页366 谈戒与持戒 中华佛学学报第六期（1993.07）
　　减少惊奇；反之，我们发现浩瀚宇宙如此的美，如此的瑰丽眩目，远过神秘的护卫者所曾构想到的。早期视野中的“神奇”，最大功能是在掩藏想像的澈底失败，是无可奈何地闪避“人造神”的概念。驾著金车驶过天空的愤怒神祇，是心术单纯的漫画书故事，有如现代天文学的迷人新发现，DNA复制机器的极端错综复杂，使得“原始生命力”像超人的恐怖秘密武器那么有趣……（当）不有神秘时，（事情将）变得不一样，但还是会有美，也比从前更有敬畏的空间。
　　"Talking about Precepts and Practicing Precepts"
　　By Luis O. Gomez
　　Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
　　University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
　　Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal
　　No. 6 (July 1993)
　　pp. 351-389
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　　Summary
　　Buddhism has been very attached to codes and rules. Morality or ethics are preliminaries to the higher goals of Buddhism and the essential basis of the higher life. Buddhism adapted its ethical ideals to new cultural situations not so much by reasoning the subtleties of a moral theology but by an appeal to extra-ethical values: (l) by affirming its transcendence, and (2) by appealing to its more general soteriological principles.
　　Traditional Buddhist rhetoric is not responding adequately to the crisis in Buddhist ethics today. A meaningful reexamination of the Vinayas will require a revision of both the content and the foundations of Buddhist ethical ideals. It will not do to deny the shortcomings of Buddhism.
　　A meaningful Buddhist ethics for our times should have four overlapping requirements: ① To be rooted in the past and in traditional Buddhist discourse. ② To take the social and the individual present into account. ③ To serve its purpose well with a minimum of mystification and pomp in Buddhist ethical discourse. ④ To take into account the individual as well as his or her social reality. It must be a code for each and every one.
　　We need to examine critically some of the ancient mystifications and to renew the myths and symbols that sustain Buddhist ethical life. However, it does not mean the end of religious awe.
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　　A common interest in "Vinaya" in the broad sense has brought us together in this conference. Many among us are fascinated by the history and the minutiae of Buddhist monastic codes, by their ritual and sociological contexts, but we share above all a respect for Buddhist ideals of human conduct generally. In other words, interest in Vinaya, I assume, implies interest in the broad issues of ethics, virtue, concern for others, and self-cultivation. The high esteem in which we hold Buddhist ethical ideals, I am sure also leads to a concern for their future, for their survival, and for the preservation and clarification of their meanings. I would therefore like to invite the participants in this conference to reflect on the ideals embodied in the Vinaya literature, as well as on the historical specifics of that literature.
　　In some way or another Buddhist monastic codes have provided models for human virtue and human perfection for over two thousand years. The "virtue" of Buddhist monks has been proverbial in the West for centuries. Already more than half a millennium ago, Marco Polo spoke of the exemplary life of the followers of Buddha, although he saw their belief system as a "superstition." [1] As Western understanding of, and respect for, Buddhism grew, the perception of Buddhism and Buddhists as highly ethical did not diminish. It is not uncommon, even today, to hear of Buddhist "virtue" or "morality" as being somehow special, more subtle than any of the Western systems of morality.
　　In 1913, Carolyn Rhys-Davids wrote with inimitable fondness of the Pali term sila, as she seemed to apologize for translating the word as "morals.":
　　I was tempted to retain the pretty word ?īla for our more cumbrous "morality," etc. "Virtue" is more elegant, but a little vague. Sīla is moral habit, habitual good, or moral conduct -- the conduct of one who does not hurt or rob living things, is sexually straight, truthful, and gentle of speech, and sober as to drink. (C. A. F. Rhys-Davids, 1913: 269, n. 2)
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　　1. Things have not changed much in the six hundred years since. Perhaps the same mixture of admiration and fear of the exotic moved Carl Jung in our century to see "Oriental" wisdom as the repository of profound psychological truths, but not a place for Westerners to dwell in.
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　　As if this took care of the matter, she added "That is all."
　　And in a certain manner of speaking, that has been all. Modern writers on "Buddhist ethics" often have been content with expanding on definitions and assumptions similar to those implied by this brief reflection of Rhys-Davids. [2] It is also customary to claim a central role for ?īla in the Buddhist paradigms for human behavior and fulfillment, while at the same time (and perhaps this is what has attracted contemporary Westerners the most) asserting that morality or ethics are only preliminaries to the higher goals of Buddhism. In the same note just quoted, Rhys-Davids states categorically, "Such conduct is only the essential basis of the higher life." [3] And then, revealingly, adds, "The sermon is addressed to hired assassins, not to bhikkhus"!!
　　?īla, however, is seen not only as a foundation for the path, but also as derivative from the content of Buddhist doctrine. Almost a hundred years ago Thomas H. Huxley wrote admiringly, and with typical Victorian flair, of the "metaphysical tour de force" that lead "Gautama" to conclude that in "the whole universe there is nothing permanent, no eternal substance either of mind or of matter," that "personality is a metaphysical fancy; and in very truth, not only we, but all things, in the worlds without end of the cosmic phantasmagoria, are such stuff as dreams are made of." (Huxley, 1893/1989: 124-125).
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　　2. B. C. Law (1936/1966) uses Rhys-Davids' footnote as the guide for his summary of Buddhist sila in Concepts of Buddhism.
