In Buddhism ethics is not a discipline apart from psychology and the natural sciences. In the Manifestation Only teachings of Mahayana Buddhism there is a practice of looking deeply called the Four Ways of Investigation. It applies to the investigation into ethics and into other aspects of life. These are four ways of looking deeply that can help us have Right View.
The First Investigation is called Investigation of the Name. Name means designation. Buddha is a designation and so are good and evil. We have to investigate the name and this belongs to the field of semantics. What do we mean by a name, such as Buddha, goodness, or evil? Often we see that the name is a mere designation, or a false designation; it’s not the truth of the matter.
There is a practice we can do to help us realize what we mean by the word “Buddha.” We begin by saying to ourselves:
In this case the thing that I consider to be myself goes into the background and the thing that I consider to be the Buddha comes into the foreground. When we begin the exercise we look on the Buddha and ourselves as two separate realities. But Buddha is just a name and “I” is just a name. They are both false designations. This is something quite deep. Then we say to ourselves:
I feel how the Buddha’s breathing is gentle and even. The Buddha’s sitting is upright and stable. The third part of the exercise is:
The peaceful and gentle breathing is the Buddha. You can’t find Buddha outside of the peaceful and gentle breathing. We begin to see what Buddha is made up of: solid sitting and gentle breathing, and so we’re no longer caught in the word “Buddha.” If you look at a robe, you see there is material, yarn, a shuttle, a weaver, a seamstress; but apart from these things there’s no robe. So “robe” is a false designation.
Generally we’re caught in false designations. This investigation corresponds in part to the philosophy of Logical Positivism. The philosopher August Comte asked questions such as, “You speak of good. What do you mean by good? You speak of evil. What do you mean by evil? Don’t play games with words. Don’t let yourself be caught in words. You have to ask: What do you mean by that?” These questions and admonitions are an important aspect of the use and study of semantics.
In Buddhism, the investigation into how we use words is very important. In Buddhism we say that all designations are false designations and we should not be caught in them. According to the practice of investigating the name, we have to let go of the name in order to come to the nature. We let go of the word “robe” in order to discover the nature of a robe.
In Judeo-Christian belief, God the Creator is the ontological ground of the universe. If God is the ontological ground, he is not just the creator but he must also be in the creation, in the creatures themselves. In this light, the name God includes the creator and the creation and we can no longer hold that the creator and the creation are two separate realities.
The Buddhist Prajñaparamita Sutras say that the ground of everything is emptiness. We have to understand the meaning of the word “emptiness.” This emptiness is not nothingness; it is interbeing which is the absence of both being and non-being. In Buddhism we could say that the ontological ground is emptiness. Sometimes we call this ground nirvana or suchness. In Buddhism we look for Buddha in ordinary beings. Where do we look for God? We look for God in ourselves and we see that this insight exists in Christianity when we say “God is in our heart.”
God and we are not two separate realities. We are in God and God is in us. The creator is in the creature and the creature is in the creator. Many Christian teachers, philosophers, and practitioners have experienced this truth of nonduality. In the Gospel, we learn that the Kingdom of God is a seed in our own heart.
In Buddhism, we talk of the emptiness of transmission. There is no transmitter who is separate from the thing transmitted and the person to whom the transmission is made. The body our parents transmit to us is not something separate from them; they are the body they transmit. We don’t receive our parents’ body as something separate from ourselves; we are our parents’ body. So there is no separately existing body, no separately existing transmitter, and no separately existing inheritor. We can also speak of the emptiness of creation. If there were no creatures, there could not be a creator. We can’t recognize God the creator outside of the creation. God is his creation.
In order to transcend the dualism between semantics and ontological ground, there is epistemology, the study of knowledge and belief. In the Zen school we say: “There is a transmission that does not depend on teaching, words, and language. It goes straight to the heart. It is the ability to see the true nature and become Buddha.” The heart of Zen is not to be caught in words and language, even in words like “Buddha” and “Dharma.” So when we do use words and terms we have to be very careful, whether we’re the teacher or the disciple, otherwise both listener and speaker will be caught. Zen is a tradition in which we want to come as close as possible to the truth. The question is, can we use our intellect to do this, or do we just use intuition and direct insight? This is a matter of epistemology.
In Buddhism, there is a kind of wisdom called nondiscriminative understanding. This is the insight that subject and object are not two separate realities but that they lie in each other. The foundation of ethics and of the mindfulness trainings is very deep. If we don’t learn to be aware of the limitations of designations and names, we won’t be able to understand the trainings deeply and we shall be caught in the words and terms used in the mindfulness trainings.
