Integrity is difficult because it is misunderstood. We are conditioned to be out of integrity. Without integrity we are less than fully human. Difference between ordinary schooling and ontological education. Be ready to examine your assumptions about life. Show up fully present, participating with integrity and being yourself authentically. Look up and clear your misunderstood terms, as discussed in Becoming Genius. Be committed to something greater than yourself, as described in What is Skillful Living? Be willing to be cause over changing your Being, as discussed in Being and Becoming. Being Integrity uses a certain technical terminology. You may think—and even find that others agree—that our language is unnecessarily complex, and could be made much simpler and more understandable. Do not make this mistake, because if you do you will block the full benefit that this series makes available to you. The semantics of this material is very carefully crafted to provide a specific result. Substituting other terminology will deprive it of much of its power and effectiveness.

1. BEING INTEGRITY 2: PRELIMINARIES
A Strong Foundation
THE ESOTERICTEACHING

2. GETTING STARTED
• Integrity is difficult because it is
misunderstood.
• We are conditioned to be out of integrity.
• Without integrity we are less than fully
human.
• Difference between ordinary schooling
and ontological education.
• Be ready to examine your assumptions
about life.

3. PREREQUISITES
• Skillful Living 1: Foundation Series
Transformation, the Process of Becoming
• Skillful Living 2: Becoming Genius
Learning how to Learn
• Skillful Living 3: Being in the World
Ontological Analysis of Ordinary Life
• Skillful Living 4: Call of the Friend
Achieving Authenticity through Conscience

4. • Show up fully present, participating with
integrity and being yourself authentically.
• Look up and clear your misunderstood
terms, as discussed in Becoming Genius.
• Be committed to something greater than
yourself, as described in What is Skillful
Living?
• Be willing to be cause over changing your
Being, as discussed in Being and Becoming.
FOUR FOUNDATIONS

5. Being Integrity uses a certain technical
terminology.You may think—and even find
that others agree—that our language is
unnecessarily complex, and could be made
much simpler and more understandable.
Do not make this mistake, because if you do
you will block the full benefit that this series
makes available to you.The semantics of this
material is very carefully crafted to provide a
specific result. Substituting other
terminology will deprive it of much of its
power and effectiveness.
TERMINOLOGY

6. The essence of our work, as discussed in the
Skillful Living 1: Foundation Series is the
creation of an ontology—a context or
network of specific terms and concepts—
that gives access to a very high level of self-
transformation of Being.
Just as every specialty, from plumbing to
nuclear physics, has its own shop talk, we
also have a detailed language of Being.
Knowledge of this linguistic context is itself a
powerful transformative force.
TERMINOLOGY

7. THE BUDDHA’SVIEW
What is the role of integrity in the Buddha’s
teaching? In the Skillful Living Series so far
we have discussed the importance of Being
and the Buddha’s theory of Dependent
Origination, the science of Becoming.
Knowledge of Being and Becoming is
included in the Buddha’s First and Second
NobleTruths, The Flood:
1. There is preventable suffering (dukkha).
2. There is a cause of suffering
(Dependent Origination).

8. Now let’s look at the Buddha’s art of Skillful
Living beyond the stage of Suffering to the
beginning of the Buddha’s Eightfold Noble
Path.This is the knowledge of theThird and
Fourth NobleTruths, The Raft:
3. There is cessation of suffering
(mastery of Becoming).
4. There is a path to the cessation of
suffering
(the Noble Eightfold Path).
THE BUDDHA’SVIEW

9. THE WHEEL OF BECOMING
Everyone in ordinary conditioned
consciousness is trapped in a process of
becoming, leading to death and suffering.
When most people reach the stage of
suffering, out of ignorance they assume the
problem can be solved by a better state of
being. So they allow their present state of
being to fade away (death) and begin a
new cycle of becoming. Of course, the
result of this is also leads to suffering,
because nothing really has changed.

10. The Buddha taught a process of
enlightenment, based on knowledge of
Dependent Origination, that allows us to
achieve mastery of the Process of
Becoming. If we have enough Integrity (the
first stage of the Noble Eightfold Path) to
apply the Buddha’s wisdom to our life, we
can master Becoming and quickly attain
Contentment (the second stage of the
Noble Eightfold Path).
THE WHEEL OF BECOMING

11. How much integrity is required? Enough to
do the work to learn the instructions for
the process, and to practice them until you
become expert. How much integrity is
required to learn chemistry or electronics?
Only enough to study the books and do
the labs. Similarly, if we treat the Buddha’s
teaching like a science or engineering
discipline rather than a religion, we can
easily gain enough expertise to greatly
reduce our suffering.
THE WHEEL OF BECOMING

12. DEFINITION OF INTEGRITY
in•teg•ri•ty n: The quality of being honest
and having strong moral principles; moral
uprightness:‘He is known to be a man of
integrity.’
The state of being whole and undivided:
‘upholding territorial integrity and national
sovereignty.’
The condition of being unified, unimpaired,
or sound in construction:‘the structural
integrity of the novel.’
Internal consistency or lack of corruption [as
in electronic data]:‘integrity checking’.

13. DEFINITION OF INTEGRITY
This a very interesting and powerful functional
definition of integrity:
Integrity is a state of being leading
to reducing or eliminating suffering
for self and others.
Thus, in this series we define Integrity as:
The objective, measurable state or
condition of being whole, complete,
unbroken, unimpaired, sound, in
perfect condition—born of
compassion: the intention to
eliminate suffering for self and
others without creating
dependence.