Virtue is Intolerant.

“You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound. And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?”
Khalil Gibran

Is happiness the ability to fulfill desires without any obstruction? Is a good life one that is free from impediments? Should we seek to actualize every whim? Is true freedom being able to play any note you want during an electric guitar solo?

After many years of diligent practice, learning scales and simple songs by heart, I was finally ready to start improvising with my teacher. I was like a horse in a stall before a big race, ready to put everything I had learned into a mind-melting solo. However, from the first lesson until the last, my teacher always repeated the following saying:

through restriction we find freedom.

He was referring to staying within one scale while soloing - and that through limiting myself to only playing 12 notes, I was free to explore their limitless permutations. The restriction of the domain of all possible notes on a guitar to just 12 was hard for a young musician to handle. Yet, through this wise restraint, I was able to cultivate real musical insight. This lesson has stayed with me.

Restraint begets freedom.

In the age of consumption, the idea that one ought to limit their ability to fulfill their desires seems counterintuitive to happiness. Yet, this is precisely what great institutions and religions have prescribed for ages. On the level of the individual, in the Buddhist path of training, restraint plays a crucial role in laying the groundwork for our ability to discern the causal nature of reality, which in turn liberates us from suffering. On the societal level, the declaration used for conferring Law degrees at Harvard reads the following:

“You are ready to aid in the shaping and application of those wise restraints that make men free”

This declaration has, as a presupposition, that wise restraints will lead us towards collective prosperity. This begs the obvious question: How can chains free you from chains?

As we toured our students around the United Nations Headquarters, I was struck by a quote from Dag Hammarskjold, the Second UN Secretary-General.

“The UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell”

Removing religious metaphors, this quote speaks to the nature of the organization: to help the world avoid evil actions.

Restraint is to be intolerant towards certain actions.

In Buddhism, dedicated lay followers adhere to five core ethical precepts, which guide them in abstaining from killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, and intoxication. These precepts reflect a commitment to avoiding actions that lead to moral degradation and are considered harmful to both individual and societal well-being. Importantly, these behavioural restraints are in service of a higher set of trainings, of which moral restraint serves as the bedrock.

In society, laws often emerge to discourage behaviours deemed detrimental, targeting actions that propel individuals towards base or impulsive conduct. However, these societal laws frequently stem from specific court decisions, tailored to particular instances.

This approach contrasts with the broader, more aspirational goals of Buddhist precepts. Instead of aiming at higher moral principles, these laws often focus on preventing lower, undesirable behaviours, without necessarily promoting a comprehensive ethical framework. The development of such laws, especially in common law systems, reflects a pragmatic approach, dealing with issues as they arise rather than adhering to a predefined ethical code.

I think we can both avoid hell and go to heaven. We can do better than simply avoiding pitfalls. The trouble is that heaven is hard to articulate, and developing a collective vision of prosperity is a great challenge. Yet, across cultures, we see religious writings that point to the fact that our highest ideals are already present within us.

The Kingdom of Heaven is Within

In Luke 17:21, it is written that, with regards to the Kingdom of Heaven, you won’t be able to say, “Here it is!” or “It’s over there!”, for it is already among and within yourself.

In the Vimalakirti Sutra, when the Buddha speaks to his disciples Sariputra, he says that the Buddha land (which equates to Nirvana) is always pure and clean, and not separate from our current conditions. Dongshan, the legendary Zen patriarch, writes that at the end of the spiritual journey, even though everyone wishes to leave the mundane world, we all must return “to sit in the charcoal heap”. We all return to abide in the ordinary profundity of the present moment. It was here all along, we were just too busy to see it.

In Hindu thought, the fact that our ultimate nature is found within and not without is captured in one of the Mahavakyas, the great sayings of the Upanishads. In Sanskrit, Tat Tvam Asi, in English, Thou art that. Thou art already what is sought, you only need to recognize it.

Wise restraint is the first step towards this recognition - without restraining ourselves even minimally, our energies will be too scattered to experience the kingdom of heaven within. Restraint extends even to eating and sleeping, as Krishna warns Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita that “there is no possibility of becoming a yogi if one eats too much or too little, sleeps too much or too little”.

The journey inwards and away from hell begins by collecting our scattered thoughts and desires and ceasing to tolerate rumination on trivialities. This begins with intolerance towards behaviours, and ultimately intolerance toward intentions.

Restraint is to be intolerant towards certain intentions.

An important point is that intolerance and repression are not the same. We are not trying to repress the arising of certain thoughts or habit patterns - we are trying to bring wisdom and awareness to them. When an intention arises you are to immediately discern what factors brought it about, what factors lead to its abiding, and what factors lead to its passing away. In the Buddhist tradition, this causal chain is clearly laid out when it comes to factors that distract our mind (known as hindrances) and factors that accelerate our awakening (Awakening Factors). For example, if we are careless with our attention and ruminate over things that we don’t like, this will cause us to develop aversion and ill will. If we ruminate over and engage with thoughts of laziness, lethargy, and drowsiness we will become slothful, lazy and drowsy. This is simply an observation of the age-old adage that mind is the forerunner of action, and what we think about we become. As such, if you no longer want to act in certain ways you need to notice when the intention arises and then immediately divert your awareness to something more productive.

Restraint without cultivation is like a rice cooker without a safety valve.

When we set a moral standard for ourselves, whatever that may be, we will experience internal pressure. When we impose wise restraints on the behaviours and intentions we tolerate, parts of ourselves will rebel. Our energy will increase and, if this energy is not harnessed, will manifest as anxious and scattered.

If you don’t believe me just try it out. Refrain from doing something you like doing, when the desire to act arises tell yourself you simply will not do it. Something internal will happen, most likely the arising of an uncomfortable sensation.

Now ask yourself: is your desire to act out due to actually wanting to perform the action or is it to rid yourself of the unbearable pressure that has arisen internally? Ajahn Nyanamoli Thero speaks brilliantly on this topic. He argues that we seek to rid ourselves of the pressure. The argument continues to state that most of our actions are not done out of a joyful optimistic inward abundance that cannot help but express itself, rather, our actions arise out of a primal desire to rid ourselves of discomfort.

This acute discomfort of not acting naturally forces us into a heightened state of awareness. With our heightened awareness, we can begin to notice subtler and subtler truths about our experience. Once we notice these truths, we can even further refine our virtuous intolerance to more closely accord ourselves with what is real. We can get an even clearer picture of why we act the way we do, and with a sharp and discerning awareness, intervene even more decisively to change our actions at the level of intention. We become virtuous by first noticing all the ways in which we are not - and these are only made plain to us through the imposition of wise restraints. As such, small chains free us from large chains.

And yet, if we restrain ourselves simply as an act of exertion without any higher ends, then we are simply inflicting suffering upon ourselves. We must use the energy of restraint to propel us forward!

The question now arises - where should we go? Where should we apply the energy of restraint? One of the many paths we can walk is the gradual path of Buddhist training. I have written extensively on the topic and if you would like to learn more about it, and start walking the path for yourself, I encourage you to click here and learn more.

It is as it is.