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anxiety, Aśvaghoṣa, Boston University, Candrakīrti, Disengaged Buddhism, Donald Trump, Nick (Nattavudh) Powdthavee, Pali suttas, Philip Brickman, Richard Easterlin, Śāntideva, Steven Collins
My project on disengaged Buddhism has now been submitted to a journal. It’s undergone several revisions by this point. One of the most important such revisions was suggested unanimously by BU’s magnificent CURA seminar. In an earlier draft I had attempted to emphasize the contemporary constructive significance of disengaged Buddhism by noting how its ideas were corroborated by some contemporary psychological research. The seminar participants thought that discussion of psychology did not strengthen the paper because I didn’t have the space to defend them fully; the paper would stand best discussing disengaged Buddhists’ claims in their historical context and letting those claims stand on their own.
I think they were right, and I removed the psychology discussion from the paper – a little sadly, as I thought the psychological case for disengaged Buddhism was worth making. Fortunately, I have another place to make it: here.
The key Buddhist ideas I discuss in the paper are: that we should have a detached attitude to the passage of time rather than hoping for progress; that politics leads our minds to an anger that hurts them; and that the kinds of goods politics can provide (especially material goods) do not do as much to fix our suffering as we think they do. And I think evidence collected by modern psychologists lends some support to each of these claims.
I had previously mentioned the psychological distress experienced by liberal Americans after the election of Donald Trump, distress so severe it causes physical symptoms. One journalist reports that her anxiety about Trump led to a psychosomatic retinal bleeding so bad it almost made her blind. It seems to me that such people have something to learn from the Cakkavatti Sīhanāda Sutta, a text which some have regarded as politically engaged but which (I argue in the paper, following Steven Collins) is the opposite. In that text, history has been declining rather than progressing, and it will get worse before it gets better; and so, the Buddha says, we should “be islands unto yourselves, be a refuge unto yourselves with no other refuge.” Whether or not the text’s account of history’s direction is right, it is not hard to imagine how such a detached attitude to the passage of time could be a balm for those experiencing such great psychologically induced distress.
Along with the fear and distress in the Trump era comes anger, an anger that one therapist described as “almost irrational”. That reaction seems to confirm the worries of Aśvaghoṣa about the harshness inherent in politics – and the way that harshness interferes with one’s tranquility.
The negative consequences of anger and violence for their targets should be obvious. But it is worth noting also how some contemporary psychological and biomedical research concurs that anger and hostility have a negative effect on the angry one’s own well-being, a key concern of these texts. Psychological and medical researchers have observed a significant correlation of anger not only with self-destructive behaviours like bulimia, but with physiological illnesses like heart disease and diabetes.
As for the disengaged Buddhists’ disregard for material goods, it seems confirmed by the theory of the hedonic treadmill (which I briefly discussed a long time ago.) That is, any perceived gain in happiness from increased income is temporary at best, confirming the Rajja Sutta’s claim that “not a mountain of gold would suffice for one”. Philip Brickman and others found that lottery winners were neither happier than a control group, nor showed a significant increase in happiness from before they won the lottery. At the collective level, when a state’s GDP rises, Richard Easterlin and others found that there is a short-term boost in happiness but the long-term relationship is nil – whether the country was rich or poor to start with.
The implications of these studies are debated, but they should give us pause before dismissing the disengaged Buddhists’ arguments that the goods of politics are not as important as we think they are. The Thai-born behavioural economist Nick (Nattavudh) Powdthavee makes the connection explicit: he told his 90-year-old Thai Buddhist grandmother about the findings of the happiness literature and she replied “Tell me something I don’t already know.” And so, he came to think:
maybe it wasn’t Philip Brickman and colleagues who first discovered that people adapt to changes in life events. It probably wasn’t Richard Easterlin who was the first to conclude that economic growth for all increases the happiness of no one…. It was actually the Buddha who first discovered them over 2,500 years ago.
