4👑☸ Cattāri Ariya-saccaṃ 四聖諦

Hiri & Ottappa🔥😳

STED hiri😳

hirīmā hoti,	(has) [a sense of moral] shame.
hirīyati	(He) feels-shame [at the thought of engaging in]
kāya-du-c-caritena	bodily-mis-conduct,
vacī-du-c-caritena	verbal-mis-conduct,
mano-du-c-caritena,	mental-mis-conduct.
hirīyati pāpakānaṃ	(He) feels-shame {at falling into} evil,
a-kusalānaṃ dhammānaṃ	un-skillful ☸Dharmas.
samāpattiyā.	{***********}

STED ottappa🔥😳

ottappī hoti,	(has) [a sense of moral] fear-&-dread.
ottappati	(he) fears-&-dreads [the suffering that would result from]
kāya-du-c-caritena	bodily-mis-conduct,
vacī-du-c-caritena	verbal-mis-conduct,
mano-du-c-caritena,	mental-mis-conduct.
ottappati pāpakānaṃ	(He) fears-&-dreads {falling into} evil,
a-kusalānaṃ dhammānaṃ	un-skillful ☸Dharmas.
samāpattiyā.	{***********}

AN 4.169 strong ties to 5bal (modifiled) and 5ind

AN 4.169

AN 7.67 🏰 frontier fortress & 7 true-Dharmas

AN 7.67 hiri & ottappa in the simile are the large encircling road and moath around fortress 7 true-Dharmas (sad-dhamma). Mostly a combo of 5ind indriya and hiri + ottappa.

KN Iti 42 guardings of the world

{Iti 2.15; Iti 36} (b.than) This was said by the Blessed One, said by the Arahant, so I have heard: "There are these two bright qualities that safeguard the world. Which two? Conscience & concern (for the results of unskillful actions). If these two bright qualities did not guard the world, there would be no recognition of 'mother' here, no recognition of 'mother's sister,' 'uncle's wife,' 'teacher's wife,' or 'wife of those who deserve respect.' The world would be immersed in promiscuity, like rams with goats, roosters with pigs, or dogs with jackals. But because these two bright qualities guard the world, there is recognition of 'mother,' 'mother's sister,' 'uncle's wife,' 'teacher's wife,' & 'wife of those who deserve respect.'" Those in whom concern & conscience are not always found have strayed from the bright root, are headed to birth & death. But those in whom concern & conscience are rightly established always, who are mature in the holy life: they are calm, their further becoming ended.

MN 61 harāyi-tabbam (to be ashamed and disgusted)

	(hiri contrasts against piti & pamojja of 7sb)
♦ “katvāpi te, rāhula, manasā kammaṃ tadeva te mano-kammaṃ paccavekkhitabbaṃ — ‘yaṃ nu kho ahaṃ idaṃ manasā kammaṃ akāsiṃ idaṃ me mano-kammaṃ atta-byābādhāyapi saṃvattati VAR, para-byābādhāyapi saṃvattati, ubhaya-byābādhāyapi saṃvattati — a-kusalaṃ idaṃ mano-kammaṃ dukkh-udrayaṃ dukkha-vipākan’ti? sace kho tvaṃ, rāhula, paccavekkhamāno evaṃ jāneyyāsi — ‘yaṃ kho ahaṃ idaṃ manasā kammaṃ akāsiṃ idaṃ me mano-kammaṃ atta-byābādhāyapi saṃvattati, para-byābādhāyapi saṃvattati, ubhaya-byābādhāyapi saṃvattati — a-kusalaṃ idaṃ mano-kammaṃ dukkh-udrayaṃ dukkha-vipākan’ti, evarūpaṃ pana VAR te, rāhula, mano-kammaṃ VAR aṭṭīyitabbaṃ harāyitabbaṃ jigucchitabbaṃ; aṭṭīyitvā harāyitvā jigucchitvā āyatiṃ saṃvaraṃ āpajjitabbaṃ. sace pana tvaṃ, rāhula, paccavekkhamāno evaṃ jāneyyāsi — ‘yaṃ kho ahaṃ idaṃ manasā kammaṃ akāsiṃ idaṃ me mano-kammaṃ nevatta-byābādhāyapi saṃvattati, na para-byābādhāyapi saṃvattati, na ubhaya-byābādhāyapi saṃvattati — kusalaṃ idaṃ mano-kammaṃ sukh-udrayaṃ sukha-vipākan’ti, teneva tvaṃ, rāhula, pītipāmojjena vihareyyāsi aho-ratt-ānusikkhī kusalesu dhammesu.	“Having done a mental action, you should reflect on it: ‘This mental action I have done—did it lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both? Was it an unskillful mental action, with painful consequences, painful results?’ If, on reflection, you know that it led to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both; it was an unskillful mental action with painful consequences, painful results, then you should feel distressed, ashamed, & disgusted with it. Feeling distressed… you should exercise restraint in the future. But if on reflection you know that it did not lead to affliction… it was a skillful mental action with pleasant consequences, pleasant results, then you should stay mentally refreshed & joyful, training day & night in skillful qualities.

