THE HIGHEST GOOD
We seem to stray from metaphysics into ethics today as we examine the ‘Highest Good’ as presented in the Upanishads. However if the reader will bear with me, I think its place in the Hindu conception of ultimate reality will become clear.
Last time we ended with the Upanishad’s assertion that our good and evil actions due to desire or passion cause us to identify with those actions leading us away from liberation and towards further reincarnation. In short, good and bad actions of this type are counterproductive to Brahmātmaikyan (the identity of Brahman and ātman). The Westerner might be tempted to turn away from this apparent rejection of moral responsibility, but there is more to the story.
While it is true that for the Upanishads the perfect human is constrained by Knowledge rather than good and evil, this does not mean that one is free to commit sin.13 Liberation depends on the prerequisite that one eradicate all evil tendencies and devote oneself to the welfare of others. The Hindu approach to ethics, we discover, is akin to the Western system of virtue ethics, but with the emphasis on purification of the mind and deepening of the inner self. However, self-purification demands care of the body, renunciation (nyāsa), self-reflection, equanimity, detachment, and self-control.14 These then culminate in the highest good.
The Upanishads teach that evil is due to association of the self with the body and mind, while the true self is beyond pleasure, pain, righteousness, and unrighteousness.15 However that will only get one so far; the direct line to the highest good is Knowledge, that is, the Knowledge that “Brahman is the sole Reality; which appears as both the objective universe and the individual self. With this Knowledge of Brahman, the self is not lost in It; the self only realizes that it has always been Brahman.”16 So instructed we understand why ultimate reality is considered by these thinkers to be beyond categories of good and evil.
But the circle of ultimate reality and ethics is finally closed. Moral behavior emerges from this Knowledge at it inevitably leads to universal love based on the recognition of “the fundamental oneness of all living beings.”17 And the impact is reciprocal: “The nature of Ultimate Reality, whether as Personal God or as Impersonal Absolute is Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, whose reflections are seen in their counterparts in the empirical world.”18 Nonetheless as in much of philosophy there is a paradox; the idea of ‘ought’ or morality is contrary to the struggle for perfection – you cannot be moral and perfect at the same time.19 Ethical behavior reveals the real self, but the real self is already intrinsically ethical, not moral by intention. In the end perfection means ‘God-realization’ or ‘Self-realization’ either of which transcends ‘oughts’ through freedom from the very idea of moral agency.20
So much to contemplate…
(final continuation next post)
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13Nikhilananda, Swami, The Upanishads Volume 2. Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, 1952. Page 1.
14Ibid., pages 4-8.
15Ibid., page 13.
16Ibid., page 17.
17Ibid., page 21. We cannot help but be reminded of Christ’s teaching.
18Ibid., page 26.
19Ibid., page 31.
20Ibid., page 33.
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