Dhamma as indispensible

The following from Bhikkhu Bodhi appears to present an argument against Aristotelianism or reducing or getting rid of cosmology/metaphysics:

The importance of this directly visible side of Dhamma practice cannot be underestimated, as it serves to confirm our confidence in the liberating efficacy of the Buddhist path. However, to downplay the doctrine of rebirth and explain the entire import of the Dhamma as the amelioration of mental suffering through enhanced self-awareness is to deprive the Dhamma of those wider perspectives from which it derives its full breadth and profundity. By doing so one seriously risks reducing it in the end to little more than a sophisticated ancient system of humanistic psychotherapy. - http://www.vipassana.org/resources/bodhi/dhamma_without_rebirth.php (emphasis mine)

Buddhist Publication Society Newsletter cover essay #6 (Spring 1987)
Copyright © 1987 Buddhist Publication Society

If we incorporate this into our understanding of Buddhist ethics, it means we must object (at least in par) to Damien Keown's (1992/2001) focus on the goal of nirvana "in this lifetime." Of course he does this to maintain a focus on a robust moral agent and avoid issues of rebirth and the moral nature of an awakened one. He does address both of these but seeks to keep the focus on moral conduct, sīla.

But arguments such as Bhikkhu Bodhi's above, and others, suggest that we broaden the discussion to understand Dhamma in its "full breadth and profundity." In doing so, we must examine Dhamma in all its metaphysical/cosmological complexity.

Peter Harvey in - Destroying Mara Forever

coming soon... (sounds like a cheesy horror movie, I know)

Destroying Mara Forever 1

I've completed the first chapter, "Śāntideva, Virtue, and Consequentialism" by the great Śāntideva and Buddhist ethics scholar, Barbara Clayton.

The chapter argues for a version of "character consequentialism" (p.15) or "perfectionist consequentialism" (p.15 and 26) to make sense of Buddhist --- specifically Māhāyana --- specifically Śāntideva ethics. I note that because it should be an open question whether and/or how Śāntideva deviates from prior Buddhist ethics.

Clayton nods to this question when suggesting that Keown has it right (in his 1992 The Nature of Buddhist Ethics and the 1996 article "Karma, Character, and Consequentialism") when he suggests that if Buddhist ethics is consequentialist, it must be a form of ethical egoism (an ethics based on consequences for oneself) and this is clearly wrong (p.17). Keown argues this because in early Buddhism the consequences one is seeking are the elimination of one's own greed, hatred and delusion (aka the roots of suffering). So if we call Buddhism consequentialist, we are saying it is quite selfish indeed. Keown argues, rightly, that this misses the point of early Buddhist ethics, which instead focuses heavily on cultivating right kinds of other-regarding behavior.

But, Clayton adds, this just the case for Theravādin Buddhism. Buddhists who focus on the bodhisattva ideal explicitly identify all suffering as equal - refusing to differentiate the suffering of oneself and others. The consequence sought is not merely removing one's own suffering, but that of all beings. She notes several instances of this, notable one from the Compendium:

"When fear and suffering are dear neither to me nor others, what is special about me, that I protect myself and not others?" - p.19; ŚS 2.10-11 (Cf. BCA 8.96)

Universalism and Agent-neutrality

Two related notions are discussed here: Universalism and "Agent-neutrality." Universalism means that ones ethics are concerned with all beings, clearly a trait of Māhāyana ethics. And arguably not a feature of Aristotelian virtue ethics - the analogue argued for by Keown. Agent-neutrality, expressed in Śāntideva's quote above, denies the possibility of privileging one person's pain or pleasure above others. Clayton clarifies that not all of Śāntideva's work is so clear on this issue, including, for example, the suggestion that it would be worse to impede the progress of a bodhisattva than to kill every man, woman and child in India! (p.20, ŚS 83.20 - 84.5)

This, it is worried, might disqualify Śāntideva from being a consequentialist. But, Clayton argues, the reasoning here is still consequentialist in nature. The reasoning is that the results of impeding a bodhisattva, even the slightest bit, is an incredibly horrible thing to do because a bodhisattva does so much good in the world.

