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- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
'This groundbreaking study provides a much-needed philosophical framework for those practising mindfulness as well as a call to recover the pragmatic and therapeutic dimensions of philosophy.' - Stephen Batchelor, author of After Buddhism and Secular Buddhism Modern readers tend to think of Buddhism as spending time alone meditating, searching for serenity. Stoicism calls to mind repressing our emotions in order to help us soldier on through adversity. But how accurate are our popular understandings of these traditions? And what can we learn from them without either buying in wholeheartedly to their radical ideals or else transmuting them into simple self-improvement regimes that bear little resemblance to their original aims? How can we achieve more than happiness? In More than Happiness, Antonia Macaro delves into both philosophies, focusing on the elements that fit with our sceptical age, and those which have the potential to make the biggest impact on how we live. From accepting that some things are beyond our control, to monitoring our emotions for unhealthy reactions, to shedding attachment to material things, there is much, she argues, that we can take and much that we'd do better to leave behind. In this synthesis of ancient wisdom, Macaro reframes the 'good life', and gets us to see the world as it really is and to question the value of the things we desire. The goal is more than happiness: living ethically and placing value on the right things in life.
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
As I was about to finish writing this book, I found myself driving along hedge-lined Devon lanes towards a Buddhist retreat centre, Gaia House. I have been coming here on and off for thirty years or so, attracted by the insights the Buddhist tradition seemed to offer but always questioning, trying to work out whether I could accept the whole belief system or, if not, what I should leave out and why. That journey of discovery had as many twists and turns as my drive, before I felt I could come up with any answers. My relationship with Stoicism followed a similar development.
I am neither a Buddhist nor a Stoic by inclination. The ancient philosopher I feel most in tune with is the more down-to-earth fourth-century Greek thinker Aristotle. But I have come back to Buddhism and Stoicism again and again over the years, despite my difficulties and reservations. Maybe it’s because their insights seem to get to the heart of our experience of life in a way that other philosophies don’t. I believe both traditions contain much daily wisdom that can help all of us to live better lives.
I know I am not the only one to feel like this. These traditions have proved to be durable sources of inspiration for generation after generation. Buddhist schools that originated anywhere between India and Japan have been thriving and growing in the West since the mid-twentieth century. And Stoicism, which flourished first in ancient Greece and then in Rome, has experienced a surprising rise in popularity in recent years. After centuries of attracting small numbers of aficionados, there are now numerous books, blogs, online forums and an annual Stoic Week devoted to it. A Stoic approach to business has been advocated in websites and publications like Business Insider and Forbes. Philosopher Nancy Sherman has explored the relationship of Stoicism to the military in her book Stoic Warriors.
Both traditions have helped to give birth, directly or indirectly and with much shedding of detail, to a number of therapeutic techniques that in recent years have swept through the US and the UK, rapidly spreading to other countries. In particular, Stoicism is one of the inspirations behind Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), while Buddhist meditation is the source of a range of mindfulness-based interventions that aim to help with various conditions such as chronic pain, stress and depression.
Both Buddhism and Stoicism promise no less than unlocking the door to peace of mind and the end of suffering. Yet this comes at a price. Both are radical systems that ask much of their followers: ultimately, to challenge and curb their attachment to the things of the world. Perhaps their appeal lies precisely in this radical nature. More moderate thinkers like Aristotle and Epicurus, a contemporary of the early Stoics, are not enjoying such a resurgence.
I have struggled with aspects of both traditions. It’s not only that they are demanding. They are also inevitably interlaced with antiquated ideas, so it is a challenge to extract a message that is at ease in the modern world. We tend nowadays to adopt a naturalistic outlook, one that seeks to explain the universe without reference to anything supernatural. This seems right: our beliefs should be compatible with our best science, which is thoroughly naturalistic. When we are tempted to tolerate aspects of the Buddhist or Stoic traditions that clash with this naturalistic worldview, we risk taking too much from them. On the other hand, we might take too little if we end up borrowing only a few tips in the service of a conventional notion of happiness, so that the radical content is all but lost. In this book I try to walk a tightrope between too much and too little.
My main aim is to explore what we may extricate that fits in with a naturalistic, questioning point of view, but that is more than just tips on how to be happy, as happiness is not everything. This is why I’ve chosen to concentrate on the parts of both traditions that have the potential to make an impact on how we live, but that also stand up to scrutiny and preserve something of their original radical nature – challenging rather than indulging received notions of who we are and what our aims in life should be.
