Buddhists are foremost amongst those who think that meditation is something that always matters in human life. Things that always matter means that which perfumes everything we do or say, but are not articles of faith. This is the singular, truly valuable insight that Buddhism has to offer to what we must hope is an emerging world-wide village. Beyond this, Buddhist influences have little to add to those things we already know always matter in human life. As more and more people try meditation, the wisdom of deliberately uniting our spirit and our actual life is gently finding purchase.
Everybody must have a moral code. Everybody must behave well. Everybody must meditate. These are the things that always matter, according to Buddhist thought. This is not intended to convey an “or else” or a zero-tolerance ultimatum; rather, it's more like “best advice”, all things considered, about how to live a good life. Religion, of course, has been the storehouse and arbiter of things that always matter; but our ancestral religions are shedding adherents at a great rate today. Due no doubt to the erosion of faith, a spiritual vacuum has appeared in society, and as Aristotle has said, “Nature abhors a vacuum”.
Good conduct is about conviviality; it is the appropriate balance between self-interest and collective interest. It is how we live together. It is almost synonymous with culture. This is the realm of karma; our behaviours of thought, word and deed. For Buddhists the most basic definition of good conduct is the Eight-fold path, right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration. Bear in mind, though, that the English word 'right' needs to be understood as a convivial concept rather than a reflection of absolute truth.
There is a Buddhist moral code, expressed succinctly as “kindness is more important than rightness”. For those many of us who are born to a culture which valorizes 'rightness' above kindness or compassion, even after intellectually recognizing the elegance of the Buddhist moral shift, we often still try to apply habitual filters. Sometimes people even compare and compete in eagerness to get kindness 'right'. It's very easy for us to interpret this idea as meaning that kindness is better than or superior to rightness. The verbal phrase 'more important' in a Buddhist context refers to the alleviation of suffering, which is the basic religious question at issue in Buddhism.
Rightness, the striving to do right and be right, also serves to alleviate human suffering. Thus it is an important spiritual goal of Buddhism: but kindness, inclusion and compassion merit extra fidelity as the focus of how to perfect ourselves and live a good life. To avoid falling into an extreme of comparison, the Buddhist moral creed stresses wisdom and context rather than value.
Meditation is something that always matters because in meditation our conduct is immaculate. We are almost perfectly harmless when we sit or walk in meditation. The internal effort is to be open, receptive, non-judgemental and without opinions. Kindness makes us open and receptive and the resultant 'softened' body can not harbour harmful impulses. This is how meditation unites dualities such as body and mind. As a practice it embodies the preference for kindness. The immaculate, almost zero-karma experience in meditation is a universal refuge regardless of life conditions or beliefs.
Wayne Codling is a former Zen monastic and a lineage holder in the Soto Zen tradition. He teaches Zen style meditation in various venues around Victoria.Wayne’s talks and some writings can be found on his blog http://sotozenvictoria.wordpress.com
You can read more articles from our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking, HERE
* This article was published in the print edition of the Times Colonist on Saturday, January 2 2016
