As the song goes, “Be kind to our four-legged friends,” but what about our siblings, other relatives, neighbors, friends, or mere acquaintances?

Loving actions and empathic compassion are both wise and desperately needed in this violent, competitive world. Just how is it that each of us can live in such a way to contribute toward a happier, healthier, and more loving and sane home, school, community, and world? This is a big question, yet the answer is not out of reach.  I well remember a young child once said to me “Martin Luther King was a great leader — he had big words.  When some people said hate he said love.” Somehow this young being already had an idea about what it takes to live in such a way that brings happiness to ourselves and others at the same time. The Dalai Lama of Tibet reminds us, “If you want to be happy, make others happy. Happiness and well being is the purpose of this life. My religion is loving-kindness.”

It is said that in Tibet, every village, valley, and clan had its own red-and-gold robed Lama to act as priest, healer, teacher and wise man. And also every village had its day-lok, or returner from the beyond, the bardo, land of the dead, or intermediate state. These returners understood reality and often came back with hair-raising tales of the “no-good-niks” who had done evil things on this earth, and as a result, were undergoing pain and travails in the world to come. Occasionally the day-lok also reported on the rewards of the honest and generous ones who would reap excellent rewards from their good karma (actions and intentions) in the next life. However, the fire-and-brimstone-like oral day-lok literature is mostly comprised of vivid cautionary tales meant to inspire common folks to follow unfailingly the Five Buddhist Moral Precepts of: no killing, stealing, lying, intoxicants, or sexual misconduct — and to live a good, honest, productive, and nonviolent life.

My late friend, the lama Chakdud Tulku used to tell stories about his mother Ama-la, who was a day-lok. A humble, pious, shy and quiet woman, she devoted herself daily to caring for her family and neighbors, and especially her reincarnate lama son (tulku) who was the apple of her eye.  Never did she raise her voice or gossip and criticize anyone. Unlearned in books, she was skilled in the arts and crafts of traditional Tibetan home and family life.

One day a terrible epidemic spread among the villagers, and carried Ama-la off along with some of her neighbors. She breathed her last breath with the Dalai Lama’s mantra-prayer of compassion and loving kindness on her lips, wishing her family and friends well “Om Mani Pedme Hung!” — the jeweled spiritual light is in the lotus of each of us! Whispering the mantra ever more gently, she breathed her last and then, relaxing back into herself, with the final seed-syllable, “Hung,” she was gone.

A family lama was called to oversee her final arrangements, pray for her and strive to ensure a higher rebirth. How amazed was he to find that she woke up the next morning and seemed to be alive and cured! The entire family rejoiced. But Ama-la was a transformed person, a day-lok, having returned from the land of the dead with tales to tell. Ama-la told whoever would listen that the obnoxious, drunken, old wife-beating Uncle Dorje’s ongoing spiritual being had become stuck beneath a rocky road and was constantly being run over by trucks, and that the spiteful, acid-tongued old Grandmother Cheutso was reborn as a spider in the gloomy, dank local police station basement. Moreover, she’d seen the infamous thief Puntsok reborn as a sore-covered snake, armless, legless, and slippery, being beaten with sticks by local villagers.

“How could this be?!” asked more than a few of Ama-la’s neighbors. The day-lok patiently explained to them again and again that she herself had voyaged there and had seen reality. She knew beyond a doubt that the basic fundamental and ethical teaching from Buddha concerning the law of karma, cause and effect, was undoubtedly true. Ama-la saw that we each reap the results of our actions. While once she had been a meek and mild-mannered woman who kept in the background as tradition required, Ama-la now spoke with great authority, in a calm and clear, Lama-like teacher-Elder voice.

“The flowering, wish-granting Tree of Virtue and Morality,” she exclaimed in an orator’s voice which completely amazed her listeners, “wafts its heavenly fragrance to all who shelter under it, and it is like a blissful and serene flower-garden heaven all around them. The gods and angels themselves are spawned by good karma’s fragrance of this wonderful virtue wafting all the way up to the highest heavens, and delighting the Ultimate Judge of All Karma (actions). Join together with me in this virtuous celebration!”

