King David and Bathsheba

Of all the vices, lust is the one many people seem to find the most difficult to control.  This story of Patriarch David and Bathsheba is from the second book of Samuel in the Bible.

When David first became king he went with his army upon the wars against the enemies of Israel.  But there came a time when the cares of his kingdom were many, and David left Joab, his general, to lead his warriors, while he stayed in his palace on Mount Zion.

One evening, about sunset, David was walking upon the roof of his palace.  He looked down into a garden nearby, and saw a woman who was very beautiful.  David asked one of his servants who this woman was, and he said to him, “Her name is Bathsheba, and she is the wife of Uriah.”

Now Uriah was an officer in David’s army, under Joab; and at that time he was fighting in David’s war against the Ammonites, at Rabbah, near the desert, on the east of Jordan.  David sent for Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, and talked with her.  He loved her, and greatly longed to take her as one of his own wives.  But David could not marry Bathsheba while her husband, Uriah, was living.  Then a wicked thought came into David’s heart, and he formed a plan to have Uriah killed, so that he could then take Bathsheba into his own house.

David wrote a letter to Joab, the commander of his army.  And in the letter he said, “When there is to be a fight with the Ammonites, send Uriah into the middle of it, where it will be the hottest; and manage to leave him there, so that he may be slain by the Ammonites.”

And Joab did as David had commanded him.  He sent Uriah with some brave men to a place near the wall of the city, where he knew that the enemies  would rush out of the city upon them; there was a fierce fight beside the wall; Uriah was slain, and other brave men with him.  Then Joab sent a messenger to tell King David how the war was being carried on, and especially that Uriah, one of his brave officers, had been killed in the fighting.

When David heard this, he said to the messenger, “Say to Joab, ‘Do not feel troubled at the loss of the men slain in battle.  The sword must strike down some.  Keep up the siege; press forward and you will take the city.’”

And after Bathsheba had mourned over her husband’s death for a time, then David took her into his palace, and she became his wife.  And a little child was born to them, whom David loved greatly.  Only Joab, and David, and perhaps a few others, knew that David has caused the death of Uriah; but God knew it, and God was displeased with David for this wicked deed.

Then the Lord sent Nathan, the prophet, to David to tell him that though men knew not that David had done wickedly, God had seen it, and would surely punish David for his sin.  Nathan came to David, and he spoke to him thus:

“There were two men in one city; one was rich, and the other poor.  The rich man had great flocks of sheep and herds of cattle; but the poor man had only one little lamb that he had bought.  It grew up in his home with his children, and drank out of his cup, and lay upon his lap, and was like a little daughter to him.

“One day a visitor came to the rich man’s house to dinner.  The rich man did not take one of hgis own sheep to kill for his guest.  He robbed the poor man of his lamb, and killed it, and cooked it for a meal with his friend.”

“When David heard this, he was very angry.  He said to Nathan, “The man who did this thing deserves to die! He shall give back to his poor neighbor fourfold for the lamb taken from him.  How cruel to treat a poor man thus, without pity for him!”

And Nathan said to David, “You are the man who has done this deed.  The Lord made you king in place of Saul, and gave you a kingdom.  You have a great house, and many wives.  Why, then, have you done this wickedness in the sight of the Lord?  You have slain Uriah with the sword of the men of Ammon; and you have taken his wife to be your wife.  For this there shall be a sword drawn against your house; you shall suffer for it, and your wives shall suffer, and your children shall suffer, because you have done this.”

When David heard all this, he saw, as he had not seen before, how great was his wickedness.  He was exceedingly sorry; and said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”  And David showed such sorrow for his sin that Nathan said to him, “The Lord has forgiven your sin; and you shall not die on account of it.  But the child that Uriah’s wife has given to you shall surely die.”

Soon after this the little child of David and Bathsheba, whom David loved greatly, was taken very ill.  David prayed to God for the child’s life; and David took no food, but lay in sorrow, with his face upon the floor of his house.  The nobles of his palace came to him, and urged him to rise up and take food, but he would not.  For seven days the child grew worse and worse and David remained in sorrow.  Then the child died; and the nobles were afraid to tell David, for they said to each other, “If he was in such grief while the child was living, what will he do when he hears that the child is dead?”

But when King David saw the people whispering to one another with sad faces, he asked, “Is he dead?”

And they said to him, “Yes, O king, the child is dead.”

