Before the modern era, it was more or less universally recognized that spirituality and morality go hand in hand. The two were tied together through the religions that provided the basis for both. Morality was an inherent part of spiritual practice, and the ultimate rational justification for acting in a moral way was to point to the spiritual benefits that such actions bring, both in this life and beyond it.
But then modern culture decided that much of traditional spiritual morality is “oppressive,” “superstitious,” and “irrational.” People wanted to extract certain moral values from their previous religious and spiritual context while leaving the rest of that context behind. The only way that this project wouldn’t be a case of trying to have your cake and eat it, too, would be if a new, secular, and supposedly more “rational” basis for morality could be found.
For centuries, therefore, various thoughtful people have been bending over backwards trying to come up with a mundane, materialistic foundation for morality. Broadly speaking, this attempt has taken two forms.
One of them, exemplified by the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume, says that the only necessary basis for morality is human sentiment – what Hume calls “sympathy” of one person toward another.[1] “All you need is love,” in other words. But what if my sentiments differ from yours, as is so often the case in life? Why should I act in a loving way toward you if I don’t feel love for you here and now? Sentimentalism fails to provide any rationally binding grounds for being moral.
The second version of the attempt to found morality on something other than spirituality and religion is exemplified by one of Hume’s contemporaries, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant tried to construct a foundation for morality out of nothing but rationality. Unlike feelings, Kant said, the judgments of reason are supposed to be universally and categorically valid. Therefore, the only thing we need to do to determine whether a proposed action is morally correct or not is to ask: would we want everyone to act this way all the time? If so, the action must be moral, and if not, it must be immoral.[2] But wait! If Kant’s supposedly cold rationalism is based on what someone does or doesn’t want, then it, too, is really based on sentiment. Rationalism is irrational – and disingenuous. It’s just sentimentalism with more steps involved.
The insurmountable problem that all attempts to invent a secular basis for morality run into sooner or later is that morality simply doesn’t make rational sense in the modern secular worldview. If we’re nothing more than material bodies and the brain-bound egos that run them, living in a universe defined by “randomness” and the absence of any intrinsic meaning in anything, then morality must somehow be founded on the ego and its whimsical cravings, as Hume, Kant, and their countless followers down through the centuries have tried to do.
Yet morality is all about overcoming the ego. In order for it to be rational to act morally, morality has to be founded on something that transcends the ego. So if there isn’t truly anything in us that transcends the ego, then there’s no viable basis for morality. Trying to base morality on the ego is like trying to clean your house with mud. In the end, if you see yourself as living in a materialistic, nihilistic universe, it’s not rational to live in anything other than a materialistic, nihilistic way. It’s no coincidence that the word “materialism” can mean both a worldview in which only matter truly exists and a lifestyle of hedonistic acquisitiveness; the two go hand in hand.
Hume grasps much of this at least implicitly when he speaks of an “is-ought gap:” the idea that “is” and “ought” are so categorically separate that nothing that “is” can tell us anything about what anyone “ought” to do, and vice versa.[3] Such a gap is demanded by Hume’s unspiritual worldview. Kant, too, says much the same thing for much the same reason: that nature can be properly understood by treating it as an amoral, inanimate machine, and so moral questions and questions about nature can’t rationally have anything to do with each other.[4]
The Spiritual Solution
Religions universally disagree with such views. First of all, they point out that the only way for it to be rational to act morally is if that morality comes from divinely-revealed truth that transcends the ego’s whims, and if it provides a way of successfully living in accordance with that ultimate truth. As one of the Hindu rulers of the Varanasi region of India once said, “There is no right superior to that of truth,”[5] and as the book of First Corinthians in the Christian Bible puts it, “Love… rejoices in the truth.”[6]
And secondly, religions all share what is, at bottom, the same view of what that truth is – just as we would expect if the core of each religion has, in fact, been revealed by the same divine source: hidden underneath the ego is the divine, which is within all things yet also transcends them all. In the divine, all things are one. The absolute truth at the heart of all religions can be realized for oneself through spiritual enlightenment (or “union with God,” etc.), the death of the ego and the reunification of the self with its divine source and goal, which is also a reunification with all things through that divinity that encompasses them all. Achieving that realization is the inherent meaning of life. (Those linked articles all provide robust scholarly overviews of how all religions do in fact teach all of these things, and Why All Religions Are True also provides a systematic philosophical defense of these teachings.)