And so Ama-la regaled them with life-valuable parables about what goes around comes around. We shall reap what we have sown, as many of the Good Books say. This is universal truth, timeless yet timely, good for today and good for tomorrow. Be good and do good, and goodness shall follow you like a shadow follows the body. Wreak havoc and evil, and you shall reap the whirlwind, or at least bad karma… and no one wants that!

This karmic law, what goes around comes around, can help us to understand that for every action there is a reaction. (Science also now tells us this, too.) Things reproduce in kind and not at random. Just as apple trees come from apple seeds and not from lemon seeds; our good habits and excellent character and destiny arise through repeating good, wholesome and helpful deeds, including our actions of body, speech, and mind. This is why it’s important, as my own late grandmother Anne taught me, to practice what you preach, do what you say you’re going to do, keep your agreements, and walk your talk.

Our thoughts and intentions are also very important. If we can train our brains and open our hearts, we become masters rather than victims of circumstances and conditions. For it’s not what happens to us, but what we make of it that makes all the difference; this is what defines our experience, our character, and our destiny. Understanding this, our inner strength and power, helps us to train ourselves into following the good path in life and to assume the high ground. And we find that we do not to have to travel very far from home in order to find the holy land. It lies within and all around us, always. Heaven and nirvana, happiness and well being, love and truth can be discovered in our own backyard if we dig deeply enough into our own heart and mind, and examine our body, soul and spirit to find out who we are, where we come from and how we fit in to this entire marvelous and miraculous universe. We uncover, recover, and discover the god or goddess, the Buddha, the divinity within everyone and everything.

If we can dig deeply into ourselves, we will reach the water table where we are all one, all invisibly joined, the common ground. Then we can both learn and practice naturally The Golden Rule, treating others as we would ourselves be treated. The enlightened teacher named Buddha said, long ago: “What is hateful to you, don’t do to others; what is delightful to you, do for others, too.”

As we mature and wise-up, we can graduate to the second rule, which I lovingly call The Diamond Rule: seeing the Buddha, the divine light, the sacred in everyone and everything. Through this path of self-inquiry and discovery, we grow in insightful awareness, discernment, and unselfish love. We reduce selfishness, and increase altruistic compassion and empathy, and positively transform our inner attitudes in order to be an edifying light and a caring steward — rather than a dark cloud and exploiter — in this, our world. “To know the world is knowledge; to know oneself is wisdom,” as the aged Chinese sage Lao Tzu once said. The mature wisdom of self-knowledge is the universal panacea, the universal remedy. So let’s awaken together from the sleep of separateness and illusion, and lighten up while enlightening up.

Wisdom and compassion, the Buddhist words for truth and love, are like the two wings of a great bird. As a bird cannot fly with only one wing, we need wisdom to know truth and warmhearted loving compassion to live closely together and get along in this world. The word “religion” implies uniting and bringing together, and should not become a divisive force in this world. Each of the world’s major religions has their own version of the Golden Rule, to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And there is only one person we can ask to do this: ourselves. Each of us must focus on our own behavior and let it be good. Let’s learn to love and accept ourselves and each other with patience and tolerance before it’s too late to save this, our endangered planet.

Each of us is unique and significant, and has our role to play in this great pageant. Everything we do makes a difference, whether large or small. It’s not how large our works, accomplishments, and deeds are, or even if they are recognized, seen, and appreciated. It’s how much love we put into them that makes them meaningful and even great in the long run. Even something as simple as being polite is connected to morality and self-discipline, steadying and easing the societal and family wheels. Politeness requires patient attention, alert presence of mind, and conscientious care for others as well as oneself — all factors of contemplation, meditation, prayer, and awakening. Pay attention, my dear friends. If we are not here now, we won’t be there then. This I can guarantee. Developing present awareness by consistently remembering to integrate mindfulness into our actions, rather than mindlessly sleepwalking through our days, helps bring us all that we want, need and aspire to, a better quality of life for ourselves and all our connections.

