How can one know what actions, thoughts are wholesome or unwholesome when all definitions and grounds for morality are quite individual and relative?
A person's psyche might be at ease with stealing, lying or killing and it can be done selflessly.
Are you sure?
Well, you're asking a question which you're presuming something.
You're presuming what we call relative truths, I think, or relative morality, when it's a debate.
Many people believe in absolute morality.
Mostly theists and religious people believe in absolute morality and they usually give
God as a reason.
I've answered this question before, Buddhism has a much more mundane
definition or argument in favor of absolute morality and that is the definition of morality being that, the definition of an immoral act as something that leads to suffering.
So Buddhism has a utilitarian view of morality.
Something is immoral if it
causes suffering.
Now, Buddhism also has an absolute view of morality in the sense that there is the claim that certain mind states
inevitably lead to suffering, inevitably have as their result unpleasantness, stress, suffering.
They can't be avoided.
So this is why Buddhism, and mind states, not actions, because actions are ethically variable, it's uncertain.
Killing is potentially ethically variable because
it can be done unintentionally.
If you step on an ant, didn't know the ant was there, we don't consider it to be an unethical act.
If you knew the ant was there, if you want to kill the ant, even though you don't actually do it, we still consider it unethical.
The thought is unwholesome because it's going to change you, it will
create the habit of being violent, contribute to the habit and will lead to all sorts of unpleasantness as a result.
So, we disagree that all definitions and grounds for morality are individual and relative.
We do have an individual definition
and grounds for morality, but we don't consider it to be relative.
We consider it to be absolute because there are certain mind states that are unethical by their very nature, that lead
invariably to suffering, to stress.
And those are the things we consider to be unethical.
So we believe and also we understand through experience, through introspection, through observation that things like anger, greed, arrogance, conceit can never be of any use.
The mind states are never valuable.
never beneficial, are always harmful.
If it could be minuscule, the result could be minuscule, but they are invariably negative and therefore unethical in a Buddhist sense.
So, a person's psyche might be at ease with stealing, lying or killing, and it can be done selflessly.
I disagree that it can be done selflessly, unless it's done unintentionally.
A person who is truly selfless, in a Buddhist sense, will not kill.
Because selflessness also means not seeing another person's self.
It doesn't mean altruism.
It means really and truly not clinging to the idea of entities.
If you don't cling to entities, you don't kill.
You don't have reason to kill.
Stealing and lying also will not be performed by someone who has given up the idea of self.
And a person who does these things will never be at ease, can never truly be at ease.
This is the claim because when you watch, you see the person's psyche when they're lying.
It's twisted.
Lying is twisting reality.
Killing is harming.
It is disrupting.
Stealing is again harming, it's corrupt, it's a corrupt act and so it's done with negative.
But people who are able to do these things with ease are because it's so familiar and they're so steeped in corruption.
So the first time an ordinary person, when they steal or kill for the first time,
it shakes them up, it disturbs them.
Because the Buddha said it's like a clean person, a person who is fastidious in cleanliness, getting some dirt on their fingers or getting some dirt on their clothes.
They're quite quick to clean it up, they're horrified by it.
But a person who is steeped and soiled in dirt and filth,
wouldn't be at all bothered by getting something on their shirt or body.
And it is the case with unwholesomeness.
People who are steeped in unwholesomeness eventually become, what do you call it, inured or desensitized to it.
But it's building up.
It's just there's so much.
It's like there's so much salt in the ocean.
If you drop a bit of salt, you don't notice it.
But the salt content has increased.
It's just so salty already, you don't notice.