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Aristotle, Buddhaghosa, Christopher Gowans, Damien Keown, David Chapman, John Rawls, Maria Heim, Peter Harvey, virtue ethics
I’ve recently been reading Christopher Gowans’s Buddhist Moral Philosophy: An Introduction. It is an introductory textbook of a sort that has not previously been attempted, and one that becomes particularly interesting in the light of David Chapman’s critiques of Buddhist ethics. While Gowans and Chapman would surely disagree about the value and usefulness of Buddhist ethics, they actually show remarkable agreement on a proposition that could still be quite controversial: namely, that the term “Buddhist ethics” or “Buddhist moral philosophy” names above all a Yavanayāna phenomenon. That is: the way that Gowans and Chapman use the terms “Buddhist ethics” and “Buddhist moral philosophy”, what they name is a contemporary Western (and primarily academic) activity, even if it is one conducted primarily by professed Buddhists. (“Professed Buddhists” include Chapman and myself; I don’t know whether they include Gowans, but I would guess they do.)
In this respect, Gowans’s textbook differs greatly from previous introductions to Buddhist ethics, like those of Winston King, Damien Keown and Peter Harvey. The older textbooks refer the reader mostly to primary Buddhist sources, especially the Pali suttas. When they introduce their readers to Buddhist ethics, what they see themselves as introducing is a first-order discourse, an intellectual activity that Buddhists in Asia have been doing for millennia. Gowans, however, is introducing readers to a second-order discourse, an intellectual activity that goes back 300 years at most and probably considerably less – and one that includes the works of King, Keown and Harvey. Gowans’s approach, like Chapman’s, makes them objects of study in their own right.
Both Gowans and Chapman are important in this respect because they mark a sea-change in the way we talk about Buddhist ethics. Is Buddhist ethics really a thing traditional Buddhists have always done, or is it a thing that we Buddhist scholars are doing now? Gowans and Chapman’s approach suggests the latter view (Gowans implicitly, Chapman explicitly), and there is not necessarily any shame in that. The question to ask is: are they right? Is Buddhist ethics, arguably like Hinduism, a modern creation?
The answer, no surprise to anyone I can imagine, is that it depends on how we define ethics. In my view, part of the problem with “Buddhist ethics” is that it has tended to define ethics wrongly. That is, the way contemporary Buddhist ethicists approach the idea of ethics is one that orients us away not only from traditionally Buddhist concerns, but from what I take to be proper human concerns.
Two areas of inquiry occupy Gowans’s work above all, areas that I think fairly reflect the concerns that are typically considered “ethics” in the English-speaking world (and specifically in departments of philosophy). One is applied ethics: what are Buddhist views on contemporary social and political issues like abortion, social inequality and the natural environment? I have previously discussed why I think this focus an innovation, and my own position on it.
But there is another area of contemporary “Buddhist ethics” that I’d like to turn my attention to here. (Keown focuses much more on this latter area, where Harvey focuses on the former.) This is the question of how we classify Buddhist ethics, according to the key categories of analytical ethics: is it consequentialist? Deontological (Kantian)? Virtue ethics? A large amount of ink, and pixels, has been spilled on this question. I have commented on it before, but I think there is more to say – and more that sheds light on the problems with the project of “Buddhist ethics” today.
In my previous discussion I was okay with lumping Buddhism in under “virtue ethics”, since “virtue ethics” functions as a residual category for those traditions that are not consequentialist or deontological. But there are further problems here. For one thing, “virtue ethics” often tends to get reduced to Aristotle, and as Gowans himself points out, there are very large differences between Aristotle’s thought and most Buddhist thought – differences of the utmost importance to someone like me who is deeply influenced by both. Aristotle insists on the continuity of self that Buddhists are at pains to deny, as well as advocating a life centred around participation in politics and family. In many respects I think the Buddhists are closer to Aristotle’s Hellenistic critics – the Stoics, Epicureans and Skeptics – than to Aristotle himself. The category of “virtue ethics” effaces the distinction between them, which is to my mind among the most important distinctions in philosophy.
