A lighthanded Government is Necessary for the Thriving of the People

Lead the people with administrative injunctions and keep them orderly with penal law, and they will avoid punishments but will be without a sense of shame. Lead them with excellence and keep them orderly through observing ritual propriety and they will develop a sense of shame, and moreover, will order themselves.

- Confucius (translated by Ames and Rosemont in The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation)

If it were possible to achieve a government that provided all necessary services of society perfectly and completely, would such an endeavor be worth implementing?

My answer is no. Even if somehow, despite all evidence pointing to the fact that government is typically inefficient in its endeavors, government could be perfect in its services, such a reality is a stark one.

When a father works hard to provide for his family, he is practicing love, care, and sacrifice. When a mother cooks each meal for her children she is engaging in love, care, and sacrifice. When a grown child takes care of his parents in his very own home, he is repaying a sliver of the owed gratitude that his parents deserve. These acts are both symbolic and expressive of the love and care of the relationship, and each act reinforces and strengths this relationship.

Love is the most important thing. Without love, nothing else matters. Nothing else becomes a source of happiness. Therefore, it is natural to sacrifice the quality of other things for its manifestation.

Fortunately, the Way does not force on to choose between competing goods. One is not forced to choose between efficiency and love. For when one manifests virtue, related blessings naturally arise. When parents take care of children appropriately, the government no longer needs to step in. When family members take care of one another, the good that comes out of this is better than the good that comes from government taking care of individuals.

To grow as a person, and to cultivate character and virtue, one must put it into practice. Whoever heard of someone who simply sat in place, pondering compassion, and achieve a higher state of compassion without having put it into practice? Whoever heard of one who removed himself from all annoyances, merely contemplating patience, and achieved great patience without having dealt in difficult situations? Whoever heard of someone who had nothing to give, merely believing in charity, yet became generous and benevolent without having given? Such things are impossible. Through engaged practice can one truly cultivate virtue.

If government usurps these opportunities to work harmoniously with one's fellow man, what is left for him to cultivate himself in? And when he cannot cultivate himself, how can he more deeply love, care, and sacrifice? The beauty and grace of these acts become lost.

Once the people lose their ability to cultivate character, virtue seeps away from the land. Once virtue seeps away, the culture becomes degenerate. Once the culture becomes degenerate, poverty, war, and crime increase. With this comes the inevitable collapse of civilization.

When people cannot practice love, love is easily lost from their hearts and minds. When love is lost from the people's hearts and minds, relationships falter. When relationships falter, true happiness can no longer be found. Once true happiness becomes unattainable, the people become destitute and desperate for happiness, seeking it in all kinds of vices and pettiness. Once this occurs, the end of society is near.

Government, by forcing upon injunctions to act in a certain way, deprive people of two things. The first that government deprives its people of is the act of choosing to do good, to commit to good. The act of this choice and commitment changes people for the better, reaffirms their goodness. When acts of good are forced, this choice is not committed, and hearts are not changed.

The second deprivation regards critical thinking and the engagement, and consequent development, of wisdom. In cultivation, one must comprehensively search for what the right values are, what the right actions are, and what the right words are. When one is merely forced into an act without the prior contemplation of its ethical reasoning, individual soul-searching, and analysis of particular circumstance, one cannot develop wisdom or the critical thinking so needed to deepen one's soul.

Government deprives people of their opportunity to grow as human beings, and to engage in loving relationships. When a faraway government provides these things, instead of a local government or a light government that actively engages people into relationships of care and duty, character and relationships cannot be cultivate. From here begins the inevitable decline of individual, family, and society.

When the people are corrupt, no degree of government can help them. Injunctions will be ignored and roundabouted, programs will be exploited, and government officials themselves will work selfishly and not for the benefit of the people. But when the people are virtuous, government is not necessary. People will naturally follow the wise injunctions of their own hearts, programs will be unneeded, and government officials will work for the loving benefit of the people.

Using Water to Cure All Diseases

To take a single practice, such as meditation, and expect the fullest and deepest wisdom from it is akin to drinking water to cure all diseases.

A foolish person might take some water, and upon repeatedly taking that water, discover that with more water, he is more alert, stronger, quicker, and more steadfast. Blinded by the amazement of the benefits of water, he continues to drink, becomes obsessed with it, and soon does not spend any effort aside from drinking, ignoring food, exercise, and rest.

Is such a practice not incredibly foolish? Do things not have their place in harmony with other things?

Confucian Self-Realization

The following is from The Ways of Religion: An Introduction to the Major Traditions edited by Roger Eastman. The author of the essay is Tu Weiming, one of the most highly recognized Confucian scholars of our time.

Confucian Self-Realization
Tu Wei-Ming

Tu Wei-ming (1940 - ) was born in Kunming, China, and came to the United States in 1962. He received his doctorate from Harvard University and has taught at Tunghai University (Taiwan); Princeton; the University of California, Berkeley; and Harvard, where he became chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Among his books in English are Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth, Centrality and Commonality: And Essay on Confucian Religiousness, Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Thought, Confucian Ethics Today: The Singapore Challenge, and Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation.
Professor Tu has stated that his concentration on the Confucian tradition “is not only the academic commitment of a professional intellectual historian but also the personal quest of a reflective human being.” Widely acclaimed for his scholarly work on Confucianism, he lists that religion as his own.
This article appeared in the August 1989 issue of, and is reprinted with permission from, The World and I, a publication of The Washington Times Corporation, copyright 1989.

