DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45392#0197
Conscience
may soon develop into a sense of ‘ sin ’ which does not
altogether depend on fear, but is largely a matter of con-
vention. Another and higher aspect of conscience is
based on reason, the knowledge of cause and effect—a
full realization that evil actions must sooner or later recoil
on the doer, and the reflection, on the other hand, that all
beings are like-natured, and therefore it must be right
to do to others as one would have them do to oneself. A
third and still higher form of conscience arises from the
intuition (O.E. inwit') of identity: a bad conscience then
signifies a consciousness of selfish motive equivalent to a
denial of the inner relation of unity to which the con-
science is witness.
The Buddhist sati, mindfulness or recollectiveness, is to
be identified with the conscience based on reason. It
works not so much through the fear of consequence, as
by a sense of the futility of admitting hindrances to
spiritual progress. He that is recollected reminds himself
of natural law, viz. the coming-to-be as the result of a
cause, and the passing-away-again, of all phenomena,
physical or mental. To act as if this actual fact of
Becoming were not a fact, would be foolish, sentimental,
wrong. Whoever realizes, “all existences are non-ego,”
he cannot act from selfish motives, for he knows no self.
To many Western minds it may appear that to be ever
mindful of impermanence cannot be a sufficient sanction
for morality. Nor can it be pretended that such a sanction
would or does suffice for all. Those, for example—
perhaps the majority of professing Buddhists—who regard
a heaven to be reached after death, perform meritorious
actions in order to attain it. But for those who understand
the true significance of Nibbana, ethical behaviour is
derived from a categorical inner imperative, “ because of
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may soon develop into a sense of ‘ sin ’ which does not
altogether depend on fear, but is largely a matter of con-
vention. Another and higher aspect of conscience is
based on reason, the knowledge of cause and effect—a
full realization that evil actions must sooner or later recoil
on the doer, and the reflection, on the other hand, that all
beings are like-natured, and therefore it must be right
to do to others as one would have them do to oneself. A
third and still higher form of conscience arises from the
intuition (O.E. inwit') of identity: a bad conscience then
signifies a consciousness of selfish motive equivalent to a
denial of the inner relation of unity to which the con-
science is witness.
The Buddhist sati, mindfulness or recollectiveness, is to
be identified with the conscience based on reason. It
works not so much through the fear of consequence, as
by a sense of the futility of admitting hindrances to
spiritual progress. He that is recollected reminds himself
of natural law, viz. the coming-to-be as the result of a
cause, and the passing-away-again, of all phenomena,
physical or mental. To act as if this actual fact of
Becoming were not a fact, would be foolish, sentimental,
wrong. Whoever realizes, “all existences are non-ego,”
he cannot act from selfish motives, for he knows no self.
To many Western minds it may appear that to be ever
mindful of impermanence cannot be a sufficient sanction
for morality. Nor can it be pretended that such a sanction
would or does suffice for all. Those, for example—
perhaps the majority of professing Buddhists—who regard
a heaven to be reached after death, perform meritorious
actions in order to attain it. But for those who understand
the true significance of Nibbana, ethical behaviour is
derived from a categorical inner imperative, “ because of
139