Then David rose up from the floor where he had been lying.  He washed his face, and put on his kingly robes.  He went first to the house of the Lord, and worshipped; then he came to his own house, and sat down to his table, and took food.  His servants wondered at this, and David said to them, “While the child was still alive, I fasted, and prayed, and wept; for I hoped that by prayer to the Lord, and by the mercy of the Lord, his life might be spared.  But now that he is dead, my prayers can do no more for him.  I cannot bring him back again.  He will not come back to me, but I shall go to him.”

And after this God gave to David and to Bathsheba, his wife, another son, whom they named Solomon.  The Lord loved Solomon, and he grew up to be a wise man.

After God had forgiven David’s great sin, David wrote the Fifty-first Psalm, in memory of his sin and of God’s forgiveness. (See Bible: Psalms 51:1-19; Prayer of Repentance).

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Self Discipline

Discipline is the suppression of base desires, and is usually understood to be synonymous with restraint and control. Self-discipline is to some extent a substitute for motivation.  Discipline is when one uses reason to determine the best course of action regardless of one's own desires, which may be the opposite of one’s self-discipline. Virtuous behavior can be described as when one's values are aligned with one's aims: to do what one knows is best and to do it gladly.

In self-discipline one makes a “disciple” of oneself.  One is one’s own teacher, trainer, coach, and disciplinarian.  It is all odd sort of relationship, paradoxical in its own way, and many of us don’t handle it very well.  There is much unhappiness and personal distress in the world because of failures to control tempers, appetites, passions, and impulses.

Positive Discipline is a discipline model used in schools, and in parenting, that focuses on the positive points of behavior, based on the ideal that there are no bad children, just good and bad behaviors. We can teach and reinforce the good behaviors while suppressing the bad ones without hurting the child verbally or physically. People engaging in positive discipline are not ignoring problems. Rather, they are actively involved in helping their child learn how to handle situations more appropriately while remaining calm, friendly and respectful to the children themselves. Positive discipline includes a number of different techniques that, used in combination, can lead to a more effective way for parents to manage their kids’ behavior, or for teachers to manage their students. Things become dubious for a child when his parents in home and teachers in school act in contravention of positive discipline.

The question has been at or near the center of Western philosophy since its very beginnings.  Plato divided the soul into three parts or operations—reason, passion, and appetite—and said that right behavior results from harmony or control of these elements.  Saint Augustine sought to understand the soul by ranking its various forms of love in his famous ordo amoris: love of God, neighbor, self, and material goods.  Sigmund Freud divided the psyche into the id., ego, and superego.  And we find William Shakespeare examining the conflicts of the soul, the struggle between good and evil called the psychomachia, in immortal works such as King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet.  Again and again, the problem is one of the soul’s proper balance and order without which an individual’s self-discipline cannot achieve positive enhancement.

 But the question of correct order of the soul is not simply the domain of sublime philosophy and drama.  It lies at the heart of the task of successful everyday behavior, whether it is controlling our tempers, or our appetites or our inclinations to sit all day in front of the television.  Our habits make all the difference.  We learn to order our souls the same way we learn to do math problems or play baseball well—through practice.

Practice, of course, is the medicine hard to swallow.  If it were easy, we wouldn’t have such modern-day phenomena as multimillion-dollar diet and exercise industries.  We can enlist the aid of trainers, therapists, support groups, step programs, and other strategies, but in the end, its practice that makes self-control possible.

Considerable disagreement exists over what should legitimately be studied in formal institutions of learning for self-discipline. Usually, some topics or subjects are considered taboo. These taboos may come about through interpretations of the law, as in the case of the exclusion of religious teaching from public schools in the United States. Or they may come about as a result of pressure from interest groups, as in the attempts to exclude sex education, teaching about Communism, and sensitivity training from American schools. The major considerations are that young children are not well equipped to resist heavy bias in teaching and that they are usually compelled by law to attend school and thus constitute a captive audience. It is sometimes argued, therefore, that they should be protected against religious and political propaganda and against material or experiences that require greater maturity to be handled creatively. On the other side, the danger in such arguments is that they can be used to keep all controversy out of schools and to render them places characterized by dull uniformity of thought.

There is nothing distinctively religious in recognizing that religious faith adds a significant dimension to self-discipline. No doubt that Faith is a source of discipline and power and meaning in the lives of the faithful of any major religious creed. It is a potent force in human experience.