Both traditions placed great value on seeing things clearly, so rejecting their more outmoded ideas is actually more faithful to their spirit. As Seneca put it, ‘Our predecessors achieved a great deal, but their work is still unfinished.’1 We should feel comfortable putting aside the doctrines that don’t quite square up: freezing them in time is no way to pay homage to the creative thinkers who shaped them.
There are many ‘Buddhisms’ and ‘Stoicisms’; therefore the versions I present in this book are composites. I have focused on early Buddhism partly because I find its relative simplicity most congenial, and partly because it seems more readily comparable with Stoicism. And I have quoted mainly from the Roman Stoics partly because of their emphasis on ethical issues, and partly because only fragments remain of the earlier works. I have made liberal use of quotations from ancient sources of both traditions to let the authors’ voices speak for themselves.
In light of our profound ignorance of what the Buddha actually said, whenever I write ‘the Buddha says’ it should be read as ‘the Buddha is reported as saying’. I use the Pāli rather than Sanskrit form of words, apart from ‘karma’ and ‘nirvana’, which are now terms in common usage.2
With huge literatures to deal with, and a short space in which to deal with them, my choice of what to cover has had to be ruthlessly lean, and therefore my presentation is highly selective.3 I have tried to keep it simple and capture the spirit rather than follow the letter. I am certainly not trying to say anything about what authentic Buddhism or Stoicism should be.
What follows is a personal perspective – which has emerged both from my lifelong search and from engaging with the material – on how to approach these traditions so as to take what we need from them and not more. Along the way, I highlight many of the strategies advocated in both traditions, and in the concluding chapter I describe the ideas and practices that I think we could all benefit from adopting. I hope to show that with the right approach a wealth of inspiration can be ours.
Notes
1. Seneca 2015, 64.9
2.Kamma and nibbāna in Pāli. Pāli is the language of much of the earliest Buddhist literature.
3. There are many lists in Buddhism – three refuges, five hindrances, five precepts, seven factors of awakening, ten perfections and so on, not to mention of course the four noble truths and the eightfold path. Only a few of these have made it into my discussion, but for a ‘list of Buddhist lists’ see Leigh Brasington’s website: leighb.com/listlist.htm. As for the scholarly debates currently ruffling feathers on many of the topics I touch on, clearly it would not have been possible to delve into them.
Chapter 1
SETTING THE SCENE
What do we really know?
Bodh Gaya, in the Indian state of Bihar, is nowadays a busy part of the world, full of crowded, noisy temples. Buddhist pilgrims from the four corners come to pay homage to the place where the Buddha is said to have attained his awakening, under a Ficus religiosa – subsequently also known as a Bodhi tree. The current tree is just over a century old, although its lineage is supposed to go back to the original tree. We don’t really know. The truth is that we don’t really know much about the story of the Buddha at all.
The kernel from which the legend of the Buddha grew might go something like this: Gotama, the future Buddha, lived at some point in the fifth century BCE and died sometime around 400 BCE, give or take twenty years. He probably lived at least part of his life in north-eastern India. At that time in India there was an established culture of wanderers and renouncers – people who had given up a conventional social role and become mendicants, dedicating themselves to the spiritual life. What this meant exactly was understood differently by different groups, but it generally revolved around ascetic practices and meditative techniques. Gotama left a comfortable background to pursue this lifestyle, sought instruction from teachers and experimented with but ultimately rejected extreme asceticism. Eventually he had an awakening, a powerful transformative experience that led him to establish a small group of followers at first, and then teach all over northern India for many years, dying in old age.
The texts embellish this story with many details, some more fantastical than others. The future Buddha, for instance, descends from Tusita heaven into his mother’s womb. His birth is accompanied by many portents, such as being welcomed by gods and the appearance of a splendid light. The priests declare to his father, a king, that his son has the marks of a Great Man, predicting he will become either a great king or a Buddha. He is brought up in luxury but becomes disillusioned with his life through a series of encounters: with an old man, a sick man, a dead man and an ascetic. This prompts his departure and subsequent spiritual search, enlightenment and teaching.
While its bare bones may well have some historical basis, the story of the Buddha is to be taken as legend rather than biography. A similar story was also told of a disciple of the Buddha, Vasa: ‘The son of a wealthy gildmaster in Vārānasi, he wakes up one night with feelings of disgust for the life of licentious luxury that surrounds him. He escapes from the house and the city gates open miraculously for him. However, instead of having to search for a religious teacher, he goes straight to Śākyamuni who is teaching in the Deer Park.’1 Was this a common story of the time, maybe some kind of ideal life trajectory?
