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Self as Spiritual

Prisoner
Plato (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 was
decisively 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— that
there 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 contemplation is extremely


important in Plato. Contemplation: 'looking at,'
'seeing,' 'witnessing.' Plato never lost the
touch of his early training as a tragedian, and
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, which
portrays both.

Despite Socrates' claim that the prisoners of


the cave are "like to us," they are
emphatically not— specifically we have a
perspective that they lack. As readers of
Plato'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 of
reality and the (3) theater of the Myth of
the Cave.
That is the stage-setting; what then is the
drama? The drama is an archetypal one— the
quest for freedom. The prisoners sit locked in
place, 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 the
good news: escape is possible.

Escape is possible, yes, but not easy. Escape


requires effort and discomfort. It entails
being freed from the seat into which one
finds oneself locked, turning round, seeing
the real condition of the cave, making the
ascent 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 as
humans 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: the


natural 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 theory
presented 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
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 to


the 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 certain
quantity, 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 some water from the
river. But only the tiniest bit . . . careful!: it is
the water of Unmindfulness. If in previous
lives you developed the habit of controlling
bodily appetites, you take the smallest of
sips, 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 and
its appetites, utterly committed to the
delusion that our highest hope is to feel good,
to gratify our appetites, to go shopping.

Recall the three levels of theater in the Myth


of the Cave. What does our superior
perspective, 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. To
return 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
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 that
it 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 world
perceived 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 from
which 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 theory


of the self is one that not merely distrusts
the body, but disowns it. For Plato, you are
not your body; you are a psyche that is
imprisoned in 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 philosopher
Alfred 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 is
that, 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
body. More: nature came to be understood as
a corrupt and fallen domain, a domain from
which freedom was sought, freedom through
an 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 into
Western 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
— 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 of
nature, 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 of
its keeping so many psychotherapists gainfully
employed and off the streets.
Contempt for materiality and the body has
generated a kind of cognitive dissonance
among those who, with utmost sincerity, are
committed 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 films
like Ghost and The Sixth Sense.
Again, straight out of Plato. But the same
person who thrills to this vision can, with
something like another compartment of their
mind, see things darkly otherwise. The same
person can also see that personhood and
individuality, whether spiritual or psychic or
whatever, has shared a developmental
trajectory 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 elevated
conversation, 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 as
a 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.
I said this was an editorial, right? If you
disagree, good. Do so with vigor!

The Man Who Woke Up


His name was Siddhartha Gautama. He is
thought to have lived from 563―483 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 royal family. His


father, so the story goes, was a king. This
king was told that his son was born to
greatness, that he would be either the world’s
greatest political leader or he would be the
world’s greatest religious teacher. Like many
fathers, Siddhartha’s dad wanted his son to
follow in his footsteps. To promote this hope,
he surrounded the boy with luxury and
distraction. There were beautiful people, fine
food, elegant music, grand elephants― I’m
always reminded of the lines from Samuel
Coleridge’s poem "Xanadu": "In Xanadu did
Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree. .
." Surroundings designed to deflect any
budding interests in religious concerns. Or so
the thinking went. And the plan worked― up
until Siddhartha was about thirty years old.
Then, one version of the legend goes,
Siddhartha’s charioteer got it in his mind to
show the young man something of the real
world. Then, as you’ve read in the section
titled "The Three Sorrows," Siddhartha was
confronted with the realities of old age,
sickness, and death.

The pleasure dome was just not the same.


Siddhartha developed a firm determination to
discover the causes of human misery, and a
means to overcome that misery. He left his
father’s domain; he left his wife and young
son. He traveled from one teacher to the
next, studying among various Hindu yoga-
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 was
as 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 he’d
understood the dynamics of human misery. He
attained a realization; he was infused with
confidence that he could teach this
realization to other. He returned to the Jain
community that he’d left earlier, to a group of
friends that he’d made in that community.
The Jains, recall, were radical ascetics, they
were after their fashion the "tough guys" of
religious practice. Characteristic of tough
guys, Siddhartha’s Jain friends kept their
distance― in their eyes, he'd wimped-out. But
as 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 a
dignified 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.)
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 his
friends 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, (the Buddha,
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 teaching
were 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 Indian
tradition of sophisticated metaphysics. He
offered human insight into the human
condition.
An important implication of all this, not always
acknowledged by later Buddhist traditions, is
that the Buddha is a teacher. As such, he is
not to be worshipped, but studied. Better, his
teaching is to be studied. As we’ll 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 as
well as to monks— no antecedent spiritual
qualification needed.