A shared faith binds people together in ways that cannot be duplicated by other means.  Clashing faiths, on the other hand, divide people in sometimes the most violent ways. A secular world stripped of all vestige of religion would assuredly have no religious wars, but it follows, by no means, that it would be a world at peace.  We do faith a disservice in laying at its doorstep the fundamental causes of faction.

Faith contributes to the form and the content of the ideals that guide the aspirations for our self-discipline in our lives, and it affects the way we regard and behave with respect to others. “The fruit of the Spirit”—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23)—has its parallels in all the major faiths; and the Golden Rule, expressed in one form or another, is recognized almost universally. Faith can contribute important elements to the social stability and moral development towards self-discipline of individuals and groups.

There can be no disagreement in the fact that the major sources of self-discipline for a child are home and schooling. From birth to adolescence a child learns from imitating the behavior of his/her elders in home.  Also there can be no disagreement in the fact that elders at home and school are not always equipped with positive self-discipline, a situation which affects adversely on a child behavior.

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Are We Progressing?

Yes, we’re going to survey today about our civilizational progress.  We find the idea of progress in dubious shape, when we see it against a host of nations, morals, and religions rising and falling. We find no change in man’s nature during the past and present historic times; all sciences and technological advances will have to be written off as merely new means of achieving old ends—the acquisition of goods and riches, the pursuit of one sex by the other, the overcoming of competition, the fighting of battles and wars. We discover to our amazement now that science is neutral: it kills for us as readily as it heals, and destroy for us more readily than it builds. How meaningless the proud sayings of Francis Bacon, “Knowledge is power”!  Sometimes we feel that the people in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, who lived on mythology and art rather than science and technology, might have been wiser than we are. We are repeatedly enlarging our devises without improving our purposes.

Our progress in science and technology has involved some tincture of evil with good. We have immensely developed our means of banking, insurance, credit cards, and ATM machines to facilitate our time and workings, but some of us use them to facilitate crimes and corruption. The more we progress in medical science and technology, the more we are facing with diseases and sufferings in addition to addiction of drugs gradually going to alarming stage. We have multiplied a hundred times our ability to learn and report the events of the day and the planet, but we envy our ancestors whose peace was only gently disturbed by the news of their village.

We find relief in our emancipation from theology, but have we developed a natural ethic—a moral code independent of religion—strong enough to keep our instincts of acquisition, sense of quarrel and sex from debasing our civilization into a more of greed, crime, egoism and love of fighting?  Have we really outgrown intolerance, or merely transferred it from religious to national, ideological, or racial hostilities? Are our manners better than before, or worse?  Have we given ourselves more freedom than our intelligence can digest?  Or are we nearing such moral and social disorder that frightened parents will run back to Churches, mosques and temples and beg them to discipline their children, at whatever cost to intellectual liberty? Has all the progress of philosophy been a mistake through its failure to recognize the role of myth in the consolation and control of man?  “For in much wisdom is much grief; And he who increases kn384–322 BCowledge, increases sorrow.” (Eccl.1:18).

Has there been any progress at all in philosophy since Confucius (551 – 479 BCE), a Chinese philosopher,  or in literature since Aristotle (384–322 BCE) a Greek philosopher and scientist? Are we sure that our music, with its complex forms and powerful orchestra, is more profound than the musicians and artists in the Court of Akbar the Great (1542– 1605 CE), the Moghal Emperor of India. (see details in my Chap. Music and Melodies). How does our contemporary architecture—bold, original, and impressive as it is—compare with the temples of ancient Egypt or Greece; or our sculpture with the statues of Chaperon and Hermes, or with those of Persepolis or Parthenon? Are the contemporary paintings in America and Europe a vivid symbol of our civilization’s relapse into confused and structureless decay?

We should first define what progress means to us.  If it means increase in happiness its case is lost almost at first sight. It seems silly to define progress in terms that would make the average child a higher, more advanced product of life than the adult or the sage—for certainly the child is the happiest of all men.  Progress means different to different cultures, countries and their people. The Eastern and Western part of our globe will have a wide difference in theory and practices of progress.

Is there a more objective definition possible?  We shall here define progress as the increasing control of the environment by life. If the present stage is in control of the environment, progress is real. We may presume that at almost any time in history some nations were progressing and some were declining, as Russia and China progress and England loses ground today. We should not compare the work of one land and time with the best of all the collected past. Our problem is whether an average man has increased his ability to control the conditions of his life. Under the complex strains of city life we sometimes take refuge in the supposed simplicity of the pre-civilized ways; but in a study of surviving primitive tribes reveals  their high rate of infantile mortality, their short tenure of life, their lesser stamina and speed, their greater susceptibility to disease.