　　3. Emphasis mine. This quotation is rife with implications. The length and circumstances of this address do not allow me to go into full detail into these implications, but one should remember the long debate, in Asia and in the West, about the Parable of the Raft, the arhant's status "beyond good and evil," the "formless precepts," etc. All of these, important, and highly problematic issues can only be touched in passing in an article of this length.
　　Whether the verses translated by Rhys-Davids (Thg 608 ff.) were addressed at assassins or not is impossible to tell, the frame story being from the much later commentary. But the verses clearly refer to a provisional, or non-religious, conception of morality, based on expediency, since the fruits of morality are listed as fame, gain, and heaven (Thg 609).
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　　Huxley argued that Gautama, like his predecessors, could derive "only one rule of conduct" (122) from his metaphysics -- the rule of renunciation. But, Huxley reasoned, Gautama, unlike his predecessors, "doubtless had a better guarantee for the abolition of transmigration, when no wrack of substance, either of Atman or of Brahma, was left behind, when, in short, a man had but to dream that he willed not to dream, to put an end to all dreaming." (125-126)
　　This appraisal of Buddhist philosophy and theory of liberation was followed by Huxley's enthusiastic endorsement of what he perceived to be the ethics and social practice of Buddhism (126-127):
　　The appetites and the passions are not to be abolished by mere mortification of the body; they must, in addition, be attacked on their own ground and conquered be steady cultivation of the mental habits which oppose them; by universal benevolence; by the return of good for evil; ... in short by total renunciation of that self-assertion which is the essence of the cosmic process.
　　Doubtless, it is to these ethical qualities that Buddhism owes its marvelous success. A system ... which denies a soul to man; which counts the belief in immortality a blunder and the hope of it a sin; which refuses any efficacy to prayer and sacrifice; which bids men look to nothing but their own efforts for salvation; which in its original purity knew nothing of vows of obedience, abhorred intolerance, and never sought the aid of the secular arm; yet spread over a considerable moiety of the Old World with marvellous rapidity, and is still, with whatever base admixture of foreign superstitions, the dominant creed of a large fraction of mankind.
　　To us, Huxley's panegyric suggests inadequate knowledge of Buddhist texts and history. It also reveals the scholar's uncritical faith in the power of disembodied ideas. Seen from the vantage point of the hundred years that have since given shape to various disciplines for the scholarly study of Religions, and a hundred years of Buddhist Studies, seen likewise on the looking glass of our own expectations, Huxley's appraisal appears idealistic, if not outright naive. Yet, thought the modern scholar may have little use for concepts such as the "admixture of
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　　foreign superstitions," one must recognize that Huxley was struggling with issues similar to those that concern us today. In Evolution and ethics Huxley also confronted the question of what happens to moral responsibility when there is no self, no eternal life, and no God. This is not the facile, and crusty, academic debate of how can a Buddhist believe in karma if there is no self, or the philosophical question of the metaphysical foundation for ethics, rather it is the question of the meaning, function and nature of ethics in a world without transcendence. Huxley, like we today, and perhaps like the Buddha ?ākyamuni himself, was confronted by the loss of self of his own age long before he knew of a "doctrine of no-self." But loss of self can have many meanings and many outcomes -- it can lead to more than one restructuring of a person's horizons of meaning and purpose (Taylor, 1989).
　　In the West -- as perhaps in ancient India -- social loss of self has been accompanied by an ontological loss of self. In the West, however, this loss generally is seen as leaving behind a joyless void. The main-streams of Western thought in the past have tended to derive only despair and hopelessness from negation, to infer nihilism and nothingness from groundlessness. [4] The Buddhist tradition, on the other hand, conceived of this loss as both a mark of the possibility of escape, and a reason for escaping from the world, not a reason for despair and lamentation. For the Buddhist, a desolate, homeless Earth, calls for renunciation, but renunciation leads to the highest bliss.
　　Huxley perceived this important difference: the collapse of cosmological and metaphysical security lead in the West to despair, yet, in Buddhism it seemed to lead to joyful detachment. But, ironically, for all his unveiled admiration for Buddhism, Huxley was at the same time critical of Buddhist detachment. Huxley saw the Buddhist insight into non-substantiality as one of several classical approximations to the evolutionary perspective, but the believed the ethical principles that had been derived from these approximative insights were faulty. The Greeks had given us an overconfident faith in human perfectibility -- while hinting at both renunciation and despair in the teachings of the Stoics. In Gautama, India had given us a more perfect form of withdrawal. But withdrawal is only half the
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　　4. This is no longer the case. See Taylor, 1989.
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　　answer: between the two extremes of total despair and total withdrawal, Huxley saw a future ethics that would both accept human limitation and strive to correct it. One must "throw aside," he wrote, both "youthful overconfidence and the no less youthful discouragement of nonage." (144)
　　Huxley was no naive Romantic. His essay is at times sobering, and his genius surfaces repeatedly as he anticipates many of the insecurities of self and value that have shaped our century. But there is no question that his perception of Buddhism reflects what the Victorians expected from Buddhism and from "the East."
