self as spiritual prisoner

8/14/2019 Self as Spiritual Prisoner

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Self as Spiritual

PrisonerPlato (429-347 BCE) was born an aristocrat, a

member of one of Athens' most powerful

families. Plato was on the way to becoming a

composer of tragic dramas when his life wasdecisively changed by meeting Socrates (470-

399 BCE). Many have noted that the sheer

brilliance of Plato's writings strongly suggests

that even if he hadn't met Socrates, Plato

would nonetheless be known to us thatthere would have been four great writers of

Greek tragedies, that Plato's name would be

joined to those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and

Euripides.

The idea of contemplationis extremelyimportant in Plato. Contemplation: 'looking at,'

'seeing,' 'witnessing.' Plato never lost the

touch of his early training as a tragedian, and


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he regards the various levels of human

experience as various levels of theater.

For example, consider the Myth of the Cave.There are portrayed three distinct levels of

theater:

1. the theater of shadows

2. the theater of realities

3. the theater of the myth itself, whichportrays both.

Despite Socrates' claim that the prisoners of

the cave are "like to us," they are

emphatically notspecifically we have a

perspectivethat they lack. As readers ofPlato's myth, we are already "en route": we

see what the cave-dwellers do not that they

live life from a limited perspective. We see

the inferior theater of the cave from two

superior perspectives: the (2) theater ofreality and the (3) theater of the Myth of

the Cave.


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That is the stage-setting; what then is the

drama? The drama is an archetypal one the

quest for freedom. The prisoners sit locked inplace, as Plato tells us, "their legs and necks

fettered from childhood, so that they remain

in the same spot, able to look forward only,

and prevented by the fetters from turning

their heads." If you've seen the film A

Clockwork Orange, recall the 'treatment'against violence given to the character Alex:

his head is locked in place and he's forced to

look at the flickering shadows of films. That's

the idea; that's how things are at the bottom

of the cave.The cave-prisoners never see realities, but

unsteady and flickering shadows of realities,

shadows cast onto the cave wall in front of

them by the dancing, unsteady light of a fire.

An undignified and dismal situation. Now thegood news: escape is possible.

Escape is possible, yes, but not easy. Escape

requires effort and discomfort. It entails


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being freed from the seat into which one

finds oneself locked, turning round, seeing

the real condition of the cave, making theascent out of the cave into the sunlight, the

sunlight where for the first time one is able

to see realities rather than turbid shadows of

realities. And in this glorious sunlight, one is

free. But every step toward the sunlight is

painful and confusing. Why? Because ashumans we have been habituated to take the

dark circumstances of the cave as the only

reality "that's just how it is" we were told,

and we believed it.

Let's take the myth on its own terms: thenatural state of human life is debased and far

beneath our full capacities. How then did this

situation come about? How did I get here?

How did you? Plato supports his cave myth

with a theory of reincarnation, a theorypresented in yet another myth the Myth of

Er, found in Book 10 of the Republic. We

needn't spend a lot of time on this myth, our


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focus is "How did we get here in the Cave,

Plato?" And Plato's answer is that we have

been incarnated here, imprisoned in flesh,because of our incapacity to govern the

body's appetites and impulses. Just before

being reborn, the psyche is submitted to a

kind of ordeal:

"...they marched on in a scorching heat tothe plain of Forgetfulness, which was a

barren waste destitute of trees and

verdure; and then toward evening they

encamped by the river of Unmindfulness,

whose water no vessel can hold; of this

they were all obliged to drink a certainquantity, and those who were not saved by

wisdom drank more than was necessary;

and each one as he drank forgot all

things."

The river of Unmindfulness, the River Lethe,induces forgetfulness. You are very, very

thirsty. You must drink somewater from the

river. But only the tiniest bit . . . careful!: it is


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the water of Unmindfulness. If in previous

lives you developed the habit of controlling

bodily appetites, you take the smallest ofsips, and depart with much of your hard-won

wisdom intact. For the rest of us:gub, gub,

gub, gub, gub, gub....

And here we are: in the cave, remembering

nothing, abjectly identified with our body andits appetites, utterly committed to the

delusion that our highest hope is to feelgood,

to gratify our appetites, to go shopping.

Recall the three levels of theater in the Myth

of the Cave. What does our superiorperspective, the perspective of the myth

itself in which both the cave and upper

sunlight regions are depicted, what does this

show us? Several things. But let's start with

the most obvious: the myth portrays people

held as prisoners in an underground cave. Toreturn to Socrates' claim that the prisoners

are "like to us," it is clear that Plato means to

liken this dismal scene to what we ordinary


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folks you and I, my friend what we are

pleased to call "the real world." Another way

of describing this "real world" is to say thatit is the world delivered to us through our

senses. And our senses, of course, are rooted

in our bodies.