…

Personality, in the Confucian perception, is an achieved state of moral excellence rather than a given human condition. An implied distinction is made between what a person is by temperament and what a person has become by self-conscious effort. A person’s natural disposition – whether introverted or extroverted, passive or aggressive, cold or warm, contemplative or active, shy or assertive – is what the Confucian refer to as that aspect of human nature which is composed of ch’i-chih (vital energy and raw stuff). For the sake convenience, we may characterize the human nature of vital energy and raw stuff as our psychophysiological nature, our physical nature, or simply the body.
The Confucian tradition – in fact, the Chinese cultural heritage as a whole – takes our physical nature absolutely seriously. Self-cultivation, as a form of mental and physical rejuvenation involving such exercises as rhythmic bodily movements and breathing techniques, is an ancient Chinese art. The classical Chinese conception of medicine is healing in the sense not only of curing disease or preventing sickness but also of restoring the vital energy essential for the wholeness of the body. Since the level of vital energy required for health varies according to sex, age, weight, height, occupation, time, and circumstance, the wholeness of the body is situationally defined as a dynamic process rather than a static structure. The maintenance of health, accordingly, is a fine art encompassing a wide range of environmental, dietary, physiological, and psychological factors. The delicate balance attained and sustained is the result of communal as well as personal effort. To become well and sound is therefore an achievement.

However, the centrality of the physical nature (the body) in the Confucian conception of the person is predicated not only on the irreducibility of the vital energy and raw stuff for personal growth but also on the potentiality of the body to become an aesthetic expression of the self. The wholeness of the body, often understood as allowing the vital energy to flow smoothly, is not only a measuring standard but also a unique accomplishment. Indeed, the idea is laden with ethico-religious as well as psychophysiological implications. When Mencius defines the sage (who has attained the highest moral excellence in the human community) as the person who has brought the bodily form to fruition, he assumes that the body is where the deepest human spirituality dwells. Yet, it is important to note that the Mencian conception of sagehood involves much more than our physical nature.
It seems that the conscious refusal to accept, rather than the lack of conceptual apparatus to perceive, the exclusive dichotomy between body and mind prompts the Confucians to endow rich resources to the idea of the body as the proper home for human flourishing. The ascetic rigor deemed necessary for reaching a higher spiritual state in virtually all major religions is practiced in the Confucian tradition, but the attention is not focused on self-denial, let alone immolation of the body. The Confucians do not take the body as, by nature, an impediment to full self-realization. To them, the body provides the context and the resources for ultimate self-transformation.
Understandably, Confucian education takes the “ritualization of the body” as the point of departure in the development of the person.(1) Lest the purpose be misconstrued as the imposition of well-established societal norms of behavior upon the innocent youth, “ritualization” as a dynamic process of interpersonal encounter and personal growth is not passive socialization but active participation in recognizing, experiencing, interpreting, and representing the communicative rationality that defines society as a meaningful community. In other words, through ritualization we learn not only the form of the accepted behavior but the grammar of action underlying the form as well. Surely, on the surface at least, it seems that we are socialized unsuspectingly, if not totally against our will, to become members of a linguistic and cultural community. We really do not have much choice in adopting the linguistic specificities of our mother tongue and the cultural particularities of our fatherland. Nevertheless, the Confucians believe that if we make a conscientious effort to actively incorporate the societal norms and values in our own conduct, we will be able to transcend the linguistic and cultural constrained of our society by transforming them into instruments of self-realization. Like poets who have mastered the subtleties of the language, articulating their innermost thoughts through them, Confucians who have become thoroughly proficient in the nuances of the ritual are said to be able to establish and enlarge others as well as themselves by bringing this personal knowledge to bear on daily practical living. The seeming naïveté of the Confucians in accepting their own linguistic and cultural universe as intrinsically meaningful and valuable is based on the collective judgment that the survival and continuation of their civilization is not a given reality but a communal attainment. This judgment is itself premised on a fundamental faith in the transformability and perfectibility of the human condition through communal self-effort.
Actually, for the Confucians, the intellectual recognition and experiential acceptance of the body as the point of departure for personal growth are the result of a strong commitment to a holistic view of self-realization. The body, as our physical nature, must be transformed and perfected so that it can serve as a vehicle for realizing that aspect of our nature known as the nature of i-li (rightness and principle), the moral nature, or simply the heart-mind (hsin).(2) Even though the body is a constitutive part of our nature, it is the heart-mind that is truly human.
A person’s temperament may significantly determine his natural disposition in a social environment. Whether he is introverted, passive, cold, contemplative, and shy, or extroverted, aggressive, warm, active, and assertive may very well be a reflection of his native endowments. Quite a few Chinese thinkers, for pragmatic and bureaucratic considerations as well as for social and aesthetic ones, have been fascinated by the classification and evaluation of distinctive character traits. A third-century treatise on the categorization of human beings according to talent and disposition remains to this day a comprehensive treatment and sophisticated analysis of personality types.(3) However, despite the importance and irreducibility of the vital energy and raw stuff (the physical nature or the body) that we are endowed with, the main concern of Confucian education is the process through which we realize ourselves by transforming and perfecting what we are born with.