It’s clear that, in the context of traditional


Hinduism, the Buddha is revolutionary. He
rejected the caste system, a monentous
innovation in the context of Indian culture.
Further, he rejected the authority of the
central Hindu scriptures, the Upanishads. He,
and those who followed him, were no longer
Hindus. In this, his revolution from the
mother-tradition to which he was born was
far 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 and
religion 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 human
misery. A human has only one intelligent
concern, according to the Buddha― the
elimination of the conditions that make human
life unhappy. To this end, one of the most
important stories of the Buddha is what
you’ve read in the section titled "An Enquiry
into 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 religion
that 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? They
are known as the Four Noble Truths.

The Four Noble Truths are expressed in


various ways throughout the vast Buddhist
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 by
eliminating its causes.
4. There is a method, a way, to
accomplish this.

There is dukkha.
Often, indeed usually, dukkha is translated as
"misery," or "suffering." Many scholars of
Buddhism point out that this is mistranslation
because 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 us
hooked into the cycle of pleasure and pain. It
is the cycle of pleasure/pain, of joy/sorrow,
that constitutes dukkha. Pleasure and joy are
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 and
ecstasies 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 ourselves
and 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 said
often 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, a
coherent strategy can be invoked to end it.
The claim that dukkha is caused elicits in the
mind a spirit of inquiry― what causes it?
We'll consider these causes in more detail
soon. For now, they may be stated simply:
dukkha is caused most fundamentally by
ignorance; 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 its


causes.
To say it again, the focus is on you. We're
not talking about sin, here― you haven’t done
anything wrong. You are, as we'll see, involved
in 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 something
you really never experienced. And then― this
is where it hurts― you become desperately
invested in that misinterpretation. But
because it's you who has misinterpreted,
because it's you who is so desperately
invested, it can only be you who works out the
tangle that is dukkha. No salvation here,
folks― if liberation from dukkha is 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 accomplish


this.
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
dukkha― a path― the Eight-fold Path
enumerated in the presentation of the Fourth
Noble Truths in your text. That Eight-fold
Path is elaborated in another important early
Buddhist text, the Dammapada. We’ll come
back to the Eight-fold Path in a moment. For
now, however, let’s consider what success
looks like in the Buddhist quest for liberation
from dukkha.
Liberation, in the Buddhist view, is a state in
which the ignorance at the root of dukkha
has been replaced with a realistic
understanding 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 Buddha
said 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 is
cessation: 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 Buddhist
diagnosis of the normal human condition. The
first of the so-called Noble Truths is that
life is dukkha. And the term dukkha, recall, is
typically mistranslated as "suffering" or
"misery." Our normal joys and "highs" are a
part of the cycle of dukkha. Our aspirations
are 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 it
in 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
based on a false understanding of the self
and things and people we encounter in the
world— false understandings rooted in the
process 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— blown
out? 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, then
suffer 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
we have experienced, is dukkha. Nirvana is an
alternative to that vacillation between joy and
sorrow; it is alternative to living now in a
state 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 side
of 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 your
text, you'll see that the first step of the
Eight-fold Path is Right Views.
That the Buddha was an anti-metaphysical
pragmatist means that he rejected arcane
metaphysical speculations. He did not reject
what 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 into
experience. 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 "The
Three 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.
We’ve already covered the
second characteristic― that everything you
experience is bound up in a cycle of dukkha.
So let’s 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 permanence
rather 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 has
been 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 it
were a thing, but we're aware that "weather"
is in fact a combination of processes. That
awareness keeps this reification from being
dangerous. There are other times― most of
them in fact― when we impute "thingness" to
what we experience and are blind to the
reification 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 the
lines? Obviously there is a bunch of them,
because you see them― right? Or do you?
You see the black dots; without doubt you
experience them. Equally evident, however, is
the reality of those dots: they wink in out of
your 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 everything
you 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 of
your self as some permanent. But in the
Buddhist view, all you’ve ever actually
experienced is a series of winking and
blinking moments of feelings, sensations,
memories, and suchlike. These moments of
experience are all you’ve ever experienced.
And there’s 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 world
philosophies address themselves. "Whatis
there?"― what is the nature of the reality we
experience? According to the Buddha's
analysis, all there is exactly what you’ve
experience― and nothing besides. And what
of the self that experiences? You are exactly
what 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. What’s real is
nothing other than what you experience. This
commitment on the part of Buddhism is
sometimes called psychological realism.
The question is not Do you agree?― the
question is Does this make sense to you?

