Does the Dalai Lama succeed in providing a secular grounding of morality?

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I will attempt to define morality, distinguish between religious and secular groundings for
morality, explain how the Dalai Lama attempts to liberate morality from its religious
foundations and assess his effectiveness in providing a stable ground for morality sans
religion.

Unfortunately, morality is not an easy thing to define. Since its the Dalai Lama being
evaluated, its probably best to stay faithful to his own interpretation of the word morality.
As I see it, his morality requires three separate things. First it requires us to try to make
other people happy, as long as what they want is not immoral (violent, materialistic etc).
Second , morality requires us not to rank our own happiness or the happiness of those
closest to us above that of any other person; It requires us to treat all hu
man beings as
having the same worth. Finally, morality requires that we be discerning and pragmatic in
our compassion for others; since if we are unable to achieve the ultimate goal, the impetus
for pursuing it does not properly arise1 .

How does one ground morality in the secular? In tentative accordance with the Dalai
Lamas own aims, I will define a secular grounding for morality as any foundation for

13 April, Discussion, PPT Seminar - The first two conditions for morality were raised in class discussion. The final relates to the Dalai
Lamas ideas of Discernment raised in Lecture by Jay Garfield.

morality that can exist independently of a preconceived metaphysical universe linked to a

religious faith. This is clearly what the Dalai Lama has set out to establish2 .

To illuminate how this idea is different from religious ethics, it is worth thinking about how
moral rules are established and enforced in religious doctrine. For most moral rules, there is
a social justification independent of the divine. For instance, consider the ungoverned
Hobbesian state of nature where life is nasty, brutish and short3 due to competition
among people pursuing their own interests. A community like this is inconvenient for
everyone; its clear that most people can get more out of life in communities with some
degree of moral regulation.

Naturally it follows that man creates a social institution to bridge the gap between the
interests of the individual and those of the community. Hobbes would call this institution
the Leviathan and Singaporeans would probably call it the Criminal Justice system. Heres
the issue - neither of these institutions is perfect. Some criminals get away.

This is where religious argument traditionally comes in. If people can be persuaded that
there exists a metaphysical universe in which regressive behaviour is punished, even when
the Leviathan or the Criminal Justice System fail to do so, then justifications for morality

While the Dalai Lamas definition of secularity errs toward a critical neutrality with respect to religion, I think that using secularity to
mean the removal of religious or metaphysical justifications for morality is essential to this essay. This definition was developed using
discussion on Charles Taylor
A Secular Age
in Sociology of Religion seminar.
3

Hobbes, T., & Gaskin, J. (1998). Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.PDF (78)

become more stable.

In this way,
Religion ties the ethical and the metaphysical

together. It harmonizes the way we ought to live with the way the universe is, beyond
ourselves and our choices. It is this harmony which, if ones faith allows one to assume the
metaphysical premises of any particular religion to be true, that provides religious morality
with solid foundations.

In order to succeed, the Dalai Lama must detach himself from this harmony and still find a
way to ground his arguments.

Thus, from the outset he makes a crucial distinction between religion and spirituality. For
him, religion is concerned with faith in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or
another, an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of metaphysical or supernatural
reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or nirvana.4 Linked to this faith is the religious
argument for ethics - the idea of some form of divine of cosmological reward for good
action. Morality grounded in this faith cannot be secular.

Spirituality on the other hand is concerned with those qualities of the human spirit such
as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of
responsibility, a sense of harmony which bring happiness to both self and others.5 He
contends that these qualities are internal and can be refined to high degree without
attaching them to any religious or metaphysical belief system.

4
5

Ethics for the new millennium. (1999). New York: Riverhead Books. EPUB (Page 43.4)
Ibid.

Given this distinction, it is clear that the success of the Dalai Lamas secular grounding of
morality relies exclusively on the strength of his argument that it is possible and indeed
favourable for human beings to develop spirituality internally. He roots this argument in the
understanding of two key premises:
(1) that humans share an aspiration to happiness and a
hope to suffering and (2) That our interdependence with other persons and things is a key
feature of our human reality due to our biological reality as social animals. Recognition of
these two principles, he argues, will help us appreciate the inextricable connection between
our own well being and that of others. Only after this realization can we develop a genuine
concern for others welfare6 .

Significantly, It is worth noting that here this conception of ethics relies on an unstated,
underlying premise: the idea that the world and those who live in it are naturally good, kind
and compassionate. Only if we view human nature as predominantly oriented toward
kindness can we really consider this sort of ethics a rational means of living

While the Dalai Lama does successfully lift his morality from religious grounding, he is
unfortunately unable to replicate this grounds absoluteness and coherence. The
aforementioned underlying premise is the most problematic. His assumptions of the
positive character of the human spirit are perpetually challenged by day to day life in most
societies. In reality, most humans lack the critical impartiality required to see their own

Garfield, J. (Director) (2015, April 8). Background Context and Arguments in Ethics for the New Millennium . PPT 2 - Lecture series also refer to Ethics for the New Millenium (Chapter Three) and Rethinking Secularism (Chapter Two)

happiness as totally aligned with that of all other human beings. Instead, most rank their
own happiness above that of others, in turn resulting in maladaptive emotions and
behaviour7.

His argument may be that once people like this realize their mutual interdependence, that
their emotions and behaviour may be re-calibrated. This makes the dubious assumption that
all people are capable of this realization and that those who do are certain to adjust their
actions accordingly. This is simply not the case. Very few are able to come to this
realization internally and there is no evidence to suggest that those who do act in
impartially when they. To put it simply, the self is a very difficult thing to let go of and an
internal realization of ones shared quest for happiness with the rest of the world is usually
not enough to make that jump.

Perhaps this is why morality rooted in religious or metaphysical thought stands on more
stable ground than morality developed internally, something the Dalai Lama does not
exactly deny8. In order to perfectly harmonize happiness and morality, some degree of
divine agency or metaphysical assertion is required. Whether it be the Christian idea of

Garfield, J. (Director) (2015, April 8). Background Context and Arguments in Ethics for the New Millennium . PPT 2 - Lecture series.

In both Ethics for the New Millenium (43.6 he admits that religion helps cultivate morality (43.6) those who practice religion would, of

course, be right to say that such qualities, or virtues, are fruits of genuine religious endeavor and that religion therefore has
everything to do with developing them (43.6)

providence or the Buddhist idea of the nonexistence of the self is only really important as
pertains to their instrumental power as enforcement mechanisms for moral action.

While the Dalai Lama is able to conceptually distinguish between religious morality and
secular morality, successfully remove the religious foundations of morality and tentatively
insert secular justifications to replace them, it does leave morality on less absolute ground.
The question at stake here is really whether the secular justification for morality can ever
be as strong the religious one, given that the former is rooted in human agency and the
other based in a larger cosmic order with more impositional power?

In the Dalai Lamas conceptual framework it certainly isnt.

REFERENCES

1. Ethics for the new millennium. (1999). New York: Riverhead Books. EPUB
2. Garfield, J. (Director) (2015, April 8). Background Context and Arguments in Ethics
for the New Millennium . PPT 2 - Lecture series.
3.

Hobbes, T., & Gaskin, J. (1998). Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4. Lama, D. (2011). Beyond religion: Ethics for a whole world. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt. EPUB
5. Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press.