We can get further by asking why analytic philosophy (which “Buddhist ethics” tends to follow) makes its distinctions in the way that it does. Analytical ethics, as far as I can see, is concerned above all with decision procedure: the unit of ethics is a single decision that one individual or one organization can make, and the clearly articulated principles that underlie that decision-making. That is why it is concerned above all with consequentialism and deontology, or theories like John Rawls’s that attempt to lie directly between the two: they articulate clear principles on which one can make a decision between alternatives. One can program a robot to be a consequentialist, a deontologist or a Rawlsian. Any ethical approach that does not rely on such a clear procedure, that requires subtler human judgements, is considered virtue ethics – which is really to say, miscellaneous.
I think Gowans gets at many of these points, at least implicitly, in his thoughtful chapter called “Normative ethics: anti-theoretical and other interpretations”. My main qualm with that chapter is its title: the long Buddhist traditions of abstract metaphysical reflection should give the lie to any claim that Buddhism is “anti-theoretical”. What traditional Buddhism does not have, I would argue, is the kind of theory that directly informs a decision procedure, of the sort that characterizes modern analytical ethics. It is for this reason, I suspect, that Keown has characterized Buddhism as “morality without ethics”. Traditional Buddhism indeed does not have ethics of the sort found in modern analytic philosophy; attempts to give it such an ethics have themselves been modern. But I’ve criticized Keown’s thesis at length in both my dissertation and my recent article – because it does have reasoning about how we human beings should live, in broader terms that do not focus on individual decisions and actions. That reasoning tends, however, to fall in areas we might consider more metaphysics and psychology than ethics – at least if “ethics” is considered to be about our decision procedures for action, as analytical ethics largely is.
Just for that reason, I suspect the most important recent book in Buddhist ethics may turn out to be Maria Heim’s The Forerunner of All Things – on Buddhaghosa, the thinker whose ideas in many ways came to define Theravāda Buddhism. What Heim illustrates is how Buddhaghosa’s thought is profoundly ethical in the sense of examining how human beings should live – and in a way that moves very far away from decision procedures. Buddhaghosa’s concern is not even with choice as such, taken as a unit, for in Buddhaghosa’s view the very idea of choices as units is psychologically unrealistic. Rather, Buddhaghosa engages in a kind of ethical reasoning that focuses on the habits that underlie our decisions. I am not sure that Buddhaghosa explicitly denies free will in the way that Śāntideva does, but he is arguably doing something more important: developing in detail a way of thinking about good and bad that does not rely on a conception of individual choice. Where analytic philosophy helps us ask how we can program robots to be ethical, Buddhaghosa asks in a sense how human beings are already programmed to be unethical, and what that means –and thus how we can be reprogrammed to be more ethical.
In short, I suggest we modern Western ethicists or moral philosophers don’t get very far when we ask how Buddhists have responded to our questions. We learn much more, even about closely related matters, once we learn how to ask their questions. Heim goes further than most in showing us what that could mean.
Hi Amod
You say “Aristotle insists on the continuity of self that Buddhists are at pains to deny, as well as advocating a life centred around participation in politics and family. ”
As I’ve tried to point out in my writing there are in fact two early Buddhist discourses on morality and continuity. The metaphysical doctrine of conditionality – I am not the same, not different from the past “me”. And the moral doctrine in which I have to live out the consequences of my actions, death notwithstanding. The Jātakas, for example, were the main vehicle for teaching morality in Theravāda countries and were much more likely to be depicted on early stūpas than almost any other subject. And the Jātakas make an explicit continuity between past selves and present selves.
But the two different discourses are obscured because we Buddhists segue back and forth without acknowledging the boundary. We will say “actions have consequences” with one breath and “the self doesn’t exist” with the next as though there was no contradiction – and yet one statement negates the other!
