THE PRACTICE OF DISCERNING right from wrong and applying what we learn in everyday life, what we might call ethics-in-action, is seen by many an inherent aspect of mindfulness. Perhaps for this reason, many assume that mindfulness provides enough of an orientation toward ethics that we don’t need to spend much energy focusing on it. We teach interconnection and compassion, many seem to say, and ethical behavior “off the cushion” flows naturally from that.
Maybe. But I believe there is value in emphasizing the ethical underpinnings of mindfulness. Doing so might better enable the kinds of sometimes risky actions—speaking truth to power; courageous storytelling; living and working across lines of difference; organizing against overconsumption, violence, and ignorance; and more—that are often necessary to grow and sustain capacity for living more compassionately together.
So why, even in the face of the growth of conflict and aggression right alongside the growth of mindfulness in our world, do we so often hesitate to center on ethics?
It could be due, in part, to uncertainty about what ethics means. My understanding of it was no doubt shaped in the lap of my mother, Ruth, whose views were no doubt shaped in roughly the same place of her mother, Nan, and by the teachings of the prophetic Christianity they practiced—teachings that made it hard to make a permanent enemy of any of God’s children.
