The Two Birds: Honesty, Veracity, Equanimity: Part III

[This essay was originally posted to a blog on Weebly. In transferring it I have updated and made corrections where necessary.]

[Portions of this same material were used in July 2006.]

At long last, I'm posting the third and last part of my series on "A Virtue List: Honesty, Veracity, and--now--Equanimity."

There is a famous story in the Upanishads (Svetasvatara Upanishad 4:6-7 and Mundaka Upanishad 3:1-2 tell the identical story):

"Two birds, inseparable friends, cling to the same tree. One of them eats the sweet fruit, the other looks on without eating."

Honesty, Veracity, Equanimity: Part II

[This essay was originally posted to a blog on Weebly. In transferring it I have updated and made corrections where necessary.]

Veracity.

If you check your dictionary, you may find yourself thinking, "Veracity and Honesty mean the same thing." But I'm using a special definition for this one.

On January 25, 1997, it was my great pleasure to see Dr. Huston Smith give a lecture at The Learning Annex in Los Angeles. Dr. Smith is one of the great teachers of the Perennial Philosophy, a term that describes what I have adopted as my personal "religion." In that lecture, Dr. Smith used "Veracity" to mean, "Seeing things as they are," which is one of the great virtues of Buddhism.

According to Dr. Smith, a Zen monk once explained it thus:

Honesty, Veracity, Equanimity: Part I

[This essay was originally posted to a blog on Weebly. In transferring it I have updated and made corrections where necessary.]

All my life I have been fascinated by what I call "Virtue Lists."

These are lists that transcend the "dos and don'ts" of things like the Ten Commandments, or Buddhism's Five Precepts; instead of talking about what we should do, a Virtue List outlines what we should be.

So Christianity has The (Eight) Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12, where we are encouraged to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek, to hunger and thirst after righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure of heart, to be peacemakers, and to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

Buddhism has a much shorter list: To be compassionate and wise. (There are longer lists too, of course, which we may visit later.)

That's Bob!: Coming Full Circle

[This essay was originally posted on this blog in August, 2006--much closer to the time it happened. It was cross-posted to the blog on Weebly, so I won't post it again here.]

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