Category Archives: Asian Thought

Naturalizing karma

03 Wednesday Jun 2009

Posted by in Buddhism, External Goods, Greek and Roman Tradition, Karma, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Supernatural

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You can’t study Buddhism for very long without bumping into the concept of karma – or more specifically, good karma (pu?ya) and bad karma (p?pa). Karma poses a significant problem for those trying to learn from Buddhism in a contemporary context informed by natural science. In a great many Buddhist texts, the central thesis of karma – that good actions result in good fortune for the agent, and vice versa for bad actions – is simply assumed. Śāntideva, for example, spends a long time warning you about the time you’ll spend in the hells as a result of being bad, but doesn’t give you any reason to believe this is true beyond his own say-so and that of the s?tra scriptures.

But does this mean we should simply throw out the idea of karma? I don’t think so. The most helpful way I’ve seen to think about karma is in Dale S. Wright’s valuable article Critical Questions Towards a Naturalized Concept of Karma in Buddhism. Wright proposes an approach to karma based on an Aristotelian approach to virtue: roughly, good actions develop good habits in us – which is to say virtues, such as courage, generosity or patient endurance – and those good habits in turn tend to make our lives better. The key point is that it depends on a distinction between internal and external goods: virtue makes us better and happier on the inside, and makes our lives better in that respect. It doesn’t necessarily make better events happen to us.

There are some problems with Wright’s thesis that I expect to take up here later. But its central insight seems to me worth adopting for a very simple reason: that it is both Buddhist and true.

Political quietism today

01 Monday Jun 2009

Posted by in Mahāyāna, Politics

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One of the recurring, and more controversial, themes in my dissertation was Śāntideva’s strong suspicion toward political involvement, as when he proclaims that texts on law and politics (da??an?ti) are fruitless and lead to delusion. When I first presented a chapter of the dissertation at a workshop, a colleague was critical of my attempt to use Śāntideva as a resource for contemporary ethical reflection. I don’t remember his exact words, but they ran along the lines of: “We cannot today accept an ethical system that does not involve working for political change.” For him, Buddhism could only now be acceptable if it was Engaged Buddhism. You can find similar points made in many other places; my friend and occasional mentor Jeff Kripal frequently insists (in the joint article Quietism and Karma, for example) that “quietistic” ascetic traditions cannot be “an adequate resource for contemporary ethics.”

But why should this be? The most typical argument has to do with a variety of “after”s: rhetorically, it is assumed that “after colonialism, after Auschwitz and Hiroshima, after Gandhi’s satyagraha…” political inaction is morally suspect or even unethical. (The quote is from Jeff’s book Crossing Boundaries, pp. 56-7.) I’m skeptical of such claims. History is full of genocides, massacres and struggles, dating back as far as it is recorded. What, if anything, makes our age different? Political quietism has been defended as perfectly ethical, for about as long as it has existed. Why shouldn’t it be similarly defended now?

External goods

21 Thursday May 2009

Posted by in External Goods, Greek and Roman Tradition, Mahāyāna, Stoicism

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The question at the heart of my dissertation work, on the Buddhist thinker Śāntideva, is one I don’t feel I’ve resolved: the question of external goods. I took this term from Martha Nussbaum, who in turn got it from Aristotle: external goods (and bads) are things in life that lie largely beyond our control. Wealth, personal relationships, good health: we have some control over all these things, but in the end they can all be taken from us through no fault of our own. The question is: how should we react to gains and losses of external goods, to the vagaries of fortune?

Nussbaum tends to embrace the most commonsense position: our losses of external goods are real losses, and our strong reactions to such losses are expressing the truth that our lives are poorer. She contrasts this view to the Stoics, who say that we should remain calm and unshaken, confident in our own virtue.

I have a strong sympathy for the Stoic side; it’s been my experience that if one becomes unhappy whenever misfortune strikes, one will never be happy. The most extreme logical conclusion of their view seems to be a single-minded devotion to virtue and inner peace, best expressed in a monasticism like Śāntideva’s; but something does seem to me lost in such a life, a loss that could outweigh the misery from being struck by external losses.

There is a third position on the question, though, which has come to interest me more after the dissertation. Thinkers as far apart as Mencius and Nietzsche tend to support a view that losses do matter, but actually benefit us by strengthening us: “whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.” In some respects Śāntideva is closer to this position than he is to the Stoics; and I’m wondering whether it might be the most sensible position to take.