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Augustine, Bryan Van Norden, Elisa Freschi, Gretchen Rubin, Jason Clower, Jim Wilton, Mencius, Mou Zongsan, Shunryū Suzuki, Zhao Qi, Zhu Xi
The translation of a small passage can turn out to tell us a great deal. Consider section 4B12 of the Mencius. Mencius says in this section that the great man is one who retains, or does not lose, chizi zhi xin 赤子之心. This Chinese phrase translates literally as something like “heart/mind of baby.” Most translators have followed the interpretation of the great Neo-Confucian synthesizer Zhu Xi, which dovetails smoothly with the optimistic view of human nature generally attributed to Mencius: in D.C. Lau’s translation, “A great man is one who retains the heart of a new-born babe.” We are born naturally good as babies, and become bad only if something intervenes to impede our natural development. (Contrast Augustine in the first chapter of the Confessions, who observes babies as creatures of desire and envy.)
Bryan Van Norden’s recent translation of Mencius challenges this interpretation. He translates 4B12 as “Great people do not lose the hearts of their ‘children.'” And he notes that in this he is following the early commentator Zhao Qi – for whom “children” refers to the subjects of a ruler, whose hearts must be won over. Nothing here about babies or children being naturally good.
Van Norden could be right about Mencius to this point; I’m far from a Mencius scholar and wouldn’t be able to tell. What struck me as far more surprising, though, is what Van Norden says next. He adds: “I think that Zhu Xi is led to this reading [that the great man doesn’t lose a natural childlike heart] because of the Buddhist influence on his thought, which encouraged him to seek something akin to a pure, underlying Buddha-nature as the source of the Way.”
Here, I did a double-take. Wait, you seriously think Zhu Xi got the idea of a naturally good humanity from Buddhism? That’s the exact opposite of traditional Buddhist views – that’s like saying Jewish influence made you an atheist.
But then, Marx and Freud – two of history’s most famous atheists – were Jewish. And as it turns out, this optimistic view of human nature actually does show up a lot in Buddhism – just not in Indian Buddhism. I was reminded of all this while reading Jason Clower’s The Unlikely Buddhologist, on the 20th-century Confucian thinker Mou Zongsan. Mou is firmly committed to Mencius’s idea that human nature is good – and he praises those systems of Buddhism which accept this idea, the ones that claim we all have an “original enlightenment” or “Buddha nature.” He acknowledges that such an idea, tathāgatagarbha in Sanskrit, may have had its roots in India; but Indian philosophers never did a lot with it. Clower says: “It was only in China, Mou thinks, with its indigenous Mencian tradition of optimistic universalism, that such a theory had a chance to grow and flourish.” (114)
Now this account sounded a lot more plausible to me. Notice, though, how it seems diametrically opposite to Van Norden’s. For Mou, the negative early Indian Buddhist view of human nature could be supplanted in China because of the influence of Mencius. For Van Norden, we misread Mencius by attributing to him an overly positive view of human nature that actually originates in Buddhism.
So does any of this matter for constructive philosophical reflection? Well, it seems to me, it does matter how we view human nature – and that view is going to be tied to the rest of our philosophical commitments.
The way we view humans’ natural tendencies has implications for the way we cultivate ourselves. This point came out in the comments on last week’s post. Jim Wilton, commenting about Gretchen Rubin, linked her approach to the Zen thinker Shunryū Suzuki. Both, in some respect, take the view that happiness comes in some respect from letting our true self, our “original nature,” shine through. Jim is probably right that Suzuki’s Zen view is deeper than Rubin’s, but they’re going in the same direction. It seems to me a different direction from the one that Elisa Freschi sensibly recommended on the same post: the things you don’t like (say, the particulars in novels as opposed to philosophical abstractions) can also be your blind spots. By cultivating desires for things you’re not naturally predisposed to, you can make yourself more whole. Our natural tendencies may lead us to exacerbate our flaws, not our virtues.
And so to the contrast between South and East Asian Buddhism. It’s no coincidence that the idea of sudden liberation flourished among the East Asians, who also took a much sunnier view of human nature – whether or not we see that view as beginning with Mencius. If you think that our original natures are basically and generally good, then getting in touch with that basic goodness is something you can do more or less suddenly, immediately. You just have to remember it. But if our basic nature is one that keeps us mired in suffering, as the South Asian Buddhists generally believed, then it’s going to be a long, slow, gradual, potentially painful slog getting us out of it to somewhere better.
Something clearly changed in Buddhism as it went from South to East Asia, from India to China. It seems likely to me that it came from Confucian influences, including those of Mencius. But even if the change came about somewhere else on the way, it still has big consequences for ideas about life and how we should live it.
Is there a reification of “human nature” in this context? Are there any bearers of this “human nature”? Or is it something like Plato’s Form existing sui generis without any particular bearers? What could possibly be the bearer of “human nature” other than an individual?
“our original natures”
Are there any referents for “our”? What or who are they?
“By cultivating desires for things you’re not naturally predisposed to, you can make yourself more whole…If you think that our original natures are basically and generally good, then getting in touch with that basic goodness is something you can do more or less suddenly, immediately. You just have to remember it.”
Could it be that the “you” here refers to an individual, to a self?
“it still has big consequences for ideas about life and how we should live it.”
Is one allowed ask “Whose life?” and whether it is conceivable that the “we” in “how we should live it” refers to individuals?
Jabali108: “Is there a reification of “human nature” in this context?” You bet. But what about “good” and “bad”? What do those terms signify? I’d say we are born with an urgent and painful will to survive. Where Augustine sees greed Lao Tzu sees an abundance of Te. (Tao Te Ching #55)
http://wayist.org/ttc%20compared/lafargue.htm#55
Amod: “The way we view humans’ natural tendencies has implications for the way we cultivate ourselves.” The belief that we should cultivate ourselves colors the way we view humans’ natural tendencies at least as much as the other way around.
