Category Archives: Buddhism

Why was gay sex considered misconduct?

28 Tuesday Jul 2009

Posted by in Buddhism, Family, Monasticism, Roman Catholicism, Sex

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

José Cabezón has an interesting article on Buddhism and sexuality in the latest (summer 2009) issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly. The article examines the tricky concept of “sexual misconduct” (kamesu micchācāra in Pali); one of the basic Five Precepts is a vow to refrain from “sexual misconduct.” But what exactly counts as misconduct? A fellow student asked me this when I took a Goenka vipassanā course. Goenka, in keeping with his general emphasis on non-harming, himself listed only rape and adultery as examples. But premodern Buddhists have typically gone further than this.

Cabezón probes the point that the present Dalai Lama, while defending the “full human rights” of gay people, nevertheless treats male homosexual sex (and oral and anal sex more generally) as a form of sexual misconduct. Continue reading →

The Buddhist critique of hope

26 Sunday Jul 2009

Posted by in Buddhism, External Goods, Happiness, Hope

≈ Comments Off on The Buddhist critique of hope

Tags

In her class on Buddhist ethics, Janet Gyatso once described Buddhism as a “critique of hope.” The statement has two flaws. First, of course, it’s an overgeneralization, like any statement about Buddhism as such; more importantly, it misses the hope for liberation, awakening, nirvana. Nevertheless, it strikes me as being basically true in many respects. This is perhaps another way of putting the critique of external goods: most Buddhist thinkers tell us to avoid hoping that the external conditions of our lives will get better, focusing instead on improving ourselves and making ourselves better able to deal with those conditions. On old BBSes I remember a message tagline saying “I feel so much better ever since I’ve given up hope.” In a certain sense, Buddhists urge us to be hopeless.

The problem is that in English this is not at all what “hopelessness” means. This kind of hopelessness is an arguably positive state; but normally “hopelessness” simply means despair, a terribly negative state. The reason, it seems to me, is that the word “hope” means two things at once: first, the strong desire that things be different than they are, and second, the expectation that they will become so, or at least have a chance of becoming so. Despair – hopelessness in the normal sense – is the first of these without the second. But the Buddhist critique is that it’s the first one that causes our problems, whether or not we have the second. Let go of the first, and the second doesn’t matter anymore.

It’s a self-help commonplace that we will never be happy as long as we tell ourselves “I’ll be happy when…” But that “I’ll be happy when” requires hope. If we give up the hope that we might have the things we want, it pushes us into contentment with the life we already have.

My story: finding Buddhism

23 Thursday Jul 2009

Posted by in Attachment and Craving, Early and Theravāda, Flourishing, Happiness, Modernized Buddhism

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

My previous post examined the problems that led me to move away from utilitarianism, including its Rawlsian variant. Happily, I also found solutions.

Wat ThammamongkhonWhile working at the UN in Bangkok, I spent a lot of time at Thai Buddhist temples, because I thought they were the most beautiful places I’d ever seen – such incredible feasts of colour. I didn’t just go to the biggest and glitziest, the main tourist attractions; as an urban geographer I wanted to explore the city, and I kept heading to temples way off the beaten track. This attracted a lot of curiosity from monks who rarely saw foreigners, so I had a lot of conversations with monks – people who, having started with very little, chose to have even less. I got fascinated by Buddhism – both from my encounters with monks, and from the idea of a nontheistic religion. So I kept heading back to the used bookstores on Khao San Road, devouring whatever I could find about Buddhism – finding the likes of Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught.

But Buddhism hadn’t yet made a difference in my life, while I was working in Bangkok. That would come later, as I travelled through Laos and upcountry Thailand, keeping philosophical journals as I went.

In my journals, I came to reflect on the fact of my own dissatisfaction. In my times at McGill I had felt very unhappy because I lacked a good job and a girlfriend. In Bangkok I had a girlfriend, but the relationship made me even more unhappy. I also had a well paying job opportunity that many would envy, but in an environment so charged with politicking that I couldn’t wait to get out. Finally, of course, the job did end, and I had the chance I’d been waiting for, to travel for fun upcountry. But I was lonely, travelling all by myself; what I wanted was some people to talk to. Then I met some Thai people at a guesthouse who wanted to talk, but they didn’t speak much English so the conversation was limited. So I wanted to find some fellow foreigners to talk to in English – and I did, but I didn’t like them very much.