I had a go at setting out some thoughts on this about two years ago: http://jayarava.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/unresolvable-plurality-in-buddhist.html
and another crack in March 2014: http://jayarava.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/ethics-and-nonself-in-relation-to.html
See also Del Toso, Krishna. (2008) ‘The Role of Puñña and Kusala in the Dialectic of the Twofold Right Vision and the Temporary Integration of Eternalism in the Path Towards Spiritual Emancipation According to the Pali Nikayas .’ Esercizi Filosofici 3, 2008, pp. 32-58. Online: https://www.academia.edu/723083/The_Role_of_punna_and_kusala_in_the_Dialectic_of_the_Twofold_Right_Vision_and_the_Temporary_Integration_of_Eternalism_in_the_Path_Towards_Spiritual_Emancipation_According_to_the_Pali_Nikayas
So yes, we Buddhists do deny a continuity of self when pressed, but we also affirm it when necessary (or when no one is looking) to give karma moral force. This unacknowledged duality seems to be present from early on (i.e. in the Jātakas and Pāḷi suttas). The failure of Buddhists and scholars to see this is something I have pondered quite a bit. My conclusion is that the normative emic accounts of Buddhism seem to overwhelm the objectivity of those who study Buddhism. Perhaps because normative texts make up the bulk of what historians of Buddhist ideas study – there’s no real argument from elsewhere in India for example until very late in the life of Indian Buddhism. But I also think that academics seem to be in thrall to the object of their study – they are not looking for flaws and they do not see them when they are there..
“We will say “actions have consequences” with one breath and “the self doesn’t exist” with the next as though there was no contradiction – and yet one statement negates the other!”
This is an interesting point. Egolessness is not inconsistent with the concept of karma. In Buddhist doctrine, “self” is a construct. It is a concept in the same way that we conceive of a flower as existing when what we are referring to is an experience of a “thing” that is constantly changing from bud to full bloom to flower dropping petals. Our concept of a self can be at least subtle enough to conceive of a self as evolving through predictable changes. But this does not take “self” out of the realm of thought or allow the concept of “self” to come anywhere close to describing or identifying an essence of what we call “flower” (form is emptiness).
Egolessness does not imply nothingness. Nothingness is also a mental construct, a thought (emptiness is form).
Concepts are quite useful, Buddhists don’t reject them. In the world of concepts, one way of describing change — the predictability of the arising, dwelling, and ceasing of phenomena — is karma. An action of one thing has an effect on another — and an action of a sentient being creates a force of habit that will have consequences down the road. A person is generous and is more inclined toward generosity in future interactions — and the world reacts to generosity in predictable ways. Similarly, a person steals and cultivates a rationale for stealing and, perhaps, lands in jail.
This does not mean that, in Buddhist teaching, the act of generosity cannot, in an ultimate sense, be free of karma. It is possible to have an act of generosity that embodies “three fold purity” — no giver, no recipient of the gift and no act of giving. But on the stage of the path — where there is confusion and believe in a self — we are very attached to doing the right thing (or if we are really confused — doing the wrong thing).
But the ultimate goal of all of Buddhism (although goal is path language) is wisdom and freedom. The recommendation, therefore, for all of us on the path (before we transcend having to be Buddhists) is to have view that is as limitless as the sky — but, because of karma, for our actions to be as fine as flour.
This is a good example of the kind of segue I was thinking of accompanying by a lot of distracting hand waving and doctrine citing.
> “Egolessness is not inconsistent with the concept of karma.”
It is inconsistent. We behave skilfully, according to Buddhists, because we know that karma ensures that our actions will have consequences for us. If were any other way, our actions would not have consequences for *us*. If there is no “I” then no one experiences the consequences of our actions. We will not exist in the future for the consequences to have an effect on us. And if our actions have no consequences for us we have no reason to be moral. So we have to be present continuously for karma to have any meaning at all.
> “An action of one thing has an effect on another — and an action of a sentient being creates a force of habit that will have consequences down the road.”