The Heart-Mind and Human Sensitivity

As Mencius notes, in regard to physical nature, the difference between humans and animals (birds or beasts) is quite small. What truly distinguishes human beings from animals is not the body but the heart-mind. Since the body is the proper home in which the heart-mind dwells, it is perhaps more appropriate to say that the heart-mind (in addition to the body or the body fully informed by the heart-mind) specifically defines the uniqueness of being human. Learning to be human means that the self-consciousness of the heart-mind initiates a process by which the body is transformed and perfected. The ritualization of the body can thus be understood as the active participation of the heart-mind to help the body to become a fitting expression of the self in a social context. TO be sure, an act of the will or an existential decision is required when the heart-mind becomes fully aware of its role and function in bringing this process to fruition. For Confucius, the critical juncture occurred when he “set his heart upon learning” at fifteen.(4) However, even the very young, when involved in simple rituals such as sprinkling water for the adults to sweep the floor or giving answers of yes or no to easy questions, exercise their hearts and minds in ritualizing their bodies. It is precisely because the heart-mind is housed in the body (although in practice it can be absent from it) that the human body takes on the profound spiritual significance that distinguishes it from the physical nature of birds and beasts. As a corollary, the body devoid of the heart-mind, is, strictly speaking, no longer human and can easily degenerate into a state of unreflexivity indistinguishable from the physical nature of birds and beasts.
The most prominent feature of the heart-mind is sympathy, the ability to share the suffering of others. This is why the Chinese character hsin – like the French word conscience, which involves both the cognitive and affective dimensions of consciousness – must be rendered as “heart-mind”: For hsin signifies both intellectual awareness and moral awakening. By privileging sympathy as the defining characteristic of true humanity, Confucians underscore feeling as the basis for knowing, willing, and judging. Human beings are therefore defined primarily by their sensitivity and only secondarily by their rationality, volition, or intelligence.

Expanding Sensitivity: The Perfection of the Self

Learning to be human, in this sense, is to learn to be sensitive to an ever-expanding network of relationships. It may appear to be a consciousness-raising proposition, but it entails the dynamic process of transforming the body as a private ego to the body as an all-encompassing self. To use the Confucian terminology of Master Ch’eng Hao (1032-85), the whole enterprise involves the realization of the authentic possibility of “forming one body with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things.”(5) Concretely, for Confucians, in learning to be human beings by cultivating the capacity to empathize with the negative feelings of one’s closest kin – namely, by directly referring to our own hearts and minds – we should understand the reasonableness of the following dictum: “Do not do unto others what I would not want others to do unto me” (6)
The ability to feel the suffering of others or the inability to endure their suffering empowers us to establish an experiential connection with another human being. This provides a great resource for realizing our moral nature (the nature of rightness and principle). The Confucians believe that our sympathetic bonding to our parents is not only biologically natural but morally imperative, for it is the first step in learning to appreciate ourselves not in isolation but in communication. Indeed, since the Confucians perceive the self as a center of relationships rather than as an isolable individuality, the ability to show intimacy to those who are intimate is vitally important for allowing the closed private ego to acquire a taste for the open communicating self so that the transformation of the body can start on a concrete experiential basis.
But if we extend sympathy only to our parents, we take no more than the initial step toward self-realization. By embodying our closest kin in our sensitivity, we may have gone beyond egoism, but without the learned ability to enter into fruitful communication outside the immediate family, we are still confined to nepotism. Like egoism, nepotism fails to extend our sensitivity to embody a larger network of human relationships and thus limits our capacity for self-realization. Similarly, parochialism, ethnocentrism, and chauvinistic nationalism are all varying degrees of human insensitivity. In the dynamic process of self-realization, they are inertia or limitation. In either case, they are detrimental to the human capacity for establishing a community encompassing humanity as a whole.
Confucian communitarianism, far from being a romantic utopian assertion about equality, unity, and universality, takes as its theoretical and practical basis the natural order of things in human society: the family, neighborhood, kinship, clan, state, and world. In fact, it recognizes the necessity and legitimacy of these structures, both as historically evolved institutions and socially differentiated organization. They are natural to the human community not only because they enable us to define ourselves in terms of the breadth and depth of human-relatedness but also because they provide both material and spiritual resources for us to realize ourselves. The Confucians do not accept the status quo as necessarily rational. Actually their main mission is to improve on the current situation by bridging the gap between what the status quo is and what it can and ought to be. Confucians are in the world but not of the world. They take an active role in changing the world by managing it from within; instead of adjusting themselves to the status quo, they try to transform it according to their moral idealism.
A salient feature of Confucians’ moral idealism is their commitment to the efficacy of education as character building. The Confucian faith in the transformability and perfectibility of the human condition through communal self-effort implies that personal growth has not only ethical value but political significance. The ritualization of the body is relevant to political leadership as well as to social harmony in the family, neighborhood, and clan. Since Confucians believe that exemplary teaching is an integral part of political leadership, the personal morality of those involved is a precondition for good politics. Politics and morality are inseparable. What political leaders do at home is closely linked not only to their styles of leadership but also the very nature of their politics. Self-realization, in this sense, is not a lonely quest for one’s inner spirituality but a communicative act empowering one to become a responsible householder, an effective community worker, and a conscientious public servant. Confucians may not be successful in their political careers or may choose not to seek office, but they can never abandon their vocation as concerned intellectuals.

A concerned intellectual, the modern counterpart of the Confucian chϋn-tzu (nobleman or profound person), does not seek a spiritual sanctuary outside the world. He is engaged in this wordl, for total withdrawal from society and politics is not an option. Yet, although to be part of the “secular” world is the Confucian vocation, the Confucian calling is not the serve the status quo but to transform the “secular” world of wealth and power into a “sacred” community in which, despite egoistic drives, the quest for human flourishing in a moral, scientific, and aesthetic excellence continuously nourishes our bodies and uplifts our hearts and minds.