　　As Western intellectuals lost their faith in their own institutions, they sought exotic models of ideals without institutions. It is not surprising, therefore, to read Huxley's description of Buddhism as a "philosophy" that no only shares in the insights of evolutionary biology, but also "counts the belief in immortality a blunder and the hope of it a sin; which refuses any efficacy to prayer and sacrifice; which bids men look to nothing but their own efforts for salvation; which in its original purity knew nothing of vows of obedience, abhorred intolerance, and never sought the aid of the secular arm." One has to wonder how much of this portrait is only a reflection of a Western intellectual's hopes.
　　Buddhism has been, if anything, very attached to codes and rules, and even if we grant that the term "obedience" may not be the most accurate, one would be hard pressed to find historical evidence for the disembodied Buddhism described by Huxley, It is obvious that Buddhism has had political positions, and has had to manipulate political and social realities. In doing so, Buddhism has also had to forge its own ethical ideals -- often in directions far from the simple assertion of no-self.
　　Regrettably, Huxley's profound insights into the psychology of renunciation and the sociobiology of perfection are not well known among writers on Buddhist ethics, but the Victorian image of Buddhism on which he relied is still with us.
　　Today we would like to believe that we have outgrown the agendas of the Victorian era. Our scholarship has made at least some faint progress and we can safely assert that Huxley's perception of Buddhism is at best an idealized abstraction. Yet, it is still common to assume, like Huxley did, that there is a clear, and logically necessary connection between Buddhist ontology on the one hand, and its ethical ideals and its ethos, on the other. There is also a tendency to assume
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　　the forms it takes as an ethos are or should be reflections of an ethical theory. It is also still common to express, either as historical fact or as apologetic that Buddhism has been free of ritualism, legalism, and political interests. All of these claims fly in the face of the evidence of history, but they appear to have had a certain apologetic success.
　　This not wholly a modern proselytizing strategy , however. "Disembodied religion" is a common strategy of apologetics -- "my religion" is always the true, it is defined by its ideals, whereas the religions of others are always the flawed human realities of lived religion. This is sometimes an effective apologetic strategy, and may have been very successful in certain circles during this past century. I believe this success is bound to be short-lived, and, what is worse, it is bound to thwart whatever salutary effects Buddhism may have as a force for positive change -- especially as a force in our common search for social consensus through humane ideals, rather than through coercion. The presentation of Buddhism as an ideal disembodied entity, without reference to the concrete codes of action and ritual traditions that have shaped its institutional history renders a disservice both to truth (or shall we say honesty?) and to Buddhism as a treasure-house of human insight.
　　Why this tendency to see Buddhism as a disembodied theory of ultimate insight and liberation, rather than as a body of modes of conduct? Radical differences between the social histories of Europe, India, and China no doubt are one of the most important contributing causes. A closer study of the interaction between, say, Brahmanism and Buddhism could tell us much about the nature of Buddhist ethical discourse. But in this essay I rather look at the discourse itself, and how it may change in the future.
　　It appears that Buddhism adapted its ethical ideals to new cultural situations not so much by reasoning the subtleties of a moral theology but by an appeal to extra-ethical values: (1) by affirming its transcendence (epistemologically in the mode of a two-truth doctrine, ethically as world-renunciation), and (2) by appealing to its more general soteriological principles (that is, ethics as a teleology). [5] These strategies serve well the function of Buddhism as a religious ideology, and monasticism as a self-perpetuating institution. The Christian West knows of similar ideologies.
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　　5. The first of these strategies has been followed by Dharmasiri in his recent (1989) Fundamentals of Buddhist Ethics. The second strategy is implicit in the passage I quoted earlier from Carolyn Rhys-Davids' Psalms of the Earlier Buddhists. The problem is of course more complicated than this. Whereas Christian apologists learned the value of independent ethical arguments and independent theories of philosophical anthropology (a skill they no doubt inherited from the Greeks and the Romans, and honed by sparring with secular philosophers), any code or theoretical system of ethics that defines itself in religious terms runs the risk of devaluing ethics itself. Moreover, in spite of the reservations I will express presently regarding Buddhist teleology, I do not believe there is anything inherently flawed in teleological arguments, and they are historically of the greatest important for religious ethical thought. I side with the deontologists, however, when teleological arguments lead, to a devaluation of the social and human realities that give rise to the need for an ethics, or to a hierarchy of the two fundamental dimensions of religious ethics: relating to others and relating to oneself.
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　　These approaches to ethical justification lead on the one hand to a paradoxical localization of ethics -- the ethics of non-monastic Buddhists defined by the moral customs of the locality. They also lead, on the other hand, to the disembodied ethical ideals of the monastics; paraphrasing Rhys-Davids, ethics is literally ethics only when preached to brigands, and only a springboard when preached to monks.
　　Be that as it may, today we face a crisis in Buddhist ethics. A crisis to which traditional Buddhist rhetoric is not responding adequately. The crisis is not so new, and was pointedly described by Huxley. This moral crisis cannot be interpreted merely as a weakening of moral resolve. The traditional foundations of ethics -- the social, the metaphysical, and the religious -- have been seriously questioned. A new Buddhist ethical discourse, and, by extension, a meaningful reexamination of the Vinayas, will require a revision of both the content and the foundations of Buddhist ethical ideals. We have again to rethink the broad principles that form Buddhism and we have to look at the specific rules from the perspective of those broad principles. It will not do to argue that Buddhism is the
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　　answer and that the "real" the answer is somewhere in another realm, the realm of liberation -- that ethics will make sense, or not make sense, only from the perspective of one who is liberated.