SN 16.2. An-ottappī, link to ātāpi and right effort/viriya

this sutta by mahakasspa, known for austerities (tapa), then shows the relationship between atapi and ottapa working together.

SN 16.7 increase or decrease in skillful Dharma

	(maha kassapa giving the talk)
“Dubbacā kho, bhante, etarahi bhikkhū, dovacassakaraṇehi dhammehi samannāgatā akkhamā appadakkhiṇaggāhino anusāsaniṃ.	“Sir, the monks these days are hard to admonish, having qualities that make them hard to admonish. They’re impatient, and don’t take instruction respectfully.
Yassa kassaci, bhante, saddhā natthi kusalesu dhammesu, hirī natthi kusalesu dhammesu, ottappaṃ natthi kusalesu dhammesu, vīriyaṃ natthi kusalesu dhammesu, paññā natthi kusalesu dhammesu, tassa yā ratti vā divaso vā āgacchati, hāniyeva pāṭikaṅkhā kusalesu dhammesu, no vuddhi.	Sir, whoever has no faith, conscience, prudence, energy, or wisdom when it comes to skillful qualities can expect decline, not growth, in skillful qualities, whether by day or by night.

SN 45.1 causal sequence 8aam, bundled with avijja, to wrong view

“Mendicants, ignorance precedes the attainment of unskillful qualities, with lack of conscience and prudence following along. “Avijjā, bhikkhave, pubbaṅgamā akusalānaṃ dhammānaṃ samāpattiyā, anvadeva ahirikaṃ anottappaṃ. An ignoramus, sunk in ignorance, gives rise to wrong view. Avijjāgatassa, bhikkhave, aviddasuno micchādiṭṭhi pahoti; Wrong view gives rise to wrong thought. micchādiṭṭhissa micchāsaṅkappo pahoti;

B.Bodhi essay

.

.

The Guardians of the World

By Bhikkhu Bodhi © 1998 Like the Roman god Janus, every person faces simultaneously in two opposite directions. With one face of our consciousness we gaze in upon ourselves and become aware of ourselves as individuals motivated by a deep urge to avoid suffering and to secure our own well-being and happiness. With the other face we gaze out upon the world and discover that our lives are thoroughly relational, that we exist as nodes in a vast net of relationships with other beings whose fate is tied up with our own. Because of the relational structure of our existence, we are engaged in a perpetual two-way interaction with the world: the influence of the world presses in upon ourselves, shaping and altering our own attitudes and dispositions, while our own attitudes and dispositions flow out into the world, a force that affects the lives of others for better or for worse. This seamless interconnection between the inner and outer domains acquires a particular urgency for us today owing to the rampant deterioration in ethical standards that sweeps across the globe. Such moral decline is as widespread in those societies which enjoy a comfortable measure of stability and prosperity as it is in those countries where poverty and desperation make moral infringements an integral aspect of the struggle for survival. Of course we should not indulge in pastel-colored fantasies about the past, imagining that we lived in a Garden of Eden until the invention of the steam engine. The driving forces of the human heart have remained fairly constant through the ages, and the toll they have taken in human misery surpasses calculation. But what we find today is a strange paradox that would be interesting if it were not sinister: while there appears to be a much wider verbal acknowledgment of the primacy of moral and human values, there is at the same time more blatant disregard for the lines of conduct such values imply. This undermining of traditional ethical values is in part a result of the internationalization of commerce and the global penetration of virtually all media of communication. Vested interests, in quest of wider loops of power and expanding profits, mount a sustained campaign aimed at exploiting our moral vulnerability. This campaign proceeds at full pace, invading every nook and corner of our lives, with little regard for the long-term consequences for the individual and society. The results are evident in the problems that we face, problems that respect no national boundaries: rising crime rates, spreading drug addiction, ecological devastation, child labor and prostitution, smuggling and pornography, the decline of the family as the unit of loving trust and moral education. The Buddha's teaching at its core is a doctrine of liberation that provides us with the tools for cutting through the fetters that keep us bound to this world of suffering, the round of repeated births. Although the quest for liberation by practice of the Dhamma depends on individual effort, this quest necessarily takes place within a social environment and is thus subject to all the influences, helpful or harmful, imposed upon us by that environment. The Buddhist training unfolds in the three stages of morality, concentration and wisdom, each the foundation for the other: purified moral conduct facilitates the attainment of purified concentration, and the concentrated mind facilitates the attainment of liberating wisdom. The basis of the entire Buddhist training is thus purified conduct, and firm adherence to the code of training rules one has undertaken — the Five Precepts in the case of a lay Buddhist — is the necessary means for safeguarding the purity of one's conduct. Living as we do in an era when we are provoked through every available channel to deviate from the norms of rectitude, and when social unrest, economic hardships, and political conflict further fuel volatile emotions, the need for extra protection becomes especially imperative: protection for oneself, protection for the world.