The Ceaseless Process of Human Flourishing

Understandably, to become a mature person (an adult), in the Confucian sense, is not to attain a limited professional or personal goal but to open oneself up to the ceaseless process of human flourishing. The becoming process, rather than an attained state of being, defines the Confucian personality. One’s critical self-awareness in the later stages of one’s maturation (e.g., at the age of fifty, when Confucius confessed to have known the Mandate of Heaven)(7) ought to be directed to the authentic possibilities of further growth in moral development. Unlike scientific and aesthetic talents, sensitivity in ethics never declines and, properly cultivated, it becomes more subtle and refined.
Nevertheless, a person becomes a personality not by conscientiously obeying conventional rules of conduct but by exemplifying a form of life worth living; indeed by establishing a standard of self-transformation as a source of inspiration for the human community as a whole. The interchange between an exemplary teacher and the students aspiring to become householders, community workers, or public servants is never one-way. As fellow travelers on the Way, they form a community of the like-minded so that the project of human flourishing becomes a joint venture, mutually admonishing and mutually encouraging. The exemplary teacher as an achieved personality in the eyes of the students must continue to cultivate his inner resources for self-transformation. Confucians do not believe in fixed personalities. While they regard personalities as accomplishments, they insist that the strength of one’s personality lies not in its past glories but in its future promises. Real personalities are always evolving. This is why fundamental improvement in the quality of existence is possible for even a human being a breath away from death: “Thou shall not judge the person conclusively before the coffin is sealed!”(8)
This faith in and commitment to the transformability and perfectibility of the human condition through communal self-effort enables Confucians to perceive each person as a center of relationships who is in the process of ultimate transformation as a communal act. The “ultimacy” in this seemingly humanistic enterprise is premised on the ability of the human heart-mind, without departing from its proper home (the body), to have the sensitivity to establish an internal resonance with Heaven by fully comprehending its Mandate. Sensitivity so conceived is a “silent illumination.” It is neither a gift from an external source nor a knowledge acquired through empirical learning. Rather, it is an inner quality of the heart-mind, the shining wisdom that a ritualized body emits for its own aesthetic expression. Such an expression is neither private nor individualistic, but communal.
As mentioned, for the Confucian to bring self-transformation to fruition (to its ultimacy), he must transcend not merely egoism but nepotism, parochialism, ethnocentrism, and chauvinistic nationalism. These undesirable habits of thought, perceived as varying degrees of human insensitivity, limit the full potential of the silent illumination of the human heart-mind to manifest itself. The Confucian insistence that we must work through our families, communities, and nations to realize ourselves is not at all incompatible with the Confucian injunction that we must go beyond nepotism, parochialism, and chauvinistic nationalism to fully embody our humanity. Actually, the seemingly contradictory assertions signify a dynamic process that defines the richness of the Confucian way of learning to be human.
On the one hand, Confucians, in contrast to individuals, take the communal path by insisting that, as a center of relationships, a personality comes into being by fruitfully interacting with its natural human environment – the family, kind, community, and the state. This process of continuously communicating with an ever-expanding network of human relationships enables the self to embody an increasingly widening circle of inclusiveness in its own sensitivity. On the other hand, Confucians, as opposed to collectivists, firmly establish the “subjectivity” of the person as sui generis. No social program, no matter how lofty, can undermine the centrality of selfhood in Confucian learning. After all, Confucians see learning for the sake of the self as the authentic purpose of education. To be sure, the self as an open and communicating center of relationships is intimately connected with other selves; far from being egoistic, it is communal. However, by stressing the centrality of the self in learning to be human, the Confucians advocate ultimate self-transformation, not only as social ethics but also as the flourishing of human nature with profound religious significance.

Forming One Body with Earth and Myriad Things

For Confucians to fully realize themselves, it is not enough to become a responsible householder, effective social worker, or conscientious political servant. No matter how successful one is in the sociopolitical arena, the full measure of one’s humanity cannot be accommodated without a reference to Heaven. The highest Confucian ideal is the “unity of Man and Heaven,” which defines humanity not only in anthropological terms but also in cosmological terms. In the Doctrine of the Mean (Chung-yung), the most authentic manifestation of humanity is characterized as “forming a trinity with Heaven and Earth.”(9)
Yet, since Heaven does not speak and the Way in itself cannot make human beings great – which suggests that although Heaven is omnipresent and may be omniscient, it is certainly not omnipotent – our understanding of the Mandate of Heaven requires that we fully appreciate the rightness and principle inherent in our heart-minds. Our ability to transcend egoism, nepotism, parochialism, ethnocentrism, and chauvinistic nationalism must be extended to anthropocentrism as well. To make ourselves deserving partners of Heaven, we must constantly be in touch with that silent illumination that makes the rightness and principle in our heart-minds shine forth brilliantly. If we cannot go beyond the constraints of our own species, the most we can hope for is an exclusive, secular humanism advocating man as the measure of all things. By contrast, Confucian humanism is inclusive; it is predicated on an “anthropocosmic” vision. Humanity in its all-embracing fullness “forms one body with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things.” Self-realization, in the last analysis, is ultimate transformation, that process which enables us to embody the family, community, nation, world, and cosmos in our sensitivity.

Endnotes:

1. For a general discussion on ritualization as humanization, see Tu Wei-ming, “Li as Process of Humanization,” Philosophy East and West, 22, no. 2 (April 1972): 187 – 201.
2. Mencius 6A:7.
3. Unfortunately, Liu Shaoe’ Treatise on Personalities (Jen-u-u chih) is still not yet available in English translation.
4. Analects 2:4.
5. See his essay on “Understanding the Nature of Jen (Humanity).” in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, trans. And comp. Wing-tsit Chan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963): 523.
6. Analects 15:23.
7. Analects 2:4.
8. This common expression is still widely used in China. Although it is a popular idiom rather than assertion in the Confucian classics, it vividly captures the Confucian spirit that self-realization never completes and that, as long as a person lives, he is still redeemable.
9. Chung-yung (Doctrine of the Mean) XXII. For a discussion of this idea in the perspective of Confucian “moral metaphysics,” see Tu Wei-ming, Centrality and Communality: An Essay on Chung-yung (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1076 pp. 100-111.

The answer to suffering cannot be simply to avoid suffering, any more than the answer to the meaning of life is to prolong life as much as possible.

