorians’ methodological holism, others, such as Damien Keown, haveendorsed their own versions of it. For Keown the “value structure ofBuddhism as a whole” is necessary not so much to provide greater historicalcontext but rather is deployed in the service of his comparative aims (Keown1992, pp. 18–9). For Keown the first task of Buddhist ethics is to determinewhich family of moral theory it belongs, and to classify it accordingly; heargues that “the Buddhist moral system” bears close affinities to Aristotelianvirtue theory (21). But the holistic move that makes this comparison possibleis particularly regrettable. It forces Keown to omit entire schools of Buddhismthat do not easily conform to an Aristotelian model (we find no mentionof East Asian forms of Buddhism in his book, for example). It also assumes,rather than argues, that the huge range of historically diverse Buddhisttraditions articulated a single moral system. Finally, such holism elidesattention to Buddhists’ own distinctive systems and styles of moral discourse,which may not easily fold into Western systems and categories (see Hallisey1996, 1997).

Successful work in comparative Buddhist ethics must tread carefullythrough these debates even as it begins to reach beyond them. The earliertension between philosophical formalism and descriptive empiricism doesnot animate the field as it once did but its questions remain. These approachesdisagree over what counts as moral thinking: is it something already therein the tradition that we need to learn how to interpret in its own terms, oris it something that gets fashioned by the work of philosopher? To whatextent should Western ethical language guide our analysis of Buddhist moraldiscourses? While these questions will remain with us, the issue with holismis more easily remedied and put behind us. Nothing is really lost by givingup a holistic understanding of the tradition, and there is much to be gained,including closer historical precision and greater attention to distinctivelyBuddhist modes of moral thinking. Advances in comparative work willcome from more finely grained studies than those of the preceding generationof comparativists; they will seek not to compare Buddhist ethics as a unifiedwhole, but rather more circumscribed thinkers, discourses, or texts fromwithin particular traditions.

An important development in the field has been to learn how to readparticularly Buddhist discourses, such as certain narrative literatures (Hallisey& Hansen 1996; Hansen 2002) and meditation treatises (Dreyfus 1995), assophisticated moral reflection. While not yet widely practiced, studies thatcompare certain Buddhist moral texts with non-Western discourses canbegin to dislodge an overly Western overlay on Buddhist traditions (Heim2004). Quite promising for those of us interested in the complexity anddiscontinuities within and across Buddhist traditions are efforts to compare

110 . Maria Heim


Buddhist thinkers and traditions with one another. John Carter’s recent essaycomparing Therav-da and JOdo Shinsh0 around their conceptions of intuitiveawareness in moral experience is a notable contribution to this kind of work(Carter 2005). We should also notice discontinuities across time, especiallyin view of the radical disruptions of modernity in all Buddhist traditions.Charles Hallisey has demonstrated how the impact of modernity, colonialism,and globalization on Buddhist traditions has engendered striking disjuncturesbetween premodern and modern moral discourses even from within thesame traditions (Hallisey 2005). Finally, the recent wave of scholarship inthe area of applied ethics or “engaged Buddhism” explores the complexissues associated with applying Buddhist moral thinking to modern moralchallenges and crises. This work is largely constructive, creating new formsof ethical knowledge as Buddhist traditions confront modern social, political,and moral challenges unprecedented in their histories. Much of the vitality in thisarea and others in Buddhist ethics in the last fifteen years has been stimulatedby the very successful international online Journal of Buddhist Ethics.3

The Ethical Study of Human Nature

With these and other important developments in mind, my focus in theremainder of this essay is the ethical study of human nature and the comparativepossibilities that can proceed from it. Following Charles Hallisey’s turn tophilosophical anthropology,4 this inquiry can take many different forms,such as developing the tools and language to explore moral agency andsubjectivity, exploring various loyalties and obligations humans experiencetoward both intimate and distant others, considering strategies and technologiesof cultivating the moral person, and exploring the ethical significance ofemotion and sensibility. In keeping with Buddhist thinking, studies of themoral person are unlikely to settle on any fixed or essentialist descriptionof a universal human nature. The shifting nature of human life as we age,find ourselves in complex and diverse relationships, and are shaped bycircumstances both local and immediate and more structural and seeminglyremote will provide the subjects of much of this inquiry. Because no singleuniversal moral agent is assumed at the outset and the question of humanmoral nature and capacity is left wide open, this is a messier line of inquirythan others, and it is likely to make progress in diffuse and not entirelysystematic fashion. Because it recognizes the enormous diversity withinBuddhism in its approaches to all of these questions, it will advance throughthe work of many different scholars on various fronts, employing varyingmethodological strategies.