More than that, the story of the Buddha’s life as it is usually told also applies to all the other Buddhas that are said to have preceded Gotama, of which there are a few. In one discourse the Buddha tells the story of his manifold previous lives, starting with Buddha Vipassī 91 aeons ago (an aeon being basically a very long period of time), through to the Buddhas Sikhī, Vessabhū, Kakusandha, Konāgamana and Kassapa, and ending with the current Buddha. Similarities and differences are listed: which clan they belonged to, under what tree they were awakened and so on. Lifespan, through these countless aeons, reduced from 80,000 years in the time of Vipassī, to scarcely a hundred in the time of Gotama.2
Differences in timescale and detail notwithstanding, the essentials are the same. Vipassī’s biography has exactly the same turning points as Gotama’s: the descent from Tusita heaven; the encounters with an old man, a sick man and a dead man; the decision to leave his comfortable surroundings to embrace the homeless spiritual life; the awakening; the teaching. This generic Buddha-story may well have preceded the full telling of Gotama’s life in the Buddhist texts, which seems to suggest that the life course described is more like a typical Buddha’s CV than a historical record.
The appeal of the idea that there is history and biography lurking in the early Buddhist texts if only we can discover it is irresistible, but it has been discarded as wishful thinking by more than one scholar. The story of the Buddha was never intended as pure history. These texts are the stuff of myth and legend and so they will remain. There may well have been a real person at the root of the Buddha’s legend, but history and myth cannot be disentangled.3
As for the Buddha’s teachings, despite modern books having titles like What the Buddha Taught, we don’t really know what that was either. The main body of work that has been handed down over the centuries as containing the teachings of the Buddha is known as the Pāli Canon. This is divided into three areas: discourses (suttas), monastic rules and commentaries.
The texts that make up the Pāli Canon had been transmitted orally for centuries before being committed to writing. It seems that individual followers would specialise in reciting particular kinds of texts, and there would be scope for adjusting length, or detail, according to context. The Canon manifests all the features of oral literature: mnemonic formulae, overlapping lists, repetitions, stock descriptions (sometimes ending up in the wrong places). The doctrinal discrepancies and contradictions that show up in the texts could be due to several reasons, for instance that teachings varied according to context and purpose, that competing schools left their mark in different places, or that doctrines from non-Buddhist schools were gradually incorporated.
Contemporary scholarship is split between those who believe it is possible somehow to isolate the original teachings from later interpretations and those who are more sceptical. But even if we believe that at least some of those teachings have been preserved in the Canon, it would be naive to think that this records the words of the Buddha exactly as he spoke them. Even the early discourses would have undergone potentially major changes in the few generations after the Buddha, and probably reflect later developments. Late additions are likely to be found cheek by jowl with earlier material. The layers are likely to be so interwoven as to make it extremely challenging, maybe impossible, to separate the Buddha’s own thought from that of those who followed him.
We know a little more about Stoicism. The school was founded by Zeno of Citium around 300 BCE. Its name came from the location of Stoics’ meetings: the Stoa Poikile, or painted porch, in Athens’ city centre. This is now an unkempt, fenced-off area where cats roam and adjacent buildings are adorned with graffiti. But at the time it was part of a busy public area, where many other philosophical schools were peddling their wares: Cynics and Epicureans were active, and older centres of learning like Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum were still open. Zeno was followed by Cleanthes and then Chrysippus as head of the Stoics, the latter often considered the most significant early Stoic figure. Teaching continued until sometime in the first century BCE, when the centre of gravity of the tradition shifted to Rome, by then the main cultural centre of the Western world.
But a lot is unknown. The writings of the early, Greek Stoic philosophers are mostly lost, their ideas known mainly through other writers’ accounts. This is why reconstructing their views is an uncertain task, especially since those later authors were often hostile towards Stoicism. The work of the Roman Stoics – Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius – on the other hand, has survived through the centuries, either as writings by the philosophers themselves or as notes taken by their students. By the beginning of the third century CE the Stoic school was declining, but the Roman Stoics continued to influence philosophers and psychologists with almost unbroken popularity until today.