Interesting article about contemporary America and Confucius:
http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node/16

Sexual Orientation is a Social Construct that should be Abandoned

There is no such as "sexual orientation" as having intrinsic character. Why? Because "sexual orientation" arises out of discriminatory attraction. Discriminatory attraction arises out of the confusion that equivocates lust and love. This confusion of lust and love is specific to a certain understanding of human relationships. Because this certain understanding of human relationships is specific to the individual and the culture in a specific historical context, "sexual orientation" cannot arise through an understanding that removes lust from love. In effect, our sexualization of everything, from our relationships to people and people themselves, leads to a social reality in which there is such a thing as "sexual orientation." Therefore, "sexual orientation" can only arise from a specific cultural context that arises from a certain understanding of human relationships, and is not part of fundamental human nature.

Because "sexual orientation" is not part of fundamental human nature as is socially-constructed, we have the potential to assess its merit and either continue using it or discard it. Because "sexual orientation" has no merit, and causes suffering, "sexual orientation" should be abandoned as a social reality and individuals should cultivate themselves away from manifesting "sexual orientation." Because lust is the intrinsic evil that leads to "sexual orientation," cultivators should rid themselves of lust as much as possible in order to abandon "sexual orientation."

"Sexual orientation" arises out of discriminatory attraction. Sexual orientation can only exist under the assumption that an individual can be sexually attracted to one form, but not another. We understand sexual orientation through affirmation and negation; homosexuals are sexually attracted to the same sex, but not the opposite sex. Heterosexuals cannot be sexually attracted to the same sex, but are attracted to the opposite sex. Bisexuals are attracted to both sexes, and cannot be attracted to neither sex. Therefore, our concept of "sexual orientation" only arises out of a concept of discrminatory attraction.

However, the nature of attraction is that it is neither truly discrminatory nor truly non-discriminatory, but rather empty of inherent nature. Attraction cannot be truly discriminatory, because it has no bounds and changes over time. One can find one's spouse attractive, and then in a few years find them unattractive or even repulsive. In purely sexual terms, one can find human beings sexually attractive, and then later find animals sexually attractive. Sexual attraction in minimal before puberty, grows during puberty, and declines after a certain age. Attraction, and especially lust, constantly changes and has no bounds. People can literally be attracted to anything. However, attraction cannot be truly non-discriminatory, because no one is attracted to every thing simultaneously. In fact, attraction can only exist in the context that certain things are either attractive, unattractive (neutral), or repulsive (direct opposite of attractive). Foods taste good because other foods are tasteless or taste bad. Some people are beautiful because other people lack beauty or are ugly. (Though the perciever can possibly attain a state in which of all food tastes good or all people are beautiful, this transcendent perception cannot give rise to attraction. If every food is equally tasty and every person equally beautiful, what is there to be attracted to?)

Because discriminatory attraction has no inherent, unchanging, fixed basis, neither can sexual orientation. Sexual orientation cannot then be an inherent, unchanging, fixed characteristic of any individual. Furthermore, sexual orientation can only arise out of lust, which can be, to a fair extent, controlled and diminished through proper self-effort, and can be shaped in certain directions through the conditions and environment one finds oneself in.

Romantic discriminatory attraction arises out of the confusion that equivocates lust and love. Whereas true love can be extended to all beings, caring and cherishing them regardless of condition, circumstance, form, and history, lust does not work this way. The nature of lust roots itself in attraction, which as explained, must intrinsically find other things as unattractive or repulsive. This process of finding things attractive, non-attractive, or repulsive is discrimination. That is why attraction necessarily involves discrimination. Because this discrimination into attractive, non-attractive, and repulsive has no fixed characteristic and can be changed, shaped, and suppressed or developed, discriminatory attraction has no inherent nature nor intrinsic character. That is why one person can find his spouse attractive one year, less attractive the next, unattractive another, and eventually repulsive, without the spouse radically changing. Same with favorite foods, clothing styles, friends, dating partners, and so forth. Whereas love can be unconditional, attraction is everchanging. Therefore, romantic discriminatory attraction cannot be explained by love, but by the confusion of attraction as love.

Because sexual orientation discriminates based on gender or sex, this discrimination cannot be explained by attraction in general, but only specifically through lust, which is attraction in its sexual form. Without lust, there cannot be sexual orientation.

This confusion of lust and love is specific to a certain understanding of human relationships. What is this understanding? This understanding is that other human beings can be related to as objects of pleasure, objects of attraction, objects to be discriminated among for the sake of one's self. This is hedonism as applied to human relationships. Specifically with regard to "sexual orientation," people extend this hedonistic understanding to the conception of "romantic relationships" as being intrinsically lustful and sexually-based, with the understanding that this sexual attraction is unchanging, fixed, and inherent to one's personality.

However, this is not the case. Attraction is malleable, changing, unfixed, and not inherent to one's individual personality. Because this certain understanding of human relationships is specific to the individual and the culture in a specific historical context, "sexual orientation" cannot arise through an understanding that removes lust from love. When one understands love as separate from lust, in their purest forms, one understands that love necessarily involves unconditional care, boundless benevolence and compassion, and willingness to suffer for the other person. These elements are separate, and in practical expression often contradictory, to attraction (lust or otherwise). Because attraction is by nature fickle, changing and unfixed, attraction can only impurify true love. That is why many individuals in the Victorian era had and expressed deep love for those they had intimate relationships with, whether friends or family, whether male or female. To them, "sexual orientation" would be nothing more than the direction of one's lust, because one could love someone regardless of which gender or sex that person is.