(concise definition)

The Buddha points to two mental qualities as the underlying safeguards of morality, thus as the protectors of both the individual and society as a whole. These two qualities are called in Pali hiri and ottappa. Hiri is an innate sense of shame over moral transgression; ottappa is moral dread, fear of the results of wrongdoing. The Buddha calls these two states the bright guardians of the world (sukka lokapala). He gives them this designation because as long as these two states prevail in people's hearts the moral standards of the world remain intact, while when their influence wanes the human world falls into unabashed promiscuity and violence, becoming almost indistinguishable from the animal realm (Itiv. 42).

(hiri internal, ottappa external orientation)

While moral shame and fear of wrongdoing are united in the common task of protecting the mind from moral defilement, they differ in their individual characteristics and modes of operation. Hiri, the sense of shame, has an internal reference; it is rooted in self-respect and induces us to shrink from wrongdoing out of a feeling of personal honor. Ottappa, fear of wrongdoing, has an external orientation. It is the voice of conscience that warns us of the dire consequences of moral transgression: blame and punishment by others, the painful kammic results of evil deeds, the impediment to our desire for liberation from suffering.

(vism. simile of hot poker smeared with feces)

Acariya Buddhaghosa illustrates the difference between the two with the simile of an iron rod smeared with excrement at one end and heated to a glow at the other end: hiri is like one's disgust at grabbing the rod in the place where it is smeared with excrement, ottappa is like one's fear of grabbing it in the place where it is red hot. In the present-day world, with its secularization of all values, such notions as shame and fear of wrong are bound to appear antiquated, relics from a puritanical past when superstition and dogma manacled our rights to uninhibited self-expression. Yet the Buddha's stress on the importance of hiri and ottappa was based on a deep insight into the different potentialities of human nature. He saw that the path to deliverance is a struggle against the current, and that if we are to unfold the mind's capacities for wisdom, purity and peace, then we need to keep the powderkeg of the defilements under the watchful eyes of diligent sentinels. The project of self-cultivation, which the Buddha proclaims as the means to liberation from suffering, requires that we keep a critical watch over the movements of our minds, both on occasions when they motivate bodily and verbal deeds and when they remain inwardly absorbed with their own preoccupations. To exercise such self-scrutiny is an aspect of heedfulness (appamada), which the Buddha states is the path to the Deathless. In the practice of self-examination, the sense of shame and fear of wrongdoing play a crucial role. The sense of shame spurs us to overcome unwholesome mental states because we recognize that such states are blemishes on our character. They detract from the inward loftiness of character to be fashioned by the practice of the Dhamma, the stature of the ariyans or noble ones, who shine resplendent like lotus flowers upon the lake of the world. Fear of wrongdoing bids us to retreat from morally risky thoughts and actions because we recognize that such deeds are seeds with the potency to yield fruits, fruits that inevitably will be bitter. The Buddha asserts that whatever evil arises springs from a lack of shame and fear of wrong, while all virtuous deeds spring from the sense of shame and fear of wrong. By cultivating within ourselves the qualities of moral shame and fear of wrongdoing we not only accelerate our own progress along the path to deliverance, but also contribute our share toward the protection of the world. Given the intricate interconnections that hold between all living forms, to make the sense of shame and fear of wrong the guardians of our own minds is to make ourselves guardians of the world. As the roots of morality, these two qualities sustain the entire efficacy of the Buddha's liberating path; as the safeguards of personal decency, they at the same time preserve the dignity of the human race. Publisher's note The Buddhist Publication Society is an approved charity dedicated to making known the Teaching of the Buddha, which has a vital message for people of all creeds. Founded in 1958, the BPS has published a wide variety of books and booklets covering a great range of topics. Its publications include accurate annotated translations of the Buddha's discourses, standard reference works, as well as original contemporary expositions of Buddhist thought and practice. These works present Buddhism as it truly is — a dynamic force which has influenced receptive minds for the past 2500 years and is still as relevant today as it was when it first arose. Buddhist Publication Society P.O. Box 61 54, Sangharaja Mawatha Kandy, Sri Lanka ©1993 Buddhist Publication Society. You may copy, reformat, reprint, republish, and redistribute this work in any medium whatsoever, provided that: (1) you only make such copies, etc. available free of charge and, in the case of reprinting, only in quantities of no more than 50 copies; (2) you clearly indicate that any derivatives of this work (including translations) are derived from this source document; and (3) you include the full text of this license in any copies or derivatives of this work. Otherwise, all rights reserved. Documents linked from this page may be subject to other restrictions. BPS Newsletter cover essay no. 23 (Spring 1993). Last revised for Access to Insight on 5 June 2010. How to cite this document (a suggested style): "The Guardians of the World", by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 5 June 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/bps-essay_23.html .

B.Thanissaro essay

.	.