Down *which* road? The self is just a concept. So the road must be just a concept as well. As are consequences. As are actions. This is more or less what Nāgārjuna says at the end of Chp 26 of MMK. But morality, at least as I understand it, can’t exist without a person, actions, and consequences. If you take the person out of the equation then it’s just a kind of physics in which our intentions play no part, and karma is intention according to the Pāḷi sutta (AN 6.63).
Karma relies on consequences. What you are saying is that there is no personal continuity, therefore there is no “down the road” for anyone. There is no road.
> “Similarly, a person steals and cultivates a rationale for stealing and, perhaps, lands in jail.”
And we are back in a moral discourse in which a person is around to live the consequences of their actions. “A person” cannot land in jail if they don’t exist or if they do not experience personal continuity. Under a strict interpretation of Buddhist metaphysics no such thing is possible, there is no person to go to jail. So stealing has no consequence for the thief. Stealing cannot have moral consequences because that implies a stronger continuity than is allowed by Buddhist metaphysics.
As I say this is a good example of moving between two different discourses: one metaphysical and one moral. They are incompatible with each other, but Buddhism needs to have both to sustain the idea of karma in the face of anātman conceived of as “egolessness” or “not-self”.
Karma is also inconsistent with pratītyasamutpāda. Indeed pratītysamutpāda is modified in order to preserve the working of karma, suggesting that karma is the more important principle in Buddhism – at least through to the mature Mahāyāna.
Your views don’t take into account that Buddhism is a path that moves from confusion to wisdom. It is not helpful to a person fearful of death to simply say: “There is no self even in the present moment — so don’t be afraid.”
A traditional analogy is the person who is confused and mistakes a colored rope for a snake and is cowering in fear. Now, to help this person, you might take the approach of trying to show the person that they are mistaken — that the rope is really a rope. But a person may not (is likely not) to be able to see this. So, to relieve suffering Buddhism offers expedient means to relieve suffering that are suited to the sufferer. For example, a bodhisattva might tell the person: “This is really a rope, but I know exactly what you are feeling — let me take this rope that looks like a snake out of the room and then we can talk about a more permanent solution for you the next time you run into this problem.” It is not inconsistent to remove the rope from the room — the bodhisattva may know that removing the rope is unnecessary, but the person does not — he is deluded and still in fear.
It is sometimes necessary to adopt expedient means to relieve suffering. No lineage of Buddhism that I am aware of asserts that the doctrine of karma is ultimately true. Concepts such as karma (and time itself) apply only on the level of relative truth. Of course, this is why Buddhism is not a philosophy and meditation is essential — the idea of thinking yourself out of suffering only works up to a point because our fixation on concepts is so deeply ingrained.
My views set out to treat my readers as intelligent adults who don’t like being lied to. Like me. The idea that wise men in loin clothes have to lie to us because we couldn’t face the truth is quite insulting really. The idea that one must lie to people to save them is a weird Mahāyāna invention that I find repellent. And even if you do feel the need to lie to people, I do not. Hence I point out the contradictions at the heart of Buddhist doctrine.
Thanks, Jayarava. This is certainly a problem for Buddhists, and has been since the start of the tradition. One doesn’t even need to make reference to the jātakas for it; the suttas speak plenty often of the continuity of the self and the consequences of action, within life and across the next. Nor does rebirth need to figure, for that matter. One of the first questions that perceptive students ask about Buddhism is “if there’s no self, what gets reincarnated?” – and while that is a problem, it’s a problem from moment to moment just as much as from life to life.
The Pudgalavāda tradition took up what you seem to be advocating, but they did not survive through history; they have not been a living tradition for over a thousand years. More commonly, the problem is answered through the distinction between conventional and ultimate truth: speaking in terms of the self is a necessary fiction (like speaking of “sunrise”), because we’d have a hard time ever doing anything if we always spoke in the terms of the abhidharma. Nevertheless, for non-Pudgalavādins, it is not fully accurate to say that the self accrues karmic consequences in this life or the next – whether because the “self” is ultimately just the aggregates (Theravāda) or because no way of speaking is fully accurate (Madhyamaka).
