Can sīla with benefit be rendered as “kindness”?

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Sīla is typically translated into English as morality, ethics, or virtue. While none these is wrong, the question arises as to whether any of these properly captures the full scope of sīla. Let’s start this brief analysis by looking at a few instances of how sīla is used in the suttas.

In the standard sequence of the gradual training, e.g. at MN 27, we find the following:

Once they’ve gone forth, they take up the training and livelihood of the mendicants. They give up killing living creatures, renouncing the rod and the sword. They’re scrupulous and kind, living full of sympathy for all living beings. …

They give up divisive speech. They don’t repeat in one place what they heard in another so as to divide people against each other. Instead, they reconcile those who are divided and support those who are united, delighting in harmony, loving harmony, speaking words that promote harmony. …

When they have this entire spectrum of noble sīla, they experience a blameless happiness inside themselves.

What is interesting here is that sīla includes what one might call positive morality, that is, the doing of good actions. It is not just that one lays aside violence, but one lives with “sympathy for all living beings”. In fact, every aspect of Buddhist morality has both a negative and a positive side. One should avoid doing that which is hurtful, but one should also do that which is kind.

At AN 6.44 we have two once-returners, one is who is chaste and one who is “content with his wife”. The one who is chaste is said to be superior in sīla:

If Isidatta had achieved Purāṇa’s level of ethical conduct … [Purāna was chaste, but not Isidatta]

Yet, since they are both ariyas, their sīla is already perfected. What we are seeing here, then, is a broadening of the concept of sīla to include conduct more generally, including the abandoning of certain aspects of sensuality.

This broadening of sīla is more prominent in post-Canonical literature, for instance in the expression indriya-saṁvara-sīla, “the sīla of sense restraint”, the earliest occurrence of which might be in the Milindapañha. In this case the sīla is mental, which means we are seeing the expansion of the idea to include what we might call “character”. Sīla then becomes an indicator of who we are as human beings.

That sīla can refer to character fits with how it is defined in the PTS dictionary:

nature, character, habit, behaviour; usually as --° in adj. function “being of such a nature,” like, having the character of …

If this short analysis gives a reasonable indication of the broader meaning of sīla, we might ask how this can best be captured in English. It seems to me that the usually renderings of sīla, such as morality, ethics, and virtue, tend to emphasise the negative aspect, that is, the things one is not supposed to do. A moral person does not harm others. Likewise, ethics generally concerns social conventions and rules about appropriate behaviour, which normally is about what one should not do. No doubt morality and ethics can be seen as including positive behaviour, but in normal speech they usually connote the avoidance of what is bad.

Virtue is perhaps leaning more towards the positive than either ethics or morality. The problem with the virtue, as I see it, is that it has a certain old-fashioned ring to it. The reader may not be able immediately to relate to this word, which would detract from comprehension and emotional connection.

For these reasons, I am wondering if “kindness” might be a good alternative. While kindness certainly includes the non-doing of harm, it focusses more squarely on doing what is of benefit to others. In addition, kindness is easily extended to the mental realm. A truly kind person is someone who wishes others well, that is, they have a degree of mettā and compassion, which would fit the broadest definitions of sīla, especially when seen as including sense restraint.

I admit this analysis is superficial. I have not done a systematic survey of the way sīla is used in the Canonical texts. Nor have I properly assessed the meanings of the terms morality, ethics, and virtue. Still, it seems to me that kindness captures an aspect of sīla that is not normally expressed through the usual renderings of the word. What have I overlooked?

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More than just leaning! That’s the denotation!

To quote Churchill: “old words are best of all.”

We have a deep well of philosophers in the West who espoused and elaborated on virtue ethics quite similar to Buddhist ethics (see Damien Keown The Nature of Buddhist Ethics). I think Buddhist teachers in the West are leaving this untapped if they avoid our culture’s own, old wisdom: the wisdom we forgot when Descartes thought “I am” and split man from world, the wisdom we forgot when utilitarianism justified the means of modernity… Before all that, we knew about virtue and valued it, and I think people are hungry to be reminded! :folded_hands:

As an American, this is exactly how “kindness” falls to my ears. A smile at the grocery store.

I’ve had coworkers I’d describe as “kind” who had no professional ethics, for example. They would sign off on shoddy work as a “kindness” to their lazy coworker. That may or may not have been “kind” but I wouldn’t describe it as a virtue!

Mettā is just one of the four Brahma-vihāras. Focusing too much on the first leads to burnout, the second, “compassion fatigue,” etc. “Virtue” has the right association with “balance” “wisdom” (another old word!) and “skill” in my book to adequately cover the breadth of sīla. :folded_hands:

I’m reminded of another great book: Luangta Mahabua’s A Life of Inner Quality. To me that sums it up well. Sīla is about character: that “inner quality.”