To explore one of these areas further, let me take up a set of questionsabout human moral resources and capacities. This is to begin several stepsbehind moral decision making, and to return to those questions that RhysDavids found so richly addressed by Abhidhamma psychology. She wasparticularly enthusiastic about what she saw as this system’s philosophical



attention to moral psychology. In her view, all moral systems involve astance on psychological factors whether or not they are given duephilosophical consideration:

[A]mong ethical systems there is a world of difference in the degree of importanceattached to the psychological prolegomena of ethics. In ethical problems we areon a basis of psychology, depending for our material largely upon the psychologyof conation or will, with its co-efficients of feeling and intelligence.And in thehistory of human ideas, in so far as it clusters about those problems, we find thisdependence either made prominent or slurred over. (Rhys Davids 1900, xvi)

Writing the preceding in her introduction to her translation of theDhamma-sangini, the first book of the Pali Abhidhamma, Rhys Davids sawthe text as rendering explicit a theory of the psychological constituents ofmoral agency, the processes of attention, feeling, and imagination thatundergird moral choice and action.

The Abhidhamma posits a finite list of factors in human experience,defines them, and considers their interrelations. It offers an analysis of humanexperience while resisting a substantive or essentialist description of the self.For our immediate interests Abhidhamma classifications of factors of humanexperience as good or moral (kusala), bad or immoral (akusala), and neutral(avyAkata) form the basis of its moral psychology. Factors are deemed goodif they are skilful and lead to salutary, blameless, and happy results (DhsA.,pp. 62 –63).5 While some kusala factors are cognitive and conative, theseoften have affective qualities as well, and they portray human experienceas intricately connected to the world through emotional sensibility. Theparticular ways human beings are sensitive to the world around us shape ourcapacity for moral response, and in this sense, morality is rooted in humannature. In addition, the Abhidhamma maintains that we can cultivate andnourish good mental factors while dismantling negative ones.

An example of some of these factors can be found in the complexAbhidhamma psychology of love and compassion. In particular, the fourbrahma-vihAras, that is, the “divine abidings”– friendliness (mettA), compassion(karunA), sympathetic joy (muditA), and equanimity (upekkhA) – furnish someof the affective components of moral response and development. These aremoral factors6 that can be generated and enriched through meditation, andform an important foundation for an ethic of love. At the same time thesesentiments are revealing about human nature, and here I would like to takeup a small comparative task both in order to enhance our understanding ofat least one of these factors, but also to demonstrate how comparisons, evenor perhaps especially ones limited in scope, can lead to new knowledge.

While universal love and friendliness, compassion for those suffering, andequanimity or impartiality in one’s feeling for all beings have receivedscholarly attention, the fourth brahma-vihAra, sympathetic joy, has not beenas widely appreciated.7 Sympathetic joy is a special kind of pleasure onetakes in other people when they are happy and successful. This particularexperience brings together two key elements of the Abhidhamma perspective

112 . Maria Heim


on the moral person: the ways in which we are linked through imagination andfeeling to others, and the ways in which such links can be profoundly pleasurable.

The term translated here as “sympathetic joy” (muditA) is defined inBuddhaghosa’s AtthasAlini and elsewhere according to the technical methodof exposition of the Abhidhamma commentaries:

Sympathetic joy has for its characteristic delight in beings, its function is lack ofenvy, its manifestation is the elimination of aversion, its proximate cause is seeingthe success of beings, its success is relief from aversion, its failure is the productionof mirth. (DhsA., p. 193; Vism 318)

Such technical designations may appear rather arid at first, but in fact theyreveal an intriguing psychological profile of the moral person. Our natureis such that we take interest and pleasure in other beings’ success, as long asenvy is not present and we are not hindered by aversion. When we aresuccessfully gladdened by others’ good fortune we enjoy relief from aversionand dislike, which are, among other things, quite unpleasant experiences.But such sympathy can fail when it degenerates into mirth or enjoyment oftrivial delights. Buddhaghosa goes on to maintain that sympathetic joy hastwo enemies, one distant and one close, revealing a potentially conflictedand adversarial mental life. Its near enemy is delight in worldly attainments,which lies dangerously close to the happiness one feels for others’ success;it is possible that one will get too caught up in material pleasures. This isdangerous for the monastic meditator because “it is impossible for one whois delighted to long for seclusion and the higher moral states” (DhsA.,p. 194).Sympathetic joy’s other enemy is aversion which is distant in the sense ofbeing the opposite kind of experience. The danger with this enemy is thatwhen aversion toward others’ good fortune is felt, sympathetic joy hasdifficulty entering at all. Elsewhere the text recommends the meditativecultivation of sympathetic joy particularly to those filled with much aversion(DhsA., p. 195); it allows them to “escape” from it (DhsA., p. 192).