Incidentally, have you read Heim’s book? If not, I think you might like it – there’s a long chapter on the jātakas and other stories and the role they play in Buddhaghosa’s thought.
I’m not really a Pudgalavādin. After all even Theravādins acknowledge the kind of continuity I’m point to is necessary for a functioning morality – perhaps the Pudgalavādin where just open about it. Though I suspect that the pudgala was a solution to the other problem I mentioned, the mismatch between karma and pratītyasamutpāda. I’m just pointing out the apparent contradiction evident in Buddhist teaching – the two discourses, ethical and metaphysical. I’m certainly no expert in Mahāyāna but my impression is that the two discourses occur and survive across the board. I’m not sure there is a coherent way to reconcile the two discourses.
I do not think we can deny that there is a problem: Why should we care about the karman our actions accumulate, if it is not going to affect “us”?
Nonetheless, I am tempted to answer that /we/ (leaving for a moment aside that we exist only momentarily) should care, just like we should care for global warming, although it is not going to affect us. We should start thinking altruistically about future human beings and their well-being. Similarly, if I were a 5th c. Buddhist, I would want to avoid accumulating bad karman, since this would lead to bad consequences, although not for me (since I do not exist).
That’s Śāntideva’s solution, and I think something like it may be the solution that Buddhists need to take, even non-Mahāyāna Buddhists. Dukkha qua dukkha is bad; it has no “owner”.
Hi Amod
Is there any evidence that any Buddhist anywhere or at any time was moral because of this principle? Is there any evidence from psychology that it’s likely to work in practice?
“Suffering is bad” is a not, to my mind, a sensible basis for a moral system. No one will disagree with it. Of course suffering is bad. But so what?
I’m not an expert in psychology, but I’m reasonably well read in the psychology of religion and I don’t think this is a plausible basis for morality in practice.
Also it contradicts the broad sweep of Buddhism before Śāntideva. And modern Buddhism. All the modern Buddhism I’m aware of employs the dual belief system – contradictory metaphysics and morality.
If we are going to propose a basis for morality, the first thing we have to take into account is precisely what motivates people to act, what kinds of criteria do people actually use when making decisions about what to do and what not to do.
This is why they composed works at the conventional level and not merely the ultimate, for motivation in everyday cases, and wrote about how the two related to each other and could therefore both be true in some respect. (“The sun rises” is true at a conventional but not an ultimate level; one is not lying by saying it, even though one knows it is actually the earth rotating.) What they could not have done was write only at the conventional level and not the ultimate. That would have been straight-up lying.
Say what? Now you are an apologist for medieval Buddhist theology?
Hi Elisa
“we should care, just like we should care for global warming, although it is not going to affect us.”
This is a modern, liberal point of view. It evidently does not motivate the majority of people, else we’d be dealing with global warming more effectively and there wouldn’t be an actively oppositional voice denying global warming. Not everyone is a liberal. So this liberal ideal doesn’t work for most people. Indeed some people *hate* liberalism of this kind.
I don’t think you have characterised a 5th century Buddhist accurately. As I say Buddhists have a dual belief – metaphysically they don’t exist; morally they do. While I’m no expert on 5th century Indian Buddhism, I’m fairly well informed on belief systems in earlier centuries and I have no reason to believe that anything changed on this front, at least not in any obvious way. Given that the modern forms of Buddhism I’m familiar with all have the same dual belief I assume that there is continuity of this duality over time – ironically.
My complaint is that impersonal karma theories are all very well in theory, but I don’t know anyone whose mind really works that way.
I agree that it does not motivate normal (i.e., deluded) people, who only act for the sake of their non-existent self, but I think that it could motivate people who have undertaken the Buddhist path and are becoming aware of the reality of anātmatā. I agree with you that normal people will need to think of karman as something regarding themselves and that in this sense there are two parallel narratives in Buddhist texts (one about anātmatā and one about morality—which presupposes an enduring self). However, as someone who methodologically tries to make as much sense as possible of the texts she reads, I feel compelled to try to find a possible way to avoid the contradiction.