The "cave" that Plato presented us, then, can

be understood in two ways: (a) as the worldperceived through the bodily senses and (b)

as the body itself. And in regard to both, the

punch of Plato's myth turns on the idea of

imprisonment: we are imprisoned in the sense

perceived world, or nature, and we are also

imprisoned in our bodies. The prison fromwhich we can escape, that from which we are

freed, is nothing other than our own bodies

and the mode of experiencing the world

through those bodies.

To state the situation in brief: Plato's theoryof the self is one that not merely distrusts

the body, but disownsit. For Plato, you are

not your body; you are a psyche that is


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imprisonedin the body, imprisoned in alien

matter matter that drastically blunts the

capacities of the psyche.The implications of this underground scenario

are profound, and all the more so because of

the degree to which they have cast an

influence over the entire course of Western

civilization. The 20th century philosopherAlfred North Whitehead claimed that all of

Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato.

No doubt Whitehead's assertion sounds like

an exaggeration, yet there are reasons for

taking it seriously. One of these reasons isthat, through the influence of the brilliant

theologian St. Augustine (354-430 CE),

Plato's attitudes toward the body were

incorporated into institutional Christianity.

Through Augustine's writings and influence,

Christianity became "Platonized." Specifically,the self in its natural state was taken to be in

a squalid condition; the true self was taken to

be a non-material psyche and not the human


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body. More: nature came to be understood as

a corrupt and fallen domain, a domain from

which freedom was sought, freedom throughan ascent to a higher, more real, more

valuable realm, the realm of "heaven."

The attitudes and values articulated in Plato's

Myth of the Cave were incorporated into

Christianity and thus mainstreamed intoWestern culture. Indeed, the Christian ideal

of the "soul" or personal spirit, that which

survives the death of the body, owes far

more to Plato's philosophy than the Judaism

out of which Christianity ostensibly emerged.

Some of these Platonic values are splendid: an

assertion of the need for critical thinking,

for not taking circumstances at face value; an

aspiration to transcend known horizons; to

attempt to be more than you thought you

could be. Again, splendid.

But in addition, this historically influential

myth conveys an ominous freight of contempt


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a contempt for matter, for nature, for the

human body. (You're about to get an editorial

here, can you tell?)Contempt for material nature, indeed for

nature itself, has, over time, helped to

generate a dismissive attitude toward nature

in the West. There were other historical

factors, of course. But a disparagement ofnature, coupled with the allure of a 'higher'

world, one that is oh so much better than

nature, has contributed if only subliminally to

the ecological crisis in which the modern

world finds itself.

Contempt for the body with its appetites and

desires, when mixed with Christian notions of

sin, guilt, and inherent unworthiness, can yield

an ugly cocktail of self-loathing that induces

anything but the freedom to which Plato

aspired. And this is not justified by virtue ofits keeping so many psychotherapists gainfully

employed and off the streets.


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Contempt for materiality and the body has

generated a kind of cognitive dissonance

among those who, with utmost sincerity, arecommitted rethinking our culture's values and

sense of the sacred here at the beginning of

a new millennium. Because often (not always,

but often) such folks express revulsion at the

thought that the wet and fleshy brain is

inextricably involved in human consciousness.Consciousness is taken to be pure and

spiritual; the brain is, well, meat. Straight out

of Plato.

Contempt for the body and for nature yields,

here at the beginning of the 21st century,attitudes toward death that are a quirky

combination of sentimentality and horror. On

the one hand, a person can be attracted to a

vision of spiritual survival of death like the

one dramatized in entertaining filmslike Ghost and The Sixth Sense.


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Again, straight out of Plato. But the sameperson who thrills to this vision can, with

something like another compartment of their

mind, see things darkly otherwise. The same


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person can also see that personhood and

individuality, whether spiritual or psychic or

whatever, has shared a developmentaltrajectory with the body and, in every

likelihood, will share the dissolution of the

body.

And so: when death is considered casually, in

connection with life-insurance or in elevatedconversation, lovely images of spiritual beings

may be invoked. But should death confront us

profoundly, say, in the form of an unhappy

medical diagnosis, we may find ourselves

unable to invoke images of lovely spirits and

instead feel ourselves confronted by death asa specter of horror. And this horror is

grounded not in realistic assessment, but in

the fact that we have avoided realistic

assessment through our invocation of lovely

spirits when the idea of death came to mind.Then, on that grim day, death confronts us as

a horror, as a ghastly and outrageous reality.


