Ethics are concerned with what is best to do in a situation. However, each situation that actually occurs is unique and the person confronting it at the time is also in a unique point in his or her own spiritual development. Thus, each person, at each point, must make a decision for which no formula can ever be entirely adequate. Nor does one face a situation with an entirely predictable outcome. Sometimes well meant actions produce bad results. Sometimes the inverse is true. In any case one is never in possession of all the relevant information. Thus the ethicality of each act is a function of a struggle within the heart of the individual concerned. We need the courage and faith to make this struggle from a position of love and wisdom, but how is this to be obtained?
We can distinguish between ethical acts that are the application of an ethical formula, injunction or precept and those that spring naturally from a pure heart. We intuitively know that those that spring from a pure heart are the most authentic. This fact, however, does not nullify the usefulness of ethical formulas correctly understood. What is that understanding? It is that such formulas are exercises. Taken in an absolute sense, there is no ethical precept that it is possible for a real human being to keep purely in all respects at all times. One's mind is not totally under control and passions arise unexpectedly. Also, one is inevitably implicated in the actions of others. Further, we live in a world so constituted that life cannot be maintained without harm being done. Thus, any ethical precept, such as "Do not be proud of yourself and devalue others," or "Do not take the life of other sentient beings," if taken seriously, must result in an anguish of the heart. One arrives at the inevitable "I cannot."
Arriving at this impasse experientially, not merely intellectually, and feeling the depth of the anguish embodied therein is of extreme importance. This is the point where the self-perfection project founders and genuine humility is born. From this humility springs gratitude. Although I am a faulty, vulnerable being prone to error and wayward passions, still I am supported by this universe, still I receive help and guidance, still I am fed, cared for and benefitted in innumerable ways. My debt is incalculable. This is the position of humility from which generosity of spirit and compassion in the form of fellow-feeling emerge.
Thus the ethical precepts are spiritual exercises that drive one to a point of looking more deeply into one's nature and seeing that this must be the nature of all. It produces a penetration below the veneer of social life into the reality of human animal nature and its existential situation. This penetration is the root of spiritual maturity. In the mature soul, the self-perfection project is abandoned. The super-ego evaporates. One stands in the position of an authentic, fallible being in the midst of others equally human to oneself. Thus the impetus to harsh judgement of others also evaporates.
Thus by applying and seriously undertaking ethical precepts one is driven into a deep study of oneself that in due course leads to one forgetting oneself, except, perhaps, as an object of amusement. One confronts each situation as it comes with a heart educated by failure, that bows before the lessons of life and learns them readily, free from the burden of self-justification, knowing that one will never be justified, but yet one is enfolded by beneficence. From this state of liberation one acts according to one's truthful perception of the situation. Consequences follow and one accepts them and learns. In acting one knows that one may be wrong, but act one must.
Thus there is a cyclical progress. Through the attempt to apply the exercise of an ethical rule one trains oneself in goodness but in the process learns one's inevitable limitation. From this learning one's heart is educated. Acting with such an educated heart, the actions that spring forth are increasingly those of love and compassion. The heart is light and the world is full of grace. One lives in praise and gratitude. The rightly ordered heart generates a rightly ordered life that others will see as conforming to the kinds of standards that constitute the formulas of virtue.
Between such action and such a heart lies the mental activity of reflection that is both intellectual and intuitive, engaging emotion and will. Seeing what one has done one feels contrition and it is this which softens the heart. When the heart is touched, too, there is a reflection that informs the mind. Contemplation thus mediates between heart and action and finds a refuge that goes beyond self-perfection, self-reliance, self-esteem and all the other forms of self-clinging that only generate a false appearance of spiritual virtue. One finds refuge beyond the self, beyond the ego, free from the super-ego, simply in the reality of the contrast between one's own nature as one honestly encounters it and the transcendent, unconditional ideal that one intuits and that most certainly is our ultimate loadstone.
Reflecting in this way we come to see that ethics is a process, not a formula. The spiritual development of the person is an ethical development which is also an education of the heart through honest experience. Ethics is not a matter of self-justification, not a matter of fear of divine retribution, not a question of maximising utilitarian benefit, nor is it the imposition of a strait-jacket of restrictions. It is an exercise in spiritual growth toward genuine humility. The more that the heart is touched the more readily will it be touched again, opening to all in need.
This progress of the heart is not stress free, although in the long run it brings an infinite peace. In the anguish of honestly confronting one's own nature through the evidence of everyday life one must face an anguish that is in proportion to the self-conceit that one carries within. This painful travail, however, is the most liberating experience that one can know, for it relieves one of the onus of perfectionism and leaves one at home in the world as it is. Great solace lies therein.