Therefore, in effect, our sexualization of everything in our modern, Western culture, from our relationships to people and people themselves, leads to a social reality in which there is such a thing as "sexual orientation." Everything is sexualized these days. Commercials constantly appeal to sexual attraction. Our clothes emphasize bodily contours. Dating is not about finding the right marriage partner, but about a sexual relationship. Mainstream music is inundated with sexuality. Pornography is becoming more and more acceptable. People are taught to believe that they are little more than thinking animals, and so are encouraged engage in lust this way (even though animals simply do not experience lust the same way humans do), and social "scientists" take current historically-specific modern trends of our hypersexuality as "evidence" that we are, "in fact," little more than animals. Because sexuality is so inundated is everything we do and experience because of our hypersexualized culture, we have trouble understanding that lust and love are actually separate, and we have trouble perceiving this separation correctly. Because we cannot separate lust and love, we believe that romantic discrimination is love, and because lust is intrinsically sexual, this discrimination manifests itself as "sexual orientation," which we falsely understand as being part of love.

Therefore, "sexual orientation" can only arise from a specific cultural context that arises from a certain understanding of human relationships, and is not part of fundamental human nature. Because one can understand love and lust as separate and mutually exclusive, and change one's heart to expand one's love and diminish one's lust, romantic discrimination, sexual attraction, and therefore "sexual orientation" ceases to become neither meaningful concepts nor social realities. There is, in fundamentally human reality, no such thing as heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, or asexuals. These concepts only arise out of lust and sexual attraction, which is ever-changing, unfixed, malleable, changeable, given direction by self and society, encouragable, and supressable.

Because "sexual orientation" is not part of fundamental human nature as is socially-constructed, we have the potential to assess its merit and either continue using it or discard it. Because lust hinders true love, lust should be diminished as much as possible. And because "sexual orientation" can only arise out of sexual attraction, which is lust, "sexual orientation" must necessarily be abandoned when one abandons lust. "Sexual orientation" provides no good for individuals or society, self or others. When people define their marriages and love based on "sexual orientation," they define it on sexual attraction, which will hinder the cultivation of true love. "Sexual orientation" also divides people, not simply because of discrimination, but because attraction discriminates. When 1.5% of the population is "homosexual," "homosexuals" will have difficulty finding marriage partners simply because of reduced demographics. Finally, when people marry those who they cannot have children with, a greatly wonderful aspect of life is absent. Therefore, because "sexual orientation" has no merit, and causes suffering, "sexual orientation" should be abandoned as a social reality and individuals should cultivate themselves away from manifesting "sexual orientation."

Because lust is the intrinsic evil that leads to "sexual orientation," cultivators should rid themselves of lust as much as possible in order to abandon "sexual orientation." Why is lust evil? Because it reduces other people to being objects from which to extract pleasure from. When one person is lusting after another, he or she is not concerned with the well-being or benefit of the other person; rather, he or she simply wants something from the other person for his or her own pleasure. Therefore it is a great impediment to true love, which is based on unconditional care, boundless benevolence and compassion, and willingness to suffer for the other person. Thus, lust should be abandoned.

The sexualization of everything and the cultivation of lust brings upon a confusion between love and lust, which then defines "love" as "attraction." Further emphasis on lust results in "sexual attraction," which by its discriminating faculties creates socially-constructed divisions of "heterosexual," "homosexual," "bisexual," "asexual." This hypersexualization and lust at extremes results in pedophilia, sexual abuse, rape, and other sexual wronghoods and abnormalities.

Through Catholicism, I was introduced to the greater concepts of right and wrong.
Through Buddhism, I began to understand that following right and avoiding wrong protected and benefited myself.
Through Confucianism, I began to learn to take joy in right and become saddened at wrong for others' sake, and to fully understand why that is.


As I grew up, going through local public schools up until middle school, I was never exposed to an actual system of ethics. Sure, there was the usual authoritarianism that public schools invariably indoctrinate into its students, the superficially supervised playtime in which only physical violence is somewhat stopped (but certainly not verbal or emotional) but not reformed, and of course the 'government and citizenship in a nutshell' activities. But if you asked me anything about ethics, or what it meant to being a good person, I might reference something I learned in class about "random acts of kindness" or recycling to help the environment. I can't exactly recall how deeply I thought about right or wrong acts, though I did have a big problem with how friendship was conducted during my elementary school years, but I certainly couldn't have given you a straight answer back then.

And when they taught us sex "education," I didn't even think to bat an eye at the fact that they were showing everyone how to use condoms right in the middle of class, or the fact that people did not discuss why sex should be done only in certain social situations and what those situations were (in a steady dating relationship? or only after marriage? were one-night stands acceptable assuming mutual consent? how do you ensure mutual consent without losing the 'romantic' atmosphere, or at least the sexually-charged feelings of the moment?).

When one of my 6th grade friends talked about his drug experiences, and later on in 8th grade, his experiences in having sex, I both felt deeply uncomfortable, but a bit excited for him, and had no idea why I had these mix of feelings. Even if I could express them back then, I certainly couldn't justify or explain why.

I had been going to the St Andrew and Paul Korean Catholic Mission since I was in elementary school, but ethics were told, but not actually taught. I never encountered an actual explanation as to why pre-marital sex was wrong, maybe outside of something vague like "God wants you to..." And unsurprisingly, once most of the kids I knew from the church got out of their parent's control, they committed all the sins (or what I'll refer to as "near-sins") they were told not to, because they never developed a strong understanding of why they shouldn't do certain things.

So what do I mean by "sins" versus "near-sins"? If a sin is pre-marital sex, the near-sin would be dressing in lingerie to a Halloween party. The explicit sin is the extramarital sex (adultery or fornication), but the underlying vice is lust. So even though dressing in lingerie to a Halloween party, or dirty dancing for that matter, is not explicitly written out as a sin (as extramarital sex is), it's the same depravity at work. So the nature of all these activities should be considered to be sinful.