I took some stock of this situation in my journals. These events sounded to me like some sort of Buddhist parable; I just wished I could figure out what the point was. But eventually I did. I thought especially of the Second Noble Truth from the Pali suttas, that suffering comes from craving. Maybe, I thought, the problem isn’t with me not getting the things I want. Maybe the problem is with me. At age 21, especially for someone who’d grown up frequently being treated as if he was the smartest person on the planet, that’s the kind of realization that can change your world. It did change mine.

And yet, all the Western philosophy that I’d learned before didn’t just go away. I’d learned important, powerful, beautiful things that seemed true – and often seemed opposite to the Buddhism I’d found myself in. Is there a way to reconcile the two? One way or another, that question has been central to my life ever since.

Yavanayāna Buddhism: a defence

16 Thursday Jul 2009

Posted by in Buddhism, East Asia, Mahāyāna, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Modernized Buddhism

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

In my last post I spoke of Yavanayāna Buddhism, the new modernized, Western-influenced Buddhism (including Engaged Buddhism) that focuses on meditation and denies the supernatural. Many contemporary Buddhologists look at Yavanayāna with barely concealed disdain. Donald López’s article on belief in the volume Critical Terms for Religious Studies, for example, is a prolonged sneer toward the views of Henry Steel Olcott, the nineteenth-century reformer who made much of Sri Lankan Buddhism what it is today.

I’ve heard several fellow academics look at a Buddhism like Olcott’s or Walpola Rahula’s or even S.N. Goenka’s and snort “That’s not Buddhism!” And certainly, as noted, Yavanayāna Buddhism turns out quite different from what the Buddha actually taught. But few of these same academics are willing to turn around and say about East Asian Buddhism: that is not Buddhism. And yet, I would argue, East Asian Buddhist tradition has (at least at times) gone even further than North American Buddhism from anything that could be identified as the Buddha’s teaching. It’s not just Mahāyāna that I’m concerned about here; Mahāyāna Buddhism as such has its origins in the j?taka stories of the Buddha’s previous lives, which are some of the oldest Buddhist texts we know of. Rather, I think of doctrines like the Tiantai view that material things have a permanent and enduring nature – contradicting not only the classical Buddhist metaphysical view of non-self and non-essence, but also its ethical implications that material things are not worthy of our pursuit. If we’re willing to grant that Tiantai is legitimately Buddhist, I would argue, we cannot but do the same for Yavanayāna.

East Asian Buddhism is often seen as an “authentic” Buddhism in a way that Yavanayāna is not. But I’ve already posted my misgivings about the concept of authenticity. East Asian Buddhism seems authentic because people now are born into it, rather than choosing to join it as they do with Goenka; but we value what isn’t chosen because that’s what modern capitalism makes scarce. It doesn’t necessarily mean that that “authentic” Buddhism is a better path to follow; indeed, a certain romanticism may mislead us into thinking that nothing modern can possibly be good.

Yavanayāna Buddhism: what it is

14 Tuesday Jul 2009

Posted by in Buddhism, Early and Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Modernized Buddhism, Supernatural

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Academic scholars of Buddhism (often referred to by the ugly term “Buddhologists”) today spend a great deal of time and energy pointing out ways that particular features of contemporary Western-influenced Buddhism are not present in earlier or classical tradition. At least four features appear strikingly new: Engaged Buddhism and its concern with politics; the relative absence of monks; the strong emphasis on meditation; and the rationalistic denial (or minimizing) of supernatural forces.

It’s pretty clear that most of these features were not there in most premodern Buddhist traditions. So, for example, Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught, while taken from the Pali suttas’ record of what the Buddha supposedly taught, turns out to be an extremely selective reading. Even if we take the suttas as an accurate record of what the Buddha taught (which they probably aren’t), if you read the whole collection you would get a very, very different picture of Buddhism than the one Rahula gives you: a world inhabited by gods and spirits, focused on monks, with limited emphasis on meditation and almost none on politics. What people like Rahula did is a genuine innovation.