Morality, in such a view, is an indispensable part of how we fulfill the meaning of our lives and draw closer to that ultimate bliss. By acting as if we were all one, and as if the divine were all that truly exists, we can slowly come to understand, not just intellectually but through firsthand experience, that we are in fact all one, and that the divine is all that truly exists. What we ought to do follows perfectly naturally and rationally from what is the case: if there is an inherent meaning of life, then the only logical thing to do is to act in accordance with it, especially if the meaning of life is to achieve oneness with That which is simultaneously the deepest reality (“is”) and the highest good (“ought”).
Because of this, the spiritual approach to morality that religions teach is anything but “irrational,” “superstitious,” or “oppressive.” Indeed, only a traditional spiritual approach to morality is rational and liberating. Only then can morality help to guide us to supreme fulfillment in life, rather than just being a disposable tool of the ego. What scholar of Buddhism John Powers says of Buddhism ultimately applies to all religions, and to spirituality more generally:
Sin, in Buddhism, is a second-order problem, an outgrowth of ignorance. We only commit evil deeds because we fail to recognize that they inevitably rebound on us and cause suffering. More importantly, we think that selfish actions will result in personal happiness, but the only true satisfaction comes from the attainment of awakening [i.e. enlightenment].[7]
Thus, the classic second-century Buddhist text The Awakening of Faith by Ashvaghosha characterizes the moral practices of spiritual masters as simple, rationally straightforward applications of the perspective one gains through enlightenment:
Knowing that the essential nature of Reality is free of covetousness, they, in conformity to it, devote themselves to the perfection of charity…. Knowing that the essential nature of Reality is without suffering and free of anger and anxiety, they, in conformity to it, devote themselves to the perfection of forbearance. Knowing that the essential nature of Reality… is free of indolence, they, in conformity to it, devote themselves to the perfection of zeal…. Knowing that the essential nature of Reality is always characterized by gnosis and is free from ignorance, they, in conformity to it, devote themselves to the perfection of wisdom.[8]
From the other side of the world, Black Elk, a medicine man of the Lakota Sioux people of the Great Plains of North America, articulates in his own people’s terms the same point about how morality is a rational consequence of the spiritual nature of reality, an ought that follows ineluctably from what is:
We should understand well that all things are the works of the Great Spirit. We should know that He is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and all the fourlegged animals, and the winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that He is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as He intends.[9]
Much of Black Elk’s quote could be summarized as: treat others in a manner worthy of the divinity within them. The Taittiriya Upanishad, a sacred text in Hinduism, says the same thing and likewise holds the purpose of morality to be spiritual realization:
See the divine in your mother, father,
Teacher, and guest. Never do what is wrong….
If you are in doubt about right conduct,
Follow the example of the sages,
Who know what is best for spiritual growth.[10]
Or in the words of the early Christian master Clement of Alexandria, “When you see your brother or sister, you see God.”[11] The fourteenth-century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart adds that the purpose of acting in accordance with such a view is that “the soul is purified in the exercise of virtues, whereby she ascends into the life of unity.”[12]
Now let’s consider a few examples of how specific moral virtues make a lot more rational sense in light of this spiritual vision of the nature and purpose of morality than they do from a secular perspective.
Compassion
Modern secularism has its own unique name for compassion: “altruism.” The word “altruism” may seem like a harmless and rather straightforward synonym for “compassion” (or “charity,” or any of the other traditional names for this virtue) but a closer inspection shows that it’s a subtle but powerful expression of a worldview in which there’s no rational place for compassion.
Religions have always acknowledged how prone humans are to act in an egoistic way, but they’ve held that this tendency is a corruption of our original nature. Islam, for example, has a single word, al-fitrah, that means both humanity’s “original disposition”[13] and the special “trust” that humanity has been given to be active, deliberate servants of God in his creation.[14]
From Machiavelli in the sixteenth century onward, however, the modern world has turned this view on its head: human nature is at bottom egoistic, so acts of service or compassion are acts that ultimately run against our most basic nature. Life is essentially a zero-sum game between individuals, the “survival of the fittest.”
This profound reorientation has two consequences. First, it means that compassion consists of masochistically acting on behalf of others as opposed to oneself. This is what “altruism” is. The word “altruism” was coined by the followers of the nineteenth-century philosopher Auguste Comte, who created a secular “Religion of Humanity” whose ethics was summed up in the slogan “Vivre pour autrui,” French for “Live for others.” “Altruism” therefore literally means “other-ism.” Like Hume before him, Comte held that the only necessary basis for such “altruism” is the sentimental “sympathy” that people feel for each other.[15]
However – and this is the second consequence of the shift from a spiritual view of human nature to a materialistic one – such a perspective has no means of accounting for why people do feel such “sympathy” for others in the first place, nor for why they should be so irrational and masochistic as to act for others’ benefit rather than their own.