Similarities between Hellenistic philosophical schools (dating from the fourth century BCE, the time of Alexander the Great) and early Indian philosophy are often remarked on. There are intriguing, if wispy, glimpses of cultural transmission between India and the Greek world, but few hard facts. The geographical link between the two cultural spheres was the vast area covered first by the Persian Empire and then by the empire of Alexander the Great, through which trade and diplomatic routes developed. The Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor remarks that there was no ‘East’ and ‘West’ at that time, and that the ‘world of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE that extended from Athens to Pāṭaliputta was in many respects a single, interactive cultural sphere.’4
A central character in this story is the Greek sceptical philosopher Pyrrho of Elis, who around 334 BCE travelled to north-east India with Alexander the Great. He wrote nothing himself, but we know something of his thought through other authors’ texts. Diogenes Laertius, who documented the lives of Greek philosophers, tells us that meeting Indian sages led Pyrrho ‘to adopt a most noble philosophy … taking the form of agnosticism and suspension of judgement’, and that this was held to bring with it ‘tranquillity like its shadow’.5 One recent, controversial, theory holds that Pyrrho’s ideas advocating letting go of all views actually derive from Buddhism.6
Diogenes also tells us that Pyrrho ‘led a life consistent with this doctrine, going out of his way for nothing, taking no precaution, but facing all risks as they came, whether carts, precipices, dogs or what not’.7 On the other hand we are also told that Pyrrho lived to be nearly 90, so perhaps we should take these reports of carelessness with a pinch of salt.
Another noteworthy character is the Greek ambassador Megasthenes, who travelled in India around 305 BCE. Again, his writings have not survived, although some of what he wrote was preserved by other authors. Apparently Megasthenes mentioned two kinds of sects: the ‘Brachmanes’ and the ‘Sarmanes’ – the latter divided into forest-dwellers, living on fruits and leaves, and ‘physicians’, who lived in towns. These terms seem to correspond to the more common distinction between brāhmaṇa and samaṇa. Brāhmaṇa, or brahmins, were members of a priestly class dedicated to maintaining the religious tradition rooted in the ancient Indian texts called the Vedas. Samaṇa were wandering ascetics, whose movement the Buddha is said to have initially joined.
We can’t be sure whether there was any direct philosophical influence of India on Greece or Greece on India, and if so what exactly it was, but this remains a fascinating issue that underscores the striking parallels between Buddhism and Stoicism.
Are Buddhism and Stoicism religions?
Some belief systems form complete wholes and require followers to sign up to every tenet, making it harder to borrow ideas from them. This is especially true of religions. Buddhism is usually classified as a religion, although this is often disputed. Stoicism on the other hand is normally considered a philosophy, although it has some features in common with religions. Neither fits neatly into our current template of what a religion is. But then it all depends on what we mean by ‘religion’.
Defining religion is hard: there is probably no one definition that captures everything that at one time or other has been considered religious, and if we’re not careful we can end up with one so broad that it catches all sorts of non-religious stuff into its net. For example, according to the psychologist William James:
‘the life of religion … consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.’8
James’ definition errs on the side of inclusivity. If we were to adopt it, then both Buddhism and Stoicism would qualify as religions. Whether we conceive of religion so liberally or not, this kind of definition draws attention to the fact that the traditions may not best be seen as simple self-help methods, because they rest on complex ideas about the nature and structure of ultimate reality (what is known as metaphysics). This might not be obvious from popular books, in which what is more unpalatable is often quietly edited out, as if it were never there.
It’s a well-known fact that the Buddha made pronouncements against metaphysics, as his concern was mainly practical. In one discourse the monk Māluṅkyāputta starts brooding on the fact that the Buddha has left certain things unaddressed – things like whether the world is eternal, whether it is infinite, the relationship between body and soul, what happens after death. So he decides to go to the Buddha to sort it out. If the Buddha were to refuse to answer, he would return to ordinary life. The Buddha rebukes the monk, producing the famous simile of the arrow:
‘It is as if, Māluṅkyāputta, there were a man struck by an arrow that was smeared thickly with poison; his friends and companions, his family and relatives would summon a doctor to see to the arrow. And the man might say, “I will not draw out this arrow so long as I do not know whether the man by whom I was struck was of the Brahman, Ruler, Trader, or Servant class” … or … “so long as I do not know his name and his family … whether he was tall, short or of medium height … whether he was black, brown or light-skinned … whether he comes from this or that village, town or city …”’9
He continues in the same tone about what kind of bow or bow-string it was, what the arrowhead was like and so on. The Buddha explains that the spiritual life does not involve settling all questions regarding the ultimate nature of reality, because this ‘is not relevant to the goal’, which is nothing less than ending suffering:
‘Whether one holds the view that the world is eternal or the view that it is not eternal, there is still birth, ageing, death, grief, despair, pain, and unhappiness – and it is the destruction of these here and now that I declare.’
