Revd Chris McDermott, Lead Chaplain for the University of Sussex
Today I continue to focus on the series of precepts highlighted in Buddhist traditions but, as noted earlier, have a kind of universal significance – as do many ethical traditions. The precepts are less like ‘commands’ and more like mini-descriptions of what we are like when we are at our best as human beings.
The fourth precept, as expressed in the tradition with which I associate, reads:
Manifest the truth: do not lie.
Like the other precepts, this one has in its purview not so much as individual acts as the total ethos in which we live and breathe. It is about ‘being true’ as much as telling truth. It touches on ‘intention’ as well, embracing the possibility of telling the truth in order to promote a lie. It invites us to engage honestly with the sometime brutal question: ‘who am I?’, accept ourselves without artifice and live with integrity.
It is this quality of being true to oneself that enables effectiveness across all sorts of domains. It enables the quality of presence to relationships and situations as described by Louise Gold in an article on the qualities of an effective mediator. ‘Presence’ for Gold, entails a sense of being solidly grounded in one’s self; a conscious connection to one’s own set of guiding values; a capacity to connect with the humanity of the other person(s) with whom we engage; and a sense of congruency – that consistency in which we do what we are and genuinely being what we do. Though, written in the specific context of mediation practice, it is a definition that I think well consolidates the meaning of what lay behind the notion of someone having ‘presence’.
If you need a counter example of the qualities described by Gold, consider a recent news item reporting the Senate’s minority Republican leader, Mitch McConnell’s critique of certain corporations’ decision to pull out of the state of Georgia in protest of it passing voter suppression laws that are seen to discriminate against black people. He declared that corporations should keep their noses out of politics. McConnell himself has accepted more than $4 million over the past few years from pharmaceutical and other corporations to support their agendas.
At times all of us fall afoul of our stated values, and have heroic capacities to disconnect from others and be less than consistent. So, there is no intention to wax puritanical on this theme of ‘being true’ according to the fourth precept. Rather it is an encouragement to orient our lives in the direction of something akin to Gold’s riff on the idea of presence.
When one of the Buddha’s followers who had a reputation for falling quite short of the Buddha’s ethical teachings died, he eulogised him in glowing terms. His other followers were rather shocked and asked him how he could possibly praise this person. The Buddha replied that the disciple in question may not have been perfect but that ‘he was a tree bending in the right direction’. The more we orient ourselves toward living our values, the greater the likelihood that we will bring true presence to situations we face and to colleagues, friends, family, and all with whom we engage from day to day.
So whether we achieve or (most likely) fall somewhat short of the ideals contained in this – or any of the other precepts – we are invited to be bent – in the right direction, that is.