Transcriptions
Dev Priyānanda Svāmī Bhagavān
Video link: YouTube
Āya Bhuwan: may you live long!
Welcome to Episode 3 of Being Integrity, and today we’re going to discern or recognize integrity as compared to other types of knowledge that discuss right and wrong, such as morality, legality, ethics and so on.
Well, what does the Buddha say about integrity? He says:
“And how is a person of integrity endowed with qualities of integrity? There is the case where a person of integrity is endowed with conviction, conscience, concern; he is learned, with aroused persistence, unmuddled mindfulness and good discernment. This is how a person of integrity is endowed with qualities of integrity.” — Cūḷa-puṇṇama Sutta (MN 110)
I love how the Buddha always tells us how; not just what, but how. So we’ll go into some of these other qualities later on in this series. But right now we want to talk about unmuddled mindfulness and good discernment.
So, to discern something means to be able to pick it out, to recognize it, to identify it even among a bunch of other similar things. So for example, if I had a pet dog, and there were a whole bunch of dogs running around, I’d be able to pick out my dog from among the pack. Similarly, there are many different ideas dealing with right and wrong, good and bad, what to do, what not to do. And we’re going to go over the difference between integrity and these other ideas.
We use a positive model of integrity; and the reason we do that is because it gives us access to enhanced performance. And we’ll get into that later on in the series. But basically, if you have integrity, you will be able to perform far greater than a typical person without integrity. And of course the same goes for groups, organizations and societies that have integrity built-in. They will have a much higher output, much greater creativity and so on than others who don’t have integrity.
In our model, we discern or recognize four phenomena dealing with right and wrong: morality, ethics, legality and integrity. So let’s go over those briefly. Philosophical discourse and common usage misdefine and confuse morality, ethics, legality and integrity. This causes people to misunderstand these four phenomena, so it is very difficult to apply them properly. Their integrity declines as a result.
So what is the difference between morality, ethics, legality and integrity? Can you tell me right off the top of your head? Probably not; and that’s a problem. It’s a problem because these words actually refer to different things; and unfortunately in the ordinary dictionary definitions, they are defined in terms of one another. So there’s a lot of circular definitions going on: morality is defined as ethics, ethics is defined as morality, and so on.
So in order to clear this all up we’re going to apply a special set of definitions to these terms in our series, that will keep them separate. In our model, we discern, distinguish and define morality, ethics and legality as instances of normative values or virtues about good and bad, right and wrong, or what should or should not be.
So a normative virtue is a negative thing. In other words, the cops don’t bother you until you break the law, and then they arrest you and throw you in jail, you see? Or the teacher doesn’t punish you until you break the rules, you see? It does not reward good behavior, it simply punishes bad behavior; and as I pointed out in an earlier series, punishment does not work.
How long have we as a human race been using punishment to try to correct people’s behavior? Thousands of years, maybe? tens of thousands of years? Has it worked? No. People still do destructive and self-destructive acts because they don’t know the difference between right and wrong. Hey wait a minute: that’s the definition of insanity, isn’t it? A person doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong, they don’t know the rules, they don’t know what’s good and bad.
That’s because they don’t have integrity. If they had integrity there would be no need for rules, because a person would automatically avoid any activity that was harmful. But because integrity is something not well understood, confused with other things like morality and legality, and also considered something outside the person, like following a moral code, which is simply a bunch of rules—that way people’s integrity declines. And that’s what we’ve seen. So anyway, after thousands of years of trying punishment to correct people’s behavior, isn’t it time for something new? Well, let’s look into this some more.
What is a normative virtue exactly? Well, the definition of normative is an adjective, “establishing, relating to, or deriving from a standard or norm, especially of behavior,” and the example given in the dictionary:
‘negative sanctions are used to enforce normative behavior.’ That’s perfect; it’s exactly what we’re talking about: either you follow the norms, which are a standard outside of your self, or you’ll be punished. Enforced is the word; you’ll be forced to follow the norms. If you don’t want to, too bad. So of course this is terrible for morale. People get depressed over this because they want to do X, and X isn’t allowed in whatever context they’re in. So this is the problem: normative rules are external to the person, and they’re also negative in intent.
Let’s go on: This term appeared in the late 19th century, from French normatif, from Latin norma, ‘carpenter’s square’. Back in the 50s and 60s we used to call someone who we felt was excessively moral a ‘square’: “So-and-so is a real square.” Because he’s following an external standard; he’s not integrated, he’s not integral, he doesn’t have integrity; he’s not whole and complete in himself; he follows some external rule. This is a square. Why is it square? Because when you follow something external, you can’t be fully yourself. Everybody knows this intuitively, but now we make it scientific.