　　Furthermore, it will not do to deny the shortcomings of Buddhism -- in particular human beings, in particular moments in history, but also in its traditional dogmatic formulations.
　　It is not enough to argue on the basis of a presumed ideal, or original, Buddhism, on the basis of the Vinaya of what the Buddha ought to have said ... or even of what the Buddha actually said.
　　It is not enough to say that Buddhism is the solution. It is not enough to say even that Buddhism is a solution. One must say how and why Buddhism can offer solutions, and accept the extent to which Buddhist traditions may not have a solution to offer ... or may be able to offer something else, something that cannot be termed "solution." And one must show that Buddhism can meet at the very least the basic requirements of content and form for a universal ethics for modern Buddhists.
　　We live in an age of great disillusions -- if not an age of cynicism. We witness the disillusion of the scholar and the practitioner. It is not so much that humanity has become more cruel and callous, but that we are rapidly losing our sense of grounding, including the social confirmation of self and value, so that we can now unabashedly express and cultivate our selfishness in the name of being honest with ourselves. Thus, this is an age in which the ideals of selflessness lack a social context, in which public pronouncements and behaviors support neither the spiritual ideals nor the models of conduct upon which Buddhism relied in the past to maintain its viability as a set of living behaviors.
　　Buddhism is not immune to the effects of the erosion of public values so well described by Alasdair MacIntyre in After virtue. Writing ten years ago, MacIntyre could not fantasize with "a new world order," rather he compared our age to the last days of the Roman Empire (MacIntyre, 1981: 244). As the moral consensus of the Empire disappeared, "virtue" became the ward of small communities of new believers and renunciants. MacIntyre sees a need today too for a moral life based on the support of small communities. Thus, he sees a need for
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　　the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness... (244)
　　[But] this time the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another -- doubtless very different -- St. Benedict." (245)
　　There is indeed a need for another St. Benedict (or, better, I would say, for many Benedicts), but this new founders of spiritual communities will "doubtless be different" from St. Benedict, and, I hasten to add, from Gautama, from Tsong-kha-pa, from Dogen.
　　It is always dangerous (and, depending on how many years one lives, potentially embarrassing) to try to play the prophet, but I will venture to say nevertheless that even if the next fifty, perhaps the next twenty, years see (and I believe we will) a revival of monasticism as the core moral and spiritual institution in the industrialized world, it will be a very different monasticism. It will have to be a very different Vinaya.
　　Even the fact that we are gathered here suggests that we, or an indeterminate group to which we are responding, are groping for a new definition of the spiritual community, and its guiding principles. This is, after all, what is meant by any serious reflection on Vinaya.
　　In this quest we will have to question many of our past assumptions. Faced by the challenge of modern ethics, and the challenge of secular morality, we will have to ask something more than questions of detail about quaint monastic rules and customs. We will have to ask ourselves, "What does it mean to have 'a Buddhist ethics,' rather than ethics in general? What is it that we want to find or expect to find in the Buddhist tradition that will make any difference in constructing, deriving, or maintaining an ethical ideal for our age -- and for our very diverse, yet converging cultural universes? What could a monastic ideal offer to those who are not monastics?"
　　These are all complex and controversial issues. Today I will limit myself to
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　　inviting you to reconnoitre the field with me by considering some of the general and formal requirements of the new ethics, and of the new Vinaya. I can think of several, overlapping requirements for a meaningful Buddhist ethics for our times.
　　(1) First, and paradoxically, any rethinking of Buddhist ideals of behavior has to be rooted in the past, and in traditional Buddhist discourse. A connection with the past is a requirement for any effective ethics. Our problem is not only one of philosophical ethics, but of practical ethics, and of religious ethics. I would argue that the symbolic and historical connection with ancestors is part of both the foundation and the meaning of ethical behavior generally, and of religious ethics in particular. A sense of continuity and identity is perhaps more crucial than a philosophical cogency.
　　At the same time, however, we have to break with the past. The problem for us today is how to connect with a past, be it a quasi-historical past or a composite picture of an ideal past, while at the same we seek new ways of constructing ethical meaning. But, how is this "ethical meaning" constructed and maintained? Meaning in ethics is generated and preserved when the system of ethical symbols -- ideals, myths, codes, and rituals -- can be understood and articulated in terms of the intellectualizations of our cultures, the behavioral dilemmas of our public interactions, and the private dilemmas of our inner sense of identity. Concord in articulation, not agreement, is all that is needed. Disagreement is in fact essential if religious discourse is going to act as a goad or critic of secular discourse.
　　Notice that meaning does not arise from "truth," or from the discovery or restoration of "the true, and original" values of Buddhism, or from values "free from the cultural baggage of generations." There can be no ethics apart from culture -- the cultural baggage of past generations is what a religious tradition is all about, though we may choose not to carry all of it.
　　More about this presently -- suffice it to say here that the dilemma for us today is that we must generate new meanings and applications while we preserve a mythical past -- we can neither pretend to "purify" ourselves of myth, nor pretend that present actualities do not exist.