Buddhaghosa elaborates further. Sympathetic joy occurs as one takes upas an object of thought one or more beings (DhsA., p. 195). The largerprogram of meditation practice recommended here is what Buddhaghosacalls “breaking down barriers” between self and others, and then betweendifferent kinds of others. That is, it is easy to feel sympathetic joy for goodfriends,but the practice recommends extending the emotion to neutrals andeventually enemies until one’s fellow feeling expands to all beings, and thefeeling becomes “immeasurable” in its reach. How does one start? One firstdesires to do this, then must work to eliminate hindrances (such as envy),and then becomes absorbed in the experience (DhsA., p. 195). The capacityfor this experience is natural in the sense that it occurs in a spontaneous anduncomplicated way, for example, in a mother toward her child as she seeshim flourishing (DhsA., p. 196). Human beings are the sort of creatureswho, barring the intervention of envy and aversion, naturally take pleasurein others’ success, especially those dear to us, although it requires work todevelop it beyond our intimate relationships. Feelings move around and are© Blackwell Publishing 2006 Religion Compass 1/1 (2007): 107–119, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2006.00009.x


shared by human beings in ways deemed important for philosophical andpsychological analysis.

If we put this set of considerations up next to another moral sentimenttradition certain dimensions of it move into sharper focus. The eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith spends the first section of TheTheory of Moral Sentiments parsing the experience of sympathy, where heestablishes the human capacity for fellow feeling as the bedrock of his moraltheory. This work is both a careful consideration of human nature – thepassions and affections he explores are given to us by nature – as well as a moralappraisal of the fittingness of particular affective responses in particular contexts.

Like Buddhaghosa’s distinctions evident in the brahma-vihAras, Smith wasconcerned to differentiate the varieties of fellow feeling. He mentionscompassion and pity, and while he acknowledges that sympathy is mostoften used in a similar vein, he argues that it can denote fellow feeling withany passion, and perhaps most especially, with joy (Smith 1853, p. 5). True,our sympathy with sorrow has received more notice, but in fact, he argues,our sympathy with joy is actually far much more pervasive. This is becauseit is so delightful to sympathize with others’ happiness that we do it all thetime: “It is agreeable to sympathize with joy; and wherever envy does notoppose it, our heart abandons itself with satisfaction to the highest transportsof that delightful sentiment. But it is painful to go along with grief, and wealways enter into it with reluctance” (63). We do not eagerly search outothers’ suffering to share it:“nature, it seems, when she loaded us with ourown sorrows, thought that they were enough, and therefore did notcommand us to take any further share in those of others, than what wasnecessary to prompt us to relieve them” (66). Smith notices that weenthusiastically seek out the joy of happy companions and readily enter intoit. He is impressed with the spontaneity and instantaneity of our feelings ofsympathy toward our friends, even in trivial matters. In addition, we seemby nature inclined to find our own feelings of sympathy pleasing. Our mostsatisfying companionships are with those with whom we find ourselves inentire agreement with, and we find it disagreeable when we enter intoconversation with those with whom we cannot sympathize (13). He noticesalso our expectations that our friends will enter into sympathy with us, thatthey will share our joys and resentments (12) – and how greatly we feartheir contempt (83).

Like Buddhaghosa, Smith maintains that moral sentiments are to becarefully investigated according to several criteria. He takes into considerationnot just the affection itself but also the object or occasion which promptsit, or, in Abhidhamma terminology,“its proximate cause.”We feel sympathyas the result of imaginative practice about other people and their feelings.His analysis also considers the cause or motive which gives rise to it, andthe end or effect that it produces; in ways comparable to the Abhidhammacategory of kusala, he takes into account “the beneficial or harmful natureof the effects which the affection aims at” (17). To be sure, and again like

114 . Maria Heim


Buddhaghosa, Smith is not unaware of how envy and malice can corruptthe feeling of sympathy. Envy commonly prevents us from sympathizingwith others, and “there is, besides, a malice in mankind, which not onlyprevents all sympathy with little uneasinesses, but renders them in somemeasure diverting” (55, 58). We sometimes take delight in “railery” orderiding the small vexations of others. But lurking throughout Smith’streatise is an anti-Hobbesian program; we are not entirely self-interested,egoistic, and competitive beings, and our sympathies with both the joy andsorrow of others are strong and sincere.