We should not be greatly disturbed by the probability that our civilization will die like any other.  Perhaps, it is desirable that life should take fresh forms, that new civilization and centers should have their turn. If education is the transmission of civilization, we are unquestionably progressing. Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew, which becomes a part of their heritage.

The heritage that we can now more fully transmit is richer than ever before. It is richer than that of Greeks and Egyptians; richer than Italian Renaissance; richer than the French Enlightenment.  If progress is real despite our whining, it is not because we are born any healthier, better, or wiser than the past, but because we are born to a richer heritage, born in a higher level of that pedestal which the accumulation of knowledge and art raises as the ground and support of our being. The heritage rises, and man rises in proportion as he receives it. If a man is fortunate he will gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children.  And in his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life.

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Spirituality v/s. Humanity

Matters of spirituality might be interesting but they would not give a disciple any relief or release from worldly sufferings and day-to-day mundane problems. Those who refuse to live according to the solution of their worldly problems, until they knew about the creation of the world or the nature of the Absolute would die in misery before they got an answer to these insoluble questions.  What difference does it make if the world was eternal in time and controlled by a Supreme Being? Grief, suffering and misery would still exist.

No matter how convincing our doctrines and beliefs, they’re empty and unsatisfying if there’s no human factor attached to them. Throughout our faith journey we’ll be faced with moments of suffering, agony, hopelessness, and sheer desperation — sometimes lasting for what seems like forever. We’ll  want to give up — and sometimes we do.

Hardships can devolve into isolation, bitterness, and ultimately transform what was once a healthy spirituality and turn it into a total rejection of faith in God. Not only do we have a falling out with God, but we also disassociate ourselves from other believers and those closest to us. When we feel hurt, betrayed, or abandoned by people we assume God is to blame, causing us to doubt God’s benevolence for us — even questioning God’s very existence.

Many quit faith not because of a disbelief in God, but because of our broken and unhealthy relationships — people are the main reason we give up on God. There are basically two types of Believers: those who bring people closer to God, and those who drive them further away. Our faith hinges on relationships.

. Most religions have an ethical component, often derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance. Some assert that religion is necessary to live ethically. There are those who would say that we can only flourish under the umbrella of a strong social order of equality and justice, cemented by common adherence to a particular religious tradition.

The first ethical will or testament is found, giving a summary of moral teachings, with the Golden Rule, "Do that to no man which thou hatest" as the leading maxim.There are even more elaborate ethical teachings in Buddhism,  Christianity, Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Secularism, all influenced by Hellenistic influence.

So far my knowledge of religion has revealed that human being is a spiritual animal. From very beginning of civilization ape-man and cave-man needed spiritual help in healing their mysterious diseases, in safety from natural calamities of thunder, lightening, flood and ferocious animals.

Every Believer has experienced life-changing moments of spiritual intervention — faith-saving interactions that happen in many forms. It may have been an old friend, family member, college roommate, mentor, or even a random stranger that intervenes at exactly the right moment to provide relief, encouragement, safety, or help — saving our Faith from certain death.

On numerous occasions we get pulled back into a right relationship with God only because people were willing to love us, and this wouldn’t have happened without individuals selflessly making the decision to invest, sacrifice, and give of themselves.

Throughout the religious scriptures calls us to love God by loving others. But our loving others are mostly not immune of our hidden desire of getting material benefits. Some of us are guilty of doing as much as we possibly can in the name of God while at the same time trying to get by with as little relational investment as possible.

It means helping those around us: being a good friend, loving parent, supportive spouse, kind sibling, helpful co-worker, respecting those who are different from us, and taking the time to love people in practical, small, routine, and real ways. We don’t need to be a pastor, preacher or a religious leader to built a friendly relation with our fellow-being. No special training is required.

Within a society obsessed with money, efficiency, and busyness, dedicating time and energy toward someone is one of our culture’s greatest gifts of love. Are people worth the effort? Are they worth the two minutes it takes to messaging an encouraging note? Are they worth the hour of our morning to meet for coffee? Are they worth making a meal for? Are they worth whatever inconvenience it costs us to invest in their life?

