As far as
I'm concerned, if you're going to make things right and wrong you can never
even talk about fulfilling your bodhisattva vows.
~ Pema
Chodron; No Right or Wrong,
an online interview published on Tricycle
I am no
moralist. My doctoral thesis explored
the reasons why women in various countries endorsed the practice of female
circumcision. The thesis called for
cultural sensitivity and was, in a sense, an apologetics more than a
dissertation. Even if the tradition of
circumcision appeared to me as harmful and senseless, I argued, there is no
absolute right or wrong, no absolute moral standard, by which I, as a cultural
outsider, can judge this practice or the people who endorse it as intrinsically
“bad”. Moral values and judgments are
relative to our cultures and traditions.
Far be it from me to declare any action universally wrong even if I may
see it as wrong myself.
I stand by
this argument. What I cannot stand is when
a person uses a religious or other justification for turning a blind eye to his own heart and mind and betrays his own moral values, what he himself sees
as right or wrong, against his own better judgment. This is another matter entirely. When we tolerate and/or justify something against
our value system, this is just hypocrisy.
There is no other word for it. I
do not get the rationale for it, other than shameless self-protection, indifferent
to what this hypocrisy may cost ourselves or others.
So when dear,
soft Pema Chodron confesses that her devotion to her alcoholic and abusive
teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche, can seamlessly abide in her heart alongside the
thought that “Maybe he was a madman”, I begin to see in her weathered face the real
strain of her religious devotion to him. When,
moreover, she says that “it doesn't change my devotion because he taught me
something about not saying yes or no but resting in groundlessness”, I sadly
conclude that her rationale also strikes me as groundless. Surely she can separate the object of her
devotion from the man himself.
What is the
problem with “saying yes or no” when that is what we feel in our hearts? Why shouldn’t we look squarely into our teachers’
humanity, point out their errors and call out their harmful behaviours when we see them as “wrong”? We may not win points for unconditional guru
devotion, but we might demonstrate another kind of devotion to our teachers,
and our faith in them as human beings that, like anyone else, need others
to hold them accountable for their actions.