And let’s look into the term virtue. Virtue is a noun, “behavior showing high moral standards; a morally good or desirable quality: ‘patience is a virtue’. It can also mean “a good or useful quality of a thing”; but here we’re talking about human beings, so virtue in this sense is something that’s outside the person. This means that in our modern context especially, it’s considered optional. “Well, it’s nice if you can tell the truth, but you know, if it gets in the way of profits, or social popularity or something like that, oh we’ll tell a little white lie.”
Well, there is no such thing as a white lie; all lies are wrong. The truth always comes out eventually and then you get caught, and the result is worse than before. But people get short-term benefit out of lying, so they still do it, even though they know it’s wrong—if they’re sane. And really, any life experience will tell you, you’re going to get caught. So why do it? And the answer is, people think that truthfulness is a virtue; it’s something outside ourselves that we can adopt if it’s nice or convenient, or if we have the time. But if we’re in a pinch where we have to get some result, we can ditch it. And that’s what people do: in the name of expediency, they give up virtues and just do whatever they like, whatever they think needs to be done.
This is the problem with integrity: if integrity is looked on as a virtue, then it’s disposable, it’s dispensable—something we can live without. And because it’s often more convenient to circumvent the rules of morality. That’s what people do.
Now, in our model integrity is discerned as an instance of positive values, devoid of normative content. Integrity is thus not about good or bad, right or wrong, or what should or should not be. We will not give you a set of rules. Yes, there is a set of rules in the Buddha’s teaching: it’s called the vinaya. But functionally speaking, the purpose of the vinaya is not to enforce a certain standard of behavior, but to measure a person’s integrity.
If you start to look at it like that, then it becomes a whole different story. Because integrity is something that you are. It’s in your being. It’s a quality; it’s not something that you possess, or have, or do. Not something outside yourself, it’s something within you. It’s part of your nature. And in that way, you spontaneously follow the rules of morality, because you just don’t do things that are harmful; you don’t do things that are hurtful, because you understand kamma is going to give you back the pain that you create.
Let’s go on: Furthermore, the four phenomena of morality, ethics, legality and integrity are distinguished as belonging to distinct domains. Thus the definition of each term becomes clear, unambiguous and discrete. Discrete means separate, in this case. So what we’re doing here is creating a model of the different systems or ways of thinking that people have used to try to regulate their behavior, to minimize the harm that people do to one another.
And of course the problem is that no set of rules can cover all circumstances; no set of rules is appropriate to different times, places, societies, languages, religions and so on. So therefore, you have all these different conflicting sets of rules. Which one do I follow? It’s very hard to figure out. So what we’re doing is we’re saying each of these terms—morality, ethics, legality and integrity—belongs to a different domain—a different context, a different set of circumstances. And now we’re going to define which one is which.
First let’s look into the definition of positive. We say that integrity is a positive feature; a positive quality, not a negative quality like normative virtues. But what do we mean by positive? Well, the dictionary defines positive as an adjective, “consisting in, or characterized by, the presence or possession of features or qualities rather than their absence; indicating the presence of something; constructive in intention or attitude; showing optimism and confidence; showing pleasing progress, gain or improvement.”
In philosophy, positive means “dealing only with matters of fact and experience; not speculative or theoretical.” Fact and experiences are positive, and speculation and theory is negative. Why? Because it’s not based on experience. It’s a nice idea, it’s a great theory, but does it really work in practice? Usually not.
So a positive theory of human behavior is one that looks for the good qualities. It’s optimistic; it assumes that people are basically good and want to do the right thing, they just don’t know which set of rules to apply in a particular situation. It’s very confusing; so we get rid of the rules. We use the rules only to measure a person’s integrity after the fact. But to actually determine what to do, we use an entirely different set of criteria, a positive set of criteria based on experience: what diminishes or eliminates suffering?
For example the Buddha, when he created the vinaya—_which are the 227 precepts followed by Buddhist monks—he didn’t just make these things up and say, “Well, this is a great theory, let’s follow these rules.” No. What happened was he observed the behavior of the monks, and anytime someone did something that caused suffering, he would make a rule about it. In other words, the _vinaya is not based on theory or speculation, it’s based on experience: “So-and-so did this, and it caused suffering, so let’s stop doing that.” You see the difference? It’s not just based on theology or philosophy or logic, it’s based on actual experience. That makes all the difference in the world.
So our model of integrity is based on a distinction between normative values—virtues, which are basically negative, speculative and theoretical in nature—and positive values, which are optimistic and are based on experience. And then we make a distinction between different domains. For example, in the social virtue domain we have morality. In the group virtue domain we have ethics, and in the legal virtue domain we have legality.
Now all these virtues are external to the person himself. They’re external sets of rules, and thus they cause confusion about which one to apply in a certain situation. Morality might dictate that we do one thing, ethics another, and legality something completely different. So it’s really confusing. But in the domain of positive values we have the objective domain. The objective domain is based on experience. It’s based on reality and sense perception. And that gives us integrity, which we define as “the state or condition of being whole, complete, unbroken, fully functional, sound etc. and based on compassion: the intention to eliminate suffering without dependence.”