So today, tomorrow, next week, and for the rest of our lives, let’s practice being present with others, interacting on human level, relating to people and being brave enough to align ourselves with their sorrows, doubts, struggles, and joys — to be a part of their lives, and allow them to be part of ours.

It’s hard work, but it’s worth the effort. In the end, our relationship with God Almighty is directly influenced by our relationships with others. God is a relational being that demand we love others just as God loves us.                    

Edited: Israr Hasan

Aug. 8, 2016      

Terrorism and Western Dilemma

The West evolved from the social setbacks of the middle Ages, becoming champion of human rights, democracy and social justice.  This is the greatest gift of civilization in the modern age.

I do not see any wisdom in sacrificing this gift on the altar of terrorism. We do not need any special education, knowledge and training to discern the causes of ever increasing terrorism throughout the East and the West.  Every terror events emanates from some telling causes—political, autocratic or otherwise.  The events of 9/11 attacks on the twin towers, and the recent Paris attacks of Nov.13, 2015 could be averted by eliminating the causes of those attacks.  So long things go against justice and fair play in national and international affairs, terror and terrorism will continue its consequential course of working.

Man and Morality

Morals are the rules by which a society compels its members and associations to behavior consistent with its order, security, and growth. 

Knowledge of history stresses the variability of moral codes. They differ in time and place, and sometimes contradict each other. They differ because they adjust themselves to historical and environmental conditions.  If we divide history into three stages—hunting, agriculture, and industry—we see that the moral codes of one stage were changed in the next.  In the hunting stage a man had to be ready to chase and fight and kill.  When he had caught his prey he ate to the full capacity of his stomach, being uncertain when he might eat again; insecurity is the mother of greed, as cruelty is the memory of a time when the test of survival was the ability to kill.  The death rate in men, so often risking their lives in hunting and war, was higher than in women; some men had to take several women, and every man had to help women to their frequent pregnancy. Pugnacity, brutality, greed and sexual readiness were advantages in the struggle for existence.  Every vice of today was once a virtue in the past.  Man’s sins may be the relics of his rise rather than the stigmata of his fall. 

When men passed from hunting to agriculture, the new environ and challenges demanded new virtues, and changed some old virtues into vices.  Industriousness became more vital than bravery, regularity and thrift more profitable than violence, peace more victorious than war  Children were economic assets, birth control was made immoral.  On the farm the family was the unit of production under the discipline of the father and the seasons, and paternal authority had a firm economic base.  Each normal son matured soon in mind and self-support; all that he needed was aland, a plow, and a willing arm. So he married early, almost as soon as nature wished. As for young women, chastity was indispensable, for its loss might bring unprotected motherhood.  Monogamy was demanded by the approximate numerical equality of the sexes.  For fifteen hundred years this agricultural moral code of continence, early marriage, divorceless monogamy, and multiple maternity maintained itself in Christian Europe and its white colonies. It was a stern code, which produced some of the strongest characters in history.

Gradually, the Industrial Revolution changed the economic form and moral superstructure of European and American life.  Men, womn, and children left home and family, authority and unity, to work as individuals, individually paid, in factories built to house not men but machines.  Every decade the machines multiplied and became more complex; children no longer were economic assets; marriage was delayed, premarital continence became more difficult to maintain.  The city life offered ever discouragement to marriage, but it provided every stimulus and facility for sex.  Women were “emancipated”, i.e. industrialized; and contraceptive enabled them to separate intercourse from pregnancy.  The authority of father and mother lost its economic base through the growing individualism of industry.  The rebellious youth was no longer constrained by the surveillance of the village;  he could hide his sin in the protective anonymity of the city crowd. The progress of science raised the authority of the test tube over than of the crosier; the mechanization of economic production suggested mechanistic materialistic philosophies; education spread religious doubts; morality lost more and more of it supernatural supports. The old agricultural moral code began to die.

In our time, as in the times of Socrates (d. 399 B.C.) and Augustus (d. 14 A.D.) has added to the forces making for moral laxity. After the wars of Marius and Sulla, Caesar and Pompey, Antony and Octavius, “Rome was full of men who had lost their economic footing and their moral stability:  soldiers who had tasted adventure and had learned to kill, citizens had seen their savings consumed in the taxes and inflation caused by war; women dizzy with freedom, multiplying divorces, abortions, and adulteries.  A shallow sophistication prided itself upon its pessimism and cynicism.  It is almost a picture of European and American cities after two world wars.

