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Amber Carpenter, Aśvaghoṣa, Evan Thompson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jan Westerhoff, Martha Nussbaum, Melford Spiro, rebirth, T.R. (Thill) Raghunath
The Buddhist propositions that Evan Thompson articulates go deep. They proclaim three flaws of all the things around us, in ways that (Buddhist tradition has typically claimed) make them unworthy of our seeking. On such a view, the only thing truly worthy of our seeking is dukkhanirodha, the cessation of suffering, through a nirvana identified with “unconditioned peace”. The ethical implication is that the finest human life is that of a monk, who devotes his or her entire life to the pursuit of dukkhanirodha. It is granted that most people won’t pursue such a life, but that is because they are too weak to do so; their lives will be worse for their seeking external goods, like familial relationships and material possessions.
Aśvaghoṣa dramatizes these points in the Buddhacarita, his famous story of the Buddha’s journey to monkhood. After a contented life of luxury the Buddha-to-be sees an old man, a sick man and a dead man, he realizes that that is the fate of everyone and everything, and can take no more pleasure in the objects (viṣayas) of the world: “I do not despise objects. I know them to be at the heart of human affairs. / But seeing the world to be impermanent, my mind does not delight in them.” (BC IV.85) It is specifically the impermanence of things that leads the Buddha to become a monk and reject them.
I reject Aśvaghoṣa’s view. Why? I will first note my agreement with Jan Westerhoff that such a worldview is far more difficult to accept when one rejects rebirth. If all the things of the world are to be rejected as dukkha, and we are not reborn after death, then our best option is suicide – or perhaps murder, if we are altruistic Mahāyānists. Such a conclusion is at the very least prima facie wrong. Westerhoff thinks Buddhists should therefore cling to whatever tenuous justifications they might find for rebirth, a strategy I don’t find viable). My preferred alternative is to reject the other premise: the things of the world are not to be rejected.
But my alternative, I think, requires further justification beyond the rejection of rebirth. For even if it could be shown that humans were reborn after death, I would still reject the worldview that says we should aim to leave the cycle of rebirth and reject the things of the world. And I think there is justification for saying this.
It is characteristic of classical Buddhist philosophy to infer from metaphysics to ethics. I think the propositions at issue here contain an implicit “and therefore”. The things of the world are impermanent, non-self, and unsatisfactory (dukkha) in at least the sense that we will lose them – and therefore we should reject them, aim to transcend them for an unconditional peace. But does that really follow? The commenter Thill pointed out long ago that we don’t cease to enjoy a song because it has an ending. Amber Carpenter notes a similar objection in chapter 3 of her Indian Buddhist Philosophy. She calls the objection Nietzschean, referring to Twilight of the Idols where Nietzsche endorses “saying Yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems; the will to life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibility” – as opposed, Carpenter adds, to “rejecting some or all of it on account of its unpleasantness, painfulness, unsatisfactoriness or suffering.” (Carpenter 49-50)
I am largely in sympathy with the view of that Nietzschean objection. Buddhists like Aśvaghoṣa are right to caution us that things (including relationships) are impermanent, that we will lose them, and that we increase our suffering if we act as if this is not the case. Yet I do not think that these cautions imply the full conclusion that we should reject all these things. I also agree with Martha Nussbaum’s claim that the values we normally place on goods like relationships have such depth and power that Buddhist or Stoic objectors have “the burden of showing why and for the sake of what these beliefs are to be given up”. The burden of proof, that is, is on the Buddhist objector: if their objection is not compelling enough to reject our involvement with conditioned and compounded things – and I think it is not – then we should not reject that involvement. This isn’t missing the radically challenging aspects of Buddhism; it is reflecting on those aspects, grappling with them, and deeming them a less appropriate guide to life.
Does that mean that I am rejecting the heart of Buddhism? I don’t think so. It is for this reason that I have drawn inspiration from the less philosophical Buddhism of the Mahāvaṃsa and lived Asian Buddhist practice, the kind of Buddhism that Melford Spiro calls kammatic: most practising or self-proclaimed Buddhists throughout history, it turns out, have not in practice treated the things of the world as unworthy. I think it is appropriate to profess a contemporary Buddhism that says they were not wrong in this.
The “kammatic” term, in turn, implies a Buddhism that is focused on karma rather than nirvana. That brings us back to the topic of karma, which I will take up in next week’s posts.
The counterargument to this is that the bliss of nirvana surpasses that of any attachment to worldly goods. One would therefore be giving up a mixed blessing (worldly pleasures and attachments) for something inconcievably better. The strength of this argument depends on one’s belief that there reallty is such an inconcievably better outcome. The weakness of this argument is that one has to believe in this inconciebably better outcome without ever haing seen it, or without having known anyone else who has ever acheived it. In that case, it is easy to conclude that the odds of personally acheiving this kind of nirvanic bliss are exceedingly small, and something more like Aristotelian eudaimonia is a better bet.
In formulating the Integral Yoga for the seekers at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, The Mother emphasised upon action with an attitude of surrender over cultural or intellectual modes because of participation of the body, the ultimate aim being divinisation of the body (as in SAVITRI).
As Buddhist is that what we are suppose to do? … “I would still reject the worldview that says we should aim to leave the cycle of rebirth and reject the things of the world”
Mainly on the second point – “reject the things of the world”
I thought the purpose is to see things as they truly are. We often have the mistaken view that what actually brings us suffering brings us happiness, what is actually impermanent we see as permanent, what is actually interdependent as having intrinsic existence. The Buddhist path (and I think this holds regardless of belief in rebirth) is to see that which causes suffering as suffering, that which is impermanent as impermanent, that which is interdependent as interdependent.
I don’t see how this has to lead to a rejection of the world. Rather it seems to be knowing the world as it actually is. Perhaps we are to reject our mistaken views of the world but this is not the same as rejecting the works itself.
Just my thoughts, but I am very appreciative of this conversation between you and Evan Thompson. We don’t have to all agree but we should all question our own assumptions and think more deeply about our faith. Which this has done for me
Thanks, Jason, and welcome.
For traditional Buddhists like Aśvaghoṣa, all the things of the world are impermanent, essenceless (not really “inter”-dependent, since the dependence is one-way) and suffering. The last point is decisive: we think they bring us happiness but actually they bring us suffering. Even sukha is dukkha. The point, as I understand it, is that our reasons for embracing those things have to do with them being permanent, selfed and (especially) happiness. Without the illusion that these dukkha things are actually sukha, we have no reason left to seek them. That is the force of the “and therefore” I mentioned above.
This is making me realize there is probably more I need to say in refutation of that view, so thank you for that. I might not need to say it in the context of the present conversation, though, since neither Thompson nor you nor I actually embrace Aśvaghoṣa’s view.
Thanks for the reply!
I follow you on that this leaves us no reason to seek them. But I am not sure I agree that just because we have no reason to seek them, logically implies that we must reject them. But perhaps it is just that we relate to the term “reject” differently.
More substantially, I think trying to pin point the intent and view of Buddhism as a single thing is doomed to give rise to disagreements (not saying this is what you are doing as you explicitly state you reject a specific interpretation, Aśvaghoṣa‘s view). But at the same time this is about Buddhism more generally.
Different schools of thought in Buddhism have very different interpretations of the relation between samsara and nirvana, of the material world, etc.
Yet even though they have different interpretations of nirvana and the three marks of existence – the three marks and the four noble truths (which includes the nature of nirvana) remain essential to most schools of thought.
Honestly I am not familiar enough with the details of Aśvaghoṣa‘a view and would be interested in reading more.
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