In the Eyes of the Wise

The Buddha’s Teachings on Honor & Shame

by Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu [dana/©] 2018 - Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammā-sambuddhassa - Several years back, I led a retreat in Santa Fe on the topic of karma. One of the readings was a passage in which the Buddha teaches his seven-year-old son, Rahula, how to examine his actions, as he would his face in a mirror, to make sure that he harmed no one—neither himself nor anyone else. One of the retreatants was a therapist who, the day after the retreat, was scheduled to hold the final meeting of a therapy group she had organized for some of her clients. She decided to Xerox the Buddha’s teachings to Rahula (MN 61) and share them with the group, to get their opinion on the Buddha’s parenting skills. Their unanimous verdict: “If our parents had taught us like that, we wouldn’t be needing therapy groups like this.” What was striking about their verdict was that they arrived at it even though the Buddha’s teaching emphasized the need for Rahula to develop a sense of shame around his actions: If he didn’t feel shame at telling a deliberate lie, he was as empty of goodness as an overturned dipper was empty of water. If he realized that he had engaged in thinking that had harmed himself—or could lead to harm to others—he was to feel ashamed of those thoughts and to resolve not to repeat them. And the Buddha didn’t teach shame only to Rahula. In his more general teachings to the public, he called shame a bright guardian of the world, in that it kept people from betraying the trust of others. He also called shame a noble treasure, something more valuable than gold or silver in that it would protect you from doing things you’d later regret. The high value that the Buddha placed on shame contrasts sharply with the way it’s regarded in many segments of our culture today. In business and in politics, shame is all too often viewed as weakness. Among therapists, it’s commonly seen as pathological—an unhealthy low opinion of yourself that prevents you from being all that you can. Book after book gives counsel on how to overcome feelings of shame and to affirm feelings of self-worth in their place. It’s easy to understand this general reaction against shame. The emotion of shame—the sense that you don’t look good in the eyes of others—is a powerful one. It’s where we allow the opinion of other people into our psyches, and all too often unscrupulous people take advantage of that opening to trample our hearts: to bully us and force on us standards of judgment that are not in our genuine best interests. It’s bad enough when they try to make us ashamed of things over which we have little or no control: race, appearance, age, gender, sexual orientation, level of intelligence, or financial status. It’s even worse when they try to shame us into doing harm, like avenging old wrongs. But efforts to avoid these problems by totally abolishing shame miss an important point: There are two kinds of shame—the unhealthy shame that’s the opposite of self-esteem, and the healthy shame that’s the opposite of shamelessness. This second kind of shame is the shame that the Buddha calls a bright guardian and a treasure. (Iti 42) If, in our zeal to get rid of the first kind of shame, we also get rid of the second, we’ll create a society of sociopaths who care nothing for other people’s opinions of right or wrong—or who feel shame about all the wrong things. Businessmen and politicians who see no shame in lying, for instance, feel shame if they’re not at least as ruthless as their peers. And for all the general dismissal of shame, advertisers still find that shame over your body or ostensible wealth is a powerful tool for selling products. When all shame gets pathologized, it goes underground in the mind, where people can’t think clearly about it, and then sends out tentacles that spread harm all around us. This is where the Buddha’s teachings on healthy shame can be a useful antidote, helping to bring the topic into the open and to show that, with proper training, shame can be a great force for good. To begin with, the Buddha couples healthy shame with a healthy sense of honor: a sense that you deserve respect for holding to a high standard of conduct. In this sense, shame is a sign of high, rather than low, self esteem. Honor, like shame, begins with the desire not only to be good, but also to look good in the eyes of others, which is why it, too, comes in both healthy and unhealthy varieties. Duels, feuds, gang wars, and honor killings—based on the belief that