INDIAN THOUGHTS ON ETHICS

8/7/2019 INDIAN THOUGHTS ON ETHICS

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INDIAN THOUGHTS ON ETHICS

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

(SOURCE: Collected Works, Vol. II)

1. All the secret of success is there: to pay as much attention to the means as to the ends.

2. With the means alright, the ends must come«.. if we take care of the cause, the effect will

take care of itself. The realization of the ideal is the effect. The means are the cause: attention

to the means, therefore, is the great secret of life.

3. Great error of all ethical systems is failure to teach means to refrain from doing evil.

4. It is grand and good to know the laws that govern the stars and planets; it is infinitely grander

and better to know the laws that govern the passions, the feelings, and the will of mankind.

5. Ethical Codes from Utilitarianism are for the time only. ECs from spirituality relate the

individual to the Infinite and embrace society in between.

6. Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands ± renunciation of the finite for the

Infinite.

7. The senses say, µmyself first¶. Ethics says, µI must hold myself last¶.

8. «. One central idea, eternal self-abnegation. Perfect self-annihilation is the ideal of ethics «

the scope, the goal, the idea of all ethics is the destruction and not the building up of the

individual.

9. Utilitarian standards cannot explain relations of men. Without supernatural sanction, as it is

called, or the perception of the super consciousness, as I prefer to term it, there can be no

ethics.

10. Ethics itself is not the end, but the means to the end. If the end is not there, why should we

be ethical?

11. Centre of all ethical systems is doing well to others. Why? Feeling of sameness

everywhere. ³I am the Universe´.

12. What is the watchword of all ethical codes? ³Not I but thou´, and this ³I´ is the outcome of

the Infinite behind trying to manifest itself on the outside world.

13. «.. We must work for lessening misery, for that is the only way to make ourselves happy.

14. It is in ³monism´ that lies the explanation of ethics, morality, spirituality: the whole Universe

is but one.



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15. The Vedantic idea that you are the Infinite is the principle of ethics.

16. It is one of the most practical things in Vedantic morality, for it is the teaching of the

Vedanta that you are all prophets«. The book is not the proof of your conduct, but you are the

proof of the book.

MAHATMA GANDHI

(Source: Selected Works. Edited by S.Narayan)

1. That which merely answers the saying, ³Honesty is the best policy implying that if it is not the

best policy, we may depart from it´.

2. For me, it is enough to know the means.

3. The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree.

4. Impure means result in an impure end.

5. Economics that hurts the moral well-being of an individual or a nation is immoral and,

therefore, sinful. «.. True economics never militates against the highest ethical standard, just

as all true ethics to be worth its name must at the same time be also good economics.

6. My theory of ³trusteeship´ is no make-shift, certainly not any camouflage«..It has the

sanction of philosophy and religion behind it.

7. I have no hesitation in endorsing the proposition that generally rich men, and for that matter

most men, are not particular as to the way they make money.

8. Our life should become daily simpler and not more complex. We should be progressively

more self-restrained.

9. Without mental purity external action cannot be performed in a selfless spirit.

10. In the path of morality there is no such thing as reward for moral behavior.

11. A moral act must be our own act; it must spring from our own will.

12. Just as moral action should be free from fear or compulsion so should there be no self-

interest behind it. «.. That honesty cannot long endure which is practiced in the belief that it is

the best policy.

13. We see also that moral laws are immutable. Opinions change, but not morality.

14. Bismarck¶s dreadful deeds v. sermons to school children why? ³So long as the seed of

morality is not watered by religion, it cannot sprout««´ Thus it will be seen that true or ideal

morality ought to include true religion««. Morality cannot be observed without religion. That is

to say, morality should be observed as a religion.



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15. ««.Altruism is the highest form of morality.

16. «« We have neither practiced nor known ethical religion so long as we do not feel

sympathy for every human being«. Higher morality must be comprehensive; it must embrace

all men.

SRI AUROBINDO

(SOURCE: The Human Cycle, unless otherwise cited)

1. The kernel of the true ethical being remains always the same ± will, character, self-discipline.

Self-mastery ± these are almost the first conditions for human self-perfection.

2. In all our practical life we are content to be slaves of an outward necessity, and think

ourselves always excused when we admit as the law of our thought, will and action, the yoke of

immediate and temporary utilities.

3. Utilitarian Ethics«« its reduction of ethical action to an impressible scientific and quite

impracticable jugglery of moral mathematics, attractive enough to the reasoning logical mind,

[but] quite false and alien to the whole instinct and intuition of the ethical being.

4. Good, not utility, must be the principle and standard of good.

5. There is only one safe rule for the ethical man, to stick to his principle of good, his instinct of

good, his vision of good, his intuition of good and to govern by that his conduct.

6. Virtue comes to the natural man by a struggle with his pleasure-seeking nature««..

7. For ethics only begins by the demand upon him of something other than his personal

preferences, vital pleasure or material self-interest.

8. His relations with others and his relations with himself are both the occasions of his ethical

growth. But that which determines his ethical being in his relations with God, the urge of the

Divine upon him ± whether concealed in his nature or conscious in his higher self or inner

genius.

9. For the ethical being, like the rest, is a growth and seeking towards the absolute, the divine,

which can only be attained securely in the supranatural.

10. In fact ethics is not in its essence a calculation of good and evil in the auction or a laboredeffort to be blameless according to the standards of the world ± these are only crude

appearances ± it is an attempt to grow into the divine nature.

11. Ethics deals only with the desire-soul and the active outward dynamical part of our being; its

field is confined to character and action. ( The Synthesis of Yoga, 1988, page 617)



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INDIAN THOUGHTS ON ETHICS