This distinguishes integrity from all other forms of social and behavioral values.
Now let’s look into the definitions of some of these other things—morality, ethics and so on—and see how they differ from our conception of integrity. Let’s start by defining morality. Morality is a noun, “the principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong, or good and bad behavior.” Well, that’s nice; but whose morality? Morality is a relative term. Morality in New York in the 1920s is completely different from morality in a Buddhist monastery. Morality in California in the 1960s is completely different from Chinese morality. So the question is, which morality are we going to follow? Do we follow the morality that is given by religion? Do we follow the morality given by our corporation? You see, it’s a problem. “A particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society; for example, ‘the bourgeois morality’.” Another definition: “the extent to which an action is right or wrong: ‘behind all arguments lies the issue of the morality of the possession of nuclear weapons’.”
So what is right? What is wrong? Who decides? If it doesn’t come down to the individual, then you have an external set of values. And this is always going to reduce productivity, reduce energy, reduce creativity. We’ll see how this works later on in the series, but I want to introduce this now, so that it’s really clear.
Let’s go on. Definition of ethics: noun, “moral principles that govern a person’s or group’s behavior: ‘judeo-christian ethics’; the moral correctness of specified conduct: ‘the ethics of euthanasia’.” So you see how these terms are cross-defined they’re defined in terms of one another. So unless you bring in the idea of a domain, and say that morality applies to the social domain; ethics applies to the organizational domain; you’re going to get confusion.
So morality is a system of right and wrong dictated by a society, whereas ethics is dictated by an organization. That means you can have a social idea of right and wrong, such as, “I never lie,” and then your organization can override that because, well, you work in the marketing department, and marketing is nothing but lies. So if you want to keep your job, you break your morality to keep your ethics. Or let’s put it this way: different organizations may be in competition with one another, so it’s OK, or it’s ethical to benefit my organization while attacking another organization of the same type. That’s group ethics; it’s relative. Just like morality is relative to society, ethics is relative to an organization. That distinguishes morality from ethics, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of which ethics or which morality we’re going to observe.
And now the definition of legality. Legality is a noun, “the quality or state of being in accordance with the law: ‘documentation testifying to the legality of the arms sale’; or obligation imposed by law.’ So then, the question again is, which law? If I’m in France, do I follow French law or American law? The problem is, the law can change in a heartbeat; all it takes is the administrative head or legislature voting to change the law, and that’s it. What was legal yesterday is now illegal today, or vice versa. Tomorrow the whole thing can change again.
So legality, morality and ethics are all external, and they cause confusion because they’re relative and changeable. What’s legal or moral today can change tomorrow. It just depends on the fashion, or the overriding consensus of the society, the rules of the particular organization, or the laws enacted by the government.
Let’s take a look again at the dictionary definition of integrity. Integrity is a noun, “The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness: ‘He is known to be a man of integrity’.” 2—“The state of being whole and undivided: ‘upholding territorial integrity and national sovereignty’.” 3—“The condition of being unified. unimpaired or sound in construction: ‘the structural integrity of the novel’.” And 4—“Internal consistency or lack of corruption [as in electronic data]: ‘integrity checking’.”
So let’s look at our definition of integrity. Our definition of integrity is based on the functional definition, that “Integrity is a state of being leading to reducing or eliminating suffering for self and others.” This is positive; this is functional; this is based on experience. If you have integrity, you’re going to be suffering less than others who don’t have integrity. It’s experiential: you can experience it for yourself. If I tell the truth, and I always tell the truth, and I can be counted on for telling the truth, then I will live a better quality of existence than someone who lies. In our series Being Integrity we define integrity as:
“The objective, measurable state or condition of being whole, complete, unbroken, unimpaired, sound, in perfect condition—born of compassion: the intention to eliminate suffering for self and others without creating dependence.”
We went over this before. So, integrity is an intention. It’s something that comes from the deepest part of our being. It is an impulse to reduce suffering. This is known as compassion. One can have compassion towards himself, or towards others. Either way, integrity is functionally reducing suffering, either for oneself or for others. Other than that, it has no meaning. If it’s simply about following moral principles, then it’s another relative external quality. And this leads to confusion, and it leads to not following integrity.
And finally here are some questions to get you started thinking and contemplating about the issues we go over in this video. Please take some time, sit down and think about them, and look back at your own experience and see how they show up there. And if you’re really brave, you can share your thoughts about these in the comments. Thanks for being with us; Budu Saranai.
Exercise: Discernment
Make sure you understand the definitions of the terms as used in the context of this video. How has confusion among these terms influenced your thinking in the past? Has it affected your behavior?
How does disambiguation of the definitions of integrity, morality, ethics and legality help you to apply them in practice? Can you think of any specific examples in your experience?