David Chapman is an old friend and a very insightful man. (Back in the day, he was an AI pioneer at MIT, but I guess we can’t talk about that anymore). Of course, he’s using the fact that Buddhism has no ethics, as part of a larger argument that probably won’t appeal to any who is not already a Tantrika. His thing was that (his form of) Tantric Buddhism is the best form of Buddhism for the modern world.
I remember when he first posted these arguments and they felt very fresh and challenging at the time. He is a good writer and a great polemicist.
Chapman was one of the first people outside of academia to read and absorb the message of David McMahan’s The Making of Buddhist Modernism. He was arguing against Buddhist Modernism, but also arguing for a particular kind of reform movement within Tibetan Tantric Buddhist tradition.
Not long after this, however, Chapman stopped writing about Buddhism and began to focus on a developmental theory proposed by Robert Kegan. All his work and his following began to discuss “getting from stage 4 to stage 5”. I still don’t get it.
Chapman is essentially right about the facts. There has long been a philosophical distinction between morals which are rules for behaviour and ethics which are principles for making moral rules. I think the way that Damien Keown actually put it was that there are no ethical treatises in Buddhism. (I no longer have a copy to hand, so I’m quoting from memory).
The implication of this is that there is no discussion of the principles on which we might formulate new rules. For example, suppose we decided that the “five precepts” needed to be expanded. There is no traditional text that we could consult which could guide us in formulating a sixth precept. And indeed the five precepts of Buddhism—a religion that preaches “everything changes”—have not changed for millennia.
Chapman was too quick to dismiss karma, but he was on the right track with that too. Karma can’t really help us design moral rules because the effects of karma are not visible to us (on the whole). Moreover, again quoting from memory, there are texts that say: don’t even try to think about how karma works, you’ll go mad. Early Buddhist texts don’t propose karma as an ethical principle.
The closest we get is the Buddha talking to the Kālāmas, a text that I think has been widely and wildly misinterpreted as a restatement of Liberal/Protestant values, notably individualism. I forget who called the Kālāma Sutta “a charter for freewill” but it’s clearly nothing of the kind in Pāli.
The prohibitions the Buddha states for the Kālāma lack a verb in Pāli.
mā anussavena, mā paramparāya, mā itikirāya, mā piṭakasampadānena, mā takkahetu, mā nayahetu, mā ākāraparivitakkena, mā diṭṭhinijjhānakkhantiyā, mā bhabbarūpatāya, mā samaṇo no garūti. (AN I 189)
What we expect, and what is absent, is a verb in the 2nd person aorist. So mā anussavena means “don’t [do something] with hearsay”. But don’t do what? The verb is missing so we don’t know. There is no basis for morality here. Worse, translators always supply a verb that fits their preconceptions and this is the gap into which Liberal/Protestant values are inserted.
Later, in the Kālāma Sutta, the Buddha recommends a way of thinking about morality:
Yadā tumhe, kālāmā, attanāva jāneyyātha – ‘ime dhammā akusalā, ime dhammā sāvajjā, ime dhammā viññugarahitā, ime dhammā samattā samādinnā ahitāya dukkhāya saṃvattantī’ti, atha tumhe, kālāmā, pajaheyyātha.
When you know for yourselves – ‘these things are unskilful, these things are offensive, these things are criticised by the intelligent, these things undertaken and accomplished result in harm and misery’ – then you should abandon them.
Arguably one knows for oneself because of the way people respond to each other’s behaviour. Here we see hints of virtue ethics, consequentialist ethics, and particularist ethics; but in the end no clear ethical principles. The morality here seems to be: try to get along with other people.
But note that “unskilful” and “results in harm” are not two different things in Buddhism. The latter is the definition of the former.
The closest we get in Buddhism to a moral principle that might be used to guide forming rules is the idea of avoiding causing harm (ahiṃsa). But such principles are explicitly applied to ourselves, not to others.
The precepts are phrased in the first person: samādiyāmi “I undertake…”. They are not rules that we can expect anyone else to follow. At best we can remind people of their undertaking if they have made one. Is this really morality?
A major problem for Buddhist ethics, is that morality is actually secondary in Buddhist soteriology. One does need to be good enough to be reborn as a human with access to Buddhist teaching, but if one is too good, then one is born in a devaloka and liberation from rebirth is delayed by thousands of human lifetimes. Paradoxically, being perfectly good is not conducive to liberation because one would never be reborn as a human.
Having attained a human birth there is no great emphasis on morality in Pāli. Liberation comes from samādhi and paññā, and in this context sīla is largely concerned with supporting samādhi.
Sīla—in the sense of “restraint, guarding the gates, etc”—is aimed at reducing the impact of sensory deprivation in meditation. The initial effects of withdrawing attention from sensory experience (i.e. abandoning dhammas) are identical to those documented with sensory deprivation. Sīla effective asks us to reduce the amount of sensory stimulation we experience. This is why some Indians recommend avoiding spicy food also. According to this view, the Buddhist should be asking “What’s the blandest thing on the menu?”
you mentioned this tangent Jayarava so I must share this from his website:
You might disagree with my points, but all of these issues can be tackled with Buddhist principles from a utilitarian ethical perspective that is conducive to enlightenment and achievement of cessation of kamma.