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Greetings Ajahn,

I was going to respond much along the lines of @Khemarato.bhikkhu but my internet connection dropped out.
I’ve been contemplating Sila a lot recently and agree that it is a broad encompassing thing. Not only that but it is incredibly profound when we are talking about perfected Sila - Otherwordly!

So I also feel that ‘kindness’, while definitely part of it, seriously diminishes the profundity of it.

Yes, Virtue may be an old fashioned word - it’s also an old fashioned concept or goal today where we live - but everybody knows what it is! I’d say it is a very good thing to contribute to keeping it alive and relevant.

While of course Sila has many levels (1-100), at its most profound it’s a Saintly level of virtue. Saintly and virtuous.. both old fashioned words .. But that is the Truth of it.

Virtue also carries with it a reference to refraining from sensual indulgence, so as far as the meaning goes it is pretty spot on - ‘old fashioned’ or popular or not.

Happy Translating! :slightly_smiling_face: :folded_hands:

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As fitting a contender as ‘kindness’ is in theory, I think to most English speakers ‘kindness’ specifically suggests simply behaving ‘kind(ly)’ (sociable, generous, polite) to other people, as noted by venerable Khemarato previously in the thread (though I think of ‘kindness’ as a bit more genuine than a disingenuous smile), which I would say secludes it even further from the broader sense that ‘sīla’ entails than ‘ethics’, ‘morality’ or ‘virtue’ does.

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Actually I’m thinking that kindness is just one behavioural manifestation of virtue.

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Hi Venerable,

As others are lauding the virtues of the old word virtue, I’ll add that it has the virtue of being abstract enough that people often disagree about what is virtuous and what is not! How is that a virtue of the word virtue you may ask? Well, it can lead to introspection and growth through empirical investigation.

The fool that I am, I once thought my temper a virtue! I considered it a powerful part of my personality that could be employed for virtuous causes. Only through extensive introspection and empirical investigation have I come closer to the truth: ain’t nothing virtuous about it.

To be clear, I can’t claim that I truly know my temper is non-virtuous for the simple fact that it still arises and I still sometimes try to justify it. For me, to truly know something is more than just a superficial intellectual understanding. It is a deep knowledge that touches every aspect of the mind including the sub conscious. I’m still working on penetrating fully the truth: capacity for anger is not a virtue in any form.

So what is virtuous and what is not? The fact that the word is a bit abstract naturally encourages investigation for oneself to discover the truth. :folded_hands:

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This is probably a bit of a philosophical tangent and may not be all that helpful - so apologies in advance - but:

I would also say that the problem with virtue is that it has two somewhat distinct fields of meaning, i.e.:

  1. morally good (e.g. honesty is a virtue)
  2. strength or beneficial/ admirable thing (e.g. the virtues of brushing your teeth).

In the West, we tend to be heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian thought and probably assume the first meaning by default. The second is largely overlooked - but is arguably the older and broader meaning and one which may be worth looking at for clues to a better translation of sīla.

The second field of meaning is certainly closer to what the Greek philosophers meant by virtue (arete, ἀρετή) which they defined as excellence of any sort (and which therefore included, but was not limited to, moral good). Arete was closely tied to the idea of the full realisation of potential, purpose (telos) or function. So, for example, a person of arete would be one who fully and effectively embodied prudence (wisdom), justice (fairness), temperance (forbearance) and fortitude (restraint) [the four ideal human traits of classical philosophy outlined by Plato]. In other words, being virtuous meant fulfilling your potential or purpose as a human. As such, arete encompasses both development of the positive and avoidance of the negative.

Interestingly, Zeno of Citium (the founder of the Stoic school) linked this understanding of virtue with living according to natural law/ reality. According to Diogenes Laertius:

Zeno was the first (in his treatise On the Nature of Man) to designate as the goal “life in agreement with nature” (or living agreeably to nature), which is the same as a virtuous life …

The challenge, however, is the same as for sila - what English word other than virtue could be used that would decouple it from the default assumption of ‘virtue as morality’? “Excellence”, “excellence of character”, “goodness”? Good/ness is probably getting close but it is arguably as prone to misunderstanding as virtue (though it does make me see why you thought of ‘kindness’).

Anyway, as I said, probably not helpful, but hopefully food for thought!

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Thank you for this interesting discussion.

In support of @Khemarato.bhikkhu and @Viveka , I’d also offer that “virtue” is a useful word. In English it is positive in both meaning and connotation: a virtuous person is upright and upstanding in terms of moral and ethical behavior by definition, and by connotation is assumed not to be cruel or utterly self-interested. So both sides of the sīla coin are covered. :slightly_smiling_face:

Regarding the word “kindness,” unethical, non-virtuous people can sometimes perform kind actions. But imho that doesn’t make them virtuous in the context of sīla.