I think that if you are trying to avoid the contradiction then that is not intellectually honest. I know this is a confrontational thing to say, but I venture this comment because I respect you as a thinker, and I think you’re better than this.
There *is* a contradiction. If our approach to contradiction is to explain it away, then we never learn what the contradiction has to tell us. If our fundamental assumption is that the tradition we are reading *has to make sense* then we suffer from confirmation bias in the worst way.
I used to be like this. But wave after wave of realisation that Buddhist doctrines don’t make sense changed my mind. There are contradictions everywhere, including at the heart of the Buddhist religion.
Some of these contradictions were acknowledged by earlier commentators. For example Nāgārjuna acknowledges the contradiction between karma and pratītyasamutpāda (MMK chp 17), surveys some of the possible responses but dismisses them in favour of denying the reality of action, actor, and consequence. Which itself does not make sense either in early Buddhist terms or in modern terms.
If we do not acknowledge the contradiction, let it stand, and dwell on the questions that it begs, then we are failing in our role as scholars.
Once we have acknowledged the contradiction we are in a position to evaluate the traditional attempts to paper over the cracks. For example, does Amod’s insider invocation of the Two truths Doctrine really solve the problem? Only if we embrace the emic view. If we refuse to take the tradition on it’s own terms, which is more or less our duty as scholars, then the Two truths looks like a terrible fudge – it’s bad philosophy. It certainly doesn’t solve the problem unless we take an emic view of both problem and solution.
In your answer you invoke the “reality of anātmatā” as if this is an uncontested concept. Whose definition of “anātman” or “reality” are you invoking? There are many to choose from! What can “reality” possibly mean in a discourse which denies the possibility of a reality in the modern Western sense of the word, such as we find in early Buddhist texts?
Given that neither of us profess to know that reality, whose testimony has satisfied the conditions set out by Hume for accepting such testimony. My recent experience suggests that people who claim to have experienced anātman do not repeat the words of Buddhist texts and thus some question remains as to which accounts of that experience we ought to rely on. There are so many other questions and ambiguities that I cannot see how any of this is a good basis for resolving the contradictions.
Here am I, the committed Buddhist, having to tell professional philosophers not to take my tradition on its own terms. Contrarily a couple of weeks ago a Theravādin bhikkhu was telling me off for calling him an “apologist for the tradition”. He thinks he’s a neutral observer, despite being a chaste monk who defends the tradition he;s ordained in. The world is upside down!
You mean the ancient Buddhists didn’t discuss the trolley problem? How terribly thoughtless of them! On a more serious note, while Buddhism doesn’t enumerate specific sets of decision rules, it does supply lists of virtues and skillful mental states, and a set of goals ranging from better rebirth to final liberation. Behaviors are then either skillful or not in terms of the goals. I think this is sufficient to develop a meaningful ethics. I outline some of this in a recent post on Buddhism and moral coherence: http://www.existentialbuddhist.com/2015/12/buddhism-and-moral-coherence/
There is a Buddhist version of the trolley problem. The story of the ferry and the murderer – the captain, a bodhisatva, kills the murderer to save his passengers.: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tib/ctbw.htm I doubt it is ancient, but it may be old (pre-modern). I’ve heard it cited many times, but never found a canonical source.
I don’t think anyone doubts that given modern methods we can develop a meaningful ethics from Buddhist history. The point was that there were no ethics in Buddhism to start with. It’s worth pausing to reflect on.
Thanks, Seth. There’s a lot to say about your post. A couple of thoughts:
1) It is important that premodern Buddhists have no word really translatable as “morality” or even “ethics”. Sīla refers to restrained conduct; it is only one part of a good life, not equatable to goodness or rightness in general; puṇya is embedded into that larger cosmological framework of rebirth. They may debate the nature of either of these, but they’re then debating something different from what we call “morality”.