Whereas the concept of “altruism” assumes a fundamental separation between self and other, the spiritual virtue of compassion is based on the fundamental unity of self and other. If the divine is all that ultimately exists, then you and I are really one and the same. Compassion, in this view, is at bottom simply the acknowledgement of the way things really are, and thus effortlessly rational. Sentiment for others’ well-being may be present, of course, but it isn’t strictly necessary; all that’s required to act with compassion is devotion to the truth. As the Tao Te Ching, the central sacred text of Taoism, says of a spiritual master:
He cares about nothing but the Tao [the divine].
Thus he can care for all things.[16]
Or as Jesus teaches in the Gospel of Saint Matthew:
Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”[17]
Here, “selfishness” and “selflessness,” properly understood, are the same thing. There’s no notion of my good as opposed to your good – there’s only the Good. Thus, Meister Eckhart can say, “If you love yourself, you love all men as yourself. As long as you love a single man less than yourself, you have never truly learned to love yourself.”[18]
Compassion thereby also helps us to exercise another virtue that powerfully points toward enlightenment: equanimity or detachment, the state of remaining the same internally when your ego gets what it wants and when it doesn’t get what it wants. Eckhart writes, “You must love all men equally, respect and regard them equally, and whatever happens to another, whether good or bad, must be the same as if it happened to you,” because “we must take Him equally in all things, in one not more than in another, for He is alike in all things.”[19] Through practicing compassion, we can realize for ourselves the truth of Eckhart’s assertion that “He is alike in all things.”
Peace
The modern secular world’s attempt to found morality on the ego renders the attempt to make peace with others just as irrational as it renders acts of compassion. The ego and its cravings are the very source of all strife and conflict between people, as a text from the Buddhist Pali canon describes:
Again, with sensual pleasures as the cause… kings quarrel with kings, nobles with nobles, brahmins with brahmins, householders with householders; mother quarrels with child, child with mother, father with child, child with father; brother quarrels with brother, brother with sister, sister with brother, friend with friend. And here in their quarrels, brawls, and disputes they attack each other with fists, clods, sticks, or knives, whereby they incur death or deadly suffering.[20]
The more inner, spiritual peace one has, the more one can foster outward peace between oneself and others, too, and the more one fosters outward peace, the more inner peace one finds. Peace and the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment go hand in hand, just like conflict and the pursuit of egoistic cravings do. To quote Black Elk again,
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its Powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka [the Great Spirit], and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real Peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.[21]
If there’s nothing in us deeper than our egos, then the rational course of action is to ignore morality and kick up as much strife and war as necessary to get what we want or think we want. But if our real nature is spiritual and transcends the ego and its tumult, then the rational course of action is to instead seek to quiet that tumult and its outward manifestations.
Humility
If we’re only material bodies with egos, what rational basis is there for humility? The ego is anything but humble. It operates as if it were the only thing with any inherent value in the world; everything else is only conditionally valuable, and that condition is how pleasing is it to the ego. The ego treats itself as the sole measure of all things.
But if, instead, the divine is all that truly exists, with the ego being a superficial illusion in which we’re provisionally trapped, then our everyday selves are nothing in the face of the divine. Humility is a rational, straightforward acknowledgement of what we truly are and are not. In the words of the anonymous medieval Christian mystical treatise The Cloud of Unknowing, “A man is humble when he stands in the truth with a knowledge and appreciation for himself as he really is.”[22]
This spiritual attitude and awareness are exemplified by the prophet Abraham in the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible (or the “Old Testament,” if you prefer), in which he prays: “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.”[23] Black Elk uses the very same image to make the same point when describing the meaning of one of his people’s traditional rituals: “we are humiliating ourselves before the Great Spirit, for we know that we are as dust before Him, who is everything, and who is all powerful.”[24] Elsewhere, he says of another rite: “As the men sing this, and as the hot steam rises, the ‘lamenter’ cries, for he is humbling himself, remembering his nothingness in the presence of the Great Spirit.”[25] If the Great Spirit is everything – and also above everything, as per the first quote from Black Elk in this article – then we are nothing, and humility is the only rational response to that reality.
Humility is thus part of the means by which we can draw closer to spiritual enlightenment. Carried to its logical conclusion, it entails nothing less than the full dissolution of the ego, as the Sufi (Islamic mystic) poet Attar says: “Not until you learn humility in your annihilation can you attain baqa, everlasting life.”[26]
What True “Freedom” or “Liberation” Is
The dominant reason that modern secular people give for turning their backs on the spiritual morality provided by traditional religions is that, even though they can get on board with a lot of the stuff about compassion and the like (despite being unable to give any convincing reasons why), they find much of the rest “oppressive” and “arbitrary.” They instead want “freedom” and “liberation.” And sure, we all seek liberation from oppression, certainly for ourselves and ideally for others as well. The question, however, is what is meant by these terms.