Bellarmine was different, but to varying degrees, depending on the teacher and the setting. Same basic conservative morality, but certainly different teaching approach. Some teachers were more rigorous than others, namely the great and universally honored Dr. Dalton, guiding us through moral thinking and development. Do we really want to live in certain ways? Do we really want to live in a society that purchases Disney merchandise made through exploitative child labor? Is there something greater to life than grades and the material wealth that supposedly comes from higher education? For the first time, I had teachers that explicitly told us that "freak dancing" (dirty dancing that simulates the act of sex) is wrong. This was the beginning of formally and consciously tackling these questions.

Still, while going through Swarthmore, and my atheistic/materialistic phase, I was hard pressed to explain to my fellow students, who were much more liberal than I ever was at my peak of liberal affiliation, my more conservative views. The best I could do to counter the idea that "having sex before marriage is like test-driving a car, you need to do it before you make the purchase" was to point out that people aren't cars. But I couldn't really articulate myself beyond that, even after putting further thought into it. I knew that there was definitely more to sex, but I couldn't give a logical explanation beyond something that might be considered 'merely' poetic or unrealistically romantic.

The closest justification I could come to expressing was through evolutionary psychology. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was attempting an examination of fundamental human nature in order to establish a sense of what we should do and shouldn't do. I was tired of hearing that everything was a social construct, or that things are "not necessarily true" and have exceptions as a reason to disregard the entire principle (because it did not account for 100% of reality).

So in terms of the premarital sex question, I could point out that human beings have evolved to require heavily parental investment in their children (babies are born premature, and children really need parents to take care of them in a purely physiological/biological sense up until puberty, and even afterward, parents must teach them how to incorporate themselves into society for survival's sake), and their behavior (including emotional reactions to various social and biological stimuli) must have evolved to seek partnership relationships with the individual(s) they have sex with. So human beings are definitely not supposed to have one-night stands with strangers, with no sense of obligation, because the implications for the survival of our offspring are disastrous. Instead, we've evolved to psychologically demand stability from our sex partners, which, in social terms, culminates in the institution of marriage. A violation of this biologically innate demand for stability in our mates will cause us significant distress, physically and emotionally.

But explaining why people are predisposed to act and respond in certain ways because of its evolutionarily-mandated drive for survival is hardly a foundation for morality and spiritual development. Seeking only survival of oneself and one's offspring often, in fact, runs contrary to our understanding of true morality and ethics. After all, rape could theoretically be justified if evolutionary survival were to replace ethics, because this is a way of maximizing one's offspring potential. And surely, by virtue of having human hearts, we all find reasoning utterly deplorable.

After graduating from Swarthmore, I began to attend the Zen Center of Sunnyvale partly out of intellectual interest, but partly because I was interested in joining a religious community again. I had left the Catholic church because I couldn't reconcile various aspects of its theology with itself, so I thought I'd investigate a religion that was known for its logical rigor.

And logical it is! I could go on ad infinitum about Buddhism, but with respects to morality, there are two big principles at play here; karma and compassion, which in a sense reflect two sides of the morality coin.

Karma describes cause and effect. (The Sanskrit literal meaning is "action," but one cannot talk about action without its results in Buddhism.) Karma can be understood to have two components - 1. the physical, seeable results of the action and 2. the intention behind them. These two factors will combine to produce an effect that returns to the doer of the karma. So karma could be described as "volitional action" that creates a specific result to self and others.

For example, doing community service for Habitat for Humanity in order to improve one's college application would involve good physical, and seeable results. However, the volition is not so pure; the intention was not compassion, because the point of the service was not to help others, it was to help oneself. Because the compassionate intent was not there in doing the good, the 'merits' (or colloquially, the benefits for yourself) of the community service is muted to some considerable extent. On the other hand, if someone accidentally steps on a bunch of ants while taking a stroller, totally unaware, the act is physically harmful but the intention to harm was absent. The results of this action is also muted to some considerable extent, perhaps completely and totally. The volition is a critical component of the merits produced.

Karma also has a reinforcement effect on your mind. If you keep doing compassionate acts, you will become more compassionate. If you keep doing malicious acts, you'll keep becoming more malicious. If you keep indulging your greed or lust, you'll become even greedier and more lustful.

Compassion is less difficult to explain. If you have the intent to alleviate others' suffering and bring them happiness, it's naturally you'll avoid certain things and commit certain actions. For example, becoming vegetarian is advocated because one will be freeing livestock animals from harm. You might donate to charity simply because the charity will inevitably help people.

So with regards to premarital sex, because sex in an unstable relationship can really end up hurting people, a good Buddhist will avoid having sex recklessly. And because indulging in lust will bring about more lust (and lust, or greed, is one of the "three poisons" that causes suffering), sex in general is to be avoided as much as possible. So certainly, one-night stands are not looked favorably upon. I would even argue that upon these grounds, a compassionate individual would have sex only in the context of marriage, because this is the safest and most stable scenario for his would-be sex partner. A lot of anxiety and confusion arises with premarital sex, and if you truly loved someone, you would keep him or her from experiencing that. At the least, you ought to assure your loved one that you'll always be there for him/her (which is one of the central elements of, of not in and of itself totally equivalent to, marriage) before you start having sexual relations.

To further my point, I'll quote from the Buddha himself, who describes in the Culakammavighanga Sutra (found in the Majjhima Nikaya of the Pali Cannon) a person who commits sexual misconduct as a person who

has intercourse with women who are protected by their mother, father, mother and father, brother, sister, or relatives, who have a husband, who are protected by law, and even with those already engaged.

It's pretty clear that the Buddha did not look favorably upon extramarital sex, whether it's premarital sex or adultery.