My sense that Śāntideva's words here can only be religious hyperbole, to be read with reverence and gratitude to bodhisattvas, and not to be read as a rational argument. Thought about rationally, too many obvious questions arise.

Along similarly troubling grounds is Śāntideva's claim that even a transgression of precepts rooted in the defilement of passion (rāga) may be acceptable if it benefits others (somehow). (p.23) It is here that the consequentialist strain in Śāntideva becomes worrisome.

Moral Accounting

A third concept that Clayton brings up is moral accounting (pp.24-25). Moral accounting, weighing out the pros and cons of a given act or rule, is a hallmark of consequentialist theories. And Keown, rightly again, argued at length that this is not the way Buddhists derive their ethics. The first precept, for instance, is not there because "more or less" it reduces suffering.

Clayton argues, however, that Śāntideva engages in just this sort of moral reasoning. Quoting again from the ŚS, I paraphrase, "what good is one's happiness when the world is suffering? What good is it when a body is in flames to have a fingernail unburnt?" This, Clayton suggests, is Śāntideva's way of saying that a little suffering (on his part) should be accepted if it relieves more suffering in others.

However, it is not clear to me that this is the kind of reasoning going on. It may not be a case of ethical reasoning at all, but rather exhortational, "hey, I, we, you have got work to do!" Based on pan-Buddhist karmic theory, one's happiness is a result of past good deeds, and, according to pan-Buddhist psychological theory, unless we're awakened, we're ignorant and thus likely to misunderstand this and waste our lives and all the good karma in them. So Śāntideva is likely just rousing these obvious understandings in his reader as a pep-talk. Based solely on the lines quoted, we needn't read into this some deeper moral accounting, as Clayton does: "bodhisattvas should do whatever will ultimately yield the most benefit to sentient beings."

The problem, here, is that it presents a paradox. Either the bodhisattva is an ignorant chump like you or me and this cannot possibly know what will "ultimately yield the most benefit..." or he/she is awakened and thus will spontaneously, that is, without the need of moral reasoning of this kind, always act in ways that will ultimately yield the most benefit to sentient beings. If the bodhisattva is ignorant, then this "decision rule" is either empty or, like the above, exhortational. If the bodhisattva is awakened, it's just empty.

I'm not sure that this critique of mine holds water and I invite your thoughts on it.

Clayton's article concludes by agreeing with Keown on his critique of the Transcendency Thesis, but comes back to restate her position that this does not disqualify Buddhist ethics, at least in the case of Śāntideva, from being a form of consequentialism.

Update 2/1/10: on second thought, perhaps the paradox is not as intractable as it seems. Even mainstream consequentialists, who have great faith in people's ability to reason and thus make the best decisions, would admit that noone is omniscient and that mistakes happen. So Śāntideva could, too, be making a clearly consequentialist plea/argument here.

How to Teach Buddhist Ethics

The good news is that I've been invited to sunny southern California to teach Buddhist ethics (/philosophy?) to 50 college students over 5 days this month. The tough thing now is determining just how to go about teaching it.

In fact, the format is a bit up in the air (as far as I know), so some of my assumptions may be incorrect, but here is what I think I'm expected to do.

Give the students, who I assume will be fairly new to Buddhism, an overview of the entirety of Buddhist Ethics (Peter Harvey 2000 style) in 5 hours.

Yikes.

The fact is, I probably will teach right from his book, "An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics."

But I also had the odd notion of trying a dual chronological approach, starting in the 1960s with the publications of Winston King's "In the Hope of Nibbana" and (1970) Melford Spiro's "Buddhism and Society" - setting up the very simple dualism of kammic vs nibbanic Buddhism as an introduction. I could spend a whole lecture describing how these categories have been and could be used to describe the activities of Buddhists the world over (Geoffrey Samuel carefully utilizes them in his brilliant 1990 book on Tibetan Buddhism, "Civilized Shamans").

