TSHP036 – How to Find Your Passion

1. 

   Christopher Penny says:

   February 19, 2014 at 9:18 pm

   Hi Sean and Ed. Great podcast as usual. I was interested to heat Sean talking about being on a course about ethics. That was one of the reasons I became a Buddhist, because I wanted to find the difference between right and wrong, and normal western philosophy was next to useless in providing anything like the clarity and certainty I was looking for. Buddhism talks about good actions being those that lead to happiness and evil actions being those that lead to suffering. That makes sense to me! Recently I listened to the audiobook of ‘The Moral Landscape’ by Sam Harris, and I was impressed by his ideas. He takes as his main focus the idea of wellbeing. Good actions are those that increase wellbeing, and bad actions are those that decrease wellbeing. As a Buddhist I can relate to that approach – it seems to make alot of sense. But I think that other philosophers are less than impressed by Sam Harris – they think he is naive and ignores too much of what has gone before. What do you think Sean?

   Reply
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     Sean Orford says:

     February 20, 2014 at 12:36 am

     Hi Christopher
     Thanks for your comments. The answer could become another book.

     My roots are pre Buddhist in AyurVeda (AV) that sees the relationship between conscious and unconsciousness (Purisha/Prakritti – Yin/Yang, or what ever terms we might use) as neutral, that the phenomenal world of experience only exists at that point when consciousness and unconsciousness meet and interact. In AV philosophy the expression of consciousness at an individual level concerns waking from deep asleepness through dream states, the waking state, awake-ness, objective consciousness, intuitive consciousness, creative consciousness to enlightenment. At any point in the evolution of human consciousness, until the point of awake-ness, the individual experience is subjective.

     From an individual subjective point of view all actions are labelled by the ego as good or bad depending on the frame work from which they are seen. The concepts of Dharma and Karma, presented to Arjuna by Krisna in Bhagavagita are, from my point of view, the most useful.

     Waking would seem to be driven by either pain or awareness, most of us seem to choose the root of pain and grow only because it becomes too painful to remain as we are.

     There is a point to this…

     It would seem that the moralities of any individual or society are limited by the level of consciousness that is being expressed. The greater the consciousness the more moral the action. (Accepting that all I am saying is also done so subjectively from my point of view just as you will read this subjectively from your point of view.

     I would describe myself as a consequentialist, in the karmic sense that every action, even doing nothing, leads to a consequence that becomes the next learning point. The decision to live mindfully or Dharmically would lead to minimal negative consequences and create the most positive consequences or karmas.

     The question that I always asked is, ‘is there an absolute rightness that could be described as a moral rightness?’ My conclusions to date are that at lower levels of consciousness there are subjective moralities that justify behaviour, at higher levels of consciousness these become objective moralities that observe and explain behaviour. It is being able to sit on the bank and allow the river of life to flow by without paddling in it, swimming in it, or needing to dam it or turn it. This is the law of allowing and acceptance that allows the mad people to be mad.

     Once when I asked my teacher to explain what his life was about he simply said that if his life he could inspire ten other people to be positive and to work positively with others and, if in each of their live they did the same thing, then human consciousness be assisted in it evolution. This has become what I do as a therapist of ‘Bhakti ‘ who attempts to serve others. My work, often in therapy, is to enable people to see their decision and moralities from an objective point of awareness that allows them to go beyond being the victim of other people ideas and actions and to take responsibility for who they are and the morality of their thoughts feeling and behaviours.

     Though it would seem that the final arbiter of moral decision is the consciousness that is within and the only way I know to allow that to ‘be’ is through mindfulness and meditation.

     I hope some of that makes sense.

     So, from you point of view, what do you think?

     Sean

     Reply

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