2) That’s not necessarily a bad thing. When you say “not everyone can” buy the premises of the Buddhist solution you outline: the same is true of any solution. Every conclusion depends on its premises. This is the key lesson of MacIntyre’s work for me. You point out he “argues that morality achieves coherence through embeddedness within a cultural matrix of supporting practices, narratives and traditions. Buddhism happily provides all three.” True. One could argue that scientific materialism does as well. But whether it does or it doesn’t, I think a serious Buddhist can’t buy a modern utilitarian solution any more than the materialist can buy a Buddhist solution.
3) Still, 1) does mean that the “general Buddhist principles fail to provide a means for resolving conflicts between specific moral intuitions.” But so what? That’s not what they’re there for. Nor are Aristotle’s. It’s moderns who are obsessed with the kind of decision procedure you can program a robot for. Aristotle says making decisions is a matter of phronēsis, of developing a habit of excellence in practical wisdom. There’s no general principle that provides a means for playing a violin well or being a good cook; these activities involve decisions, but the decisions are a part of a larger activity. One reason Buddhism does get lumped in with “virtue ethics” is that it is in this respect the same way.
Jayarava, the fable of the captain and the murderer is contained in the Upaya-Kausalya Sutra. I agree that Buddhism contains no historical tradition of ethical inquiry. I have written about that here: http://bit.ly/onffa1
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For the reasons explained above, Buddhist teachings on karma and egolessness are not logically inconsistent.
But it is also the case that, on the ultimate level, Buddhist teachings do not depend on logic but on experience. We can get a glimpse of this by looking at the Four Noble Truths. An intellectual approach to the Four Noble Truths would proceed logically and arrange cause before result. So, the first two truths dealing with samsara would begin with desire and attachment (cause) and proceed to suffering (result). Instead, because the ultimate orientation is on experience, the Four Noble Truths begin with suffering. I believe it was one of the early Dalai Lamas who explained that it is like a person who is walking down the street and is hit by a bucketful of icy water (suffering) and then turns his head to see where it came from (cause of suffering). Similarly, there is an experience of enlightened mind even at early stages of practice that is the inspiration for the path.
If Buddhism were a video game, it would be a first person shooter, like Call of Duty or Halo, not a logical map game, like World of Warcraft. Ultimately (at the Bodhisattva stage of entering rather than aspiration), the desire to benefit others comes from seeing clearly and — because our ultimate nature is Buddha nature — acting in accordance with what is true. There are no ethical rules involved. In fact, ethical rules at this stage of the path would be a hindrance.
Jim, this is a lovely story. But it does not explain anything at all. It’s just hand waving.
I am committed to the idea that Buddhism is always talking about experience – a a rather more radical sense than most people are comfortable with. That has been my explicit position for many years now. But that does not solve the problem.
The teachings on anātman and karma *are* inconsistent. And egolessness is not a translation of anātman. Ātman is not ego. Ahaṃ is ego.
I have too little experience of video games to know whether your analogy is apposite, but so far you’ve been completely off topic.
How do you know what your “ultimate nature” is? Did you know that the original meaning of anātman is that we do not have an “ultimate nature”? The very idea of an ultimate nature is a false view according to classical Buddhism. Absolutes are wrong views. This is one of the central implications of pratītysamutpāda.
The root of the problem is that we have to use words. This locks us into a framework of relating to the world in a relative sense. If we have a concept of egolessness, it implies an ego that we must get rid of. A more helpful way to think of ego is as a verb — ego is nothing more than struggle — ego is a confused attempt to stabilize a world that fundamentally cannot be grasped. Within this framework (while we intellectually and emotionally and viscerally believe that there is a self that needs to be protected), karma is important. But, ultimately, there is freedom from karma — that is enlightenment.
The intellectual reconciliation of buddha nature in the Mahayana (Uttaratantra shastra) with egolessness is an interesting debate. I take the side of the debate that the two concepts are not inconsistent. But this depends on a view that goes beyond logic — that is based on the view that egolessness is not the opposite of ego.