　　By the same token, we have to find alternatives to the traditional intellectual discourse of Buddhist ethics, yet preserve our connections with it. Consider, for instance, two of the doctrines often used by classical as well as by modern apolog-
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　　ists as foundational doctrines: Buddhist have appealed to "the ultimate goal" of the path or to the principle of compassion as purported foundations for ethical action. Perhaps there are ways to use these principles as inspirations for further reflection without falling into the simple repetition of variations on the same themes.
　　It appears that the first of these two principles is not meant to be a fundamental ethical principle but a non-ethical foundation for ethical principles. Yet, it is not at all clear how one is to derive an ethics from it. Traditional Buddhist ethical discourse focused on the stratification of the cosmology of rebirth, not on the so-called "ultimate goal." [6]
　　The argument from the goal is, in my mind, the weakest of all, and has led to much questionable speculation, both in classical Asia and among modern Buddhists in the West. Nirvana as a foundation for the path was criticized, but not quite superseded, by the Mahayana. In the West, where we have had our share of teleologies, ethical philosophers have sought a different conception of the foundation of morality -- inspired in part by Aristotle who first argued that "morality" ... is a form of doing (Praxis) and not of making (Poiesis), ... the end of doing is not something distinct from the action itself -- doing well is in itself the end." (Frankena, 1980:31) Mahayana philosophers moved away from a strict teleology, but the primacy of the soteriological goal obscured those elements of an ethics of immanence present in Mahayana ethical and mythological reflection. [7]
　　The problem, however, is not so much in whether a teleological definition or justification of morality is formally, or a priori, unjustifiable, rather the issue is the nature of the morality that one could derive from particular conceptions of Nirvana.
　　Naturally, derivations" in moral and religious thought are always soft, and
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　　6. Naturally, the properly ethical underpinnings of these constructs have been traditionally the doctrines of merit, and of kusala (we have as yet to find an English equivalent for this all-important term). I believe there is a place for the rhetoric of merit in a modern discourse on Buddhist ethics, and I regret the tendency to ignore this doctrine in modern attempts to describe Buddhist ethics.
　　7. Cf. also the extremely suggestive reflections of Vasubandhu on ?ubha and ku?ala, in the Bhā?ya ad Ako? IV:8 & IV:66.
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　　often depend on values, considerations, and arguments external to the putative axiomatic principles. Nevertheless, one can speak of two competing concepts of Nirvana as summum bonum. [8] According to one model, the transcendence of Nirvana is understood literally as a condition wholly other than the present state of our existence. Vasubandhu's reflections on Nirvana are an example of this conception. The second model, understands transcendence metaphorically as denoting a state of mind: the liberated person's place in existence is no different from that of others, but his perception of things is radically different. One may see this model in some of the writings of the Madhyamaka. It is not at all clear, however, that the second model is totally free from the tendency to see liberation as wholly other. Some ambivalence remains no doubt, and is especially obvious in Mahayana ethical writings, in the hierarchy of the virtues, and in treatments of the Parable of the Raft and the "formless precepts."
　　The change in the definition of Nirvana effected by the Mahayana was in fact a change in argument from one of ethics derived from transcendence to an ethics of immanence. The smell of earlier asceticism and contemptus mundi remains, Mahayana continued to be, after all, a monastic religion. [9] But at least in ideology a major shift began to occur. This shift was closely connected to the development of the second traditional principle of Buddhist ethics, the principle of compassion.
　　"Compassion" is not an argument for ethical behavior, but a general, and very vague, term for a cluster of virtues -- virtuous emotions, and, perhaps, behaviors. In Buddhist discourse, however, "Universal Compassion" is itself used
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　　8. I use the word Nirvana loosely to denote Buddhist conceptions of the state of liberation in general. In this usage, "Nirvana" refers to a variety of "nirvanas." What these conceptions have in common is their role as intellectualizations of the highest or ultimate value, and the desired final outcome of the Path. Needless to say, these abstractions can also serve as principles of organization in concrete or symbolic hierarchical cosmologies.
　　9. Ambivalence towards the world is also a common issue in the history of Christianity, at least until the Post-Reformation. On of the contentions of this paper is that the social circumstances that brought about a change in Christianity have now caught up with (if not passed by) Buddhist institutions.
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　　as an fundamental ethical rule (a "Gen," as the more general statements of moral rule are called by Frankena, 1980). Traditional discourse on compassion appears to regard universal compassion as axiomatic -- which it may ultimately be. But its connection with other Gens was never fully developed. [10] Even those who argued for a primary or foundational role for compassion (e.g., Kamala?īla) saw it as a preliminary, explicitly connected with the practices of calming the mind, not with the specifics of ethical rules. [11]
　　The need to renew ancient rhetoric is only the obverse of the second requirement of the new Vinayas: (2) A modern ethics, and consequently, a modern code for lay and monastics, must take into account the present: the social present, of course, but the individual present as well.
　　The difficulty here is finding a way to be flexible enough to adapt to changes in social circumstances and cultural mores without losing all sense of continuity and stability, and without relinquishing the function of religion as a critic of society. An important challenge facing Buddhism in this sphere is the changing role of the laity, especially as it is defined by a rapidly evolving secular conception
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　　10. The sophistication of Indian metaphysical discourse contrasts sharply with the less critical treatment of ethical issues. A subtle epistemology of cognition contrasts with an actuarial conception of the emotions and the virtues. There were social, as well as philosophical reasons, for this lopsided treatment of ethics. Those social circumstances have changed. In fact, they have always been changing. Buddhist reaction to those changes, however, was slow, and ethical discourse took forms that we find difficult to translate into our own rhetorical modes: the mythology of re birth, the doctrine of merit, the mythology of the bodhisattvas. Notable exceptions to this description do exist -- witness the occasional, but insightful, ethical arguments of ?āntideva and his commentator Praj?ākaramati, and of Kamala?īla, in India, and Chih-I and Jiun in East Asia, among others.
