Beyond Religion

Of course, the Dalai Lama is a deeply religious man. He’s been a monk since the age of six. He remains a devout practitioner and teacher of Buddhism

And… He respectfully makes the point that, as powerful as religion is as a means to cultivate ethical behavior, it’s impossible for any one religion to universally work for everyone. Yet… Ethical living is absolutely essential in our modern times. So, what do we do?

That leads us to the title of the book: “Beyond Religion.” What do we find beyond religion? Secular ethics. Which leads us to the sub-title and theme of the book: “Ethics for a Whole World.” Which leads us to this beautiful metaphor of water and tea.

Of course, every religion approaches things from a slightly different perspective but at the core of ALL major religions is an absolute commitment to ethical living. The differences are the “tea leaves and spices.” At the core of these traditions we have the water that sustains us.

And, as the Dalai Lama says: Just as we all need water to survive, we all need ethics to thrive. The book is his take on these universal qualities we can all embrace to create a secular ethics that work for the whole world.

P.S. The Dalai Lama is a big fan of modern science and neuroscience in particular. I love the parallels between his approach and how the founders of positive psychology (Martin Seligman, Chris Peterson, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) decided what to focus on as they tried to create a science for well-being and flourishing.

Do you recall what they did? They basically stripped away the “tea” from all the major wisdom traditions to find the universal truths—the “water” of all great wisdom. They identified six core virtues: Wisdom + Justice + Courage + Self-Mastery + Love + Transcendence. Then, they empirically demonstrated what we’ve known for millennia: If we want to have happy, flourishing lives, we need to put these virtues into action.

P.P.S. The Dalai Lama tells us that the “Two Pillars for Secular Ethics” are a recognition of our shared humanity and the understanding of interdependence. In short: We all aspire to be happy and we’re all in this together.

That’s from a chapter called “Ethical Mindfulness in Everyday Life.”

First, let’s remind ourselves that ethics isn’t simply a matter of knowing. It is about doing. We need to move from theory to practice. In fact, “For this reason, even the most sophisticated ethical understanding, if it is not applied in daily life, is somewhat POINTLESS.” (Emphasis mine. lol)

That’s Part I. Part II: How do we put ethics into practice in our daily lives? The Dalai Lama encourages us to consider three levels. First, we have the ethic of restraint. Before we start doing the good stuff, we need to STOP doing the bad stuff.

As we’ve discussed many times, this rule holds true in ALL aspects of our lives. You can’t eat enough broccoli to make up for that pizza and soda. You can’t work out once a day and think that’ll take care of all that sitting you do.

So, Step 1. Remove the toxins. Get rid of the kryptonites. Exercise restraint. (Which begs the question: What’s the #1 thing that needs to go in your life? … Today the day?)

That leads us to the second level: It’s time to get your virtue on. Cultivate your kindness, your compassion, your generosity, your self-discipline.

Then we arrive at the third level of altruism as we dedicate our lives to the welfare of others—Optimizing and actualizing so we can give ourselves most fully to the world.

Step 1. Step 2. Step 3. Let’s put our ethical theories into practice. Note: The Dalai Lama tells us that our ethical mindfulness requires “constant cultivation.”

First, I think that’s fascinating that the word “emotion” doesn’t exist in Tibetan or Sanskrit. Rather, they have a more nuanced description of the mental factors involved beyond just “feeling.”

Second, I also love the distinction between whether or not emotions feel good or bad versus whether they are helpful or harmful.

Think about that for a moment. Our entire Western psychological approach around emotions is centered around more pleasure and less pain. But what if we tweaked it to think about whether our emotions (and behaviors) were good for us or not?

Is that anger or impatience good for you? No, it’s not.

Your kindness and patience and generosity? Yep. Cultivate THAT.

That’s from a chapter in which we learn how to cultivate virtue (or what the Dalai Lama calls “inner values”)—including the virtue of contentment. (The other virtues discussed include: patience, self-discipline and generosity.)

The Dalai Lama repeatedly comes back to the fact that our world is—to its detriment—incredibly materialistic. He talks about the same science we discuss in Abundance 101 and reminds us that, beyond having enough money to take care of ourselves, true wealth will be found on the mental/spiritual side of things.

The amount of material wealth we can create is finite. Therefore, we’d be wise to choose contentment at a certain limit.

