Theos-Talk Archives (November 1994 Message tl00053)

Aki,


A> I think that if you are " an enlightened one" you have gone
beyond duality of doer-action, you-world, mind-world, I-the
others.  Our consciousness is the dwelling place of our "I", this
"I" reflects our thoughts and perceptions of the world, our self,
etc.  But all this is limited to our "I" and time.  If you go
beyond this setting you are no longer attached to your ego, world
and time.  Then you naturally no longer have any motives to your
illusory play in this world.  You may still have motives and
such, but you don't think that it is "You" who have these things.

A> I think this is a question of your overall motive.  What is
your goal in your life? If you want to have good Karma or get out
of Samsara, in general - what you want?

My guess is that we are pretty much on the same track, but our
mutual understanding concerning "enlightenment" and "motive"
seems to be unclear.  I would consider the Masters "enlightened",
yet they have clear personalities, feelings and "motives." Even a
Nirmanakaya (which is not embodied on this planet) is said to
still have human attributes.  The Masters are supposed to be
motivated by a desire for the spiritual advancement of all
humanity.

JHE> In the Mahatma Letters to Sinnett, K.H.  writes that we >
return good with good and evil with justice.

A> Maybe we should do like that.  The problem is; how we can
judge what is good and what is evil? I think that is more secure
to always respond with goodness and compassion.  Is it so bid
deal, if we accidentally respond evil with goodness? But if we
make a mistake in applying our "justice" we may do a lot of
damage.

Perhaps so.  Yet learning to judge what is "good" and what is
"evil" and how to apply "justice" comes through study and
practice.  In practice, mistakes are made, and karma created--but
it is through the making of mistakes and the creation of karma
that we learn and grow.  In the eighth century, the Buddhists of
Northern India returned good for evil by refusing to fight the
Moslems who invaded their homeland.  The Buddhists were
exterminated.

Liesel,

LD> [From A Govinda] "As already remarked, the equation of
religion with morality was the most fateful of humanity's
mistakes, and judgements such as 'good' and 'bad' have nothing to
do with religion as such.  And so the ethic of Buddhism has no
injunctions beginning 'you must' or 'thou shalt'.  Each person is
regarded as an individual according to the degree of maturity in
his insight and spiritual development, and treated as fully
responsible accordingly." ....

Great quote.  The equation of religion with morality is a real
entrenched idea.  How many time have I heard one person refer to
another as "a good Christian." Since when should Christianity, or
any other religion for that matter, necessarily have anything to
do with goodness?

LD> ...It's the Masters' statement that "for us motive is
everything".  It's a very nice quote if you've done something
that perhaps turned out cockeyed and you need to assuage your
guilt.  You've done it out of a motive you can accept, therefore
you can accept your error.  It's ignorance, not sin.  And it
helps you not get stuck, but move on to the next thing.

LD> But now, suppose you're at the receiving end of this
ignorance.  You're suffering because of the mistake.  I was going
to take the Spanish Inquisition as an example.  The motive was to
save souls, but you saved them even if you had to maim & kill the
body.  To us, that's rather unacceptable, but weren't these
clerics ascetics anyway?

I almost forgot about that one.  That's another great example to
bring up when discussing karma.  Are you aware that the primary
concern that began the Spanish Inquisition was over the
~conversos~ (Jews who converted to Christianity, mostly in order
to remain in Spain without being persecuted)? The Church figured
out pretty fast that those converts were not necessarily
practicing their new religion, in fact many secretly continued to
practice Judaism.  So the inquisition was devised to stop this.
What would you suspect the underlying motive to be here? To save
souls is one answer, but considering the circumstances that
brought this about, I see deeper and far less honorable motives.
Though motive may be everything, I don't think that we always
understand the motives behind our actions.

LD> For those of you who're bored with the same old thing, how
about discussing the ethics of transnational corporations? That'd
fall under the topic of what affects one affects all.  From a
book I read recently the 3rd world is getting exploited (dare I
use the word ?) all over again without half realizing.  My source
is "The Global Factory" by Rachael Kamel, American Friends
Service Committee, Omega Press 1990.  The book presents a rather
grim picture of what's being done under cover of the hope &
belief of raising standards of living.  ..  unsafe factories &
machinery ...  poor parents sending their kids to work without
any protection for the kids ...  12 hour work day very low pay by
our standards, but higher than 3rd world people have been earning
previously, and what's fair & not fair about that.  The book's
statstics are from the '80ies.  Superficial discussion with my
son, Bob, he doesn't agree with the book, so maybe some of you
won't either.

There has been a lot of documentation concerning corporate
exploitation of third world countries--so much so that I find it
inconceivable to deny what is going on.  What does Bob disagree
with?

LD> If that's too far out of the way, maybe we could just talk
about the feeling you get when you walk into a bank as a
potential depositor, as compared to as a potential borrower.  Or
how much spirituality is there in business ethics? Since we all
know there isn't much, can we devise ways of trying to foster
some?

A lot of people consider "government ethics" and "corporate
ethics" oxymorons.  I spent many years in middle management jobs
in corporations, and got quite an eye full--price fixing;
decisions designed to mislead employees and/or customers....  The
attitude in upper management is that they are fighting a war of
survival in a very competitive market--so management feels that
they really don't have time to preoccupy themselves with petty
considerations such as ethics.  My wife found a doctorate
dissertation done recently where a followup study was done on
people who acting on principle called attention to and tried to
take a stand against unethical practices in their work place.
The study showed that typically the employee was fired, and often
barred from ever getting another job in that industry.  The
whistle blower's life was severely disrupted--in some cases
ruined, they are usually embittered by the experience, and the
unethical practice was rarely stopped.

Jerry Hejka-Ekins