Welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast. This is episode number 95. I am your host Noah Rochetta, and today I'm talking about levels of morality.

Keep in mind you don't need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. You can use what you learn to be a better whatever you already are.

Today's podcast episode is building a bit more on episode number 92, your inner compass.

So I want to jump into this topic, the concept of morality. Now morality is a problematic word for me specifically, because if you were to look up the definition of morality, the definition is principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

And as you know, from the Buddhist perspective, the concept of right and wrong, who's to say what's right and what's wrong, the parable of the horse teaches about this concept of what is right and wrong, and how difficult or problematic it can be for us to draw a clear distinction given the fact that space and time prevent us from seeing the bigger picture.

And knowing what may have been right at one time or in one set of circumstances may be wrong or bad in another set of circumstances.

So most cultural views of morality are based, honestly, more on principles of obedience than they are on principles of what's right and wrong, because it becomes problematic to define what is right and what is wrong, who's to say what is right and what is wrong.

In the book, mindfulness and plain English by Bante Gunarotana, he talks about this concept of levels of morality. And I really liked what he has to say about it. And I want to share this concept a little bit in this podcast episode.

So imagine that there are levels of morality. And at the lowest level, we have adherence to rules and regulations that are laid down by someone else. For instance, apparent, a religious leader, a religious ideology or belief system or a political leader, something along those lines.

So at this level of morality, all you have to do is know what are the rules so that you can follow them. And this level really doesn't require a whole lot of personal thought or contemplation.

You just need the rules and then you need to believe in the authority that's giving those rules. And at this level, there's generally some kind of fear associated with breaking the rules.

And it's that fear that motivates compliance to the rules. For example, fear of burning and hell in the afterlife or fear of being imprisoned by the state if you break the rules, things of that nature.

So that's the first level. The second level of morality also includes the rules just as before. But now you may not have fear as the basis of adherence to the rules.

At this stage, the rules have become internalized and you yourself are now the punisher and the enforcer. You're the one that smacks yourself when you break the rules.

So aside from simply fear, there may now be other feelings, for example, guilt associated with this level of morality.

And I think our tendency is to hover often at these two levels, maybe starting at the first level and then moving our way into that second level once we've internalized the rules the society has imposed on us or that our religious views have imposed on us.

And I see examples of this all the time where people want to know, like what does Buddhism say about this or that?

And that's essentially a search for that question of, I need to understand these rules. I'm coming across this system called Buddhism. That's the authority.

I may be reaching this point where I think, okay, this authority is one that I agree with or that I sympathize with. Now I want to know what the rules are that are laid out so I can decide if I agree with them or not.

And every rule that we find that we agree with, we're like, yeah, okay, that gives more authority to the system.

So for example, if I've already accepted Buddhism as a valid authority, then I want to know what are the rules that authority is going to give me.

And I found myself in this search for a while too, as I was exploring Buddhism early on and trying to decide, well, what are the rules?

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