Ethics, derived from the Greek, tà ēthiká, is defined as a system of moral principles that guides us to act in conformity to the rules of conduct established in our societies. Closely linked to the beliefs and values with which we were reared, behaving ethically requires continuous examination of ourselves, and how our deeds affect other living creatures. This is by no means an easy task. In a hectic and fast-paced society as ours, it demands that each human being commits him or herself to living with compassion. Many of us are looking for what gives meaning to our lives. The idea of God can be so foreign, that one can feel lost in the midst of daily life without a clear path to attain that what gives us peace and purpose—a path out of the darkness and suffering. Behaving ethically is the preamble to such path.Jesus, Muhammad, Socrates, and Buddha, encouraged men and women to transcend the world and its suffering and to discover an absolute value: to make humanity more conscious of itself so that each individual could awaken to full potential. Sidhatta Gotama, who became The Buddha, taught that it was by ethics that humanity would wake up to itself and its responsibilities, realize its full potential, and find release from the darkness. But this can be a lonely path. It takes discipline and commitment.
Despite one’s religious affiliations, the goal should always the same: the quest for enlightenment and betterment of the world. Despite our best efforts, men and women feel strongly about affiliating themselves to a prescribed religious creed. What many fail to realize is that by following other’s path, we remain in darkness and never really find the light of true knowledge. Humans feel the need to have a set of beliefs that will guide their quest. Often it is a church’s fundamentalist teachings that a person uses to blindly assimilate a set of otherwise impossible propositions. However, the Greek word for belief, which our society has adopted as its own, did not have anything to do with this. Belief was defined as commitment. The often misused statement of “I believe so that I can understand” first coined by Anselm of Canterbury, an Italian Benedictine monk of the 11th century, should not mean that we must literally believe in the teachings of a church, but that we commit ourselves to interpret these texts in a way that allow us to transcend ourselves, without imposing our views on others, and aids us in our quest to find what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and therefore bring us closer to divinity.
The old French texts of the legend of the Holy Grail, always have a knight entering the forest at its darkest, and alone. There is no one there to guide him. As Percival, we must enter the forest alone and face our own set of challenges, which in turn reveal at the end of the quest, the Holy Grail, the enlightenment and liberation from pain.
Rabbi Hillel, renowned within Judaism as a sage and scholar, is known as the author of the expression of the ethic of reciprocity, or "Golden Rule": "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.” The Christ, who many modern scholars believe had studied the rabbinic teachings of Hillel and the Torah, also known as the Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch, had a similar teaching when he prescribed “Love thy neighbor as Thyself”. In the last ten years, I have discovered that not only the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have these teachings, but also do other belief systems, such as the Wiccae, whose Rede dictates “Ain Harm None, Do What Ye Will”. This is one more reason I personally believe that the true path to divinity is acting ethically and with compassion, in every deed and every action of our daily lives.
These statements may seem easy enough to follow, but in close examination, both Hillel’s and the Wiccae have given us much to think about. It is much harder to commit oneself to meditate on those acts that cause us distress and unpleasantness and then try with all our soul not to afflict others with the same, than to simply create a delusion of love for one another. By the same token, if taken literally the Wiccan Rede can, on the surface, seem a pretty simple proposition. A deeper understanding of this teaching compels us not only to act ethically and with compassion for one another, but also with ourselves. An apparently simple act becomes much more than it may appear at face value. Taking an example of mundane daily life, throwing a piece of paper on the side of an abandoned road, may seem a petty incident to bring up. But this simple act has many consequences not apparent at first glance, such as the possible endangering of the environment, which in turn creates harmful conditions to others, including plant and animal life, not to mention human life. It is an extreme illustration, but a simple act as this one has much the same ripple effects of a pebble thrown into a pond. We never know the end result of an apparently harmless action. I could go on with many more paradigms on the subject. My point is: “Ethical beliefs are not sufficient as they must manifest in our actions as well”.
The traditions of Wicca and Buddhism teach the Law of Karma. As one of my spiritual teachers points out “Every time we think or do something, we create a cause, which in time will bear its corresponding effects. Through our actions this cyclical cause and effect generates the complex weaving or tapestry of life and relationships. While in Eastern thought, karma refers to our actions themselves, it has come in western usage to also mean the results or consequences of our actions. In its simplest form, past actions influence the present; present actions influence the future. But our understanding of karma is non-linear and complex. The present moment is shaped both by past and by present actions; present actions shape not only the future but also the present." All of us ultimately determine our own fate through our own actions. There is no point in blaming others. We must accept responsibility for our behavior and how it affects others.
All the traditions mentioned herein have developed a system of checks and balances that may seem overwhelming to the lay reader. These set of laws or commandments were established by each tradition for the welfare and security of everyone. Their observance means peace and happiness, not only of the individual undertaking to preserve them in purity, but also to all others with whom he has contact. The Buddhist Precepts are a set of rules, by which a code of moral conduct is given to the initiated in the same fashion that the over 600 laws of the Torah and the Quran’s Ahkam, bring God to the minutia of daily life. The Wiccae also have their own set of rules. Thus, like a ruler for drawing a straight line, these precepts prevent the initiated from sidestepping the right path and urges them on straight to the goal—to achieve a closeness with the divinity that lies inherently inside every human being. The simplest acts of cooking, making love, making donations to charity, feeding a bird, sheltering the homeless, picking up garbage of the floor, helping someone in need or even writing, become permeated with divine presence.
Hitherto, I have written of the laws and views of different traditions. We have seen that the principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, encouraging us to always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to forget our egotism, and to honor the sanctity of every living creature, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.
The Charter for Compassion (http://www.charterforcompassion.org/), established in November 2009, thus tells us that we “urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.” Rest assured.
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