Gotama’s treatment of sīla (moral practice) confirms the practical nature of his ethical stance. Ethical behavior is a training that prepares the mind by removing distractions to concentration & insight. It works closely with renunciation (nekkhamma), which is a practice for seeing how we are ruled by our primitive, semi-conscious reactions to pleasant & unpleasant sensations, both physical & mental. This way we can free ourselves from distractions created by sense pleasures & fixed ideas—attempts by evolution to steer our behavior. Sīla is the beginning of learning not to be controlled by these low-level reactions, which prepares us to learn how virtually all of our downstream mental activity, including stories made of thoughts, begins at these semi-conscious sources. In the untrained mind, this flow of mental activity becomes dukkha, stress & suffering. Gotama’s approach varies from both moral absolutes (actions called wrong by an authority) & a completely relative approach (actions judged relative to the situation). Certain actions (killing living beings, e.g.) always distract from concentration, insight, & freedom, because humans naturally regret them, even if we tell ourselves we don’t. Ethical guidelines provide a way of acting that shows us what experience feels like when we see clearly the true nature of our experience. Later we can see which actions are wholesome or unwholesome for ourselves, through wisdom.
dukkha • ethics • evolution • habits • renunciation