respect is earned by your ability to do violence—have given honor a bad name. But honor can be redefined and made healthy so that it’s earned through integrity. A society without this sense of honor would be as bad as a society without healthy shame. The Buddha’s insights into healthy honor and shame came from his own experience in searching for, and finally finding, awakening. His initial search for the right path had taught him that honor and shame had to be treated with discernment, in that he couldn’t always trust the opinion of others. If he had been swayed by the honor shown him by his early teachers, he would have stayed stuck in the practice of concentration without developing discernment. If he had been swayed by the disdain shown by the five brethren when he abandoned his austerities, he would have died without ever finding the goal. But as he realized after his awakening, the problem with shame and honor is not that you want to look good in the eyes of others. It’s just that you want to look good in the wrong people’s eyes. If you can focus on the right people, shame and honor can be an enormous help in developing what the Buddha identified as the most important external factor in gaining awakening: admirable friendship. He was now in a position to give others the guidance he had lacked in his own quest, and to teach his disciples to be admirable friends to others. This is why the Buddha set up the monastic sangha: to keep the lineage of admirable friends alive. But admirable friendship involves more than just making friends with admirable people. You also need to emulate their good qualities. This is where a sense of shame and honor comes into the equation. Your desire for your admirable friends to think well of you is a crucial incentive to follow their good example. The good qualities of admirable friends are four: • conviction in the Buddha’s awakening and in the principle of karma; • virtue, in the sense of not breaking the precepts or encouraging others to break them; • generosity, and • discernment. The discernment of admirable friends can be seen in two things: the standards by which they judge you, and their purpose in judging you. If they’re really discerning, they’ll judge you by your actions—not by your appearance, wealth, or anything else over which you have no control. They’ll judge your actions both by the intentions on which you act and on the results of your actions. In both cases—and here’s where the Buddha’s sense of honor inverts the military sense of honor in which he was trained as a young prince—the standard of judgment is that you can find happiness in such a way that your intentions and actions harm no one: not you or anyone else. The purpose for which admirable friends judge you is not simply to arrive at the judgment. They want to help you recognize why your mistakes are mistakes, so that you can learn not to repeat them. In this way, they’re encouraging you to develop the true source for your happiness: your ability to act with more and more skill. If they judge you in these ways, your friends show that they’ve developed both of the discernment factors of the path: right view—in seeing the importance of action—and right resolve, in extending goodwill to you. If you internalize their standards, you’re internalizing the path as well. This is why the Buddha taught Rahula how to internalize those standards by examining his own actions. That way, even if the society around him was falling apart and he was separated from his admirable friends, he could still live by their values. That would be for his long-term welfare and happiness. The Buddha prefaced his instructions with the image of a mirror: Just as you use a mirror to see how you look to other people, Rahula was to look at his actions to see how he appeared in the eyes of the wise. And the wise would have him judge his actions like this: Whatever he did in thought, word, and deed, he was first to examine his intentions: If he anticipated that the act he planned would cause any harm inside or out, he was not to act on that intention. If he didn’t anticipate harm, he could go ahead and act. While acting, he was to check the results of his action. If he was causing unanticipated harm, he should stop. If not, he could continue with the action. After the action was done, he should look at the long-term results of the action. If it turned out that he had caused harm in word or deed, he should talk it over with a trusted friend on the path who would advise him on how to avoid causing that harm again. Then he should resolve not to repeat that action. If his