It is useful at some point to engage in practices that transcend logic in order to develop confidence in this view (koan or shikantaza practice in the Zen tradition or pointing out instruction and Dzogchen practices in the Tibetan tradition). But since we are all on the path, it is useful as a practical matter to continue also with practices to accumulate merit (shape the mind by changing habitual patterns). These two approaches are not at all inconsistent.
But it is helpful to have a sense of humor. It is something of a “cosmic joke” be on a path, the point of which is to transcend to idea of a goal.
Thanks for your thoughtful commentary. It is fun to talk about these issues.
Again, this is just hand waving. The strategy of denying that the ultimate truth is expressible in words is one that I’m quite familiar with, with or without the implication that the author “knows” – though I’m not sure which camp you are in.
This dodge is largely a result of medieval thinking about Buddhism and is almost entirely absent from early Buddhist discourses. The early Buddhists seem to have expected their words to be coherent and congruent, whereas Mahāyāna Buddhists excused themselves from having to make sense. They rejected absolutes.
In my fact experience of pursuing the practices of Buddhism for more than twenty years now, and my many interactions with very experienced practitioners with decades more experience, suggests no reason that explanations of what we do and experience should not make sense.
The inability is express what is going on is because people don’t understand it. We’re stuck with the incoherent legacy doctrines that don’t make sense, trying to force our thughts into these defective models, but too embarrassed to just say so. So we engage in a lot of distracting hand waving and (especially) deny that anything sensible can be said in the final analysis, because the reality we supposedly contact (a reality utterly denied by the early Buddhist texts btw) is a mystical experience beyond words. Buddhism is very much a religion in this sense. The supposedly wise people all seem to be idiots.
I think it is a big joke, on the people who buy into this rubbish. The fact that a practitioner will not admit that the Emperor has not clothes on does not surprise me, or even interest me. Religious people rely on religious explanations that have nothing to do with reality and are extremely resistant to rational discourse. I’ve studied this phenomenon in some detail and I don’t have any expectation of a rational exchange of views with such people. The academics who won’t admit it are another matter all together because their ostensible job is to bring rationality to bear on the subject of study, not to naively embrace religious doctrines.
In your view, Milarepa, Tsongkhapa, Shantideva, Garab Dorje, Karma Pakshi, Mikyo Dorje, Jamgon Kongtrul the Great, Dilgo Khyentse, R., Tulku Urgyen R., Dogen, Shunryu Susuki R., Katagiri Roshi, Kobun Chino Roshi, etc. are “idiots”.
In that case, you quite understandably are not interested in anything that I have to say.
So, I’ll not comment further to your posts.
Since I enjoy Amod’s blog and would like to continue to comment from time to time, I would appreciate if you would not comment on my posts.
Best wishes, Jim
I don’t know that you are representative of any of those people that you cite. You seem to think you are. I just call bullshit when I see it. Since I have found contradictions and incoherences amongst the sacred texts on a number of occasions now, I no longer treat traditional authorities as sacred cows.
For religious people “being wrong” is not a possible state for Buddhist authorities. I have disproved this proposition and now “being wrong” is always a possibility no matter who is speaking. Including me of course. Buddhism is often wrong. Buddhists are often wrong, but seemingly never willing to admit it. ideally academics would point out the mistakes, but they don’t seem to.
All I ask is that we think carefully about Buddhist doctrines and stop pretending that everything makes sense. It does not. Once we admit this, then we need to sift through what we assert as truth, to decide if it makes sense or not. And karma plainly does not make sense, even on its own terms.
You chose to respond repeatedly to my comments, Jim. So don’t make out that I’m the one spoiling your fun. If you don’t want to read my opinion, then you could start by not asking for it, eh?
I could ask whether it’s karma or non-self that “makes no sense on its own terms”, since at various times in this thread you seem to have suggested both, but perhaps it’s better to follow your advice in the last sentence.
Rather, I will leave it at noting how your response to my defence of the “idiots” was solely to express incredulity at the bare thought that I would even try to defend them. I will leave it to readers to decide whether this constitutes a disproof.