I wonder if anyone else is ambivalent about cultivating the self. Is there nothing to be said for self-acceptance?
Jon, part of the trick is that for many people, self-acceptance is its own form of self-cultivation. Very few of us are happy with ourselves the way we are. I’d argue that in some respect that’s good – we are all deeply flawed beings. At the same time, I agree with you that often we need to come to accept ourselves and live with ourselves, flaws and all – but the paradox is that that’s often very hard to do! To unlearn the habit of beating yourself up takes a lot of time and effort.
Amod, I don’t know where you get the idea that a “naturally good humanity” is the “exact opposite of traditional Buddhist views”.
The third noble truth posits a cessation of suffering that results from clearing away obscurations to reveal an innate nature that is basically good. To use a traditional metaphor — it is like trying to clean a jewel that is covered with dirt rather than trying to clean a piece of coal.
Later Mahayana traditions (and particularly the Vajrayana lineages) are even more expliciit on this point. But it is abundantly clear in the Southern Buddhist schools as well.
Jim, where are you getting this idea yourself? The metaphor you describe sounds like it would be very traditional in East Asia, or perhaps even in Vajrāyāna, but I would be startled to find it in pre-Mahāyāna, early Mahāyāna or later Theravāda Buddhism. Is there a text from those traditions where you have found it stated?
If early Buddhists would criticize the (very brief) account I’ve made of their tradition here, it would likely be on grounds like those Jabali makes above, a suspicion of the concept of “human nature” itself. It is difficult to speak of an “innate nature” in anything – but if there is such a nature, it is our tendencies to accumulate bad karma through craving, miring us further in suffering.
“If early Buddhists would criticize the (very brief) account I’ve made of their tradition here, it would likely be on grounds like those Jabali makes above, a suspicion of the concept of “human nature” itself.”
Let me clarify that I am not all “suspicious” of the concept of “human nature” provided it is acknowledged that it is an abstraction or generalization based on individuals and the characteristics they share.
Early Buddhism makes a number of assumptions concenring human beings, e.g., that humans are averse to suffering, that they want to overcome suffering, that if a path to overcoming suffering were pointed to them, they would embrace or follow it, that they are capable of compassion, etc.
The only suspicion I harbor is that a great deal of Buddhism, early and later, is incoherent!
“It is difficult to speak of an “innate nature” in anything – but if there is such a nature, it is our tendencies to accumulate bad karma through craving, miring us further in suffering.”
Why is it “difficult” since Buddhists aver ad nauseam about impermanence? Isn’t impermanence an innate nature of everything?
As Thill has pointed out on several occasions, common sense and science offer us plenty of evidence of some elements or features of the innate nature of things and the causal interactions dependent on those elements or features.
For example, our linguistic ability is innate or part of our innate nature. Our ability to respond to music is another.
Consider Donald Brown’s list of universals in his book on Human Universals. If a feature is a cultural universal, then it is probably part of human nature.
Yes, for a list of human universals given in Brown’s book, go to
http://condor.depaul.edu/mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm
“If a feature is a cultural universal, then it is probably part of human nature.”
I would say that it may also correspond to something in human nature, human biology and consciousness, OR in the physical environment in which all human beings live.
Amod, point taken; self-acceptance can be difficult. But perhaps self-acceptance is a state that is relaxed into, rather than striven for. I take it from your statement that “we are all deeply flawed beings” that you are more in tune with what you describe as the South Asian Buddhist view that “our basic nature is one that keeps us mired in suffering.” But as I understand the Theravada position, speculation on human nature is a distraction from the task at hand, which is to recognize the four noble truths “simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each. Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed. These duties form the context in which the anatta doctrine is best understood.”
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/refuge.html So perhaps the Buddhist view is that speculation about “human nature” is simply a distraction. If so, it would be understandable for Buddhism to take on the view of human nature of whatever culture it finds itself in because, from the Buddhist perspective, the question is beside the point. Or not. These musings may be wildly off base; I don’t self-identify as a Buddhist and don’t know the history of Buddhist thought.
“Self-acceptance” without a self to accept and to engage in the act of accepting is a very intriguing notion indeed!
Thank you for your thoughtful comments on my translation of the Mengzi. There are, as you point out, many forms of Buddhism, even in India. The forms of Chinese Buddhism that influenced philosophers such as Zhu Xi did believe that our underlying transpersonal nature is purely good (or at least they would have accepted this as one legitimate verbal formulation of a position that is ultimately beyond words). For example, as I note in the Introduction to the work you quote, Huayan was a particularly important influence on Neo-Confucianism (even while Neo-Confucians claimed to be rejecting Buddhism). — BWVN
Bryan, thank you very much! I’m honoured that you responded here. You are right, that Chinese forms of Buddhism such as Huayan and Tiantai did believe in something approximating an inherently good human nature; and I don’t think you’re disagreeing that those are a considerable departure from (the great majority of) traditional Indian Buddhisms. My reaction to reading your comment in the book came mainly from the fact that the idea was described as coming from “Buddhism” full stop. You may be right that it comes from Chinese Buddhists rather than from Mencius himself; as I noted, I’m hardly enough of a Sinologist to figure that one out. If that’s so, though, the interesting question may be where they got it – where this idea originated, if it came neither from early (even early Mahāyāna) Buddhism nor from pre-Buddhist Confucianism, and why it became so popular later on that it led people to distort the teachings of both the historical Buddha and Mencius!
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