The Eightfold Path, Part 4: Right Conduct

So far in our journey through the Buddha’s Eightfold Path, we’ve looked at worldview, thoughts, and speech. It should come as no surprise that the fourth element of the path is action, completing the ‘thought, word, and deed’ triplet we all know so well. Once again I’ll introduce the idea within its Buddhist context before exploring how it connects, or doesn’t, with Christian teaching.

Right Action in Buddhism

When the Buddha introduced his idea of right action, or right conduct, he included five specific exhortations:

• abstain from destroying life
• abstain from theft
• abstain from dishonest dealings
• abstain from illegitimate sexual activities
• assist others to live their own lives with peace and dignity

On the surface this could easily be read in a legalistic way, the way of freedom being reduced to following a set of rules. But, while this has been the case in some Buddhist communities, for the most part this risk is mitigated once again by the fact that ‘right’ as understood in the Eightfold Path is not primarily about morality but rather functionality. The question isn’t what behaviour is morally right or wrong, but what behaviour helps get me — and those around me — further down the path away from attachments, from greed, hatred, and delusion, and towards freedom, towards generosity, lovingkindgness, and wisdom. And that’s suddenly a big difference. It’s less a matter of a checklist and more a meaty discernment discernment process with the aim of producing freedom (non-attachment) for oneself and others.

I think this is a good part of why Buddhism has adjusted so well to the contemporary Western setting with its laxer sexual mores. Where traditional Buddhism was also quite conservative in this respect, its conservatism was primarily understood as a means to the end of freeing oneself from one’s attachments to the whims of the libido, so in an environment where people were chaffing at legalism, it could easily pivot its teaching to focus on the ends (liberation) rather than the means (abstention). It still insists an ethical sexuality must be found, but outside the bounds of any legalistic framework.

Christian Response

Once again, there is a significant alignment between the two traditions when it comes to advocating for right action. In fact, for many people today (perhaps quite shockingly to early Christians), a strict, even legalistic, way of life is the first thing they think about when they think about Christianity. All four of the prohibitions contained in the Buddha’s idea of right conduct have correlates in the Ten Commandments, to say nothing of the broader Law of Moses. The Jewish Law also made it clear that one was to act in ways that benefited one’s neighbour, ‘resident aliens’ (think expats, immigrants, and refugees in today’s context), and those without means to support themselves. The idea of the Jubilee year also promotes the benefit of the wider community by eliminating generational poverty.

But the Law was very much Law, so doesn’t match up with the functional aim of the Buddha’s right conduct. But, as we’ve seen time and time again here, Jesus took a similar approach to the Buddha when it came to the Law. He upheld the Law, but insisted that we go deeper than legalism, so that the motivating feelings behind our bad actions, such as lust and anger, are to be avoided along with the actions they precipitate, and that the love of neighbour extends even to one’s enemy. He radicalized and internalized the Law, rejecting any legalism or ideas of purity culture.

In this way, early Christianity came by its appropriation of the Stoic vocabulary of human psychology and action honestly. For it too sought to avoid the motivating feelings (’the passions’) that lie behind sinful actions. The apostle Paul, grounded in this way of thinking, goes so far as to say (in what I think could be the most revolutionary words of the New Testament): “All things are permissible for me’ — but not all things are beneficial.’ All things are permissible for me’ — but I will not be dominated by anything” (1 Corinthians 6.12). Here we have a perspective on right action that mirrors the Buddha’s quite closely. Like Jesus, Paul rejects legalism completely. Everything is permissible for him, but this freedom is guided by two principles: benefit for oneself and others, and freedom from domination of one’s appetites, whims, impulses, and drives.

But in time, both due to the moralizing impulse that seems natural to religious movements and more conservative interpretations of Greek philosophy gaining ground in culture at large starting in the late first century, Christianity as a whole took on a far greater suspicion of the body and its drives, so that there was little room for any positive engagement with food, sex, or really any kind of desire or wanting. And so, Christianity lost its revolutionary shift in attitude towards conduct and for the most part fell back onto promoting conventional morality and conventionality as morality, a trend that we see very much alive and well in the Church to today.

Conclusions

Providing a guide towards right conduct is an important part of any philosophical, wisdom, or religious tradition. Neither Buddhism nor Christianity are special in this respect. But in their own ways, both of these traditions, at least in their more prophetic forms, turn the idea of morality on its head, away from legalism and towards thinking about how to exercise one’s freedom well, breaking free from internal as well as external shackles for the benefit of everyone. But, that both traditions have also tended to fall back on more legalistic or conventional approaches is also instructive. We can’t take our traditions’ revolutionary spirits for granted and must renew that sensibility lest our practice and witness lose their ‘saltiness’ (as Jesus would put it).