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Wow, that’s a resounding cry in favour of virtue. It’s almost loud enough that I don’t dare pursue alternative renderings. Yet, for the sake of a proper exchange of ideas, I do wish to press my case a bit further.

I hear you! I am certainly not going to dismiss your concerns. I suspect the reason I do not see this as clearly as any of you is that English is, in the end, not my mother tongue. I am not going to pretend that I am somehow severely linguistically challenged, yet as a non-native speaker there will always be areas where you do not have a native speaker’s feel for a language. This might be one such case.

This leads to an important point. The number of non-native speakers who are likely to read these translations may well be greater than the number of native speakers. If so, we need to take into account which word will work best for them. Since kindness is a simpler word than virtue, whose meaning is likely to be more widely and properly understood, it may well be more appropriate. Moreover, considering my own experience, I doubt many non-native speakers will take kindness to convey a superficial kind of virtue. Also, the scope of the word virtue may not be clear to many of the same people. (To be clear, this is no more than a guess on my part. It would be great to hear what other non-native speakers think of this.)

A second point I wish to make is the obvious one that words get their meaning from context. The comments here discuss kindness mostly in a stand-alone fashion. In context the exact connotations of kindness will be much more obvious. For instance, we would have expressions such as “perfect in kindness”; “kindness, stillness, and wisdom”; “kindness by body, speech, and mind”. I don’t think any of these could be mistaken as merely indicating a “sociable, generous, polite” kind of kindness. I haven’t looked closely at the various uses of sīla in the suttas, but it seems clear enough that many cases provide sufficient context that we can conclude that something profound is going on.

This reminds me of a discussion I had a few years ago about the proper rendering of samādhi. I argued, following Ajahn Brahm, that stillness would be an appropriate translation. The counterargument was that stillness was too ordinary a word to capture the full depth of samādhi. Perhaps, yet stillness too gets its meaning from context. That it refers to a deep kind of stillness is clear enough when these contexts are taken into account.

There is one final factor to take into account, namely the kind translation one is producing. It is one thing to translate entire suttas, let alone entire Nikāyas. In such cases one should perhaps stick to the best possible fit for a particular term, because in such cases one may wish to get across a broad appreciation of the Dhamma. In other cases, however, especially where one is translating short passages, perhaps as part of a long essay or a monograph, one may wish to emphasise a particular aspect of Pali terminology, either to make a particular point or to show an alternative understanding of a particular term or passage. In such cases I think alternative renderings are acceptable, even, perhaps, rendering sīla as kindness. :slight_smile:

All of this does not mean that I reject the rendering “virtue”/“virtuous” for sīla. But it does mean that I will consider this carefully before I make a final decision.

Thank you so much everyone for your input! If there is anything else that needs to be said, please carry on!

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I don’t think this logic holds. It reminds me of the fellow looking for his keys under the streetlamp simply because that’s where the light is. Just because non native speakers may be more familiar with the word kindness doesn’t mean it is better to use than virtue. If a non-native speaker consults a dictionary I think virtue is going to get them much closer to sīla that kindness.

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Since this seems addressed to me (?), I’ll reply in my defense to say that I highlighted how it sounds in isolation to point out the meaning the word has in isolation. Obviously, readers are smart and can infer a lot from context. Sometimes we may even leave a word untranslated and let the reader entirely learn the meaning from context. But, to quote one of my translation teachers (:face_with_hand_over_mouth:): “the translator’s job is to translate.” The intelligence of the reader is no excuse for choosing the wrong word.

You may have misunderstood my point, so let me try to clarify: I have no problem with using terms that have a difference in degree. To my mind, kindness and sīla is a difference in kind. Sīla isn’t “kindness but more so.” Sīla is “kindness and other qualities as well.”

Sādhu for being open to thinking out loud and in public, Bhante! :folded_hands: And thank you for your careful consideration :blush:

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That was not what I was thinking. I rather thought that “kindness” covers a different scope of meaning than “virtue”, with some overlap, of course.

But more importantly, the ear that listened most attentively to all this was the ear of the translator in me. And this translator started seriously considering to change my translation for sīla to the German counterpart of “virtue”, i.e. “Tugend”. Sorry for that, Bhante! :see_no_evil_monkey: :laughing:

(I haven’t made up my mind fully yet, mostly because of the opposite of virtue. There are many passages that oppose a “virtuous” person to an “unvirtuous” one. While “virtuous” is “tugendhaft”, a word “untugendhaft” doesn’t exist in German, so this opens up new questions … :upside_down_face:)

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Nicht tugendhaft? . . . . .