thoughts had caused harm, he should feel shame around that type of thinking and resolve not to repeat it. If he had caused no harm, though, he should take joy in his progress on the path, and keep on training. In this way, the Buddha didn’t simply tell Rahula to cause no harm. Instead, he told him, in effect, “Try not to cause harm, but if you do cause harm, this is how you go about learning from your mistakes.” This shows the element of practical goodwill that pervades these teachings. As does the Buddha’s recommendation for joy. After all, joy is what healthy shame and honor are for: to help you see for yourself the well-being that comes from mastering higher levels of skill and harmlessness in your actions. When this becomes your source of happiness, you grow up, with less need for the approval and affirmations of others. In seeing the power of your actions and really wanting to act in harmless ways, you make right view and right resolve your own. One of the dangers that can come from shame and honor in admirable friendship is that, out of a desire to look good in your friends’ eyes, you might want to show off your good qualities. To counteract this tendency, though, the Buddha warned that if you do, your good qualities immediately get ruined. One of the signs of integrity, he said, is modesty—to speak as little as possible of your own good qualities, and never to exalt yourself over others who lack them. The other danger of shame and honor is that you might want to hide your mistakes from your admirable friends. This is why the Buddha stressed that, if you’ve made mistakes in the past but have now learned not to repeat them, you brighten the world like the moon when released from a cloud. (Dhp 172) And it’s also why the Buddha prefaced his instructions to Rahula with a teaching on truthfulness, letting him know that making a mistake is much less shameful than making a mistake and not admitting it. If you hide your faults, you not only lose the trust of your friends, but you also close the way to making progress on the path. Or even worse: In the Buddha’s words, if a person feels no shame in telling a deliberate lie, there’s no evil that that person won’t do. The Buddha illustrated this point with the image of elephants in battle. If an elephant goes into battle and uses his feet and tusks, but holds back his trunk, the elephant trainer knows that the elephant hasn’t given his life to the king. But if an elephant uses his feet and his tusks and his trunk, the elephant trainer knows that the elephant has given his life to his king. There’s nothing it won’t do. This image is a good lesson in the Buddha’s revolutionary sense of honor. At first glance, it would seem that the elephant who doesn’t hold back would be the hero of the image—after all, that’s the kind of elephant a king would want to send into battle, and it represents the kind of honor often extolled in warrior cultures. But the Buddha is actually presenting the image in a negative light: The elephant’s willingness to risk its trunk is a sign of its servility to the king. In effect, the Buddha’s telling Rahula that if, like the elephant who protects his trunk, he’s heedful to protect his truthfulness, it’s a point of genuine honor: a sign that he’s a servant to no one, neither to anyone outside nor to his own defilements inside. This inversion of the old military sense of honor is echoed in the Buddha’s comment that better than victory in battle over a thousand-thousand men is victory over one person: yourself. The Buddha’s instructions in training Rahula to develop a healthy sense of honor and shame eventually bore fruit. Instead of taking pride in the fact that he was the Buddha’s son, Rahula showed a willingness to learn from all the monks. And after he gained awakening, the Buddha extolled him for being foremost among the monks in his desire to learn. Of course, at that point Rahula didn’t need the Buddha’s praise. He had already found a deathless happiness that was beyond the reach of other people’s respect. Actually, the Buddha was praising Rahula for our sake, to let us know that shame and honor can be useful tools on the path. If you’re careful in choosing whose opinions you let into your psyche, and internalize the qualities that make shame and honor healthy, you’ll not only look good in the eyes of the wise. Your eyes will become wise as well. Provenance: [dana/©] 2018 Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Provided by the author via dhammatalks.org. Translations, rebublishing, editing and additions are in the sphere of responsibility of Zugang zur Einsicht.