　　11. The historical roots of this problem may be in the early mythical and ritual contexts of compassion. It appears to have been associated not with social ethics or an ethics of virtue, but with the extraordinary powers of buddhas at one end of the spectrum (cf. Abhidharmadīpa 508, Abhidharmako?a 7.34) and the cultivation of states of mind at the other end (cf. Aronson, Gomez).
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　　of the human being. In this conception -- which is really not so new -- the human being is defined as a biological entity, and its human identity is no longer constructed apart from the blind drives, the limitations, and the fragility of a living organism. What is more, human identity and thought can no longer be separated from the physical realities of the brain in which they at least partly inhere. And yet, the individual human personality is furthermore conceived as inherently valuable -- apart from political or spiritual hierarchies. Granted this is only an ideal, an intellectualization, and a sophisticated myth, but it is a powerful and dominant myth, a myth that requires of our ethical reflections a conception of restraint and perfectibility that is very different from that expressed in classical (and contemporary) Buddhist ethical discourse.
　　At the very least the foundations (mythical, soteriological, or philosophical) of Buddhist moral thought, and possibly the institutions (lay and monastic), will have to conform to these radical historical shifts. With the invention of social justice we have learned to suspect spiritual hierarchies and hierarchs as promoters of spiritual ideologies that serve as tools of control and exploitation. With the invention of the mind as brain, of the so-called unconscious, and of the biology of emotions, we have learned to suspect virtue as a screen for less spiritual motivations. These two major shifts threaten two pillars of traditional Buddhist morality: the notion of levels of value and hierarchies of morality, and the morality of virtue as restraint.
　　With the new conception of the individual come changes that I believe are already affecting Buddhist institutions even in Asia. Reflections on the Vinaya and reflections on Buddhist ethics generally must face squarely and critically the traditional position and open disparagement of women, and more ambiguous positions in a range of ethical issues -- such as war and peace, homosexuality, social justice (in contrast to merely recommending kindness in the treatment of slaves and servants).
　　The new Vinaya will have to be based on ethical principles that spread out on a continuum. The moral principles governing the community will have to be grounded on the same goals or definitions of virtue for all members of the community. This process cannot be accomplished by monachizing the lay life (or, for that matter, by secularizing monastic life -- if my prediction that monasticism
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　　will endure turns true). But it will require a new concept of restraint, a concept that will take into account the modern willingness to accept the biological (or, why not call it with a less euphemistic term, the animal) nature of the human being. Such was the challenge Huxley saw in the new biology of his days, and such is still the challenge today.
　　These changes will seem as threats to some of the concepts held most dear by traditional Buddhist ethical thinkers. On the side of hierarchy, these changes would challenge the privileged access to the higher, or formless, precepts, or even their ethical viability. It would also challenge the second class status of lay morality. On the side of the psychology of morality, these changes would challenge the notion of detachment as renunciation -- in fact, it would challenge the possibility of renunciation, and, needless to say, the possibility of totally eradicating sexual drives.
　　This would then be a Buddhist morality that seeks to account for real human beings, not by separating their spirituality from their animality, but by confronting the coexistence, if not identity, of those dimensions of experience that have been isolated by these two constructs. Huxley saw this as one of the challenges of the scientific revolutions of the nineteenth century: to understand the sense in which our intellectual and spiritual is not reducible to our biological reality, but is nevertheless an integral part of it. I am not arguing, therefore, for the secularization of values and the glorification of selfishness promoted by our institutions, and by popular science, and, especially, by the popularization of the psychotherapies of self-fulfillment.
　　Religious discourse can serve to cover and preserve, or it can serve to uncover, discover, and challenge. Both functions are necessary, and must remain in precarious balance. I am afraid too much energy has gone into covering and preserving, at all costs. In doing so, Buddhist discourse on ethics has failed to fulfill one of its purposes: to assist us in effectively adapting to and acting on the world. This function include under a third "requirement": (3) Buddhist ethical discourse should be efficacious, effective, and efficient. In other words it must serve its purpose, and must serve it well, with a minimum of mystification and pomp. This includes a recognition of the circumstances that make the code necessary. Nothing is served by lamenting or disparaging the human realities that make the
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　　code necessary.
　　The realities giving rise to the code are interpersonal circumstances and human passions. Ethical rules advising or compelling generosity and contentment with what we have may be based on ideal models, but they are mostly prompted by the reality that we cannot all have what there is to have, that I cannot have my colleagues salary, and, above all, that I insist, nevertheless, in coveting what others have. In other words, the rule and the virtue are modeled on the vice. But, if the rule, and the virtue as ideal are to be effective, they must conform to the reality of the passion, the reality of the human being who struggles to conform to the ideal.
　　As corollaries, this ethical discourse (a) must persuade without coercion (which does not mean it should gloss over fear, peril, and terror, or ignore violence, manifest or latent). It must also (b) allow for human error and imperfection, in both the unholy and holy, in the humble believer and in the virtuoso of meditation.