More pertinent to Smith’s account, however, if we may be permittedagain to employ Abhidhamma distinctions, is not the “distant enemy” ofenvy, but the “close enemy” of taking pleasure in imagining the riches andcomforts of the great. This leads us to care about all the wrong sorts of things– we slavishly admire and sympathize with the wealthy and powerful, anddespise the poor and unfortunate. Moreover, our own longing to besympathized with and our awareness that others sympathize with those whoare fortunate cause us to parade our riches and hide our poverty (70). Thereis thus for Smith a keen danger in the corruption of the moral sentiment ofsympathy: “That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respectand admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that thecontempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often mostunjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint ofmoralists in all ages” (84). While Buddhaghosa also worries about the driftingof sympathetic joy in the wrong direction toward a concern for worldlythings threatening to monastic contentment, these deliberations do notlead to the same implications as they do for Smith. For Smith “upon thisdisposition of mankind to go along with all the passions of the rich and thepowerful, is founded the distinctions and order of society” (73). Oursympathy leads us to defer to the great and to tolerate and enforce socialhierarchy. Buddhaghosa is concerned solely with how these sentiments affectthe monk and his practice, while Smith is eager to consider large-scale socialimplications of the human affections.

For Buddhaghosa moral reflection does not merely extol the beneficialsentiments and censure the harmful ones, but it also enlists a program ofrestraint.And here we find Smith again in broad agreement: morality is notjust sensibility but is also self-command. On the one hand are the “amiablevirtues that consist in that degree of sensibility which surprises by its exquisiteand unexpected delicacy and tenderness,” and on the other, the“self-command which astonishes by its amazing superiority over the mostungovernable passions of human nature” (28). Neither tradition espouses asimple emotivism, but both are part of larger moral programs of improvingone’s temper, character, and sensibility through exerting control over theproblematic constituents of human psychology. For the Abhidhamma theseare of course greed, hatred, and delusion and their many variants and alliedexperiences. Yet while these factors of moral psychology are deeply rooted,



this Buddhist tradition deploys its analysis of human psychology in order tochange them, not merely through self-knowledge, but by means of developedmeditative techniques. While also attributing value to reflexivity throughthe agency of an “impartial spectator” as an almost second self to monitorour sentiments and check our more selfish and violent passions, Smith doesnot go so far as to endorse meditation, at least not in ways directly analogousto Buddhist techniques. Instead, his work is located as part of a largerprogram shared by other eighteenth-century British moral sense theoriststo habilitate the affections for their social utility and to install a vision ofpublic and political humanitarianism built on proper emotional education.Here Buddhaghosa must part ways with Smith, for Buddhaghosa’s reflectionson the moral factors never lead him to consider broader questions aboutsocial obligation, public order and harmony, or justice, and this differenceis crucial and significant.8

Concluding Considerations

While it might be intriguing to explore further the extent to which Smith’streatise examines affections akin to the brahma-vihAras – certainly along withsympathy, the feelings of universal benevolence and compassion are muchdiscussed in his work, and it may not even require too much of a stretch toexamine his “impartial spectator” in light of Buddhist equanimity – in theinterest of space we must leave off here. But before doing so, it is worthpausing to reflect on what reading Buddhist Abhidhamma and Adam Smithtogether does. Smith makes a good companion to read with not because hecan be said to share the same system of ethics, but because he is occupiedwith similar questions about human nature in ways comparable enough toBuddhaghosa that he poses close and subtle questions to him, and vice versa.Just as a good reading companion takes us deeper into a text and prods ourinterpretation in ways we might not consider on our own, readingcomparatively allows for a process of greater mutual interrogation. I amequally confident that scholars of eighteenth-century Scottish moral thoughtwould benefit from having Abhidhamma commentaries at their side as theyread their Smith or Hume.