In another discourse, the Buddha tells the story of a monk who is curious about where the four elements that make up the world ‘cease without remainder’, and who, being able to access the god-realms in meditation, asks the same question to ever-ascending hierarchies of gods. They don’t know. He finally appeals to the all-seeing, all-powerful god Brahmā for an answer, but in a strangely humorous twist the great god takes the monk aside and confesses that even he doesn’t know the answer.
The Buddha’s lack of interest in metaphysics sits alongside a reluctance to foreground supernatural powers or causes. In the same discourse, for instance, the Buddha has to deal with the householder Kevaddha, who is urging him to get ‘some monks to perform superhuman feats and miracles’ to impress the locals. The Buddha replies that’s not his style. When Kevaddha insists, the Buddha goes on to say that while he allows the miracles of psychic power and telepathy, he knows they would be misattributed to charms if displayed, and therefore ‘I dislike, reject and despise them.’10
But despite the Buddha’s reservations, the supernatural pervades the texts. The Buddhist cosmos is thick with gods. The Buddha and his followers lived among and interacted with ‘fairies, demons, goblins, ghosts, nymphs, dragons, angels, as well as various gods’.11
And while the Buddha clearly disliked showy displays, a number of discourses set out the supernatural abilities that can be achieved through meditative states. In addition to powers like mind reading and recollection of past lives, the ascetic life yields the following fruits:
‘being one, [the monk] becomes many, being many he becomes one; he appears then vanishes; he passes unhindered through house walls, through city walls, and through mountains as if through air; he rises up out of the earth and sinks down into it as if it were water; he walks on water as if it were solid like earth; he travels through the sky cross-legged as if he were a bird with wings; he touches and strokes with his hand things of such power and energy as the sun and moon; he has mastery with his body as far as the world of Brahmā.’12
Many people protest that all this supernatural stuff is a late addition to the more minimalist and purer original message. Perhaps because of some of the Buddha’s pronouncements, a scholarly tradition developed according to which Buddhism is really a down to earth philosophy onto which supernatural beings and metaphysical flourishes were stuck.13
But this may be wishful thinking. A wandering ascetic of the time of the Buddha is likely to have believed many things we find improbable. The supernatural is inextricably woven into the fabric of Buddhism. It is possible to create a ‘bespoke’ Buddhism by selecting the texts that suit us and leaving contradictory ones out, but that would be moulding Buddhism in our own image. Supernatural and naturalistic aspects of Buddhist doctrine are deeply intertwined. If Buddhism is practical or non-metaphysical, it is so only relatively.
Even away from supernatural beings and extrasensory powers, some key Buddhist ideas are uneasily squared with a naturalistic worldview. Much of the Buddhist edifice is built on the twin foundations of karma and rebirth. It is not entirely clear where these concepts originally came from, but they became common and widespread in ancient India. The basic idea of karma is that our intentional actions (which in Buddhism include purely mental states like intentions and volitions) accumulate and continue to produce consequences well beyond the end of this life, directing us towards a good or bad rebirth.
The idea that Buddhism is a purely secular philosophy devoid of religious or supernatural elements, therefore, is not entirely in tune with its teachings as they have been handed down. The question for the secular-minded is how many Buddhist ideas can survive being uprooted from the religious soil in which they grew.
What of Stoicism’s relationship to metaphysics? Like Buddhism, it is far from being a mere collection of wise maxims about how to live and is very much an integrated system in which the practical advice relies on views about the cosmos and our place in it.
According to Diogenes Laertius, for the Stoics God is:
‘a living being, immortal, rational, perfect or intelligent in happiness, admitting nothing evil, taking providential care of the world and all that therein is, but he is not of human shape. He is, however, the artificer of the universe and, as it were, the father of all’.14
The Stoic God can be difficult to pin down. Without going into too much detail at this stage, according to the Stoics the cosmos is providentially ordered by a divine rational principle that suffuses everything. This is what they call God, or Zeus, and sometimes even refer to, in the plural, as ‘gods’. Our minds are fragments of this principle, ‘literally “offshoots” of God, parts of God that God has assigned to the mind or self of each person’.15 If this is our essential nature, where does evil come from? The Stoics believed it originates in humanity, but this doesn’t seem to get to its ultimate source. It seems that Chrysippus wrote works on fate, providence, divination and oracles, in which he had a go at various answers: cosmically, good and evil are necessarily interdependent; or evil is only a by-product of good; or some apparent evils are actually goods.
