Three Questions

From Menletter June 2011

By Tim Baehr

Thou Shalt Not

Many aspects of our lives are governed by injunctions against doing something. We have the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and an equivalent collection (with fewer explicit thou-shalt-nots) scattered about in the Qur'an. The Ten Precepts of Buddhism are similarly negative.

As we grow up, we learn a wide variety of other thou-shalt-nots in covering almost all aspects of our behavior: Don't touch that. Don't eat that. Don't touch yourself there. Don't shout. Don't pout. Don't cry. Don't go there. Don't speed. Don't park here. Don't talk back. Don't stay out after dark. Don't eat meat. Don't eat pork. Don't get drunk. Don't drink. Don't tell anyone. Don't cheat on your test/boss/spouse.

Don't even think about doing it.

Yes, some of our guidelines for good behavior can be worded positively: Always tell the truth. Stay within the speed limit. Get home before dark. Be faithful. But mostly we're told what not to do.

Two problems with the negative approach to behavior are that (1) we break many of the rules, big and small, anyway; and (2) breaking a rule is an invitation to guilt and shame and punishment (the eternal kind or a time-out in the corner or being grounded for a week). I don't think I've ever witnessed guilt or shame leading to consistently good behavior. Many of us parents have observed that children remember the punishment long after they remember the "lesson" they were supposed to have learned.

One positive set of rules, expressed in almost every religion, is to love your neighbor as yourself; to do to others as you would want others to do to you. Simple enough, and if we could all manage to follow the rules, we would live on a harmonious and peaceful planet. The evidence is all around that we don't follow them very well, often not at all.

A Journey

I'd like to take you on a little journey from a business writing course to a more positive way we might remind ourselves to behave.

I start with my friend Peter, who was a lecturer in business writing at Harvard's Extension School. I was one of three teaching assistants working with him. Every term, we tried to teach fifty or so students to write clear, concise, and accurate business communications. Students had to write fourteen or fifteen business letters and reports in response to business cases that Peter presented in the lecture portion of the course.

Teaching writing can involve many thou-shalt-nots: Do not mix up these similar-sounding words. Do not mix verb tenses in the same paragraph. Do not mix metaphors. Do not use big words when simpler words will work as well. And so on.

But in all this, Peter had a positive message, in the form of three questions. Whatever else might be in the form and content of a business communication, these questions demanded answers:

Is it kind?

Is it the truth?

Is it necessary?

During the time I was teaching, I was also reestablishing a spiritual life after dropping out of organized religion and going through a dry spell. I was, among other things, wondering how I could continue through life with a bunch of thou-shalt-nots hanging over me all the time. Peter's three questions looked like a good starting point. But something was missing. Kindness was O.K., but truth and necessity seemed a bit narrow.

Stumbling

Then I stumbled onto Zen and the concept, in Buddhism, of the Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path is a series of steps for understanding life, treating other living beings, and calming and focusing the mind. The steps are not linear, like stepping stones, but more of a circle, or even a dance. The first step, Right View, has to do with the nature of suffering. The second step is Right Intention, and its basics include three approaches to behavior: loving-kindness, harmlessness, and renunciation of desire.

The next three steps are Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood, and here we encounter the rules of behavior, mostly in negative terms: no lying, no gossiping, no stealing, no killing, no misuse of sex, and so on. The last three steps have to do with meditation and concentration.

The middle three - about speech, action, and livelihood - brought me up short. Bummer: just another set of thou-shalt-nots.

But wait - what if we were to apply Right Intention to all the actions in those three steps? And what if they took the form, if not the content, of Peter's three questions?

I saw loving-kindness not as a sentimental emotion implied by the words, but a practical matter of recognizing myself in other beings. Harmlessness was a bit more straightforward, even though ultimately negative: Do not harm other beings. Renunciation of desire was a problem. I knew it didn't mean I had to give up chocolate or sex. Ultimately I figured out that "desire" was more like excessive craving to the exclusion of other activities. It could even mean craving for non-material things like outcomes over which I had no control. Desire meant wanting or doing more than was necessary.

So, inspired by what I had learned from Peter, we now have these questions:

Is it kind?

Is it harmless?

Is it necessary?

I looked at the thou-shalt-nots in the Eightfold Path and in various religions and guides to behavior, and injunctions against bad behavior, and I couldn't come up with any activity that wouldn't fit the three questions. Answering "no" to any of the questions should at least send up a warning signal. Lying? Harmful and maybe also unkind and unnecessary. Stealing? Ditto. Killing? Ditto.

But wait. What about the social lie that kindly smoothes over a relationship? What about stealing food if my family is starving? What about killing in time of war, or in self-defense? What about idle talk if it cements a friendship?

Definitions and Interactions

The sticking point in all of this is that I have personal responsibility in everything I think, say, and do. I have to determine for myself how the questions interact; my own definitions of kindness, harmlessness, and necessity; how the interactions and definitions change with each situation. I may want to believe that I can push this responsibility off on some greater power, who will judge me and maybe punish me after the fact. But even if I can transfer my responsibility, my thoughts, words, and deeds are where the rubber meets the road. What I think, say, and do contain within themselves positive and negative effects on others, potentially on my environment, and on myself.

Sometimes I get the right answers to the three questions before I act. Sometimes I get the wrong answers and realize it after the fact. Sometimes I get the wrong answers before I act, and I plunge on anyway. Sometimes I am just mistaken about something and its short-term or long-term effects. Sometimes I'm just stupid.

But the three questions offer a positive framework that work better for me than a series of injunctions against bad behavior. The questions even give me a vocabulary for making amends: I'm sorry that what I said was unkind. I'm sorry I caused you harm. I apologize for going too far, or hogging the dessert.

A final thought. These questions apply as well to the things I think, say, and do to myself. Am I kind to myself? Is what I do to myself harmless? Am I doing or desiring what is beyond necessary?

And those may be the toughest questions to answer.