Let us think globally while acting locally, beginning with ourselves and each other, helping, connecting, wishing others well and acting on the best impulses of our better nature. Let us care for our own garden, as well as the entire environment. Pick up litter, recycle garbage, and refrain from waste. Give the gift of your time and good energy to someone in need, or lend an ear, a shoulder, a helping hand. There are a million-and-one ways and places to kneel and kiss the ground, not just in church. This world of ours is like an altar, and all who walk on it are like gods and goddesses, Buddhas and angels. This we can see through awakening to reality, opening our wisdom eye and practicing with simple clarity these two essential teachings for the heart and mind, body and soul. May these jewels, The Golden Rule and The Diamond Rule, adorn each of us and beautify the world.

Be kind to one another.

Lama Surya Das (Jeffrey A. Miller)

To whomever the die is cast upon:

I know not your identity, nor your character,

But I know that which defines you,

For I know that you, as one of us, are a creature of Grief.

We are all newcomers to Grief –

Each and every time

It sinks its icy claws into us,

we feel its pain again, always new, always fresh.

Grief is not like a legion of scarlet-clad enemies on a battleground…

For however much we train in preparation for our inevitable clash with it…

Our armor will never be thick enough, and our shields will be polished up to a point

Where they are mirrors, and useful only to look upon the enemy within ourselves.

No matter how much experience we amass with Grief,

We can never anticipate where and how its strikes will land,

We can never lay down rules for it to follow…

And our constant struggles to control it are futile.

When Grief in all its terrible glory comes,

We know not how to fight it but with itself.

For in the moment, Grief is a flame that cannot be extinguished…

And a raging storm that extinguishes all else.

Grief appears in many different forms, many different places.

In ego, in selflessness, in fear, in anger, in hate, in…

In love. We can only put off Grief, let it build up for some later, distant moment,

When we sit by ourselves in a dark room, next to a window’s view of black snow.

Grief’s sword, though sharp, never inflicts fatal wounds –

No, Grief doesn’t possess that much mercy.

Instead, it leaves a hollow hole in one’s body,

An ache that never fully heals.

Grief is a visitor, stopping by each of our homes,

But this guest cannot be denied entry.

It comes and lies in your bed with you. And when it leaves,

its nightmares remain, trapped in the sweaty sheets.

If ever we prepare our defenses against Grief’s next onslaught,

We will find that Grief exists not only outside us, waiting to charge when our doors open,

But also in the most sacred chamber of our soul, locked within us…

Grief’s forces destroy us from the outside as well as the inside… it loses itself in our being.

Grief is a mathematical number without an inverse.

For that which declares itself the repairer of Grief’s wound — happiness –

Is merely a sham and a fake, and cannot exist without consequences…

There is no way back to the Identity of this set once we reach Grief.

I am truly sorry for that which ails you,

A Neutral and Unknowing Party in Your Conflicts

P.S. One last note, to sum it all up, Grief is like a double-length episode of an Indian soap-opera with songs from a new Justin Bieber album in it.

Akash V. Mehta

For most people my age, philosophy is something tantalizing, but always out of reach; referenced enough that we feel we should understand it, but so dense and abstract that we are convinced that we never will. Peel away the terminology and historical schools of thought, and what remains is a cloud of questions that are usually uncomfortable enough to make us dismiss them.

In her book Moral Clarity, Susan Neiman underlines the concrete worth of such questions. The book examines importance of abstract ideas (with chapters on happiness, reason, reverence, and hope) and how to use them to understand and form opinions on social issues. In it, Dr. Neiman addresses diverse concepts — from where morality originates to why the left experienced a decline in influence after the Cold War — all connected by one problem: how to defend the legitimacy of idealism. This winter, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Neiman about some of her own philosophical views and about Moral Clarity for this KidSpirit issue on ethics and morality. (Our exchange directly follows this article.) But before I corresponded with Dr. Neiman, I had to “chew and digest” her book in small parts with lots of thinking in between readings. In fact, I came to stuff my book full of Post-Its and notes; this attracted questions from friends and teachers and led to some of the most stimulating conversations I’ve ever had.