The Second Investigation is the investigation into the meaning or the thing. This means the object of investigation itself, and not the name. When the bodhisattva looks, she looks into the thing itself and doesn’t need to consider the name. We tend to think of father on the one hand and son or daughter on the other hand as two separate realities. But if we look into our father’s five skandhas (the five elements of his being: body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness) and into our own five skandhas, we shall see that we are the continuation of our father; we are very much the same as our father.
The Third Investigation is the investigation into self-nature (svabhava). When we look into the wave we see that its nature is water. When we look into trees, houses, rocks, people, animals, we want to know what is the true nature of all these things. For a long time people have said that things are built out of atoms. They have also said that the ground of things is God, is the Way, is the four great elements of earth, water, fire and air. There are other ideas about the ground of things. Scientists have sought the foundation of things in atoms, the original molecules, and scientists seem to be knocking on the door of ontology—the branch of metaphysics and philosophy that’s concerned with the nature of being. In Buddhism it’s the same. We see things and we want to find out the true nature of those things. The Heart Sutra is about the ontological ground. The true nature of everything is the nature of no separate self, interbeing.
The Fourth Investigation is the investigation into the false establishment of separate realities. The wave is made of water but water is also made of things that are not water. That is true of everything. Everything is made of nonself elements, those things that are not itself. Quantum mechanics has also arrived at the same insight. In the beginning, scientists were looking for atoms and molecules, thinking that they were the foundation of everything. But in fact molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles can only exist in dependence on one another. It’s like left and right. What is the right? Is it something real? It seems to be real and so does the left. There is a left-hand side and a right-hand side, but the truth is that the left-hand side cannot be if the right-hand side is not there.
How can we apply this to ethics? When we talk about good and evil, right and wrong, first of all we say that good is a designation that points to certain ways of behavior. Then if we examine the thing itself, the good, we find that it is made of what is not good and at that point we can no longer be dogmatic about what we call good and evil. Buddhist ethics are not dogmatic. In theistic religions people have had the tendency to identify God with the good and Satan with the evil, and the two sides oppose each other. Sometimes in popular Buddhism too there is the tendency to see good as opposing evil, but the original teachings of the Buddha do not see things in this way.
The First Investigation is called Investigation of the Name. Name means designation. Buddha is a designation and so are good and evil. We have to investigate the name and this belongs to the field of semantics. What do we mean by a name, such as Buddha, goodness, or evil? Often we see that the name is a mere designation, or a false designation; it’s not the truth of the matter.
There is a practice we can do to help us realize what we mean by the word “Buddha.” We begin by saying to ourselves:
- Let the Buddha breathe.
- Let the Buddha sit.
- I don’t need to breathe.
- I don’t need to sit.
In this case the thing that I consider to be myself goes into the background and the thing that I consider to be the Buddha comes into the foreground. When we begin the exercise we look on the Buddha and ourselves as two separate realities. But Buddha is just a name and “I” is just a name. They are both false designations. This is something quite deep. Then we say to ourselves:
- The Buddha is breathing.
- The Buddha is sitting.
- I enjoy the breathing.
- I enjoy the sitting.
I feel how the Buddha’s breathing is gentle and even. The Buddha’s sitting is upright and stable. The third part of the exercise is:
- Buddha is the breathing.
- Buddha is the sitting.
- I am the breathing.
- I am the sitting.
The peaceful and gentle breathing is the Buddha. You can’t find Buddha outside of the peaceful and gentle breathing. We begin to see what Buddha is made up of: solid sitting and gentle breathing, and so we’re no longer caught in the word “Buddha.” If you look at a robe, you see there is material, yarn, a shuttle, a weaver, a seamstress; but apart from these things there’s no robe. So “robe” is a false designation.
Generally we’re caught in false designations. This investigation corresponds in part to the philosophy of Logical Positivism. The philosopher August Comte asked questions such as, “You speak of good. What do you mean by good? You speak of evil. What do you mean by evil? Don’t play games with words. Don’t let yourself be caught in words. You have to ask: What do you mean by that?” These questions and admonitions are an important aspect of the use and study of semantics.
In Buddhism, the investigation into how we use words is very important. In Buddhism we say that all designations are false designations and we should not be caught in them. According to the practice of investigating the name, we have to let go of the name in order to come to the nature. We let go of the word “robe” in order to discover the nature of a robe.
In Judeo-Christian belief, God the Creator is the ontological ground of the universe. If God is the ontological ground, he is not just the creator but he must also be in the creation, in the creatures themselves. In this light, the name God includes the creator and the creation and we can no longer hold that the creator and the creation are two separate realities.