(At this point, I'd like to refer to the fact that mental health problems (eg depression, suicide) are strongly correlated with premarital sex, particularly for the teenage age range. I won't discuss this evidence further in this post, but I certainly will soon in the future.)

From a strict interpretation of the Buddhist perspective, premarital sex results in harm because it engages oneself and one's partner in lust, and the instability of the non-marital relationship creates anxiety in both sex partners. Furthermore, the risk of pregnancy always haunts the couple, no matter what contraceptive is used. If a fetus is aborted (and in Buddhism, life begins at conception), murder is committed upon one's child, which of course is evil karma. If a child is born, he or she is born into an unstable family situation, and there are various harms resulting from that as well. So premarital sex results only in harm, the least of which is indulging in lust and living in anxiety, and the worst being either ruining a child's life or murder itself.

A similar analysis could be done on the "near-sins" of dirty dancing or lewd appearance. They arise lust in others, they arise lust in oneself, both of which is bad in and of itself. But this lust can result in harm later on! At Swarthmore, there used to be (and perhaps still are) an annual campus-wide party in which women dress in lingerie. Not too surprisingly, the vast majority of rapes during the school year occurred during that one night. By arousing lust in others, you are putting both yourself and others in grave danger.

Of course, I'm not justifying that a woman who dresses lewdly "deserves" to be raped. No one in the world deserves such a heinous experience, for any reason whatsoever. But I do liken the situation to one in which one approaches dogs with rabies. In that situation, no one deserves to be bitten, but one should certainly avoid that situation for his own safety!

So in Buddhism I found the justification of morality as "do not harm others" and "try to benefit others." Rather than speaking of individual rights, in which you could do whatever you wanted within those boundaries, harmful or beneficial, Buddhism talks about causality (karma) and compassion.

One of the things I found in Confucianism that I found to be lacking in Zen cultivation was finding the spiritual and sacred in all worldly things, the transformation of mundaness into richness, channeling suffering and the lesser desires into forces of benevolence and virtue.

The essence of Confucian morality is incredibly difficult to explain because it is infused with spirituality to the point of oneness. Confucian morality is not simply united or integrated with spirituality, they are one and the same. A separation between morality and spirituality comes only from a lack of cultivation.

The point is further muddled when we consider the fact that other religions have something of a claim to this effect as well. For example, Buddhists can argue that a highly cultivated individual will naturally act ethically. In Mahayanan Buddhism, when one perfects one of the six paramitas - charity, morality, patience, effort, meditation, wisdom - one perfects all. While I do agree that the perfected individual of any religion does not morality and spirituality, the emphasis on this oneness as critical for the path of cultivation lies best with the Confucians. The intermediate Buddhist cultivator will have a lesser ability to integrate the two than the intermediate Confucian cultivator, even though the perfected ideal (the "sage" in Confucianism, the fully-enlightened Buddha in Buddhism) is the same, because of the difference in emphasis for practice. An opera composer needs to develop different skills in order to create the 'perfect opera.' In doing so, he can choose to see the poetics of the text as primary, with the musical score and plot following naturally. Or he can see the musical score as primary, with the poetics and plot following naturally, or he can see the plot as primary, with the poetics and score following naturally. Whatever focus he chooses, he will produce different products based on that focus than had he chosen a different focus, until he reaches a stage where all skills are fully mastered.

To return to Confucian ethics, each action has an ethical dimension because it inevitably effects others. Ethics, especially in Confucianism, is not about the individual, but rather about relationships. The concept of individual rights is superceded by the ideal of harmony. Harmony is expressed through ritual, propriety, and ettiquette. Ettiquette, in fact, is the outwardly manifestation of ethics. A handshake in the Western culture, or a bow in the Eastern culture, are symbolic acts both of ettiquette and ethics. Propriety has an important place, because it emphasizes order and ettiquette, and is infused with a sense of sacredness about every action. Ritual, ettiquette, propriety - these are all orderly and harmonious actions that connect us to other human beings and the cosmos in a profound and sacred way.

So to apply this understanding to sexuality is intellectually fascinating, but more significantly, empowering and enriching. Sex, to a Confucian, is among the most intimate of relational acts, and the most intimate of the marriage relationship. Sex is tantamount to an expression of the closest intimacy. Intimacy, by definition, cannot be established with multitudes of people, but rather with a select few. Exclusion is necessary for the closest and highest intimacy to occur. Therefore, to have sex with many individuals means to express the highest intimacy with many individuals.

But do people who have sex with many individuals really have the highest intimacy with all of those individuals?

The answer, practically speaking (and Confucians are strong on practical ethics), is no. Clearly, even if at some point the couples felt intimate, that intimacy is no longer there, by decision (excluding cases of death).

The marriage bond is built upon a promise of intimacy and security. If sex is to have spiritual and sacred meaning as an act of intimacy, it should be reserved only for as few as people as possible. As few as people possible ideally means only one person. That one person should be one's spouse, because no one else in the world is expected to be as intimate in which sexual relations are appropriate.

So why is sex so natural to be chosen as the act of sacred and spiritual intimacy? Becaise Confucians believing in transforming the lesser desires into virtues, finding the spiritual in the mundane. As I've established before, sex undeniably has strong emotional feelings attached to it, and is certainly physically highly pleasurable. So the Confucian takes these spontaneous, natural responses and transforms them into something sacred, spiritual and noble. They no longer become simply pleasures of the body and heart - they have spiritual meaning!

Sex then becomes an expression of "I love you" with physical, emotional, and spiritual meaning of the highest intimacy. And in order for this expression to be most meaningful, sex should be reserved only for husband and wife, after they have verbally dedicated themselves to each other.