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I said this was an editorial, right? If you

disagree, good. Do so with vigor!

The Man Who Woke UpHis name was Siddhartha Gautama. He is

thought to have lived from 563483 BCE. He

was a human being. He was nothing more than

human. This last point may sound like stating

the obvious yet, in the story of Buddhism, it

is of extraordinary significance. (Details to

follow shortly.)

Siddhartha was born to a royalfamily. Hisfather, so the story goes, was a king. This

king was told that his son was born to

greatness, that he would be either the worlds

greatest political leader or he would be the

worlds greatest religious teacher. Like many

fathers, Siddharthas dad wanted his son tofollow in his footsteps. To promote this hope,

he surrounded the boy with luxury and

distraction. There were beautiful people, fine


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masters. Finally, Siddhartha took up with a

group called Jains. The Jains were dedicated

to non-injury, and to a radically ascetic life-style. Siddhartha joined them, and engaged in

what might be fairly termed as savage self-

discipline. Then, after a few years, he left

the Jains. He went off by himself, he ceased

his ascetic discipline, he ate, he washed, he

slept. He was no longer an ascetic, but he wasas determined as ever to find the root cause

of human suffering.

Legend has it that Siddhartha sat under a

ficus tree, known to us as the Bo Tree. He

was resolved not to get up until hedunderstood the dynamics of human misery. He

attained a realization; he was infused with

confidence that he could teachthis

realization to other. He returned to the Jain

community that hed left earlier, to a group offriends that hed made in that community.

The Jains, recall, were radical ascetics, they

were after their fashion the "tough guys" of


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religious practice. Characteristic of tough

guys, Siddharthas Jain friends kept their

distance in their eyes, he'd wimped-out. Butas Siddhartha approached them, there was

something about his presence that impressed

them. A passage from "The Middle Path"

section of the Text tells what happened next:

But when the Blessed One approached in adignified manner, they involuntarily rose from

their seats and greeted him in spite of their

resolution. Still they called him by his name

and addressed him as "friend Gotama." When

they had thus received the Blessed One, he

said: "Do not call the Tathagata by his name

nor address him as 'friend'. . ." [2-3]

The Jain friends are then said to have asked

"What, then, are you?" And Siddhartha, so

the story goes, answered "I am awake." And

thus the career of the Awakened One, the

Buddha, began. (The word buddhi means

awake.)


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Thus "the Buddha" is a title, not a surname,

not Siddhartha's last name. And the Buddha

proved to be a master teacher: he brought hisfriends to the realization of "awakeness" he

brought them to be Buddhas themselves in

short order.

We now return to a point mentioned earlier:

Siddhartha Gautama, the man who woke up,the man who became a Buddha, (theBuddha,

for many, in acknowledgment of his origin of

the teaching) this extraordinary individual

was a human being. Just like you and me. He

was not a god, he was not informed or

inspired by a god; his insights and teachingwere the result of his own determination and

brilliance. He was a human who developed a

unique understanding of what it is to be

human. He did not offer a new theory of

nature, or another in the great Indiantradition of sophisticated metaphysics. He

offered human insight into the human

condition.


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An important implication of all this, not always

acknowledged by later Buddhist traditions, is

that the Buddha is a teacher. As such, he isnot to be worshipped, but studied. Better, his

teaching is to be studied. As well see, some

schools of Chinese Buddhism see reverence

for the teacher, reverence for the Buddha,

as a major impediment to the realization of

Buddhahood.

No worship, no excessive reverence; no

razzle-dazzle, no woo-woo. Just a method.

Nothing fancy. The Buddha's ideas, which

came free of complicated theology and

philosophy, were addressed to lay persons aswell as to monks no antecedent spiritual

qualification needed.

Its clear that, in the context of traditional

Hinduism, the Buddha is revolutionary. He

rejected the caste system, a monentousinnovation in the context of Indian culture.

Further, he rejected the authority of the

central Hindu scriptures, the Upanishads. He,


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and those who followed him, were no longer

Hindus. In this, his revolution from the

mother-tradition to which he was born wasfar more radical than that of another great

religious innovator Jesus. Jesus lived and

died a Jew; his later followers, even those

who did not see themselves as Jews, still

acknowledged the Jewish scriptures as part

of their Bible, as the "Old Testament."