The Buddhist Prajñaparamita Sutras say that the ground of everything is emptiness. We have to understand the meaning of the word “emptiness.” This emptiness is not nothingness; it is interbeing which is the absence of both being and non-being. In Buddhism we could say that the ontological ground is emptiness. Sometimes we call this ground nirvana or suchness. In Buddhism we look for Buddha in ordinary beings. Where do we look for God? We look for God in ourselves and we see that this insight exists in Christianity when we say “God is in our heart.”
God and we are not two separate realities. We are in God and God is in us. The creator is in the creature and the creature is in the creator. Many Christian teachers, philosophers, and practitioners have experienced this truth of nonduality. In the Gospel, we learn that the Kingdom of God is a seed in our own heart.
In Buddhism, we talk of the emptiness of transmission. There is no transmitter who is separate from the thing transmitted and the person to whom the transmission is made. The body our parents transmit to us is not something separate from them; they are the body they transmit. We don’t receive our parents’ body as something separate from ourselves; we are our parents’ body. So there is no separately existing body, no separately existing transmitter, and no separately existing inheritor. We can also speak of the emptiness of creation. If there were no creatures, there could not be a creator. We can’t recognize God the creator outside of the creation. God is his creation.
In order to transcend the dualism between semantics and ontological ground, there is epistemology, the study of knowledge and belief. In the Zen school we say: “There is a transmission that does not depend on teaching, words, and language. It goes straight to the heart. It is the ability to see the true nature and become Buddha.” The heart of Zen is not to be caught in words and language, even in words like “Buddha” and “Dharma.” So when we do use words and terms we have to be very careful, whether we’re the teacher or the disciple, otherwise both listener and speaker will be caught. Zen is a tradition in which we want to come as close as possible to the truth. The question is, can we use our intellect to do this, or do we just use intuition and direct insight? This is a matter of epistemology.
In Buddhism, there is a kind of wisdom called nondiscriminative understanding. This is the insight that subject and object are not two separate realities but that they lie in each other. The foundation of ethics and of the mindfulness trainings is very deep. If we don’t learn to be aware of the limitations of designations and names, we won’t be able to understand the trainings deeply and we shall be caught in the words and terms used in the mindfulness trainings.
The Second Investigation is the investigation into the meaning or the thing. This means the object of investigation itself, and not the name. When the bodhisattva looks, she looks into the thing itself and doesn’t need to consider the name. We tend to think of father on the one hand and son or daughter on the other hand as two separate realities. But if we look into our father’s five skandhas (the five elements of his being: body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness) and into our own five skandhas, we shall see that we are the continuation of our father; we are very much the same as our father.
The Third Investigation is the investigation into self-nature (svabhava). When we look into the wave we see that its nature is water. When we look into trees, houses, rocks, people, animals, we want to know what is the true nature of all these things. For a long time people have said that things are built out of atoms. They have also said that the ground of things is God, is the Way, is the four great elements of earth, water, fire and air. There are other ideas about the ground of things. Scientists have sought the foundation of things in atoms, the original molecules, and scientists seem to be knocking on the door of ontology—the branch of metaphysics and philosophy that’s concerned with the nature of being. In Buddhism it’s the same. We see things and we want to find out the true nature of those things. The Heart Sutra is about the ontological ground. The true nature of everything is the nature of no separate self, interbeing.
The Fourth Investigation is the investigation into the false establishment of separate realities. The wave is made of water but water is also made of things that are not water. That is true of everything. Everything is made of nonself elements, those things that are not itself. Quantum mechanics has also arrived at the same insight. In the beginning, scientists were looking for atoms and molecules, thinking that they were the foundation of everything. But in fact molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles can only exist in dependence on one another. It’s like left and right. What is the right? Is it something real? It seems to be real and so does the left. There is a left-hand side and a right-hand side, but the truth is that the left-hand side cannot be if the right-hand side is not there.
How can we apply this to ethics? When we talk about good and evil, right and wrong, first of all we say that good is a designation that points to certain ways of behavior. Then if we examine the thing itself, the good, we find that it is made of what is not good and at that point we can no longer be dogmatic about what we call good and evil. Buddhist ethics are not dogmatic. In theistic religions people have had the tendency to identify God with the good and Satan with the evil, and the two sides oppose each other. Sometimes in popular Buddhism too there is the tendency to see good as opposing evil, but the original teachings of the Buddha do not see things in this way.
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