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Ethics and Mysticism in Eastern Mystical Traditions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Steven T. Katz
Steven T. Katz
Affiliation:
Department of Near Eastern Studies Cornell UniversityIthacaNew York 14853–2502
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Extract

Ethics and mysticism, we are regularly instructed, are if not antithetical, then certainly, at the very least, unrelated. This common wisdom is predicated on a specific understanding of morality and a flawed, though widespread, conception of mysticism and mystical traditions. It is yet another distorted and distorting manifestation of the still more universal misapprehension that mystics are essentially arch-individualists, ‘Lone Rangers’ of the spirit, whose sole intention is to escape the religious environments that spawned them in order to find personal liberation or salvation. Accordingly, mystics are portrayed as rebels and heretics, antinomians and spiritual revolutionaries, if not also underminers of existing social and religious structures. But this characterization, despite its popularity, needs revision. In this essay it is not possible to argue all the detailed reasons why this construal is simply incorrect, but, as a shorthand summary of a much larger, more complex interpretative reconstruction, I would call attention to the fact that mystics share not only the metaphysical problematic, the metaphysical diagnosis of existence, as this is conceptualized within their particular traditions, but also view its overcoming or deconstruction in ways consistent with the teachings of their ‘faith’mmunities. They are, that is to say, fully situated in the ontological, theological, and social contexts of their traditions. Essentially, they share the Weltanschauung of their inherited circumstance and seek to realize, experience, the ‘solutions’ proposed by their tradition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 253 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 I have explored these issues in more, if still skeletal, detail in my essays, ‘The “Conservative” Character of Mystical Experience’, in Katz, Steven T. (ed.), Mysticism and Religious Traditions (New York, 1983), pp. 3–60; andGoogle Scholar‘Models, Modeling and Mystical Training’, in Religion, vol. 12 (Fall, 1982), pp. 247–75. In addition, all the essays in Mysticism and Religious Traditions are relevant to this larger, elemental, hermeneutical issue.Google Scholar

2 It should be noted in this connection that Kant needed to introduce God as the ‘highest perfection’ into his ethicai system, make what one will of this.

3 McKenzie, John, Hindu Ethics (Oxford, 1922);Google ScholarSchweitzer, Albert, Indian Thought and Its Development (New York, 1936).Google Scholar

4 Danto, Arthur, Mysticism and Morality (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

5 Schweitzer, Albert, Indian Thought and Its Development, pp. 17, 226ff.Google Scholar

6 Mahaābhaārata, 12, 255, If.

7 Kaṭha Upaniṣad 1.2.24, cited from the English translation by Radhakrishnan, S. (ed.), The Principal Upanisads (London, 1953).Google Scholar

8 This felicitous phrase is borrowed from Sarma, D. S., ‘The Nature and History of Hinduism’, in Morgan, Kenneth W. (ed.), The Religion of the Hindus (New York, 1953), p. 21.Google Scholar

9 Mundaka Upaniṣad, III, 1, 5, cited from Radhakrishnan, S., The Principal Upamṣads.Google Scholar

10 Maitrí Upaniṣad 3: 2.Google Scholar

11 I recognize, of course, that in a fuller analysis of Indian thought the particularity of the Gītā as compared to the Upaniṣads would be required. For our present purposes, however, I believe this admixing of elements from the Upaniṣads and the Gīlā, in order to convey some larger, overarching, sense of certain main, shared, features of Indian mystical thought is legitimate.

12 Gītā 3: 22.

13 Gītā 3: 10.

14 Gītā 3: 4.

15 Gītā 2: 38.

16 Gītā 12:13.

17 Gītā 4: 35.

18 Danto, Arthur, Morality and Mysticism, pp. 72ff.Google Scholar

19 Buddhism shares with, for example, Kantianism, in defining morality in terms of intentions not actions or consequences. A moral action on this Buddhist criteria is one that is not rooted in self-interest, i.e. the illusion of self-satisfaction that is a corollary of being still imprisoned in the false, reified, ontology of ‘things’ and ‘thingness’.

20 Nāgārjuna, , Emptiness, trans, by Streng, F. J. (Nashville, 1967), ch. 18.Google Scholar

21 Angultara, iv: 116.

22 Vinayapitaka, 1, 21.

23 Gimello, Robert, ‘Mysticism in its Contexts’, in Katz, Steven T. (ed.), Mystiasm and Religious Traditions, p. 69.Google Scholar

24 Gimello, R., ‘Mysticism in its Contexts’, p. 70.Google Scholar

25 The Precious Garland and the Song of the Four Mindfulnesses, translated into English by Hopkins, Jeffrey and Rimpoche, Lad (London, 1975), verse 394.Google Scholar

26 Even Arthur Danto is forced to admit that while ‘Selflessness is a metaphysical thesis of Buddhism — not an ethical teaching…it is transformed into something like fan ethical teaching) in Mahayana’ (Mysticism and Morality, p. 81). Danto's resistance finally to granting Mahāyāna the status of an ethical system on the grounds that it is too idealistic to be practised is hardly to be taken seriously, being a common ‘fault’ of most ethical systems.