Before turning to the details of the Buddhist

teaching, something must be said about the

approach of the Buddha. He has been called

an "anti-metaphysical pragmatist."

Metaphysics is that branch of philosophy andreligion that deals with the question "What is

there?" The Buddha refused to be involved in

what he took to be idle and distracting

speculation an intellectual diversion that

prevented a direct engagement of humanmisery. A human has only one intelligent

concern, according to the Buddha the

elimination of the conditions that make human


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life unhappy. To this end, one of the most

important stories of the Buddha is what

youve read in the section titled "An Enquiryinto a Poisoned Arrow." There, we find the

following questions dismissed as distractions:

1. Is the world eternal or not eternal?

2. Is the world infinite of finite?

3. Is the soul the same as the body or

are they different?

4. Does the Buddha exist after death

or does he not exist?

The importance of this dismissal is that these

question are central concerns in most

religions certainly so in the Hindu religionthat the Buddha had left behind. Equally, the

reader will no doubt recognize, these

questions are central to the Christian religion.

If not with such urgent questions, then, what

was the focus of the Buddha's concern? Theyare known as the Four Noble Truths.

The Four Noble Truths are expressed in

various ways throughout the vast Buddhist


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literature; the rendering presented in the

section of your reading is only one of many.

They can be summarized this way:1. There is dukkha.

2. Dukkha is caused.3. Dukkha can be eliminated byeliminating its causes.

4. There is a method, a way, toaccomplish this.

There is dukkha.

Often, indeed usually, dukkha is translated as

"misery," or "suffering." Many scholars of

Buddhism point out that this is mistranslationbecause it is an incomplete rendering of the

concept of dukkha. Words like "suffering"

and "misery" tell only a part of the story of

dukkha, and not the most dangerous part at

that. Dukkha involves not only pain, yes, but

it also involves also the pleasure that keeps ushooked into the cycle of pleasure and pain. It

is the cycle of pleasure/pain, of joy/sorrow,

that constitutes dukkha. Pleasure and joy are


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the "fun" side of dukkha that keeps us in the

game, they are what keeps us buying tickets

on the roller-coaster ride of agonies andecstasies that is life as we experience it. The

point here is of extraordinary importance: we

are deeply invested in the conditions of our

dukkha; for all the noisy lamentations that go

on during the "down" sides of the cycle, we

jealously and fiercely defend (to ourselvesand to others) the cycle itself. "Mine!"

Is this making sense?

Dukkha is caused.

For a moment, I'll be a bit crude. You've seen

the bumper-sticker, you've heard it saidoften enough: "Shit happens." Dukkha is

unlike shit in this crucial sense it doesn't

just "happen." Dukkha, it is said, is caused.

This may sound like a trivial point, but in fact

it is momentous: because dukkha is caused, acoherent strategy can be invoked to end it.

The claim that dukkha is caused elicits in the

mind a spirit of inquiry what causes it?


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We'll consider these causes in more detail

soon. For now, they may be stated simply:

dukkhais caused most fundamentally byignorance; it is maintained through cravings

and aversions cravings and aversions in

regard to an understanding of life that is

rooted in ignorance. And in regard to both

elements of the causes of dukkha, you are the

principle actor.

Dukkha can be eliminated by eliminating itscauses.

To say it again, the focus is on you. We're

not talking about sin, here you havent done

anything wrong. You are, as we'll see, involvedin an entirely natural mistake. The ignorance

in which you're so enmeshed is more a

misinterpretation than anything else.

Specifically, you take what you actually

experience and misinterpret it into somethingyou really never experienced. And then this

is where it hurts you become desperately

invested in that misinterpretation. But


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because it's you who has misinterpreted,

because it's you who is so desperately

invested, it can only be you who works out thetangle that is dukkha. No salvation here,

folks if liberation from dukkhais going to

happen, self-realization is the way. You can

only do it for yourself. So it goes.

There is a method, a way, to accomplishthis.

And there is a way: this is what might be

taken as the "good news" of Buddhism. There

is a way out of bondage to the cycle of

dukkhaa path the Eight-fold Path

enumerated in the presentation of the FourthNoble Truths in your text. That Eight-fold

Path is elaborated in another important early

Buddhist text, the Dammapada. Well come

back to the Eight-fold Path in a moment. For

now, however, lets consider what successlooks like in the Buddhist quest for liberation

from dukkha.