The experience I had while reading and discussing Moral Clarity validates the power of thought and idealism. Somehow, walking around with a book called “Moral Clarity” sticking out of your backpack is at times enough to start a dialogue. Twice, I asked my tennis coach, a history and Socratic Seminar teacher at our high school, for help understanding parts of Moral Clarity involving the Cold War. Whether on the back of a bus, in classes, or in a teacher’s office, the experiences left me with much to think about.

“This is the kind of stuff I really care about,” said a friend in my Latin class, “I wish I had more time to think about morals and things that matter that way.”

We wondered what it would be like to approach virtues and their social applications in the context of normal school classes. In school, discussion-based classes are uncommon; I spend most of my time transferring information instead of really thinking about it. The cycle becomes one of board to paper, paper to mind, and later, regurgitation on a test before restarting. Both ends of the spectrum exist; for every few classes with rehearsed discussions and dry lectures, there is one that weaves kids together and prods us to form and defend our opinions. But the school situation on morality and philosophical thought isn’t entirely hopeless. In fact, it was a school-related experience last year — my AP US History term paper, of all things — that initially inspired my interest in philosophy and belief in Dr. Neiman’s words.

It was a wintry weekend sometime near the beginning of January. Swiveling in my chocolate-colored desk chair for at least an hour, I traced zigzags of sunlight on my walls and flipped absently through papers on my desk to try to forget the reason for my self-imposed bedroom exile. Philosophy was the root of my troubles. It had always seemed to me like a lofty and abstract concept, tormentingly inaccessible — even more so now that I had started sketching out my term paper involving social Darwinism. The guidance I needed lay just one long-distance phone call away.

My late great-uncle from India, Dr. Govind Chandra Pande, was a respected author and historian of Vedic and Buddhist philosophy, somewhat of a family legend. I had never met him and was terrified to call. Would he laugh at my faulty, 15-year-old understanding of “right and wrong”? Eventually, I swallowed my ego and dialed. My great-uncle patiently walked me through some texts I might find useful and connected them to current issues. He showed me the importance of understanding the ideologies that nations are built on before confronting problems in the world. Most importantly, he defined “philosophy” for me as something real. Something as mundane as a term paper became a combination of philosophy, literature, sociology, and economics as each resource I found led me dendritically to another.

Susan Neiman’s introduction to philosophy was very different than mine, but her philosophical growth is fascinating. The words of Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir changed her life. “I immediately decided that was what I wanted to do, though I really knew very little and had no realistic picture of what that meant,” Dr. Neiman says. “But perhaps my lack of such a picture helped me to shape my own.” She transitioned from a life as a 16-year-old high-school dropout, involved in the political movements of the late ’60s and early ’70s, to a college philosophy student. After moving to New York City, completing her GED, and going to night school at the City College of New York (CCNY), Dr. Neiman transferred to Harvard to finish her education. Now, subsequent to being a professor at Yale and Tel Aviv University, Dr. Neiman is the director of the Einstein Forum in Berlin — a “non-traditional form of employment” that she finds “more exciting than most of the alternatives.”

Dr. Neiman’s Moral Clarity has helped me appreciate the spiderweb of ideas that connect the past, present, and future. Personally, her beliefs ring true; the extent to which people downgrade the importance of idealism grows more apparent every day. A few days before writing these words, I found myself using material from Moral Clarity in a discussion on the legitimacy of the war in Iraq as an instrument of national policy. Dr. Neiman writes that fundamentalists and idealists are strikingly similar in one aspect: their desire for dignity and a greater “freedom” than the material world provides. An idea that connects two groups of people who seem so different ideologically is naturally appealing. Before reading Moral Clarity, I viewed terrorist groups and fundamentalists as alien creatures — people so unlike us that there was no hope in trying to understand them. “What,” a student in my history class scoffed during our discussion, “you want us to start negotiating with terrorists?” That’s the response I might have had before reading Dr. Neiman’s words, but now I think that instead of “negotiating” with terrorist groups, at least understanding their motivations is important.

