I heard the Native American credo, ‘act with honour and live in peace’ from Raghu for the first time a couple of decades ago. I don’t recall the specific context in which he brought it up; I suspect it must have been during one of our conversations around dilemmas of choice-making and what is fair, just, and the ‘right’ thing to do. At the time, it seemed to instantly blow away my mind’s fog and so has remained etched in my memory ever since.

Soon after that conversation with Raghu, I brought up the quote with Ashok one evening at my office. I told him how profound it was and how taken I was by it. He was silent for a bit, and then added that it was indeed very meaningful but that he would find it problematic if one held a singular, absolutist idea of honour. We had just spent the day talking about the EUM framework that he had authored, about subjective truths and context sensitivity, how values are not absolute, and that some are not intrinsically more desirable than others. The associated meanings and behaviours we attach to them are therefore not fixed and limited. In essence, it was a call to move away from a frozen definition of honour and peace.

A conversation with a friend last week brought me back to these encounters with Raghu and Ashok of two decades ago.

It is tempting to submit oneself to a socially constructed idea of what is role-appropriate, and sometimes feel trapped while meeting this requirement, feeling the gap between what one desires to do and what one has been given to believe one ought to do by their context. Many of these allowances and prohibitions from one’s context are internalised and constitute the inner moral universe. Honour, in such an instance, appears as fidelity to role-expectations and codes of conduct, societally defined but typically internalised, and often includes a significant denial of self-needs.

What if I am the combative warrior, vigilant, ready to take up arms against oppression, question powers that be, challenge the givens and brook no constraints, and accept no limitations? Honour here would perhaps be about a fight (unto death?) to assert or defend, slaying the demons and dragons that threaten and menace, to trust oneself to shape things after one’s desires rather than settle for less or be fearful of consequences. Honour lies in testing one’s own limits, surrendering only to the irrepressible urge for self-expression.

Or consider those for whom kith and kin are precious, and/or whose identity is significantly shaped by his or her system of belonging, wherein continuing membership is the cherished reward: preserving and perpetuating familiar, shared ways of being that include rituals, practices and obligations, acquiescence to collective norms, harmony through denial of difference rather airing them (and clearing the air). Honour lies in living by and in defence of this shared way of life, the lore, and glorifying the ‘us’ that has so much in common.

Does honour have any salience in the world of homo economicus? Where one’s utility is key to a sense of self, the ability to add value is a function of expertise, and self-worth is an outcome of presentation, comparison and distinctiveness in the marketplace of goods, ideas and services, ‘honour’ is perhaps a noun, a badge, a proclamation of achievement, a symbol of success, a testament to continuously striving for excellence, to gaining mastery, celebrating ambition and teasing out the far reaches of one’s potential, and the proud listing of those who paved the way for one’s own glory.

Now, for a moment, think about one who is less concerned with themselves and more with the other, and the invisible threads of connection that permeate and sustain everything, animate and inanimate. Perhaps to them, honour is about acting in ways that recognise a shared destiny and one’s responsibility in enriching the web of life, acknowledging the small and big ways in which all beings add colour, smell, shape and sounds, in daily attitudes of humility and gratitude, and deeds of kindness, promoting a practice of valuing rather than simply judging, and principled resistance to all that militates against co-existence.

It is a truism that in life there are no certainties or guarantees; our search for them remains elusive. Inclusion and alienation, prowess and helplessness, faith and scepticism, ambition and drift, affirmation and indifference, obsession and neglect, and so much more inform the rise and ebb of life. If only one could be free from compulsivity to be this or that and to respond in particular ways, free from dependence on knowledge ‘out there’, from the fear of consequences! If only one could trust oneself and flow with ‘what is’, one could be free of vanity and paralysis and the residues that come from reluctance to meet the present with all its boons and burdens.

Honour then lies in acting from one’s courage of conviction, rather than on socially sanctioned ways, or on precedent, valour, sterile knowledge and received wisdom or the fear of causing disruptions or hurt. It lies in accepting one’s fallibility, that there is no ‘right’ answer or response. It lies in a willingness to act and take responsibility for consequences, not procrastinating in the hope of choices where there is no price to pay. Honour lies in acting with intensity and integrity, as appropriate to the context and in the ‘subjective knowing’ that comes from tuning to the evocations, the inner churn and the wisdom of one’s feelings.

‘Living in peace’ too is perhaps similarly layered. For instance, the idea of peace can be more in line with harmony and the denial or suppression of all differences (wherein difference is seen as danger), the peace that depends on the power of the victor to write the rules and the victims’ submission to it. Consider too, the peace that comes from faith in a ‘higher authority’ and its power to regulate through rules, roles and boundaries and in imposing role and duty for oneself or, a peace that is made on the strength of pacts that secure mutual benefits.

There is also the peace informed by grace and dignity that includes and engages rather than excludes and oppresses and is equanimous in the face of the noise and the music that such engagement often entails. And lastly (for now), the peace that comes with the knowledge that disturbance is a transient state and a steady awareness of impermanence as the grand recipe for a permanent peace.