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Liberation, in the Buddhist view, is a state in

which the ignorance at the root of dukkha

has been replaced with a realisticunderstanding of life, in which the cravings

attendant on ignorance have been calmed,

have been extinguished. This state of

liberation, called nirvana, is another way of

characterizing being awake it is a state in

which one has become a Buddha. The Buddhasaid very little about nirvana by way of

positive statements. It is described in largely

negative terms: the very word nirvana has

negative connotations "blown out," as in the

blowing out of a candle's flame. Nirvana iscessation: the cessation of ignorance, the

cessation of craving, the cessation of dukkha.

The Buddhist doctrine of nirvana is not easy

to understand in the modern West. The

reason for this follows from the Buddhistdiagnosis of the normal human condition. The

first of the so-called Noble Truths is that

life is dukkha. And the term dukkha, recall, is


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typically mistranslated as "suffering" or

"misery." Our normal joys and "highs" are a

part of the cycle of dukkha. Our aspirationsare formulated and pursued from within the

context the cyclic net of dukkha. That is

the Buddhist diagnosis.

So when we hear of nirvana as a hopeful

possibility, we naturally seek to understand itin terms of the biphasic cycle in terms of

which we experience our life in terms of

dukkha. We are excited by the prospect of a

transformative experience, but we seek to

understand it through our untransformed

minds. It is entirely natural that we do this.When we ask about something good, or

something transformative, we inevitably ask

from within the nexus of what is familiar to

us; we both inquire and seek to understand in

terms of the cycle of dukkha.We think about nirvana.

We consider that it is a blowing out of the

misdirected cravings that drive us, cravings


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based on a false understanding of the self

and things and people we encounter in the

world false understandings rooted in theprocess of reification. With one side of our

mind that makes sense. On reflection,

however, the prospect can come to sound dull

and flat. The term "nihilistic" comes to mind.

The passion, the emotional fire that makes

life sing and dance. All that is to be blownout? The term "apathy" comes to mind, with

all its negative associations. Suddenly it all

sounds sad and torpid, and this calls forth the

hero in us. Yes: if I must suffer in order to

experience the grand passions of life, thensuffer I must. My splendid intensity, for

better and for worst, is me, and I shall live

my life on its terms or I shall not live with

authenticity. Put otherwise: I gotta be me!

Music by Mahler if you like up with a swell.

Okay, turn the music down now. We typically

try to understand in terms of what we know.

And in the Buddhist view, what we know, what


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we have experienced, is dukkha.Nirvanais an

alternative to that vacillation between joy and

sorrow; it is alternative to living now in astate of unrealistic hope, and now in an

equally unrealistic state of despair. Although,

if all you know are these two states that are

the "moments" dukkha,you are likely to

confuse nirvana with that "blown out" state of

self-defeat and despair that is the down sideof dukkha. It is worth repeating that,

according to the Buddhist theory of dukkha,

happiness and unhappiness have a reciprocal

relationship; our joys are complicit in our

sorrows.We return, now, to the promise of the Fourth

Noble Truth that there is a method, a way,

to attain the insight that dispells ignorance

and quenches the fires of craving. The Eight-

fold ath is mentioned. And if you check yourtext, you'll see that the first step of the

Eight-fold Path is Right Views.


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That the Buddha was an anti-metaphysical

pragmatist means that he rejected arcane

metaphysical speculations. He did not rejectwhat he took to be common sense. And for

him, common sense (what he calls Right Views)

was a feet-on-the-ground orientation to your

own experience. Right views do not concern

splendid visions of reality, or the cosmos;

Right Views are common sense insights intoexperience. Not experience in the abstract,

now, but into your experience, your everyday

experience.

Among the most important of the Right Views

are those listed in the section titled "TheThree Characteristics of Experience." They

are these:

1. Everything in experience is

transitory.

2. Everything in experience is dukkha.3. Everything in experience lacks

permanent self.


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Weve already covered the

second characteristic that everything you

experience is bound up in a cycle of dukkha.So lets look at the first: that everything we

experience is transitory. The Buddhist

assumption is that change, not permanence, is

the reality we experience. The problem is

that we humans have a misdirected tendency

to seek well-being in terms of permanencerather than the change that is the only

reality we encounter. The "things" we

encounter in experience are better described

as events. And we tend to translate those

events into things through a process that hasbeen called "reification."Reification from the

Latin word for "thing"re.

At times we are aware of the process of

reification: we say "The weather is bad

today." We speak of "the weather" as if itwere a thing, but we're aware that "weather"

is in fact a combination of processes. That

awareness keeps this reification from being


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dangerous. There are other times most of

them in fact when we impute "thingness" to

what we experience and are blind to thereification in which we are engaging.

