Bright Guardians of the Way and the World: Penthos and Hiri-Ottappa

abstract: The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to a fundamental, yet frequently over-looked, component of Christian contemplative and Buddhist meditative practice: the cultivation of shame in the face of one's lapses of body, speech, and mind. In this Christian tradition, this is called penthos , or compunction; in the Buddhist sutras and subsequent commentarial literature, it is referred to as hiri-ottappa , or moral shame and moral dread. According to both Evagrius of Pontus and many in the early Buddhist tradition, no progress can be made along the spiritual path as long as one has not squarely recognized—and openly admitted to—such failings. In a cultural context in which contemplative prayer and meditation are cast either as exercises in self-affirmation or as propaedeutics to social transformation, I suggest that repositioning Buddhist-Christian dialog on a forthright acknowledgment of our common human frailty and unskillfulness can lead to a more robust, and grounded, form of mutual engagement.