Hmmn.  So I just realised that morality is a fetter.  Just saying.  

So is immorality, of course.

Question: Is this what is meant by "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law?"  And if so, does "thou wilt" need to have reached a pretty empty and luminous stage for the law to apply?  Or is it a kind of western crazy wisdom, intended to exhuast grasping? 

Malcolm (not malcolm)

Can you explain how morality is a fetter? It would help me understand what you're asking.

Sure, I'll do my best.  I felt a bit nervous to discuss this, but then tried to see that emotion as not-self and let it go.  This is a focus at the moment; renouncing becoming, and taking opportunities to rest in the joyous dimensionality of space.  Only succeeding sometimes, of course!

The renunciation is not physical but mental - trying to spot the moments of becoming and reject them. Behavioral urges are one level, reactions to emotions are another, and emotional formations are a third (e.g. residual tendencies to resentment, pride, evaluation).  Recently I saw for myself that positive emotions of bliss and rapture are also fetters - I won't say why, as I think it benefits people to work that out for themselves.

Today I realised that there is a fourth level of clinging, beyond urges, beyond reactions to emotions, and beyond emotional habits.  It struck me that morality is a deeply embedded form of conceptual clinging.  It is probably needed along the way, but ultimately it is just another empty concept.  Thus, morality eventually becomes a fetter that prevents liberation, as it encourages clinging to a residual level of delusional existence - our concepts of right and wrong.  Morality needs to be burnt up in the fire along with everything else.  Eventually, even renunciation has to go.

I hope that makes some sense.

I believe in morality because i actually believe in Kamma, so eventually an optimal kamma will be very useful for the conditions for liberation to arise.

https://dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?t=2882
Here is a mahayana sutta that mentions what you said. We shouldn't be attached to either moral or inmoral that is a dualistic mindset, but then again, if we are subjected to a karmic law then we better be at peace.

I happened upon a time of thinking this way a few months ago. There was a morality-enforcing (of skillful living-enforcing) submind that I felt myself out-growing. When at a moment I'd had enough of it's authority, I acted to "Do what thou wilt shall" as you say. This unlocked an acceleration of progress, but recently I've had to reassess it. There seems to be cycle where we use our concepts of morality or skillful living to better prime ourselves for insights but to really get there, we have to abandon them. We then run into a slightly more subtle challenge where we form new strategies to overcome - only to realize later that we've only tricked ourselves again. Frameworks of morality are empty, but for most of us, we need to use them before we can discard them - like the raft we use to cross the river.

Jamess - yes, absolutely. I certainly have no desire to encourage people to engage in practices that are karmically unskilful.  Thanks also for the link - I read on through to the story from Mañjuśrī, and it seemed similar to the point that I was trying to make. 

Nick O - wise words, thank you. Just to be clear I have no present desire to change my moral habits, or to test their boundaries, but I reached this intellectual realisation about them.  I seem to be getting into some new territory, so I am groping my way around it little bit, and this intellectual realisation was one result of that.  I suspect I am a long way away from your 'slightly more subtle' challenge, but nice to have a small heads up for the future.  Thx.

Right, and you probably wouldn't be able to change them much if you wanted to. My mind will form concepts and thoughts will arise as if the mind thinks it can change things, but I know I will go through my day in the same fashion if I never gave a single notion. Morality seems to be built upon direct experience exclusively which is why your premise of the thread, is ulitimately correct. But concepts are tools to right our ships on a course of mindfullness when suffering occrus. Oh, the paradox!

The way I see this is that all concepts need to be seen through. Morality and emotions like joy and sadness need to be seen through. Thoughts need to be seen through. All objects need to be seen through. When we know them deeply, they lose their power over us. 

And just to add, they lose one kind of power over us and they become refined into a kind of helpful communication to us. So morality, emotions, thoughts become refined over time, they're not something inherently bad that need to be completely jettisoned.

Thank you Nick, Chris, Shargol, that's helpful.  This is a really interesting part of the journey.  Weirdly, completely described in the Anapasati and Sattipathana suttas as well - but I didn't understand that until I started doing it.

I will keep on investigating clinging in the mind, and see what else turns up.