But this is getting too abstract. Consider, for

example, the following illustration. Look at it,

and ask yourself: How many black dots are

there at the intersections of thelines? Obviously there is a bunch of them,

because you see them right? Or do you?


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You seethe black dots; without doubt you

experience them. Equally evident, however, is

the reality of those dots: they wink in out ofyour experience, they are eminently

transient. For all that you experience them,

cursory analysis makes it clear that they have

no permanent existence. The black dots are

events, they are not things. And just that, in

the Buddhist view, characterizes everythingyou experience. No exceptions, absolutely

none. Just that is the first thing you need to

know about your experience. Just that is the

beginning of Right Views. Just that is the

first step to nirvana.Now take the idea of radical transience and

apply it to the most seductive mode of

reification the self. The self with which you

identify is no exception to the reality of

transience. You speak of a self, you think ofyour self as some permanent. But in the

Buddhist view, all youve ever actually

experienced is a series of winking and


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blinking moments of feelings, sensations,

memories, and suchlike. These moments of

experience are all youve ever experienced.And theres nothing permanent among them.

They the moments themselves tell the

whole story.

This yields a surprising orientation to an

important question to which the various worldphilosophies address themselves. "Whatis

there?" what is the nature of the reality we

experience? According to the Buddha's

analysis, all there is exactly what youve

experience and nothing besides. And what

of the self that experiences? You are exactlywhat you experience and nothing besides.

This orientation is surprising because it is so

utterly pedestrian and common-sensical: no

metaphysical fireworks, no whiz-bang

realization of transcendence. Whats real isnothing other than what you experience. This

commitment on the part of Buddhism is

sometimes calledpsychological realism.


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The question is not Do you agree? the

question is Does this make sense to you?

Your life is dukkha for no other reason thanyour desperate attachment to something

youve never experienced! (A sense of humor

is very helpful here.)

These are the basics of the original Buddhist

teachings. But a remarkable punctuation tothose teachings is found in the Buddhas

Farewell Address and in the Kalama Sutra.

The Buddhas attitude seems to have been

"Here is the teaching: try it for yourself;

dont just believe it on the basis ofauthority." Look:

From the Buddha's Farewell Address:

"Therefore, O Ananda, be lamps unto

yourselves. Rely on yourselves, and do not rely

on external help. [13] Hold fast to the truth asa lamp. Seek salvation alone in the truth. Look

not for assistance to any one besides

yourselves." [14]


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From the Kalama Sutra:

It is proper for you, Kalamas, to doubt, to be

uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you aboutwhat is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go

upon what has been acquired by repeated

hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor;

nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon

surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious

reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notionthat has been pondered over; nor upon

another's seeming ability; nor upon the

consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.'

This disposition to keep authority,

emphatically including Buddhist authority, ata critical distance is one that persists in the

Buddhist tradition. Those attracted to

philosophy and religion as consolation will

inevitably be given to attitudes of reverence

and obedience to authorities outside

themselves. That human tendency isdiscouraged in the original Buddhist teaching.


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"You let yourself get all

worked up over nothing."Mo

In fact the word 'nothing' is an

overstatement. But both the Buddha and

Epicurus would tell you that your Mom was

making an important point. We fret and pray

and weep and fight over a fundamental

misconception about the self we are

desperately invested in the well-being and

future prospects of something that really

doesn't exist.

Where Plato cautions us not to take our

everyday experience at face value, to see the

extent to which our senses distort and falsify

reality, thinkers like the Buddha and Epicurus

tell us to take everyday experience entirelyseriously. Analyze your experience

dispassionately, scientifically, they


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recommend, and you will come to a wisdom

rooted squarely in that experience.

One might say that, on the one hand, theBuddha and Epicurus side with the African

wisdom tradition in their insistence on the

practical, this-life value of philosophy. On the

other hand, however, they differ from the

African assessment of life in that they seehuman life as a domain of menace and pain.

Where African proverbial wisdom sees life as

rich and good and something to be warmly

embraced, the Buddha and Epicurus proposed

their philosophies as therapies that would

overcome the misery and terror of life.