Your life is dukkha for no other reason than


your desperate attachment to something
you’ve never experienced! (A sense of humor
is very helpful here.)

These are the basics of the original Buddhist


teachings. But a remarkable punctuation to
those teachings is found in the Buddha’s
Farewell Address and in the Kalama Sutra.
The Buddha’s attitude seems to have been―
"Here is the teaching: try it for yourself;
don’t just believe it on the basis of
authority." 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 as
a lamp. Seek salvation alone in the truth. Look
not for assistance to any one besides
yourselves." [14]
From the Kalama Sutra:
It is proper for you, Kalamas, to doubt, to be
uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about
what 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 notion
that 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, at
a 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 is
discouraged in the original Buddhist teaching.
"You let yourself get all
worked up over nothing."
—Mom
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 entirely
seriously. Analyze your experience
dispassionately, scientifically, they
recommend, and you will come to a wisdom
rooted squarely in that experience.

One might say that, on the one hand, the


Buddha 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 see
human 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.

Epicurus
Epicurus lived from 342-270 BCE. His
philosophical training center, or school, was
originally set up (the year was 306) in a
garden in Athens, and came to be called "the
Garden." Epicurus lived in what is known
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. To
be 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's


birthplace 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
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 sense
of 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 human wisdom (in the form of his own
teaching, naturally) was able to overcome that
suffering.

Epicurus's philosophy is an alternative


outlook— 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 with
the 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 is
imprisoned 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
variety of local religions, yes, but these
super-deities were conceived as significantly
more satisfying to the alienated Hellenistic
cosmopolitan 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, the
cult 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; he


taught 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, psychology and
physics are two aspects of a single discipline.
Neither is pursued for its own sake, or merely
out of intellectual curiosity. Knowledge of
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 nature
there 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 the
Buddha, 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
must rely when it attempts to infer the
unknown from the known. And if there
were no space (which we call also void and
place 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 oscillate
in 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 empty


space through which atoms move; atoms and
the void. The word "atom" is based on the
Greek tomon, "to split." Everything we
experience can be reduced to smaller parts;
everything we experience is tomon— splitable.
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 of


them 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 through
prayers and sacrifices. Care for humans
would compromise the blessedness of the
gods, whose perfection includes absolute
serenity." (Letter to Menoeceus; 2nd
paragraph)

No divine help is needed; human resources


are 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 blessedness
rooted 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 the
body. Unlike Plato, he insists that both the
body and the soul are material. The soul, like
everything else that is real, is comprised of
atoms. Of the atomic, material soul, we read:

"...we must recognize generally that the


soul 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 of
pleasure:
"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 to
Menoeceus; 3rd paragraph from the end)

Pleasure is the supreme human good for


Epicurus: pleasure, hedone— the 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 native


good, for that reason we do not choose
every pleasure whatsoever, but will often
pass over many pleasures when a greater
annoyance ensues from them. And often
we consider pains superior to pleasures
when submission to the pains for a long
time 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 the
thing 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 that
death is nothing to us makes the mortality
of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a
limitless time, but by taking away the
yearning after immortality." (Letter to
Menoeceus, 3rd paragraph)

What impedes our happiness, our pleasure in


life, 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 your
mind 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?

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