History reminds us that sin has flourished in every age.  Even our generation has not yet rivaled the popularity of homosexualism in ancient Greece or Rome or Renaissance Italy. Prostitution has been perennial and universal, from the state-regulated brothels of Assyria (25th century BC) to the night clubs of West-European and American cities today. We have records of 16^th C.E. that tell us obscene literatures were found a ready market; the immorality of our stage differs in kind rather than degree. We have noted the discovery of dice in the excavations near the site of Nineveh; men and women have gambled in every age. In every age men have been dishonest and governments have been corrupt; probably less now than before. The pamphlet literature of sixteenth century Europe groaned with denunciations of wholesale adulteration of food and other products.  Man has never reconciled himself to the Ten Commandments or the Gospels.

We must remind ourselves that history as usually written is quite different from history as usually lived: the historian records the exceptional because it is interesting and because it is exceptional.  Behind the red façade of war and politics, misfortune and poverty, adultery and divorce, murder and suicide, were millions of orderly homes, devoted marriages, men and women kindly and affectionate, troubled and happy with children.  Even in recorded history we found so many instance of goodness, even of nobility, that we can forgive, though not forget, the sins.  The gifts of charity have almost equaled the cruelties of battlefields and jails.  How many times, even in our sketchy narratives, we have seen men helping one another? Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?

So we cannot be sure that the moral laxity of our times is a herald of decay rather than a painful or delightful transition between a moral code that has lost its agricultural basis and another that our industrial civilization has yet to forge into social order and normality.  Meanwhile history assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.  For 250 years after moral weakening began in Greece, Hellenic civilization continued to produce masterpieces of literature and art.  Roman morals began to decay soon after the conquered Greeks passed into Italy (146 BC) but Rome continued to have great statesmen, philosophers, poets, and artists until the death of Marcus Aurelius (189 A.D). Politically Rome was at nadir when Caesar came (60 BC); yet it did not quite succumb to the barbarians till 465 AD.  May we take as long to fall as did Imperial Rome!

Morality consists entirely of behavior; every time, place, and circumstance have their own propriety; he that observes the proprieties of each occasion attains the rank of a man of integrity, and he that neglects the proprieties is far removed from the rank of righteousness. The meaning of this is akin to the dictum of Sufism, “that Sufism is not composed of practices and sciences, but it is morals,” i.e. if it consisted of practices, it could be acquired by effort, and if it consisted of sciences, it could be gained by instruction: hence it is morals that is not acquired until you demand from yourself the principles of morals, and make your actions square with them and fulfill their just claims.

A root question: Is morality attainable by religion only or by secular humanism also?  Most religions have an ethical component, often derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance. Some assert that religion is necessary to live ethically. There are those who would say that we can only flourish under the umbrella of a strong social order, cemented by common adherence to a particular religious tradition.

The first ethical will or testament is found, giving a summary of moral teachings, with the Golden Rule, "Do that to no man which thou hatest!" as the leading maxim. There are even more elaborate ethical teachings in Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Secularism influenced by Hellenistic influence.

Ethics in Buddhism are traditionally based on the enlightened perspective of the Buddha, or other enlightened beings who followed him. Moral instructions are included in Buddhist scriptures or handed down through tradition. 

Christian ethics in general has tended to stress the need for love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness because of sin. Christian ethical principles are based on the teachings within the Bible.

The guidance of Islam for ethics and morality has been laid down in the verses throughout the Qur’an, which identify the believers as those, “who enjoin good and forbid evil and observe the limits set by Allah” (Q.9:112).

Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism emphasize the maintenance and propriety of relationships as the most important consideration in ethics. To be ethical in Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism is to do what one's relationships require. Notably what you owe to another person is inversely proportional to their distance from you. In other words, you owe your parents everything, but you are not in any way obligated towards strangers. This can be seen as recognition of the fact that it is impossible to love the entire world equally and simultaneously. This is called relational ethics, or situational ethics.

Religion and morality are not synonymous. Morality does not depend upon religion but most religions contain guidance on ethics. Religion and morality "are to be defined differently and have no definitional connections with each other. Conceptually and in principle, morality and a religious value system are two distinct kinds of value systems or action guides."