So various observations from contemporary psychology would seem to lend support to key claims of the disengaged Buddhists: a detachment from hope for progress, an avoidance of anger, and a suspicion of material goods. These observations are not sufficient reason for us to disengage from politics, at least not on their own, but they are reason to take the disengaged Buddhists’ arguments seriously in our context, rather than dismiss them as some outmoded view that we have progressed beyond. Nor is it sufficient to dismiss the disengaged Buddhists as “selfish”, when the thoroughgoing Mahāyāna altruists Candrakīrti and Śāntideva express at least as much suspicion of politics as the non-Mahāyāna texts do. Even if we are not fully convinced by their view, it seems to me that they have figured out something important that most people in our activist culture have not.
Amod: When I read this post, I didn’t read a “psychological case for disengaged Buddhism”; I read a psychological case for Buddhism, engaged or disengaged. All of the psychological benefits that you advocate are psychological benefits of Buddhism and therefore should apply to engaged and disengaged varieties of Buddhism. Look at Thich Nhat Hanh’s fourteen precepts of engaged Buddhism: they do not contradict the psychological case for Buddhism that you made in this post. For example, the sixth of Thich Nhat Hanh’s fourteen precepts of engaged Buddhism is: “Do not maintain anger or hatred. Learn to penetrate and transform them when they are still seeds in your consciousness. As soon as they arise, turn your attention to your breath in order to see and understand the nature of your hatred.” People who think that they are doing “engaged Buddhism” but who are not manifesting these psychological benefits are merely doing “engaged” and not Buddhism. This seems to be reflected in the fact that in the second paragraph of this post you state: “I thought the psychological case for disengaged Buddhism was worth making.” And then in the next paragraph you state: “The key Buddhist ideas I discuss in the paper are…” Note the shift in topic from disengaged Buddhism to Buddhism. Of the three “key claims of the disengaged Buddhists” that you list in the last paragraph of this post—”detachment from hope for progress, an avoidance of anger, and a suspicion of material goods”—I would say, based on Thich Nhat Hanh’s fourteen precepts of engaged Buddhism, that all of them are also part of engaged Buddhism. Of course, engaged Buddhists would act with progress (“against oppression and injustice” in the words of the fourteen precepts) as an orienting ideal, but they would be as detached from the outcome of their activity as any other (engaged or disengaged) Buddhist.
That’s a very perceptive comment, Nathan. There is likely a lot more to be said about it. Briefly… I think you are right that these points are all core Buddhist ideas – but I think they are also at least in significant tension with political activity, in theory and practice. The paper (which is still under review, though I could email you a draft if you contact me, myfirstname.mylastname@gmail.com) does a lot more to explain how several classical Buddhist thinkers drew anti-political conclusions from these various Buddhist premises. I think that to some extent [contemporary activists as well as classical Buddhists](https://loveofallwisdom.com/blog/2017/10/the-political-path-vs-the-buddhist-path/) see those potential implications, which is a reason why activists are often reluctant to accept the premises, despite the psychological case for them. I respect Thich Nhat Hanh a lot; if anyone has managed to build a political engagement that is indeed in sync with these premises it’s him. But I do think it’s a difficult thing to do and a difficult line to walk.
Amod, thanks for the response. You said: “But I do think it’s a difficult thing to do and a difficult line to walk.” Yes. And perhaps more difficult in some situations than in others. All Buddhists, engaged or disengaged, can be seen as reasoning about and responding to particular situations. A quotation from Stephen Toulmin comes to mind that ties this thought to your last post on philosophy of science:
“Scientific interpretations of actual physical phenomena are thus as open to revision or rebuttal—as local, timely, and particular—as are clinical readings of patients and their illnesses. The moment we leave the realm of theory for that of practical experience, the rebuttable presumptions of practical argument replace the formal necessity theoretical inference. Consider, for example, the problem of conceptual change, to which much thought has been given over the last thirty years. What reasons do we need to justify giving up one scientific theory for another? Inductive logicians have offered quasi-mathematical ‘confirmation theories’ to answer this question; finding these algorithms unsatisfactory, Thomas Kuhn gave us his theory of ‘paradigm shifts.’ Yet surely a theory of conceptual change misses the point. The practical decision whether to modify an old theory or abandon it in favor of a radically new one is itself a local and timely choice about a particular situation and calls for the same appraisal as any other practical decision.” (“The recovery of practical philosophy”, The American Scholar, 57(3), 1988, 337–352)