21. Virtue as Attitudes (1)

In addition to the rules of the Vinaya, a monk’s training in virtue is also expressed in terms of attitudes he should adopt and qualities of character he should develop. There are many lists of these qualities in the Canon—we’ve already encountered one list in the Buddha’s rebuke to Ven. Sudinna—but here we’ll focus on three that seem most basic.

The first is a list that connects virtue with the quality of heart and mind called conviction—which in this context, means conviction in three things: that the Buddha was truly awakened, that he taught the Dhamma rightly in line with that awakening, and that the Saṅgha of his noble disciples has practiced rightly in line with that Dhamma and, at the very least, have gained a glimpse of that awakening as well (AN 10:92). These three objects of conviction boil down essentially to one: The Buddha’s awakening was true.

The standard accounts of the Buddha’s awakening state that he gained knowledge of three things:

1) Rebirth is a fact. At death, as long as there is still craving and clinging—desire and passion—you will be reborn in a new state of becoming, which can be either more pleasant or less pleasant than your current state. The Buddha never addresses the question of what gets reborn, but his teaching on dependent co-arising is a thorough discussion of how the process happens. And that’s what matters: You’re not responsible for the what, but you can do something about the how.

2) The type of becoming in which you take birth is determined by your actions. Skillful actions—intentions based on right view concerning action and rebirth—will lead to pleasant states of becoming. Unskillful intentions—based on wrong views that deny the power of action—will lead to painful states of becoming. This means that what you do now will have an impact not only in this lifetime, but also in lives to come. However, because these future states of becoming are based on causes that don’t last forever, they, too, will have to come to an end, as craving and clinging will lead to further becoming.

3) The process of further becoming can be brought to an end by putting an end to craving and clinging (MN 19), which is the same as subduing desire and passion. As a result of this knowledge, the Buddha was unbound.

Conviction in the Buddha’s awakening means conviction in the truth of these three knowledges and the resulting unbinding. The fundamental need for this conviction when you take on the training is underlined by the fact that when the Buddha announced his decision to teach, conviction was the first thing he asked of his listeners:

Conviction in the Buddha’s awakening connects directly with the practice of virtue in that if you don’t want to create suffering for yourself, you’ll want to act in a way that causes no one any harm. This is the principle that underlies the Buddha’s teachings to his son, and all his teachings on the topic of virtue.

The Buddha knew that he couldn’t provide empirical proofs for the truths of action and rebirth to other people. Only when they had gained a first glimpse of awakening themselves would their confidence in these teachings be verified. So his challenge was to get his listeners to see that this confidence and conviction were desirable qualities to develop.

In some cases, the obvious force of his character was enough to convince some of his listeners. For others who were more skeptical, though, he would provide pragmatic proofs: If you consider how you’d behave if you took these knowledges as working hypotheses, you’ll realize that you’d tend to behave in a more skillful way than if you didn’t. Then if it turned out that the Buddha’s knowledges were true, you would have made yourself safe. At the very least, you would have created the conditions for a good rebirth. If it turned out that his knowledges weren’t true, you would still benefit. In one version of the argument, the Buddha describes this last benefit as being able to rest assured that you haven’t created hostility, ill will, or trouble for yourself (AN 3:66). In another version, the benefit is the consolation that your views and behavior would be praised by the wise (MN 60).

Obviously, these last arguments would be convincing only for certain people: those who want to avoid hostility and who care about the opinion of the wise—in other words, people who are willing to step back from their immediate desires to reflect objectively on the results of acting on them and who have a healthy sense of honor and shame. Given that the Buddha was teaching a course of training that involves both listening to the instructions of others and reflecting on your own actions, it follows that these are the people he would want to teach. You can take advantage of admirable friendship, the primary external factor leading to the first glimpse of awakening, only if you have a sense of shame toward those who are wise. You can develop appropriate attention, the primary internal factor leading to the first glimpse of awakening, only if you’re willing to reflect objectively on your actions and their results, with an aim to being harmless. If you couldn’t muster these two attitudes, the training wouldn’t work. You would lie outside of the range of the Buddha’s instructions.

This is why, even though the Buddha is said to be the teacher of human and divine beings, he wasn’t the teacher of everyone. The standard description of the Buddha’s qualities is careful to state that he’s the unexcelled leader of those fit to be tamed. If you’re not fit to be tamed, he wouldn’t try to teach you. But if you can learn to develop the proper sense of objectivity and healthy shame, you can make yourself worthy of the Buddha’s course of training.

That’s why conviction often comes first in many lists of virtuous attitudes. It’s the foundation post of the fortress of the practice (AN 7:63).