EpicurusEpicurus lived from 342-270 BCE. His

philosophical training center, or school, wasoriginally set up (the year was 306) in a

garden in Athens, and came to be called "the

Garden." Epicurus lived in what is known


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as the Hellenistic period, which dates roughly

from the death of Alexander the Great in

323 BCE until about 200 CE.The Hellenistic world embraced the entire

Mediterranean basin Greece and Rome and

all of southern Europe, the Middle East, and

northern Africa. The Hellenistic world came

to be seen as a cultural 'cosmos' a world. Tobe a citizen of that world was to be

"cosmopolitan" (a word coined by Hellenistic

thinkers) in a sense very similar to the way in

which we use it today.

In Hellenistic cosmopolitanism, one'sbirthplace meant far less than it had in

earlier times; residence was increasingly

accidental, rather than definitive. To the

extent that people were cosmopolitan, they

were to that degree less an Athenian, an

Alexandrian, a Theban, a Sicilian, etc. Indeed,local communities were all but eclipsed by the

huge Mediterranean cosmopolis. And the

cosmopolitan individual was connected not to


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the familiar community of her or his birth,

but to a vast and impersonal welter of power

and change.For many, the psychological ambience of

Hellenistic cosmopolitanism was one of

insecurity. Older cultural identities, the

ancient gods of one's home city too often

these were powerless to mitigate that senseof insecurity. And just this is a key to

Epicurus's philosophical mission: his teaching,

like that of the Buddha, was first and last

therapeutic. And like the Buddha, Epicurus

saw the common human condition as one of

suffering, a suffering grounded in ignorance.Perhaps he was less charitable in his

assessment than the Buddha, for Epicurus's

diagnosis of the natural human state has a

wicked edge: "Most men when they rest are

as in a coma; and when they act are as mad."(Vatican Sayings.1)

And again like the Buddha, Epicurus believed

that humanwisdom (in the form of his own


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teaching, naturally) was able to overcome that

suffering.

Epicurus's philosophy is an alternativeoutlook one proposed in opposition to two

trends gaining huge momentum in the

Hellenistic world. They are these:

Platonism. By now, because you've dealt with

his Allegory of the Cave, you're familiar withthe basics of Plato's philosophy. For Epicurus,

Plato's philosophy is a headlong dash in the

wrong direction. Its non-material conception

of Reality, its understanding of the individual

human being as a non-material psyche that isimprisoned within the body, imprisoned in

nature, its blatant otherworldliness to

Epicurus these serve as an evasion rather

than an engagement of life as we experience

it.

The Mystery Religions. These were

generally associated with 'super' gods or

goddesses deities constructed from a


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variety of local religions, yes, but these

super-deities were conceived as significantly

more satisfying to the alienated Hellenisticcosmopolitan than earlier religious. And they

were more satisfying because they had power,

specifically the power of salvation:they could

save their adherents from the pain and death

so palpably part of human life. Among these

mystery religions were the cult of Isis, thecult of Mithras, and later, the one that

proved to be the most successful of the

salvation-oriented mystery religions, the cult

of Christ.

But Epicurus did not teach salvation; hetaught self-knowledge. To eliminate

suffering, he taught, one must come to know

one's own nature; and to accomplish that, one

needed to know about the nature of reality.

For Epicurus, it can be said, psychologyandphysicsare two aspects of a single discipline.

Neither is pursued for its own sake, or merely

out of intellectual curiosity. Knowledge of


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both is needed to eliminate suffering and

that is the sole purpose for studying them.

Here's how he puts in the Principle Doctrines:"A man cannot dispel his fear about the

most important matters if he does not

know what is the nature of the universe

but suspects the truth of some mythical

story. So without the study of naturethere is no enjoyment of pure pleasure."

P.D.xii

What exactly do we need to know about the

nature of the universe? Nothing that is not

revealed to us in experience. Again: like theBuddha, Epicurus grounds all his theories

squarely in human experience. And of nature,

he says:

"...The whole of reality consists of bodies

and space (that is, of atoms and the void,or empty space). For the existence of

bodies is everywhere attested by sense

itself, and it is upon sensation that reason


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must rely when it attempts to infer the

unknown from the known. And if there

were no space (which we call also void andplace and intangible nature), bodies would

have nothing in which to be and through

which to move, as they are plainly seen to

move. Beyond bodies and space there is

nothing which by mental apprehension or

on its analogy we can conceive to exist."(Letter to Herodotus; 2nd paragraph)

"The atoms are in continual motion

through all eternity. Some of them

rebound to a considerable distance from

each other, while others merely oscillatein one place when they chance to have got

entangled or to be enclosed by a mass of

other atoms shaped for entangling."