Growing up, and even now, to a certain extent, I’ve been “the innocent one,” someone who is delusional because she still believes in the goodness of humanity and the potential for peace. My friends and classmates, 17 or 18 years old at the most, sometimes seem like they are budding cynics. It’s cooler or at least “more realistic” to see idealists as “lost” wishful-thinkers with their heads in the clouds. In the past, this attitude had made me question whether my beliefs were pessimistic enough to be sensible. I thank Dr. Neiman for showing me that idealism is not outdated and encouraging me to form opinion of others’ moral standpoints. After all, discussion and debate, only generated when people stop assuming that everything moral is relative, are some of the most enjoyable parts of philosophy. Susan Neiman, through Moral Clarity, has underlined my belief in the power of ideas and given me fuel for great independent thought and social discourse.

The following set of questions and answers are selections from my conversation with Susan Neiman this winter about Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists. The questions primarily involve the applications of an idealist morality in everyday life. In the sidebar to the interview section, you can find a list of recommended reading from Dr. Neiman.

Vidushi Sharma’s interview with Dr. Susan Neiman

Vidushi Sharma: What is “moral clarity”?

Susan Neiman: Moral clarity means the attempt to take moral questions seriously and find critical answers to them, rather than (a) dismissing moral questions ironically and saying that everything is relative, so there is no right or wrong; or (b) assuming “moral simplicity,” which is to suppose that some authority — whether religious or political — has settled moral questions once and for all and everyone else is wrong.

VS: How can people consistently apply their morals while making decisions in real life, often dealing with conflicting interests?

SN: Well that’s just the question, isn’t it? I am not sure one should worry too much about consistency, certainly not in the sense of having a system of rules which will guide you in every situation. Of course we have, and need to have, rules that guide us in general, because not every situation can (or need be) thoroughly analyzed. “Practice kindness and generosity,” for example, is a good general guide, but as you rightly point out, there will be conflicts where such a general rule will lead you nowhere, and that’s where you must stop and analyze: which interests are conflicting? In following my own interest am I hurting someone else’s?

One of my favorite suggestions is one of Kant’s. He says that most people go along by seeking their own happiness and worrying about other people’s virtue (or lack of it), but the world would be better if we just did the opposite: to think of other people’s happiness and worry about our own virtue. Of course even this is not an absolutely valid rule, but it is a good general guide!

VS: How can we avoid moral relativism while still encouraging the diversity of ideas in a society, some of which might seem to be irreconcilable?

SN: I think we have to bite the bullet and be able to declare, against current cultural assumptions, that human beings make moral progress and some ideas are just wrong. We — or most of us — have learned that it is wrong to oppress women, or minorities. There are societies who claim this is messing with their tradition — but remember that the Southerners fought a Civil War over that claim, and I know very few people today who would argue that owning slaves is just an idea or a tradition that should be respected for the sake of diversity.

VS: Are individuals obligated to help others in need? How can this be achieved while avoiding unwelcome and unnecessary interference in other countries as in the Middle East today?

SN: Another hard question but yes, I do believe that we, more and more in a globally connected world, have a responsibility to help others in need.

So many Americans, of every age, are woefully ignorant of how America is seen by other countries, although this doesn’t have to be the case given how easy it is to get information and news from other countries on the Internet. So here are a few more general pieces of advice: read at least one good U.S. newspaper every day and try very hard to get news from non-U.S. sources as well. If you don’t read a language other than English, the International Herald Tribune is pretty decent, but it still reflects an American perspective. Learning a second language is crucial — so many people in other countries speak at least three. It will allow you to get a perspective on the world that nothing else can, and will put you in a position to see the world from a less parochial perspective, which in turn will allow you to play a role in changing it from a universalist moral point of view. I learned at least as much from living and working in another country as I did from eight years of studying at Harvard and I think this is true for most people, as long as they truly live, i.e., study or work abroad. Most programs that are run by American universities that claim to allow people to study abroad don’t really do it — they permit students to have a good time in a bubble that doesn’t really get them out and testing their own cultural boundaries. Doing this is not only an important life experience, but one that is truly philosophical, because it will lead you to ask questions about your own assumptions about life and the world that nothing else can.

VS: What do you think young adults can contribute to society’s understanding of morals and ideas? Is it important for kids to have “moral clarity”?