　　In other words, the new ethic must be constructed to the measure of the human being. And this is "requirement" four: (4) the code must take into account the individual, as well as his or her social reality. It must be a code for each and every one.
　　This fourth point is a warning against two common fallacies of ethical discourse that are both based on a natural confusion brought about by the necessarily imperfect match between rule (signed) and human circumstances (signified). In one case one reduces the problem to a perceived imperfection in the human person, in the other one reduces the problem to a putative imperfection in the rule. The language of morals has to be of such a nature that it balances both insufficiencies. Ethical statements of Gens must acknowledge, indeed make allowances, for individual circumstances and feelings, for individual perceptions, for individual passions. Yet they must serve as guidelines from beyond individual whim and preference. It is necessary then to separate the rule as a guideline, from the rule as a judgement, the rule of social behavior from the rule of inner feeling. In other words, one must face the fact that one is trapped between two forms of arbitrariness: the authority of universal applicability, and the whim of desire; the universal as rigid absolute and the individual as unpredictably capri-
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　　cious.
　　As a more concrete example of the problem, one may mention the dearth of reflections on self-examination and self-disclosure. In spite of the importance of dedications of merit and repentance formulas in Buddhist ritual, we do not have as yet a modern ethical reflection on their position in the Path, much less a reflection on how repentance, self-disclosure and ethical ideals are supposed to interface. Except for the hackneyed explanation of these rituals as "preliminaries," modern writers do not attempt to interpret their significance.
　　Requirements (3) and (4) illustrate well how the type of ethical discourse I envision is still rooted in traditional Buddhist rhetoric. These last two points bring to mind two principles often appealed to in Buddhist ethical argument: compassion and skillful means. My objections to the frequent use of these terms in Buddhist apologetics stem not from any serious reservations as to the inherent value of the concepts of compassion and skillful means as principles of understanding and action. Rather, what I find disturbing is the use (or abuse) of these terms as shibboleths, without any serious attempt to develop, refine, and above all, criticize the terms. It is significant that there are to this date only two major monographs on these topics (Nakamura, and Pye), neither of which addresses the philosophical issues.
　　Unfortunately, the two words are at their apologetic best when they are vague and mushy, and not open to critical examination. A critical examination of these two conceptions may prove fertile ground for the development and refinement of Buddhist symbols. But upāya will have to be more than a license to speak uncritically, and compassion something more than a mantra to guard off the consequences of our inability to act.
　　The mythology of the Great Compassion needs to be translated into a language of social action, while the cultivation of compassion as an affective virtue, especially in its association with the practice of meditation on the self, could provide useful symbols in our reflections on the connection between moral values and identity. This is especially timely today, when traditional Western notions of the self are under attack (Taylor, Dennett).
　　The concept of "skillful means" finds an echo in modern concepts of the negotiation of meaning (about which more in short). Thus developed concept of
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　　upāya could be a timely theoretical approach to a Buddhist ethics of meaning and the theory of meaning in ethics.
　　Apart from its multiple, and problematic, apologetic uses, "skillful means" is also a concept of Path theory -- morally as a doctrine of detachment from the Path and a counterpart to the emptiness or emptiness, and epistemologically as a doctrine of the dynamics of meaning. In the last sense, "skillful means" suggests a theory of meaning as doing, and of truth as the negotiation of doing and meaning. [12] These conceptions would be most useful for us, as we seek ways of conceptualizing the changes that are occurring and will continue to occur in Buddhist institutions and ideals. The modern perception of "skillful means" as a doctrinal or theoretical justification for cultural adaptation is not misguided, although its application has been far from sophisticated.
　　The doctrine of "skillful means" and its close relative, emptiness, are double edged swords: they can be used to justify any statement trying to pass for Buddhism, or they can be seen as undermining Buddhism itself. At their best, however, they are critical tools based on an intuition of the constructed nature of human realities. They do not necessarily assist us in structuring experience (any more than Nirvana can really give us an ethics), but they give us a critical perspective on the process of structuring reality. At their best, they are extensions of the doctrine of causal interdependence -- extension into the Buddhist doctrine itself. As such they derive from a recognition of the myriad ways in which we construct Buddhism, out of "intentions," personal motives, and the very same linguistic reality that constructed the world of suffering to begin with. They do not disarm critical thought, nor do they render all "truths" equally meaningless (or meaningful). They do not disarm moral thought either. But they suggest that the "true," the "good" or the "right" are not to be found in a primal, original, and pure reality independent from the reality of our own emotional, social and linguistic life. The "right" is discovered through a process of personal growth, call it Path, call it
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　　12. I use the word "suggests" advisedly, since I do not believe these ideas are explicitly stated in traditional treatments of the subject. Naturally, one should not expect such formulations in classical texts. But one can stand on their contribution to try to see beyond to conceptions that may be more meaningful to us.
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　　negotiations of meaning, but a process of growth in which we receive a world and transform it in the process of receiving it. The received world is an amorphous, and for the most part unconscious, universe of emotions, memories, doctrines, and rituals. The transformed (or, rather, transforming) world is a lived Path, not an attained goal, not an attainable goal. It is indeed ironic that such a view of ethical truth, and truth in general, is so much feared by Buddhists, who after all claim to advocate a philosophy of non-substantiality and groundlessness.
