ABSTRACT
Sila is usually translated Morality or Discipline and I am aware of how unfashionable and unfavoured such a concept currently is .2 Walpola Rahula gives a translation, perhaps more suited to the contemporary scene, that of Ethical Conduct.3 Yet under whatever name, this is an area which also receives only limited consideration in contemporary discussion of psychotherapy.4 Thus in this section I wish to look at the Buddhist sense of ethical conduct, and what this entails, and how it changed from early Buddhism, through the Mahayana, and Vaj rayana. I will then consider the subject of ethics in relation to psychotherapy. Here, although we find much written about the contract between therapist and client, and the ethical behaviour required of the therapist, there is little consideration of the wider field of ethics and value . Indeed this reflects the modern scientific world view with its distinct attempt to separate facts from values. An attempt which psychology in its pursuit of scientific status wholeheartedly embraced. Yet psychotherapists are constantly called on to answer moral questions, implicitly if not explicitly. Some definition of the good; good health, good life or good intention is surely implicit in every facet of therapy. At the same time an acceptable moral framework within which to position such questions or to legitimate their answers is difficult to find.