SN: I hope this doesn’t sound condescending, but my first answer to the first question here is: get an education, a really good one. Force yourself to read good, hard books and ask questions about what is true in them as you are reading them. It is so often the case that young people try to reinvent the wheel, by coming up with arguments — for example, for relativism — that have been around since Plato, at least, while thinking they are the first to discover them. Of course young people should be thinking critically, all the time, and not simply take for granted whatever their elders (be they parents, teachers, or Plato!) tell them, but critical thinking is always enriched by knowing what people have thought before and struggling to understand it. It isn’t an accident that some texts have become known as classics, and are read as such all over the world

Second, I think it is important for kids to STRIVE for moral clarity, but not to assume they will have it. In fact, I think it’s fairly dangerous for anyone, adults included, to be certain they have moral clarity. Moral clarity isn’t a moment of instant enlightenment, but something you should work for all your life. If you do, you’ll have it sometimes, but even after 56 years of thinking about these questions there are still many times when I am not sure what the morally right thing to do is. Every situation and every dilemma needs to be thought through individually. That’s what moral clarity, as opposed to moral simplicity, demands.

Vidushi Sharma

I stood, poised at my machine, my implement, my weapon, with my foot resting gently on the peddle, laying dormant for that one moment, but still quite ready to strike.

I toyed with the idea of slamming my foot down hard, as hard as I could, gunning the engine of this sewing machine, and racing through those last few stitches at the speed of an illegal drag race. I could imagine the crazed whirring sound that the needle made as it pulsed up and down and up and down at high speed. But I refrained, pressing my foot down gently and carefully, so to avoid injuring myself (needles are very sharp, you know) as I sewed. With that slight movement, I finished the last few stitches of my beloved garment at a steady gait. It was over before I knew it.

I removed the cloth from the machine, and looked at it. This was my piece, my creation. I felt majestic, almighty, and all-powerful, albeit slightly irrational in my fervor over fabric. This garment, a corduroy vest, was not my first piece nor my finest, but something about it awakened within me an enormous sense of accomplishment. Perhaps, it was the sharply pointed collar, my first ever, perched at the neck like a bird, or maybe it was the slight dip at the back, indicative of the design I had put into the piece. Or it was the straight, tight seams, traveling all around which caused me such pride. Who knows. Who cares. There, standing in my room, surrounded by little scraps of fabric in all shapes, sizes, and colors, hunched over a sewing machine, and completely oblivious to my piece’s modest attributes, I felt like king (check that, queen) of the world.

I held it, my vest — that seemingly great achievement up in the air, and looked at it, stared at it, displayed it for all the (empty) room to see. My delight was such that it could not be contained; it spilled out of my body in little shakes of the head, twitches of the arms, and tiny shrieks. I was so proud, so crazily, irrationally proud that I literally couldn’t keep all of that feeling inside my body, let alone inside my mouth. Naturally, I couldn’t help but smile. But this smile was of its own breed. I didn’t smile one of those smiles that you force yourself into, as a form of self-recognition and congratulation. I didn’t smile one of those smiles that serves only as a pale visible reflection of the tiniest happy feeling, only for the benefit of others. No, this smile was the embodiment of happiness, so full that my cheeks immediately began to hurt with the strain of it. The movement was involuntary. I couldn’t stop smiling. I was powerless in the face of my own achievement and boundless joy. And that instance of creation, and of elation, ultimately forged in me one of the most strange and wonderful feelings. At that moment, I was both supremely powerful, and supremely powerless.

Naomi Chasek-MacFoy

The quivering legs

Thin ebony hairs pulsing with fear—

Or was it apprehension?

Could it sense my desire, my disgust,

My repugnance?

Tender fibers enveloping

Member of order Araneae

Ancient creature,

Beloved deity,

Helpless arachnid

Its plethora of black beads

Reflecting the dim flickering fluorescence

Focused at an apex

Upon my judgment

Fist clenched

I clasp the ashen, chalked folds

And release the feral

Through the gateway between

Tame and unconquered

Through the doorway

To the wild

Sharon Lin