Zen and Morality

“The middle way does not mean finding yourself between two pretty women and kissing both of them. That’s not it. Nor is the middle way cowardice, fear, and inertia; it is not tepid and indecisive. Do not misunderstand it: it embraces opposites, it integrates and goes beyond all contradictions, it is beyond every dualism, even beyond every synthesis.” -Taisen Deshimaru

“To make use of your minds to think ‘conceptually’ is to leave the substance and attach yourselves to form.” -Huang Po

Many readers have responded to my description of Zen and meditation as ‘amoral’ with surprise. Some of them even get upset. But let’s take a step back— what are we actually doing when we meditate? We’re quelling conceptual thoughts. All of what we experience and understand from meditation comes from a willingness to suspend judgment. This, of course, includes moral judgment.

Westerners are so steeped in their millennia of Judeo-Christian morality that they have an extremely difficult time understanding the world aside from them. We don’t think of ourselves as a strong religious people but our entire mode of operation in the modern West is based on both classic Christianity and the post-Enlightenment ideals that led to the French Revolution and everything since. These ideas don’t manifest themselves today as ‘God’ or ‘Church’ but instead in more subtle ways, from social justice politics to celebrity worship. Detaching from them is difficult when most of us can’t even see their inner-workings.

Traditional Buddhism has a similar set of moral dictums that often result in its practitioners becoming vegetarian, devoting themselves to humanitarian causes, retreating to the monastic life, etc. Not saying these are bad things. But Zen, being ‘post’-conceptual and indeed amoral, does not inherently involve itself with them.

How much harm do we do ourselves by trying to do good? Quite a bit. The history of Christianity is a history of goodness-at-home and evil-out-there. Saint in the sheets, crusader in the streets. Sometimes the evil even creeps into the home. Zen knows no such dualities, for they only create trouble. When you believe yourself to be good, you create an evil by definition. Liberals believe they are correct and that the right is evil. Conservatives believe they are correct and the left is evil. Look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict— the more ardently and religiously both sides consider themselves ‘on the right side of history’, the more blood they’re willing to shed.

Morals aren’t your friend, despite what you may believe. This realization eventually emerges from consistent meditation. You recognize that the ego, as Freud said, is not the master in its own house. After this understanding comes the recognition that the human is not the master in his own house, either. Universal law and human law usually don’t overlap; that’s why humans create laws and morals.

Zen morality is precisely the amorality that allows us to do what both master Deshimaru and master Nietzsche implored us to do— go beyond good and evil. How can we know what history is— personal or otherwise— if we don’t divorce ourselves from petty individual judgments on the matter? Zooming out even further, how can we truly understand reality if we are stuck in believing that X is ‘good’ and Y is ‘evil’? Is nature moral? The tornado and the tsunami don’t pick the good or bad Christians or Buddhists to wipe out; they just wipe out everything in their path.

Let nature be your teacher. There is no morality in Zen because there is no morality in life. What is verboten today was encouraged yesterday and vice-versa. History knows no objectivity. In meditation we make peace with this. We recognize the lack of objectivity within ourselves. We recognize the inherent amorality of life. And what does this do? It encourages us to act in the best way we can! It encourages us to be confident and to take life into our own hands, to be mindful and disciplined. Unlike many religions, we know there’s no one else doing this for us. The twisted lesson of human history— the less you concern yourself with morality, the more naturally benevolent you behave. Curiouser and curiouser!

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