(Letter to Herodotus; 4th paragraph)

There are two realities: atoms and the emptyspace through which atoms move; atoms and

the void. The word "atom" is based on the

Greek tomon, "to split." Everything we


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experience can be reduced to smaller parts;

everything we experience is tomonsplitable.

Atoms were conceived by Epicurus as tiny,elemental building blocks (as it were) of the

physical world, building blocks that cannot be

reduced, that are unsplitable that are a-

tomon, atoms.

What about gods divine beings?Interestingly, Epicurus asserts that they

exist, but he reminds us of Rhett Butler as he

does so: Frankly, my dear, they don't give a

damn. Here's the way Epicurus puts it:

"there are gods, and the knowledge ofthem is manifest; but they are not such as

the multitude believe . . . the utterances

of the multitude about the gods are not

true preconceptions but false

assumptions; for example, that the gods

can be moved to do our bidding throughprayers and sacrifices. Care for humans

would compromise the blessedness of the

gods, whose perfection includes absolute


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serenity." (Letter to Menoeceus; 2nd

paragraph)

No divine help is needed; human resourcesare sufficient. Epicurus holds that the gods

exist because people experience them he

does not call into question the veracity of

that experience. The gods serve Epicurus as

models of the blessed life a blessednessrooted in their indifference to humanity. So

don't worry: the gods will not be intrusive

busy-bodies in your life. And don't embrace

foolish hopes that the gods will ride to the

rescue in your life like the Lone Ranger: they

really just don't care about you.

To repeat now: atoms and void tell the whole

story of reality. But what then about the

human mind, what about consciousness? Like

Plato, Epicurus speaks of a soul (=psyche), and

holds that the soul is different from thebody. Unlike Plato, he insists that both the

body and the soul are material. The soul, like


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everything else that is real, is comprised of

atoms. Of the atomic, material soul, we read:

"...we must recognize generally that thesoul is a material thing, composed of fine

particles (i.e., atoms), dispersed all over

the frame, most nearly resembling wind

with an admixture of heat, in some

respects like wind, in others like heat."(Letter to Herodotus; middle)

The human reality, including the human mind,

human consciousness, is not separate from

nature, but part of it. And like nature, the

human mind is material, comprised of atoms.But where is the pleasure in this

understanding? Remember, we seen that

Epicurus recommends the study of nature

because "without the study of nature there is

no enjoyment of pure pleasure." (P.D.xii) This

brings us to Epicurus's unique conception ofpleasure:


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"By pleasure we mean the absence of pain

in the body and of trouble in the soul. It

is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not

the enjoyment of the fish and other

delicacies of a luxurious table, which

produce a pleasant life; it is sober

reasoning, searching out the grounds of

every choice and avoidance...." (Letter toMenoeceus; 3rd paragraph from the end)

Pleasure is the supreme human good for

Epicurus: pleasure, hedonethe root of our

modern word hedonism. Hedonism is in low

repute today, for it suggests mindless self-indulgence. But for Epicurus, hedonism is not

an "If it feels good, do it" approach to life.

Hedonism is a rational and deeply religious

life commitment. He says:

"And since pleasure is our first and nativegood, for that reason we do not choose

every pleasure whatsoever, but will often

pass over many pleasures when a greater


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annoyance ensues from them. And often

we consider pains superior to pleasures

when submission to the pains for a longtime brings us as a consequence a greater

pleasure." (Letter to Menoeceus; middle)

Let's go back to your Mom for a second. Her

wisdom, recall, was that you let yourself get

all worked up over nothing. Now what's thething that we humans get most worked up

about? For the majority, it's death. And in

regard to death, Epicurus has some good

news: it's nothing. Just like your Mom said,

only probably not in exactly the way she

meant it. Epicurus:

"Accustom yourself to believing that

death is nothing to us, for good and evil

imply the capacity for sensation, and

death is the privation of all sentience;

therefore a correct understanding thatdeath is nothing to us makes the mortality

of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a

limitless time, but by taking away the


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yearning after immortality." (Letter to

Menoeceus, 3rd paragraph)

What impedes our happiness, our pleasure inlife, says Epicurus, is fret and bother about

an afterlife in which we might be tormented,

and a nagging hope for the impossible, for

immortality. You will die, and death is

annihilation: the atoms that constitute yourmind will, upon your death, disperse like

smoke in the wind. So while alive you have

every reason to live life with pleasure. From

the Vatican Sayings: "Remember that your

are mortal and have a limited time to live."

(#3)

"Don't worry, be happy."

Shallow advice? Or profound philosophy?

What do YOU think?

self as spiritual prisoner

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