This innovation departs enough from earlier tradition that one could call it a fourth y?na, a new Buddhist “vehicle” or tradition. Traditionally there are held to be three y?nas: the Theravāda of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia which adheres to early, pre-Mahāyāna teachings; the Mahāyāna prevalent in East Asia; and Vajray?na, the tantra-influenced variant of Mahāyāna prevalent in Tibet. I like to call the new Buddhism Yavanayāna – after yavana, the Sanskrit and Pali term for Hellenistic Greeks, and by extension for Europeans. A four-y?na distinction makes for an easy mnemonic – to Theravāda in the south, Mahāyāna in the east and Vajray?na in the north, one adds Yavanayāna in the west.

Christopher Queen has recently been arguing that Engaged Buddhism itself constitutes a fourth y?na; but modernized Buddhist traditions share other characteristics as well, such as meditation and non-supernaturalism. Goenka vipassanā is not very political, but it is very different from the Theravāda of eighteenth-century Burma, and seems like it must be considered a part of fourth-y?na Buddhism. Queen has noted in conversation that Engaged Buddhism (and other forms of modernized Buddhism) are not just a Western invention; many of its most noted practitioners, including Rahula and Goenka and other luminaries like Thich Nhat Hanh, are Asians. This is certainly true, but it would also be hard to deny that their Buddhism owes a great deal to the influence of Western reformers (Christian, Theosophist and secular). Some take this point as a criticism: this so-called y?na is just a bastardization, a pandering to Western tastes. I strongly disagree with this criticism, but that’s a topic for my next post.

Taking back ethics

09 Thursday Jul 2009

Posted by in Analytic Tradition, Buddhism, Flourishing, German Tradition, Greek and Roman Tradition, Metaphilosophy, Morality, Virtue

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

In the past few years, especially since the publication of Damien Keown’s The Nature of Buddhist Ethics, there has been a small academic cottage industry devoted to the question of how one might best classify Buddhist ethics. Which of the three standard branches of analytical ethics does it fall under: consequentialism (à la J.S. Mill), deontology (à la Kant) or virtue ethics (à la Aristotle)? The debate has generally been a tussle between virtue ethics (Keown’s position) and consequentialism (Charles Goodman). My friend (and contributor to this blog) Justin Whitaker suspects that a deontological interpretation of Buddhist ethics is possible, but he’s a voice in the wilderness so far.

At the SACP, Michael Barnhart proposed a way of sidestepping this debate entirely. As far as ethics itself goes, he says, Buddhism is particularist; it doesn’t adhere to any real theory, it just responds to particular situations. Where it does have a theory isn’t in ethics at all, but in something else entirely: the question of what we care about, or should care about. (Specifically, he argues, Buddhists claim we should care above all about suffering.)

Barnhart based this idea on Harry Frankfurt’s essay, “The importance of what we care about.” I didn’t comment on his paper right after the SACP, because I wanted a chance to read Frankfurt’s piece first. Having read it, I would now say that Barnhart and Frankfurt both run into a common problem: an unreasonably narrow definition of ethics. Continue reading →

Ethics without morality

02 Thursday Jul 2009

Posted by in Anger, Free Will, German Tradition, Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Morality

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

There’s been a debate in the past couple of years between Mark Siderits and Charles Goodman over Śāntideva’s attitude toward free will. In his chapter condemning anger, Śāntideva says a number of things that sound completely determinist:

Even though my stomach fluids and so on make great distress, I have no anger toward them. Why do I have anger toward sentient beings? Even their anger has a cause…. Certainly, all the different crimes and vices arise out of causes; we can’t find an independent one…. Therefore, when one sees an enemy or a friend doing unjust acts, one should think “it has causes,” and remain happy. (Bodhicary?vat?ra verses VI.22-33) Continue reading →

Pre- and trans-ego

24 Wednesday Jun 2009

Posted by in Attachment and Craving, Early and Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Self

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

What is the source of bad action, the root of our doing wrong or being worse than we should? I’m currently reading Iris Murdoch’s dense and rich Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, in which she most frequently identifies this source with ego. Attachment to ourselves is what makes us do wrong. The view has fairly obvious Buddhist affinities. Suffering, we are told in the Pali Buddhist texts, comes from craving and ignorance; this craving is often specifically identified with craving for selfish things, ignorance with belief in a really existing self or ego. Śāntideva states the view most explicitly: if we knew what the self really was, we wouldn’t act in selfish ways, and then we’d be the bodhisattvas we should be.