Within the wide range of moral traditions, religious value systems co-exist with contemporary secular frameworks. Modern monotheistic religions, such as Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism, define right and wrong by the laws and rules set forth by their respective scriptures and as interpreted by their religious leaders within the respective faith. Other religions tend to be less absolute. For example, within Buddhism, the intention of the individual and the circumstances should be accounted for to determine if an action is right or wrong. In Hinduism, "practically, right and wrong are decided according to the categories of social rank, kinship, and stages of life. For modern Westerners, who have been raised on ideals of universality and egalitarianism, this relativity of values and obligations is the aspect of Hinduism most difficult to understand".

A number of studies have been conducted on the empirics of morality in various countries, and the overall relationship between faith and crime is unclear.  A 2001 review of studies on this topic found "The existing evidence surrounding the effect of religion on crime is varied, contested, and inconclusive, and currently no persuasive answer exists as to the empirical relationship between religion and crime."  Phil Zuckerman's 2008 book, Society without God, notes that Denmark and Sweden, "which are probably the least religious countries in the world, and possibly in the history of the world", enjoy "among the lowest crime rates in the world and the lowest levels of corruption in the world".

Dozens of studies have been conducted on this topic since the twentieth century. A 2005 study by Gregory S. Paul, published in the Journal of Religion and Society stated that, "In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies," and "In all secular developing democracies a centuries long-term trend has seen homicide rates drop to historical lows.”

A complex relationship exists between religiosity and homicide with some dimensions of religiosity encouraging homicide and other dimensions discouraging it.

Some studies appear to show positive links in the relationship between religiosity and moral behavior. Modern research in criminology also suggests an inverse relationship between religion and crime, with some studies establishing this connection.  A meta-analysis of 60 studies on religion and crime concluded, "religious behaviors and beliefs exert a deterrent effect on individuals’ criminal behavior.”

An ethical dilemma is a complex situation that often involves an apparent mental conflict between moral imperatives, in which to obey one would result in transgressing another. Perhaps the most commonly cited ethical conflict is that between an imperative or injunction not to steal and one to care for a family that you cannot afford to feed without stolen money. Under an ethical system in which stealing is always wrong and letting one's family die from starvation is always wrong, a person in such a situation would be forced to commit one wrong to avoid committing another, and be in constant conflict with those whose view of the acts varied. There are no legitimate ethical systems in which stealing is more wrong than letting one's family die. Ethical systems do in fact allow for, and sometimes outline, tradeoffs or priorities in decisions.

According to some philosophers and sociologists, e.g. Karl Marx, it is the different life experience of people and the different exposure of them and their families in these roles (the rich constantly robbing the poor, the poor in a position of constant begging and subordination) that creates social class differences. In other words, ethical dilemmas can become political and economic factions that engage in long term recurring struggles.

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Sayings of Sages

Take Control of three things: Your language, your inner-self , your anger.

Don’t belittle three things:  Your duties, your loans, and your disease.

Always remember three things: Death, Favors and Precepts.

Do not break three things: Heart, Promise and Laws.

Keep tidy three things: Your Body, your outfits and your thinking.

Don’t destroy three things:  Your time, your friendship, and your subsistence of livelihood.

Hold with care the three things: Your pen, your steps, and your vows.

Source: Anonymous. 

In Pursuit of Happiness

Edited: Israr Hasan

Dated: 19^th Jan. 201

Happiness is a mental and/or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources. Philosophers usually explicate on happiness as either a state of mind, or a life that goes well for the person leading it.

Buddhism

Happiness forms a central theme in Buddhist teachings. For ultimate freedom from suffering, the ‘Noble Eightfold Path’ leads its practitioner to Nirvana, a state of everlasting peace. Ultimate happiness is only achieved by overcoming ‘desire/craving’ in all forms.

Judaism

Happiness or simcha (Hebrew) in Judaism is considered an important element in the service of God. The biblical verse "worship The Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs,” (Psalms, 100:2.), stresses joy in the service of God.

Catholicism

In Catholicism, the ultimate end of human existence consists in felicity, or "blessed happiness", described by the 13th-century philosopher-theologian Thomas Aquinas. Human complexities, like reason and cognition, can produce well-being or happiness, but such form is limited and transitory. In temporal life, the contemplation of God is the supreme delight of the will. Beatitudo, or perfect happiness, as complete well-being, is to be attained not in this life, but in the next.

Islam

Al-Ghazali (c. 1058–1111) a Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher and mystic of Persian descent, wrote The Alchemy of Happiness (Kimiya-yi Sa'ādat). In the work, he emphasizes the importance of observing the ritual requirements of Islam, the actions that would lead to salvation, and the avoidance of sin lead to joy and happiness. Only by exercising the human faculty of reason - a God-given ability - can one transform the soul from worldliness to complete devotion to God, the ultimate happiness.