I also want to suggest that this small engagement can guide us to highlyconsequential matters in the history of ideas. Smith’s reflections on fellowfeeling were part of a philosophical movement in eighteenth-century thoughtto refute Hobbesian and Puritan disparagements of human nature, to groundmorality in nontheological foundations, and to promote the civilizingprocesses of the Enlightenment (Fiering 1976). Buddhaghosa, and otherBuddhist traditions which encourage the brahma-vihAras, are perhaps part ofequally significant disagreements about human nature in the history ofBuddhist and Asian intellectual movements. This may become evident whenwe compare Buddhaghosa’s work on the brahma-vihAras with other traditionswithin Buddhism that are much less confident in human capacities for

116 . Maria Heim


morality. If we consider the twelfth-century Japanese figure, Shinran, forexample, we encounter a deep-seated suspicion of human motivations andan acute sense of human frailty. He develops most fully themes equallyprevalent in the history of Buddhist thought that center not on an ethic oflove, but on the pervasive greed, hatred, and delusion at the root of humanmotivations and actions. Shinran’s subjectivity as “a foolish being filled withblind passions” leads him to doubt that any action based in egoistic anddelusional calculations can be moral. The question for him then is not whatare our moral resources – we have none – but rather, how, once held withinthe other power of Amida Buddha’s compassion, we participate in a moralawareness free of the constructed, egocentric self (Hirota 2000, pp. 179 –80). While not possible to do so here, reading Buddhaghosa with Shinrancomparatively would help us probe further the foundations and limitationsof moral agency, revealing fissures and discontinuities in the long andcomplex history we call Buddhism.

Finally, the small engagement suggested by this exercise with Buddhaghosaand Adam Smith points to something of great consequence in humanlife. Buddhaghosa and Smith were interested in how we are intimatelyinterconnected with others’ experiences, why their feelings matter so muchto us, and the moral significance of our responses to them. These questionsform a large part of human experience; why should moral philosophy neglectthem? The sympathetic moments of moral imagination and feeling that lieprior to ethical decision making, that exist alongside or very often insteadof rational deliberation on moral questions and yet drive so much of whatwe do, are worthy of philosophical inquiry. I am in wide agreement withIris Murdoch that, while we do not want to shift attention entirely awayfrom moral choice and action to the study of the inner workings of themoral person, we do need to attend to moral psychology and can do so inpart through close explorations of goodness and love (Murdoch 1970).Comparative work with moral sense theorists can help us explore what ournature teaches us about morality, but is just one area to watch as the fieldturns to a more expansive commitment to moral anthropology.

Acknowledgments

The line of inquiry that centers ethics on the “moral person” has beendeveloped in conversation and collaboration over several years with others,in particular, Charles Hallisey, Karen Derris, and Anne Hansen. Withoutthem most of this essay would not be possible. This inquiry was deepenedin a recent workshop at Amherst College, entitled “Contours of the MoralPerson” (August 2005), and I am very grateful to all of the participants ofthis workshop. Thanks to Steve Heim and Karen Derris for reading andcommenting on earlier versions of this piece. I am also deeply grateful tothe Guggenheim Foundation for its support of my research on Buddhisttheories of moral agency, parts of which have contributed to this essay.



Short Biography

Maria Heim, an assistant professor of Religion at Amherst College, workson Buddhist and comparative religious ethics, focusing in particular on moralpsychology. She works primarily on texts from the Theravada tradition. Herarticles have appeared in the Journal of Religious Ethics, the Journal of theAmerican Academy of Religion, the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, and the Encyclopediaof Religion. Her book, Theories of the Gift in South Asia (Routledge, 2004),explores the ethics of the gift in medieval South Asian thought. She is aGuggenheim Fellow, and has received a Fulbright and a Charlotte W.Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. She holds a PhD in Sanskritand Indian Studies from Harvard University, and a BA in Philosophy andReligion from Reed College.

