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How can one know what actions, thoughts are wholesome or unwholesome when all definitions and grounds for morality are quite individual and relative?

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A person's psyche might be at ease with stealing, lying or killing and it can be done selflessly.

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Are you sure?

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Well, you're asking a question which you're presuming something.

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You're presuming what we call relative truths, I think, or relative morality, when it's a debate.

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Many people believe in absolute morality.

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Mostly theists and religious people believe in absolute morality and they usually give

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God as a reason.

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I've answered this question before, Buddhism has a much more mundane

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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.

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So Buddhism has a utilitarian view of morality.

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Something is immoral if it

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causes suffering.

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Now, Buddhism also has an absolute view of morality in the sense that there is the claim that certain mind states

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inevitably lead to suffering, inevitably have as their result unpleasantness, stress, suffering.

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They can't be avoided.

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So this is why Buddhism, and mind states, not actions, because actions are ethically variable, it's uncertain.

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Killing is potentially ethically variable because

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it can be done unintentionally.

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If you step on an ant, didn't know the ant was there, we don't consider it to be an unethical act.

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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.

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The thought is unwholesome because it's going to change you, it will

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create the habit of being violent, contribute to the habit and will lead to all sorts of unpleasantness as a result.

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So, we disagree that all definitions and grounds for morality are individual and relative.

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We do have an individual definition

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and grounds for morality, but we don't consider it to be relative.

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We consider it to be absolute because there are certain mind states that are unethical by their very nature, that lead

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invariably to suffering, to stress.

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And those are the things we consider to be unethical.

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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.

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The mind states are never valuable.

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never beneficial, are always harmful.

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If it could be minuscule, the result could be minuscule, but they are invariably negative and therefore unethical in a Buddhist sense.

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So, a person's psyche might be at ease with stealing, lying or killing, and it can be done selflessly.

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I disagree that it can be done selflessly, unless it's done unintentionally.

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A person who is truly selfless, in a Buddhist sense, will not kill.

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Because selflessness also means not seeing another person's self.

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It doesn't mean altruism.

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It means really and truly not clinging to the idea of entities.

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If you don't cling to entities, you don't kill.

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You don't have reason to kill.

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Stealing and lying also will not be performed by someone who has given up the idea of self.

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And a person who does these things will never be at ease, can never truly be at ease.

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This is the claim because when you watch, you see the person's psyche when they're lying.

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It's twisted.

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Lying is twisting reality.

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Killing is harming.

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It is disrupting.

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Stealing is again harming, it's corrupt, it's a corrupt act and so it's done with negative.

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But people who are able to do these things with ease are because it's so familiar and they're so steeped in corruption.

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So the first time an ordinary person, when they steal or kill for the first time,

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it shakes them up, it disturbs them.

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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.

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They're quite quick to clean it up, they're horrified by it.

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But a person who is steeped and soiled in dirt and filth,

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wouldn't be at all bothered by getting something on their shirt or body.

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And it is the case with unwholesomeness.

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People who are steeped in unwholesomeness eventually become, what do you call it, inured or desensitized to it.

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But it's building up.

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It's just there's so much.

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It's like there's so much salt in the ocean.

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If you drop a bit of salt, you don't notice it.

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But the salt content has increased.

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It's just so salty already, you don't notice.