Then I would move forward to the late 1970s, when a panel at the American Academy of Religions, including Harvey Aronson and Donald Swearer, debunked the simplistic duality of kammic vs nibbanic Buddhism. Then again we could revisit Buddhist history to question the motivations behind certain words or activities by the Buddha and his followers.

Third, I could move forward to 1992 and Damien Keown's sweeping effort to categorize Buddhism as a species of virtue ethics and his critics. Here we would see the difficulties encountered with aspects of upaya (skillful means) which violate basic Buddhist Ethics.

Already I think I have enough for 5 days (easily) with just those three 'movements' in the history of the study of Buddhist Ethics. But I'm guessing this approach, basically saying, "let's look at Buddhist Ethics by seeing what Western scholars say it is," is not the best one, or the one that my employers will be satisfied with.

Perhaps an exploration of the study of Buddhist Ethics is a worthy project down the road. It would of course include folks like Hammalawa Saddhatissa and others who were influenced by and influential in the development of the academic discipline of Buddhist Ethics.

But for now, for students new to the religion, I think Harvey's approach is best.

Notes on Keown's review of Kalupahana's Book on Buddhist Ethics 1997

I have not read the book, "Ethics in Early Buddhism", or anything (that I recall) of substance from David Kalupahana. This review makes me want to read it (eventually) just to see what NOT to do in my own work. I recall being warned to be wary of Kalupahana's ideas by Paul Williams in Bristol as well.

The review is in The Journal of Religion, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 337-340

Buddhist Ethics - is there one?

This a question that has been posed, to some extent or another, by various writers over the years. One of those is Damien Keown (author of "The Nature of Buddhist Ethics" and various articles) and another is Georges Dreyfus (see his 1995 JBE article here). Both contend that Buddhism never developed an actual "ethics" as we in the West would see it.

One defender of the theory that Buddhists DID in fact have substantive ethical deliberation (and thus a real 'Buddhist ethics') is Amod Lele (unpublished 2007 Harvard Ph.D. dissertation - my gratitude to him for sharing this with me) in his work on Śāntideva.

What do we think?

Some questions:

1. What constitutes "Ethics"?
2. When did it arise in the "West"?
3. What prevented it from arising in Asian contexts (if in fact it didn't)?

Keown's claim (borrowed from Lele, p.49):

While Buddhist teachings include normative aspects, such as
the Five Precepts and the rules of the Vinaya, these are typically
presented simply as injunctions, rather than as conclusions
logically deduced from explicitly stated values and principles. In
other words, the Precepts are simply announced, and one is left
to figure out the invisible superstructure from which they are
derived. Thus although Buddhism has normative teachings, it
does not have normative ethics. (Keown 2005, 50)

Dreyfus's claim:

First, Tibetan Buddhist traditions did not develop systematic theoretical reflections on the nature and scope of ethics. This is not to say, as has been often misunderstood, that these traditions are ethically weak. Like other rich traditions, Tibetan Buddhist traditions have developed substantive ethical systems, at the personal, interpersonal and social levels, while lacking a theoretical reflection on the nature of their ethical beliefs and practices. This lack of theoretical ethics, what we could call second degree ethics in opposition to substantive ethics, affects not only Tibetan Buddhism, but Indian Buddhism and other related traditions, and is quite remarkable given the richness of Indian Buddhist philosophical reflection in general. Compared to domains such as the philosophy of language and epistemology, Indian Buddhist traditions never developed a similar systematic reflection on the nature of ethical concepts. This is not to say that notions such as virtue or goodness are unknown in Indian Buddhist traditions, but that they are not taken to be philosophically interesting. Ethical concepts are studied, but they are not thought to warrant a theoretical discussion. For example, in the Vinaya literature, which is often taken as the main reference in ethical discussions in many Buddhist traditions, there are extensive substantive discussions: what are the precepts, what is included in them, what is excluded, etc. Very little attention is devoted, however, to the nature of ethical concepts. Precepts are discussed practically, but their status is not systematically theorized. (p.28-9 in aforementioned article)

Keown's article cited by Lele is in:

Keown, Damien. 2005. Buddhism: Morality Without Ethics? In Buddhist
Studies From India to America: Essays in Honor of Charles S. Prebish, edited
by Damien Keown. London: Routledge.