　　The conception of "truth" implicit in the above remarks has been formulated eloquently by Jerome Bruner in a challenge to traditional Western foundationalism:
　　We construct many realities, and do so from differing intentions. But we do not construct them out of Rorschach blots, but out of the myriad forms in which we structure experience -- whether the experience of the senses..., the deeply symbolically encoded experience we gain through interacting with our social world, or the vicarious experience we achieve in the act of reading... It is not the case that a constructivist philosophy of mind (or of literary meaning) disarms one either ontologically or ethically. Interpretations, whether of text or of world experience, can be judged for their rightness. Their rightness, however is not to be reckoned by correspondence with an aboriginal "real" world "out there." For such a "real world" is not only indeterminate epistemologically, but even empty as an act of faith. Rather, meaning (or "reality" for in the end the two are indistinguishable) is an enterprise that reflects human intentionality and cannot be judged for its rightness independently of it. But "World making," ... starting as it does from a prior world that we take as given, is constrained by the nature of the world version with which we begin the remaking... If there are meanings "incarnate" in the world (or in the text with which we start) we transform them in the act of accepting them into our transformed world, and that transformed world then becomes the world with which others start... (158)
　　As we reflect on the Buddhist Vinayas our challenge is therefore one of discovering, rediscover and understand meaning by reconstructing ourselves in the
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　　process of reconstructing a Buddhist ethics. Although the process involves the study, revision, and generating of Gens, of general ethical principles, statements, propositions and injunctions, it is ultimately not about rules, but about behaviors and their meanings. The rules are benchmarks that guide not only moral choice and behavior, but the meanings that those choices and behaviors carry.
　　But, since meaning is a fact of language and society, and not simply a creation of psychological motivations, ethical discourse, talk about the Vinayas is talk about cultural (and historical) realities, not about disembodied principles of reason. We are therefore in a quest to find a common language, a common way of generating meaning, a common story. This conception of the generation of meaning has been so aptly expressed by Michelle Rosaldo (1984: 140):
　　[M]eaning is a fact of public life, ... [C]ultural patterns -- social facts -- provide the template for all human action, growth and understanding. Culture so construed is, furthermore, a matter less of ... propositions, rules, schematic programs, or beliefs, than of associative chains and images that tell what can be reasonably linked up with what; we come to know it through collective stories that suggest the nature of coherence, probability and sense within the actor's world. Culture is, then, always richer than the traits recorded in the ethnographer's accounts, because its truth resides not in explicit formulations of the rituals of daily life but in the daily practices of persons who in acting take for granted an account of who they are and how to understand their fellows' moves.
　　If we change the phrase "culture is always richer than the traits recorded in the ethnographer's accounts" to read "the experience and practice of ethics is always richer that the rules promulgated by the monastic codes and the philosopher's speculations," Rosaldo's statements about culture summarize the gist of the position I have tried to formulate here: that rules and ideas are part of the interactional fabric, and that this fabric is not so much rational, logical, or ontological, as interpersonal and linguistic. This fabric is best expressed, preserved, and transformed in the rituals and the stories of a religion. [13] But, this is not to say that the text of ritual and human interaction is not in need of interpretation, in need of being
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　　13. Bruner (1986: 122): "the 'realities' of the society and of social life are themselves most often products of linguistic use as represented in such speech act as promising, abjuring, legitimizing, christening, and so on. Once one takes the view that a culture itself comprises an ambiguous text that is constantly in need of interpretation by those who participate in it, then the constitutive role of language in creating social reality becomes a topic of practical concern."
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　　made "explicit" at the level of intellectual and rational understanding. We need no more proof that our presence here today to show that in the type of society in which we live, rational exploration is an integral part of the interpersonal process of generating meaning -- scholars and schools are one of the institutions, one of the "forums" for the negotiation of meaning (Bruner).
　　This is what we are here for today to renegotiate or rather to continue the process of renegotiation. But negotiations of this type, like any other negotiation, are not possible when one sees the uncertain ground of communication, the diversity and tensions of meanings, and the fluidity of culture as a threat. We must see the precariousness of our worlds not as hazards, but as risks inherent in opportunity for renegotiating a Buddhist ethics that responds to the broad ethical needs of our age.
　　The need to examine critically some of the ancient mystifications, the need to renew the myths and symbols that sustain Buddhist ethical life, does not mean the end of religious awe. The collapse of ancient systems of understanding does not entail the disappearance of beauty and awe. As Daniel Dennett eloquently argues in Consciousness explained (Dennett, 1991: 25):
　　[L]et us remind ourselves of what has happened in the wake of earlier demystifications. We find no diminution of wonder; on the contrary, we find deeper beauties and more dazzling visions of the complexity of the universe than the protectors of mystery ever conceived. The "magic" of earlier visions, was, for the most part, a cover-up for frank failures of imagination, a boring dodge enshrined in the concept of a deus ex machina. Fiery gods driving golden chariots across the skies are simpleminded comicbook
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　　fare compared to the ravishing strangeness of contemporary cosmology, and the recursive intricacies of the reproductive machinery of DNA make élan vital about as interesting as Superman's dread kryptonite... [When] there is no more mystery, [things will] be different, but there will still be beauty, and more room than ever for awe.
　　Key words: 1. Buddhist ethics 2. Buddhist morality 3. Vinaya 4. Practicing Precepts