In the majority of cases – not all cases, but the majority – people who consider traditional morality to be “oppressive” and “arbitrary” (as opposed to “merely” arduous and severe, which it undeniably is at times) call it such because it places constraints on our ability to seek out the worldly pleasures that our egos crave. This is often dressed up in all kinds of lofty-sounding, pseudo-moral rhetoric, but this is the all-too-frequent bottom line regardless.
But placing constraints on our egos is neither arbitrary nor oppressive. It’s something that all of the virtues we’ve considered so far do in their own ways, and, of course, many more could be cited to the same effect. This is even the case for those areas of religious morality that its detractors most commonly point to – sexual morality, for example.
While different religions of course differ on the specifics of sexual morality – just as they differ on the specifics of other moral virtues – all traditional religions that I’ve ever studied, large and small, from all around the world, recommend limiting indulgence in one’s sexual appetites to certain fairly narrow contexts in which the sexual act is infused with spiritual meaning. Most if not all religions seem to affirm sex primarily or exclusively within the “container” of marriage in that religion, and instances of approved sex between unmarried partners tend to be very specific and very limited. (Of course, historical cultural practices are all over the board here, but religious teachings and cultural practices are two categorically different things.)
Is this spiritual treatment of sex “oppressive” or “arbitrary?” Our genitals might think so at times, but the divine presence within us knows better. And there’s good reason for our conscious beliefs to catch up with that spiritual presence: a skeptical view of hedonistic indulgence of all kinds, whether sexual or otherwise, follows just as rationally from everything that we’ve said so far as compassion, peace, and humility do.
Most of the time, when people use words like “freedom” or “liberation,” what they’re really referring to is the freedom of the ego. But the ego is precisely what is truly oppressive and arbitrary, and true liberation consists not of the liberation of the ego, but of liberation from the ego. Indeed, the Hindu term for spiritual enlightenment is moksha, which is Sanskrit for “liberation.”[27] As one of Hinduism’s scriptures, the Chandogya Upanishad, says, using an uppercase “S” to carefully distinguish the divine Self (Sanskrit Atman) within all things from the mundane, individual ego, “One who meditates upon the Self and realizes the Self sees the Self everywhere, and rejoices in the Self. Such a one lives in freedom and is at home wherever he goes. But those who pursue the finite are blind to the Self and live in bondage.”[28]
Buddhist texts, too, frequently frame the pursuit of enlightenment in terms of liberation from the ultimate oppression. Here are two more excerpts from the Pali canon:
That bond, the wise say, is not strong
Made of iron, wood, or rope;
But infatuation with jewelry and earrings,
Anxious concern for wives and children –
This, the wise say, is the strong bond,
Degrading, supple, hard to escape.[29]
Clinging to sense pleasures, to sensual ties,
Seeing in fetters nothing to be blamed,
Never will those tied down by fetters
Cross the flood so wide and great.[30]
Furthermore, once we’ve judged spiritual morality by the ego’s standards, even in one single instance, the entire edifice of morality falls with that one alleged exception. If the ego, and not the divine, gets to judge what’s right and wrong, then what’s to stop, say, a business tycoon from exploiting his workers and the environment, or one people from committing genocide against another? Either the ego’s cravings are legitimate, or they aren’t. Either the ego gets to decide what’s moral, or the divine does. We can’t have it both ways. If we want to stop the abusive executive or the genocidal government, we have to accept the limitations that fall on our own appetites, too.
Some might protest that no one is “harmed” when, say, any adults consent to sleep together, so spirituality and religions shouldn’t pronounce on the matter. But this assumes a materialistic, egoistic definition of “harm.” Unspiritual sex – and unspiritual indulgence more generally – harms one spiritually, which is the gravest harm there is, in addition to the various other ways in which it might cause harm in some specific instance. Since, as Hinduism so aptly puts it, the divine is the ultimate Self of all things, to act immorally (by spiritual standards) is to act against who we really are at bottom, however superficially gratifying it may be. It subtly but surely erodes us, and drags us further away from what’s really important in life.
