No front or back

Few words in the English language are as multidimensional in meaning or as laden with emotion as the word integrity. Derived from the Latin integer, the English word integrity has three distinct, established meanings. In its most common usage, integrity is synonymous with honesty, incorruptibility, and fidelity to a set of principles and values. It is another word for character. But integrity can also refer to the soundness of a structure, as when speaking of the structural integrity of a building or a car. And last, integrity can refer to the wholeness and completeness of an entity, be it a poem or play or novel, as when Aristotle describes a well-made Greek tragedy as depicting “one action and the whole of it.”

In his essay “Putting Integrity Back into Integrity,” the Zen teacher Nelson Foster simplifies this complex confluence of meanings by dividing it into two primary domains: the private and the public. Two halves of a whole, these two versions of integrity differ sharply in perspective, context, and implications. And though they sometimes overlap, they can also be at cross purposes, if not diametrically opposed

“To thine own self be true /” King Claudius’s chief minister, Polonius, advises his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.” According to this view, the essence of integrity is fidelity to one’s thoughts and feelings at any given moment. Maintain that fidelity, and your speech will flow naturally from whatever animates your heart and mind. That your present words may flatly contradict what you expressed years—or days—before is of little consequence. The important thing, in contemporary American parlance, is to “speak your truth,” whatever its fallout or its impact on others. “A foolish consistency,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in his classic essay “Self-Reliance” (1841), “is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Consistent or otherwise, what matters most in this view is the heart’s truth, fearlessly expressed. Little wonder that this concept of integrity has prevailed in American culture since Emerson’s time, grounded as we are in the tenets of individual autonomy and freedom.

In stark contrast, the public version of integrity places the highest value on consistency, which is to say, on keeping one’s promises and being true to one’s word. According to this view, whatever private thoughts or personal sentiments we might harbor, the criteria by which our integrity will and should be judged are the alignment of our words with our deeds, the constancy of our public record, and our proven capacity to “stay the course,” even when confronted with adversity or changing conditions. Integrity in this sense tends to inspire trust, in a way that the private version of integrity cannot. And though we may embrace the ideal of being true to ourselves when it is ourselves we are being true to, we hold our public officials to a quite different standard. “Flip-flopping” earns no points with potential voters and may even be regarded as a disqualifying trait in a candidate for public office.

Foster’s analysis is useful and illuminating. If nothing else, it highlights the depth and complexity of a concept most of us take for granted. But as Foster subsequently explains, in authentic, long-term Zen practice, the duality of private and public gradually disappears. Over time, the daily practice of zazen (seated meditation) reveals, beyond all doubt, the causal connection between ego-centered, unwholesome thoughts and potential harm to others and oneself. And in mature Zen practitioners, who have learned to release such thoughts and to refrain from nurturing destructive states of mind, there is eventually no need to hide one’s inner life or construct an acceptable public persona. As an old Zen saying has it, in the realized masters there is “no front or back”: no ulterior motives or hidden agendas to be concealed, no deceitful public image to preserve. Transparent to themselves, Zen masters of the likes of Thich Nhat Hanh are also transparent to the world. Their integrity, in the original sense of unity, completeness, and wholeness, can be intuitively felt as well as rationally surmised.

Like most discussions of integrity, Foster’s is framed in ethical terms. He is mainly concerned with right and wrong. But it bears mentioning that integrity can also have a profoundly aesthetic dimension. There are few sights uglier, in my estimation, than bald-faced hypocrisy, conscienceless corruption, and shameless perfidy, whether those qualities of character—or the utter lack of it—appear in the public or the private sphere. Conversely, genuine integrity is a thing of beauty. If moral depravity calls to mind a stagnant cesspool, true integrity resembles a clear lake on an autumn day. Radiant and unruffled, it reflects things as they are.

Nelson Foster, Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan & Zen (Shambhala, 2024), 49-62

Photo: Foster Lake, Alfred, New York. Photo by Stephen Crosby.