A "Revisionist View of Buddhist Ethics" ?

In his 1994 paper, Buddhist Ethics in Western Context: The Virtues Approach, James Whitehill describes Damien Keown's work on Buddhist Ethics as a "well-argued, revisionist view of Buddhist ethics."

In a later paper (1995) Keown seems to acknowledge this distance of his own work from traditional Buddhism when he asks:

In the context of human rights, which is the theme of this paper, an important preliminary question would seem to be whether traditional Buddhism has any understanding of what is meant by "human rights" at all. Indeed, it may be thought that since the concept of "rights" is the product of an alien cultural tradition it would be utterly inappropriate to speak of rights of any kind - "human" or otherwise - in a Buddhist context. (from here, emphasis mine)

By this they seem to mean that Keown is consciously breaking from the "traditional" approach found in Asian countries and attempting to formulate a broader, more theoretical and systematic understanding of Buddhist Ethics.

Given this definition, my work will also take on a "revisionist" approach to Buddhist ethics. What this means exactly, I'm not sure. Both the traditionalist and Keown (and me for that matter) want to describe the actual ethics of Buddhism, not just something we are making up.

Perhaps the traditionalist looks more at what Buddhists do? Or what is primarily taught in the monasteries as ethics? Perhaps the traditionalist even shies away from the use of the term 'ethics', knowing it is a Western category and that no clear slice of 'Buddhism' (yet another Western category) will fit into it.

Perhaps what makes his work, and mine when I do it, revisionist is that it attempts to explain things in a way that Westerners will understand - distanced, objective, disengaged. Whereas the traditionalist writes to move the reader/student forward on the path. The objectives are different. But this is simply the difference between scholarly and practical/practitioner-based Buddhist works. Are these the same categories? Are there other similar categories -- such as immigrant/convert Buddhism in the West -- that have similar lack of utility beyond the most superficial usage?

What does it mean to break from "traditional" Buddhist thought? What limits must still be in place? Much to ponder...

Categorizing people/work

D. Keown (1992) opens his work with a great review of past writings in Buddhist Ethics. Some of that effort will have to be replicated in my own and should be sketched out here.

Keown himself: (p.1) "In the face of the complexity of Buddhist metaphysics it is easy to lose sight of the fact that Buddhism is a response to what is fundamentally an ethical problem - the perennial problem of the best kind of life for man to lead."

N.B. Keown clearly sets the stage with this sentence. In fact, if you agree with this it is very easy to follow Keown down the path to an Aristotelian interpretation of Buddhist Ethics. However, one must then ask what to do with all that darned metaphysics. Other thinkers, myself included, will find metaphysical issues central to Buddhist Ethics (not a red herring as Keown suggests, cf. p19)

p. 4 "Previous Research"

Most has been descriptive (not normative or metaethical).

Tachibana (1926) "So far as I know, no work is specifically devoted to this single subject" i.e. ethics in Buddhism.

Saddhatissa (1970, Buddhist Ethics)... Keown comments favorably.

Poussin (1927, La Morale Bouddhique) - based on the Abhidharmakośa, a record of debates; its as close as the tradition gets "to the discipline of moral philosophy."

~

(p.5)
Roderick Hindery (1978, Comparative Ethics in Hindu and Buddhist Traditions) "a 'lacuna' or 'perhaps a total gap' in the contemporary analysis of Mahāyāna Buddhist ethics (p.223)."

G.S.P. Misra (1984, Development of Buddhist Ethics); included work on psychology (Abhidharma) - ch.3; morality of the bodhisattva (ch.5); and transcendence of ethics in Tantra (ch.6).

~
more to come...