Notes

* Correspondence address: Religion Department, 108 Chapin Hall, Box 2252, Amherst, MA01002. E-mail: [email protected] See Susan James for a very helpful account of early modern philosophy on the passions whichraises important questions about contemporary philosophical practice (1997, pp. 15–21).2 Both Caroline Rhys Davids and her collaborator Shwe Zan Aung often set forth Abhidhammaideas through the lens of Western philosophy and psychology. See Aung’s “Introductory Essay”to his translation of the Abhidhammattha-sangaha (London: PTS, 1910).3 The Journal of Buddhist Ethics homepage is http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/. The journal also has a veryuseful “Bibliography of Buddhist Ethics” compiled by Peter Harvey in 2000.4 Charles Hallisey, “The Contours of the Moral Person and the Study of Buddhist Ethics,”Workshop Paper,August 23, 2005,Amherst College.5 All references to the Pali sources are to the editions of the Cha{{a SaNgAyama CD-ROM, publishedby the Vipassana Research Institute, Dhammagiri, India. “DhsA” is the abbreviation for theAtthasAlini. The translations here are my own, but the reader can consult an English translation ofthis text (The Expositor, trans. by Pe Maung Tin, edited and revised by Caroline Rhys Davids,London: The Pali Text Society, 1976). Many of the passages discussed here are also in theVisuddhimagga, (Vism) chapter IX (The Path of Purification, trans. by Bhikkhu Ñ-Camoli, Kandy,Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1991).6 The AtthasAlini treats compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity as among the additional(yevApanaka) moral factors (kusala-dhammas) to be included together with the fifty-six moral factorslisted in the Dhamma-sangani. Friendliness is considered part of the absence of hatred (adoso) whichis also listed as a moral factor. The text makes the distinction that all of these are the first part ofthe experience available to us in the realm of sense (kAmAvacara) and that they can be developedfully in the realm of form (rupAvacara) as meditation practices (jhAna) (DhsA., pp. 132 –3). TheDhamma-sangani mentions the brahma-vihAras in the context of the jhAnas, and the AtthasAlini’s fullexposition of them occurs in this context (DhsA., pp. 192–7).7 Aronson’s study of love and sympathy (1980) offers an important exception.8 Modern interpreters of the kusala dhammas often bring a broader social emphasis to theirunderstanding of them than Buddhaghosa would have allowed. P. A. Payutto, for example.

Works Cited

Aronson, H, 1980, Love and Sympathy in TheravAda Buddhism, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi.Carter, JR, 2005, ‘Buddhist Ethics?’ in W Schweiker (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Religious

Ethics, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA.Dreyfus, G, 1995, ‘Mediation as Ethical Activity’, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, vol. 2, pp. 28–54.

118 . Maria Heim


[email protected]

http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/

http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/

Fiering, N, 1976, ‘Irresistible Compassion: An Aspect of Eighteenth-Century Sympathy andHumanitarianism’, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 195–218.

Hallisey, C, 1996, ‘Ethical Particularism in Therav-da Buddhism’, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, vol.3, pp. 332–43.

Hallisey, C, 1997, ‘A Response to Kevin Schilbrack’, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, vol. 4, pp. 184–188.Hallisey, C, 2005, ‘Buddhist Ethics: Trajectories’, in W Schweiker (ed.), The Blackwell Companion

to Religious Ethics, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, Mass.Hallisey, C & Hansen, A, 1996, ‘Narrative, Sub-ethics, and the Moral Life: Some Evidence from

Therav-da Buddhism’, Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 305–27.Hansen,A, 2002, ‘Story & World: The Ethics of Moral Vision in the Gatilok of Ukñ- Suttantaprij-

Ind’, Udaya, vol. 3, pp. 45–64.Heim, M, 2004, Theories of the Gift in South Asia, Routledge, New York.Hirota, D, ed., 2000, Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism, SUNY Press,

Albany, NY.James, S, 1997,Passion and Action: The Emotions in 17th Century Philosophy, Clarendon Press, Oxford.Keown, D, 1992, The Nature of Buddhist Ethics, St. Martin’s Press, New York.Little, D, 1990, ‘Ethics and Wealth in Therav-da Buddhism: A Response to Frank Reynolds’, in

R Sizemore and D Swearer (eds.), Ethics,Wealth, and Salvation, University of South CarolinaPress, Columbia, SC.

Murdoch, I, 1970, The Sovereignty of Good, Routledge, New York.Reynolds, F, 1990, ‘Ethics and Wealth in Therav-da Buddhism: A Study of Comparative Religious

Ethics’, in R Sizemore and D Swearer (eds.), Ethics,Wealth, and Salvation, University of SouthCarolina Press, Columbia, SC.

Rhys Davids, C, trans., 1900, A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics, the Dhamma-sangani, RoyalAsiatic Society, London.

Sizemore, R, 1990, ‘Comparative Religious Ethics as a Field: Faith, Culture, and Reason inEthics’, in R Sizemore and D Swearer (eds.), Ethics,Wealth, and Salvation, University of SouthCarolina Press, Columbia, SC.

Smith,A, 1853, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Harrison and Sons, London.Swearer, D, 2005. ‘History of Religions’, in W Schweiker (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to

Religious Ethics, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA.



Documents

Toward a “Wider and Juster Initiative”: Recent Comparative Work in Buddhist Ethics