According to Al-Ghazali, there are four main constituents of happiness: self-knowledge, knowledge of God, knowledge of this world as it really is, and the knowledge of the next world as it really is.

Spirituality and Happiness

While religion is often formalized and community-oriented, spirituality tends to be individually based and not as formalised. The more spiritual a baby is, the happier he/she is. Spirituality may refer to almost any kind of meaningful activity, personal growth, or blissful experience. Inner peace (or peace of mind) refers to a state of being mentally and spiritually at peace, with enough knowledge and understanding to keep oneself strong in the face of discord or stress. Being "at peace" is considered by many to be healthy. Peace of mind is generally associated with bliss, happiness and contentment.

Peace of mind, serenity, and calmness are descriptions of a disposition free from the effects of stress. In some cultures, inner peace is considered a state of consciousness or enlightenment that may be cultivated by various forms of training, such as prayer, meditation, tai chi or yoga, for example. Many spiritual practices refer to this peace as an experience of knowing oneself. Finding inner peace is often associated with traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, emphasizes the importance of inner peace in the world:

The question of real, lasting world peace concerns human beings, so basic human feelings are also at its roots. Through inner peace, genuine world peace can be achieved. In this the importance of individual responsibility is quite clear; an atmosphere of peace must first be created within ourselves, then gradually expanded to include our families, our communities, and ultimately the whole planet.

 Philosophical Views

The Chinese Confucian thinker Mencius, who 2300 years ago was convinced that human mind played a mediating role between the "lesser self" (biological self) and the "greater self" (moral self) and that getting the priorities right between these two would lead to sage-hood.  More specifically, he mentions the experience of intoxicating joy and happiness if one celebrates the practice of the great virtues.

The Hindu thinker Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, wrote quite exhaustively on the psychological and ontological roots of bliss.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, written in 350 BCE, Aristotle stated that happiness (being well and doing well) is the only thing that humans desire for its own sake, unlike riches, honor, health or friendship. Happiness, for Aristotle, is an activity rather than an emotion or a state of mind. Happy life is the good life—a life in which a person fulfills his human nature in an excellent way.

Many ethicists make arguments for how humans should behave, either individually or collectively, based on the resulting happiness of such behavior. Utilitarians, such as John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, advocated the greatest happiness principle as a guide for ethical behavior.

According to St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, man's last end is happiness: "all men agree in desiring the last end, which is happiness.” ("Summa Theologica: Man's last end).  However, where Utilitarians focused on reasoning about consequences as the primary tool for reaching happiness, Thomas Aquinas agreed with Aristotle that happiness cannot be reached solely through reasoning about consequences of acts, but also requires a pursuit of good causes for good acts.

Conclusion

All the above discussions about Happiness are academic and theoretical. Let’s examine the state of happiness in our personal life. I invite my every adult reader to pick-up the moments of happiness in their day-to-day personal life. There can be no theory or practices of happiness more authentic than our personal experience of life.

It was a stormy evening with strong wind and rain in a small town of India in 1951, when a news spread throughout the city that the results of Matric Examination (10^th Grade of Schooling) was out and published in a Supplement newspaper. Unmindful of storm and rain, I ran out of my home and got the newspaper, instantly entered in a lighted shop nearby. No words can describe my feeling of happiness and joy when I found my Roll number in the group of first divisioners.  

I have been writing this treatise on happiness for the last two weeks with loss of my comfort, sleep and appetite.  The kind of happiness and satisfaction I feel now at the completion of this treatise are beyond expression in any words. Now, I feel almost the same happiness when a mother feels on delivering birth of a baby after agonizing pain.

Until now, in the 81^st anniversary of my birthday, I have gone through innumerable moments of happiness and joy. But, in fact, the moments of pains and sufferings are larger than the moments of happiness and joy. I find the proportions of happiness and sufferings vary greatly in the social setups of the Third world and developed world. I have had experiences of life-styles of India, Pakistan, Middle East, and now United States of America.

The moments of happiness and joy are largely dependent on the social, political and economic condition in each society. Another characteristic of happiness is its short stay.  I see it as a break in the multitudes of pain and suffering, just as the peace and tranquility of night is a break in the pain and sufferings of the day. And on the same analogy it is believed that death is a moment of bliss in the agonizing tide of life. God knows better.

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