Two Kinds of Shame

The high value that the Buddha placed on shame contrasts sharply with the way it’s regarded in many segments of our culture today. In business and in politics, shame is all too often viewed as weakness. Among therapists, it’s commonly seen as pathological—an unhealthy low opinion of yourself that prevents you from being all that you can. Book after book gives counsel on how to overcome feelings of shame and to affirm feelings of self-worth in their place. It’s easy to understand this general reaction against shame. The emotion of shame—the sense that you don’t look good in the eyes of others—is a powerful one. It’s where we allow the opinion of other people into our psyches, and all too often unscrupulous people take advantage of that opening to trample our hearts: to bully us and force on us standards of judgment that are not in our genuine best interests. It’s bad enough when they try to make us ashamed of things over which we have little or no control: race, appearance, age, gender, sexual orientation, level of intelligence, or financial status. It’s even worse when they try to shame us into doing harm, like avenging old wrongs. But efforts to avoid these problems by totally abolishing shame miss an important point: There are two kinds of shame—the unhealthy shame that’s the opposite of self-esteem, and the healthy shame that’s the opposite of shamelessness. This second kind of shame is the shame that the Buddha calls a bright guardian and a treasure. If, in our zeal to get rid of the first kind of shame, we also get rid of the second, we’ll create a society of sociopaths who care nothing for other people’s opinions of right or wrong—or who feel shame about all the wrong things. Businessmen and politicians who see no shame in lying, for instance, feel shame if they’re not at least as ruthless as their peers. And for all the general dismissal of shame, advertisers still find that shame over your body or ostensible wealth is a powerful tool for selling products. When all shame gets pathologized, it goes underground in the mind, where people can’t think clearly about it and then sends out tentacles that spread harm all around us. This reflection by Ajaan Geoff is from the book, First Things First, (pdf) pp.12-13.

Ven. T. clarifies his definition of ‘compunction’ for ‘ottappa’

Thanissaro Bhikkhu's definition of 'compunction' and 'ottappa' Dear Ven. Thanissaro, What exactly do you mean by 'compunction', besides that's the word you translate for 'ottappa'? For that matter, I'm not sure I understand how to disambiguate 'ottappa' either. PED has: fear of exile, shrinking back from doing wrong, remorse. 'remorse' seems to imply to me you've already done the action and are now regretting it, whereas ' fear of exile, shrinking back from doing wrong,' implies the awareness of consequences prevents you from following through on a regrettable action. In pali dictionary for ottappa, it says shirking away from wrong doing, com·punc·tion | \ kəm-ˈpəŋ(k)-shən: (merriam webster defn.), Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu‍ trans. of 'ottappa'. 1a : anxiety arising from awareness of guilt compunctions of conscience b : distress of mind over an anticipated action or result … showed no compunction in planning devilish engines of … destruction.— Havelock Ellis 2 : a twinge of misgiving : scruple cheated without compunction … he had no compunction about brushing aside legal technicalities.— Robert Penn Warren In theology, compunction seems to be more of the sense of guilt and remorse AFTER you've already committed a regrettable action. https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/language-linguistics-and-literary-terms/english-vocabulary-d/compunction Can you please clarify both 'ottappa' and 'compunction' ? to clarify this line a little more: 'remorse' seems to imply to me you've already done the action and are now regretting it, whereas ' fear of exile, shrinking back from doing wrong,' implies the awareness of consequences prevents you from following through on a regrettable action. We should be clear if ottappa and compunciton mean: 1) ONLY the fear of wrong doing prevents you from doing wrong 2) ONLY the regret AFTER already committed a wrong doing 3) both 1 and 2 4) in the suttas, mostly 1, sometimes 2, or? Ven. Thanissaro's response: Compunction is defined as a sense of moral scruple that follows on or prevents doing something bad. In British English, it usually refers to a sense of scruple that follows on a harmful action. In American English, it refers more primarily to a sense of scruple that precedes the possibility of doing something unskillful. The Pali term ottappa could mean either compunction prior to an action, or both prior to and after an action. The suttas are not clear on this point. The important thing is that it acts as a check on the next impulse to act unskillfully. That’s when it’s a treasure.

☸ Lucid 24.org 🐘🐾‍