Similarly, in the same context, some might invoke the familiar slogan that “Love is love.” But the English word “love” is so broad that it can mean all kinds of different, even opposing, things depending on the context. For example, there’s “love” in the sense of, “I visited my friend in the hospital because I love her,” and there’s “love” in the sense of, “I love ice cream.” The first refers to compassion, whereas the second refers to mere craving. The first comes from and points back to the divine, whereas the second comes from and points back to the ego. “Love” in the first sense is emphatically not “love” in the second sense. The same principle applies to many other uses of the wildly multivalent word “love.” When a conflict arises between what our egos make us think we love and what the Self within us really loves, we do well to follow the advice of another famous Sufi poet, Rumi: “Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.”[31]
It all comes down to a question of what’s true and what isn’t. If the divine is real, and if spiritual enlightenment is possible, then it’s rational to follow a traditional, spiritual standard of morality as closely as one realistically can, and irrational not to do so. As the Buddhist Angulimaliyasutra says,
Furthermore, Manjusri, someone who knows there to be butter in milk will diligently churn it, but because it has no butter will not churn water; likewise, Manjusri, because sentient beings know [themselves] to have the [Buddha-nature], they keep observation of the precepts and practice celibacy. And furthermore, Manjusri, someone who knows there to be gold in a mountain will dig to find gold, but because it has no gold will not dig into a tree; likewise, Manjusri, because sentient beings know [themselves] to have the [Buddha-nature], they keep observation of the precepts and practice celibacy, declaring: “I shall certainly attain awakening!”
Further still, Manjusri, if there were no [Buddha-nature], then practicing celibacy would be futile, just as one who churns water for an entire aeon will never obtain butter.[32]
To continue the metaphor of milk and water, could it be that modern society is so insistent that the world consists of water rather than milk because it can’t stand the thought of having to churn it?
References:
[1] MacIntyre, Alasdair. 2007. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. University of Notre Dame Press. p. 48-49.
[2] Ibid. p. 45.
[3] Ibid. p. 56.
[4] Ibid. p. 82.
[5] Schuon, Frithjof. 2006. Sufism: Veil and Quintessence. World Wisdom. p. xvi.
[6] Coogan, Michael D., et al (eds.). 2018. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 1656.
[7] Powers, John. 2007. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. Snow Lion Publications. p. 48.
[8] Ashvaghosha. 2006. The Awakening of Faith. Transl. Yoshito S. Hakeda. Columbia University Press. p. 83-84.
[9] Brown, Joseph Epes. 1989. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. University of Oklahoma Press. p. xx.
[10] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “Taittiriya Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 251.
[11] Ware, Timothy. 1964. The Orthodox Church. Penguin Books. p. 215.
[12] Walshe, Maurice O’C. (transl.) 2009. The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart. The Crossroad Publishing Company. p. 405.
[13] Chittick, William C. 1994. Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity. State University of New York Press, Albany. p. 51-52.
[14] Murata, Sachiko, and William C. Chittick. 1994. The Vision of Islam. Paragon House. p. 134-138.
[15] Davies, Tony. 1997. Humanism. Routledge. p. 28-29.
[16] Lao Tzu. 1988. Tao Te Ching. Transl. Stephen Mitchell. HarperCollins. p. 64.
[17] Coogan, Michael D., et al (eds.). 2018. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 1423.
[18] Walshe, Maurice O’C. (transl.) 2009. The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart. The Crossroad Publishing Company. p. 296.
[19] Ibid. p. 105-106.
[20] Bhikkhu Nanamoli & Bhikkhu Bodhi (transl.). 1995. The Middle-Length Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya. Buddhist Publication Society. p. 181.
[21] Brown, Joseph Epes. 1989. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 115.
[22] Johnston, William (transl.). 2014. The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counseling. Image Books. p. 56.
[23] Coogan, Michael D., et al (eds.). 2018. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 36.
[24] Brown, Joseph Epes. 1989. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 26.
[25] Ibid. p. 54.
[26] Attar. 2018. The Conference of the Birds. Transl. Sholeh Wolpé. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 336.
[27] Rodrigues, Hillary P. 2017. Introducing Hinduism. Routledge. p. 65.
[28] Easwaran, Eknath (transl.). 2007. “Chandogya Upanishad.” In The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press. p. 140.
[29] Bodhi, Bhikkhu (transl.). 2000. The Samyutta Nikaya. Wisdom Publications. p. 172.
[30] Ireland, John (transl.). 2017. The Udana and the Itivuttaka. Buddhist Publication Society. p. 86.
[31] Barks, Coleman (transl.). 1997. The Essential Rumi. Castle Books. p. 51.
[32] Jones, C.V. 2021. The Buddhist Self: On Tathagatagarbha and Atman. University of Hawai’i Press. p. 83-84.