However, the amount of *mental* wealth we can create is INFINITE. Therefore, we’d be wise to “constantly strive for more.”

Enter: Becoming psychological billionaires—filling up our life’s balance sheet with positive emotions, life satisfaction and a deep sense of flourishing. While stuffing our secret vault in our brain (“Hi, basal ganglia!”) with diamonds of good habits rather than kryptonites of bad ones.

Unfortunately, most of us get this precisely backward: “We are never quite satisfied with what we have materially, but we tend to be thoroughly complacent about our mental riches.”

Let’s not be like most people. How can you create a little more material contentment in your life and a little more mental wealth today?

That’s from a chapter called “Meditation as Mental Cultivation” in which we get some tips from His Holiness on how to develop our meditation practice so we can cultivate the mental strength that will be our greatest asset to live ethically.

We’re told that the most important first step is to make sure our desire is strong. We need to take the time to make the connection between our mental strength and our well-being and then make the connection between our mental strength and our meditation practice.

Take a moment (if you’re feeling so inspired) to reflect on why meditating would be good for you. And, what are you missing out on by NOT doing it? With that motivation, we begin our practice.

How? Well, if we’re like the Dalai Lama, we approach it like we’re Olympic athletes!! He spends hours a day on his practice and makes it clear that the goal is not relaxation per se, but mental strength.

The Dalai Lama wakes up to hit his mental gym at 3:30 A.M. every (!) morning. Doing the math, if he gets up at 3:30 A.M. and averages eight or nine hours of sleep, that means he goes to bed around 6:30 or 7:30 P.M. <— That’s fantastic!! I knew I had a good bit of monk in me. :)

Note: The Dalai Lama doesn’t blow up his brain at night with electronic stimulation nor does he roll over in bed and reach up to grab his smartphone right when he wakes up. (Do you?)

He’s made the decision: He’s chosen to dedicate his life to actualizing his potential in service to the world. To be Actualized vs. Entertained. (You?)

He also tells us: “To conclude: in mental cultivation practice, moderate effort over a long period is the key to success. We bring failure upon ourselves by working overly hard or by attempting too much at the beginning. Doing this makes it highly likely that we will simply give up after just a short while. What good practice really requires is a constant stream of effort: a sustained, persistent approach based on long-term commitment. For this reason, practicing properly, even for short periods of time, is the best way. The emphasis should be on quality rather than quantity. And, above all, we should remember that the whole purpose of our practice is to become more compassionate human beings.”

P.S. Of course, we don’t all live in a monastery. For those of us whose morning rituals involve kids, I’m reminded of this great passage from Sri Swami Satchidananda in The Golden Present where he reminds us to make taking care of our “little deities” a core part of our practice: “At the same time, you should know your situation in life. If you are a wife and the mother of three children, you have certain family responsibilities also. If for that reason you cannot follow all the disciplines, getting up at a certain time and meditating for an hour and doing everything, you should not feel bad; but if you are not practicing due to your laziness, then you should feel hurt. If your responsibilities don’t allow you to do everything you are excused for that, because you still have your first and foremost responsibility as a wife and a mother. You have to take care of the children. That is also part of yoga. So you should ask yourself, ‘Am I not following everything due to my laziness, or due to my other responsibilities?’ Then make the other responsibilities part of your practice also. For example, if you are all alone as an individual you may clean your altar and shrine room and decorate everything and sit and meditate. But as a mother every morning you have two, three deities to decorate. Pull them out of bed, wash them, give them a nice bath, dress them well, feed them. That is the offering you are giving to God. They are living gods in your home until you see them off to school. If you ignore them and go and sit and close your eyes and meditate, then God says, ‘What is this? You offer a piece of fruit on the altar, but I am here in your home in the form of your child and you ignore me.’”

Those are among the final words of the book. I’m reminded of some parallel wisdom from Anthony de Mello and Dan Millman.

In Awareness, de Mello tells us: “An Italian poet said, ‘We live in a flash of light; evening comes and it is night forever.’ It’s only a flash and we waste it. We waste it with our anxiety, our worries, our concerns, our burdens.”

While Millman puts it this way in Everyday Enlightenment: “Life is brief—a flash of lightning, a snap of eternity’s fingers.”

Then we have Mary Oliver’s beautiful question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Well… What will it be? How will you use this precious life of yours? I say we have fun Optimizing and Actualizing in service to the world!!