There is something I find worrisome about this position – something I think Ken Wilber has managed to catch. It relates to a point I made in a previous entry: that it can be wrong to avoid insisting on what is rightfully yours. Sometimes, it seems to me, we act wrongly because we are not egoistic enough. Again, sociological evidence seems to indicate women typically have this problem more than men; but men are far from immune to it.

Wilber catches this point through the generally developmentalist thrust of his philosophy: awakening proceeds in stages. First we must build a healthy ego for ourselves; only then can we transcend it. Wilber refers in this light to the “pre-trans fallacy”: someone who has not developed proper ego boundaries seems a lot like someone who has transcended them, because neither have strong egos; but that does not mean the two are the same. Something like Śāntideva’s meditation on the exchange of self and other – designed to break down a sense of ego and identify ourselves with other people – seems very much like a “snake wrongly grasped” if it falls into the hands of the meek and servile.

When is a philosophy a technique?

18 Thursday Jun 2009

Posted by in Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Meditation, Metaphilosophy, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Sāṃkhya-Yoga

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

A question that I saw recurring throughout the SACP was technique: when is philosophical reflection about our ends or goals, and when is it just about means to those ends? I’d previously thought about this question with respect to S.N. Goenka’s vipassanā meditation: the word Goenka uses most frequently to describe it is “technique.” The webpage describing vipassanā refers to it as a “non-sectarian technique”: thus Goenka’s claim that people from “any religion” can practise vipassanā – as long as they don’t bring any religious symbols into meditation practice.

This question of technique came up at least three times at the SACP. Continue reading →

Does Asian philosophy exist?

17 Wednesday Jun 2009

Posted by in Buddhism, East Asia, Metaphilosophy, South Asia

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

,

At the SACP, South Asian (Indian, Tibetan) and East Asian (Chinese, Japanese) thought both have a central place, with Western thought on the margins. At the vast majority of philosophy conferences, Western thought has a central place, with both South and East Asian thought on the margins. I say this not to complain about the general marginal status of Asian philosophy; that’s not news. Rather, I’m increasingly beginning to wonder whether there is anything to “Asian philosophy” at all.

SACP members often lament that the South Asianists and the East Asianists don’t talk to each other much. Douglas Berger, a thoughtful and erudite scholar I had the pleasure of meeting at the SACP, recently started the interesting email list ASIAN-THOUGHT-L with a main objective of encouraging cross-Asian discussion. My own categories on this site are organized the same way. But does all of this make any sense?

In terms of areas of concern, at least, South Asian and East Asian philosophical thought each seem much closer to the West than they are to each other. (“Western” philosophy here refers to the stream of thought originating in Greece, including the Islamic world.) South Asian thought is preeminently concerned with psychology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and transcending the everyrday world, which have all been topics of central concern in the West since Plato – but are relatively little discussed in East Asia. East Asian thought, in turn, is concerned above all with politics, human relationships and social ethics – major concerns in the West but less so in South Asia.

The obvious constant between South and East Asia, of course, is Buddhism. But Buddhism here starts to look like the exception that proves the rule, for Buddhist thought changes drastically as it enters East Asia. East Asian Buddhist thinkers were much more concerned with worldly affairs and politics than their South Asian predecessors had been, and the elaborate structures of South Asian theoretical philosophies got dramatically pared down in systems like Ch’an/Zen.

So is it worth talking about Asian philosophy at all? Perhaps only as a move in intellectual politics – joining forces to carve out a space for philosophical reflection that is not Western. As for my categories, well, they seem a fitting organization for now given how much I talk about Buddhism. But I could imagine changing them on these grounds on the future.

EDIT: “a main objective of encouraging cross-Asian discussion” was originally “a main objective of encourage cross-Asian discussion.” That’s what I get for trying to blog on a layover.