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Hello again, Ajahn! :folded_hands:

I don’t want to come across as overly critical, because I think ‘kindness’ is a beautiful aspect of Buddhist practice that always deserves being emphasized. But I will just say that, one, I tend to always prefer ‘virtue’ when talking about sīla. One of the reasons is specifically because it gives off an impression of a positive, nice quality to have that comes from integrity. But I do sometimes wonder if it’s the most accurate translation.

Secondly, and lastly, I agree with some other comments that ‘kindness’ doesn’t seem to cover all aspects of sīla. In the original post, a sutta was quoted where someone who was celibate was said to have better sīla than someone not celibate. I think it would be incredibly unnatural to say that they had better “kindness.” This would not be intuitive at all, to my ear. Of course, we could make an argument about what entails kindness, but definitely the word itself does not usually include things like not accepting grains (also included in adhisīla).

With my respects! :folded_hands:

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Sure, “tugendhaft” is “virtuous”. But the counterpart to “unvirtuous” (which you’d imagine to be “untugendhaft”) doesn’t exist as a German word. It’s unknown to the “Duden”.

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I wholeheartedly agree with the “virtue” camp. :slight_smile: I think Bhante Khemarato nailed it perfectly in the first response, and all following responses from others from “virtue camp” translation choice added good points as well.

First of all I want to add my personal story related to “kindness” translation. As a non native speaker, I thought for many, many years that kindness = politeness. Only after discussion with spiritual friends I came to realise that kindness, at least in buddhism means something more like “goodness” or “spiritual love/goodness”. So I think my story can give +1 point to the fact that kindness can be mistaken with politeness for a regular person.

Virtue on the other hand is pretty much perfect word for sila. It has a long philosophical history where it was always related to people who practice some some of asceticism/spirituality or at least goodness. It is more difficult word sure, and it invites inspection, but I think it is a good thing.

Thing is sila main part is about restraint, and virtue encompasses it much more than kindness. I think that true virtue encompasses kindness too. So sila = noble restraint + kindness, which is exactly true virtue in essence.

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Yes, this quality is often considered to be ‘mettā’ - ‘loving-kindness’, ‘good will’, ‘amity’.
Mettā is an aspect of sīla, virtuous conduct.

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I really like “kindness” as a rendering for sīla. To me the word kindness has a very gentle feel to it. Being kind on a superficial level is nice, being kind on a heartfelt, deep level is even better. As we practice the Buddhist path, hopefully we develop deep and sincere feeling of kindness. As a nurse I can see myself sometimes being able to be only superficially kind, but sometimes I’m feeling and sharing deep, heartfelt kindness which for me is one of the most inspiring things we can share with each other. It’s the character we’re developing through kindness, even though sometimes it’s not fully heartfelt because we are tired or for whatever other reason.

Nothing wrong with the word virtue, it just doesn’t have the same gentle feel about it in my heart, in my experience. Of course, a non-native speaker’s perspective here, also completely brainwashed by the Buddhist meaning of kindness.

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Thank you, Venerable, for exploring English translation choices for sīla. Always happy for an excuse to hoist my 25-pound American Heritage Dictionary onto the desk :slightly_smiling_face: .

Using Pabhassaro’s line of thought:

strength or beneficial/ admirable thing (e.g. the virtues of brushing your teeth)…[This] second field of meaning is certainly closer to what the Greek philosophers meant by virtue (arete, ἀρετή) which they defined as excellence of any sort (and which therefore included, but was not limited to, moral good).

The fact that we must derive virtue in English from the Latin virtus (vir = man) presents a conundrum. The Roman ideal of manliness generally appears incongruent with sīla (at least, in my knowledge of Roman thought).

The Greek ideal seems more congruent with how the English language ended up adopting the word – even though its meaning was ultimately relegated to being moral, that is, not unethically moored.

Perhaps this is what Ms. Horner had in mind:

He, possessed of the ariyan body of moral habit, subjectively experiences the bliss of blamelessness.

As a native English language speaker, I prefer ethical habit to moral habit. I don’t relate to virtuous habit except as an amateur linguist who studies words.

Yep!

In sum, I’m not certain there’s any one English language equivalent for sīla and would depend on context, as you said.

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The four “cardinal virtues” of the Romans were fortitudo – prudentia – temperantia – iustitia (“fortitude”, “prudence”, “temperance”, and “justice”). So it had something to do with sīla, but doesn’t cover quite the same scope of meaning.

But meanings change over time, and that started already in Roman times. Under Cicero, the meaning of virtus in Roman philosophy developed to “character performance” in general. (See Pons Latin-German dictionary.)

In any case I wouldn’t take etymology as the sole criterion for translation.

(BTW the German “Tugend” has a totally different derivation. It has developed from the meaning of “suitable, fit”.)

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