Quote:
Originally Posted by onelifecrisis
Reminds me of a discussion I had with a Canadian man. In a nutshell: who is truly the "moral" person - the man who does good because he fears God's wrath, or the man who does good because he desires God's love, or the atheist who does good simply because it is good?
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In the Eastern traditions, fear of punishment and/or desire for reward would be considered "lower" forms of motivation, based in attachment to one's own individual ego. It's the "I" of the ego that desires the reward and fears the punishment, and the status accorded oneself either here or in some presumed afterlife or next life that is primarily at stake.
It's only when the next stage of awareness is achieved - the opening of the heart, and the "second birth" into a truly compassionate existence - that those motivations become secondary or nonexistent. To do what is right and just and kind without thought of reward or punishment - that is where selflessness begins.
I'm not saying those so-called "lower" motivations are necessarily bad - for instance, if a particular person is unable or unwilling to refrain from stealing, raping and killing without them, then I'm thankful they exist at all. The question is, what happens when "the rules" that must be followed in order to insure the reward or avoid the punishment actually come into conflict with what should be one's compassion for the wellbeing of others? When the rules say you'll go to heaven if you burn the heretic at the stake, stone the "fallen woman" to death, force the unbeliever to repent or else - if there is no higher motivation to act out of compassion for another instead, no sense of "there but for the grace of God go I," no identification of oneself with the supposed "other" and no empathy whatsoever for the suffering that will be caused by acting only out of attachment to one's own status in this life or the next?
Well, I think we all know what happens. The history books are full of it.
The interesting thing here is that the "selflessness" of the compassionate motivation is, in a way, no less selfish. You do right by another person because doing them wrong means you have also wronged yourself. You don't cause them to suffer, because their suffering is yours as well. You understand that to do harm to another is NOT beneficial to oneself. The difference is that the "self" at stake is no longer the "I" of the personal ego, but the bigger Self that includes the other and can identify with it.