Marcus Aurelius was concerned with this problem too. He writes:
‘Everything derives from it – that universal mind – either as effect or consequence. The lion’s jaws, the poisonous substances, and every harmful thing – from thorns to mud … are by-products of the good and the beautiful.’16
It is unclear to what extent the Stoics believed in a traditional person-like God. The Stoic Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus appears to indicate that they did:
‘Zeus, giver of all, you of the dark clouds, of the blazing thunderbolt,
save men from their baneful inexperience
and disperse it, father, far from their souls; grant that they may achieve
the wisdom with which you confidently guide all with justice
so that we may requite you with honour for the honour you give us
praising your works continually, as is fitting for mortals’.17
On the other hand, this and other similar verses could be read not as straightforward prayers but as direct addresses to a more rational part of ourselves, like in these lines by Seneca:
‘You need not raise your hands to heaven; you need not beg the temple keeper for privileged access, as if a near approach to the cult image would give us a better hearing. The god is near you – with you – inside you.’18
There is a tension between a religious reading of the Stoic God, in which God is the providential architect of the world, and a more naturalistic reading, in which all this God talk is just a traditional way of referring to natural processes. Either way, nature is an expression of a divine rational principle and God is part of nature rather than a supernatural deity standing outside it. Perhaps because this was not religion in the most traditional sense, already in ancient times the sincerity of the Stoics’ religious intentions was doubted, and they were accused of bringing in God to give an appearance of piety.19 Although the Stoics’ religious beliefs were relatively pared down, however, they did deeply affect their views on how we should conduct our lives.
The question we need to address is this: to what extent are supernatural and metaphysical elements essential to provide a foundation for ethical and practical advice? Does it really make sense to take only parts of these traditions to help ourselves to live flourishing lives, as is our aim in this book? As philosopher Owen Flanagan asks:
‘Imagine Buddhism without rebirth and without a karmic system that guarantees justice ultimately will be served, without nirvana, without bodhisattvas flying on lotus leaves, without Buddha worlds, without nonphysical states of mind, without any deities, without heaven and hell realms, without oracles, and without lamas who are reincarnations of lamas. What would be left?’20
What indeed. This is what we’ll try to grapple with in this book, about both traditions. In the next two chapters I will look at how they view the causes of the human predicament, and in the following two chapters at the solutions they offer. Then in the second part of the book I will move on to some reflections and perspectives on what gems may be left if we discard the more metaphysical aspects.
Notes
1. Snellgrove 2002, p. 7
2.‘Mahāpadāna Sutta’. Walshe 1987, 14
3. E.g. Penner 2009; Gethin 1998, p.16. But Stephen Batchelor points out that the little vignettes in the Pāli Canon describing daily life may well be truthful, since any later editors of the texts would have had no doctrinal reason to alter them.
4. Batchelor 2016
5. Diogenes Laertius, 9.61, 9.107
6. Beckwith 2015; Batchelor 2016
7. Diogenes Laertius, 9.62
8. James 1960, p. 69
9.‘Cūḷamāluṅkya Sutta’. Gethin 2008, p. 171
10. ‘Kevaddha Sutta’. Walshe 1987, 11
11. Gethin 1998, p. 128. Anālayo (2016) also comments that as far as we can tell, the Buddha and his disciples believed in a variety of celestial beings (p. 59).
12.‘Sāmaññaphala Sutta’. Gethin 2008, p. 31
13. Gethin 1998, p. 130
14. Diogenes Laertius, 7.147
15. Long 2002, pp. 145–6
16. Marcus Aurelius 2003, 6.36a
17. In Sellars 2006, pp. 91–2
18. Seneca 2015, 41.1
19. Sellars 2006, p. 93
20. Flanagan 2011, p. 3
Chapter 2
DUKKHA HAPPENS: WE SUFFER
The human condition
Life is not for the fainthearted. Just listen to the news. There are natural disasters: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts, tsunamis, epidemics. There are human-caused afflictions: robbery and murder, war, terrorism, discrimination, child abuse, domestic violence, racism, slavery, genocide, environmental destruction and people being generally nasty to each other. Turning to look inside, even the sunniest person is unlikely to dodge forever some version of grief, fear, regret, anger, loneliness.
It’s the human condition. Of course, we don’t suffer all the time. If we’re very lucky, plenty of joy and thrills will come our way alongside the angst and the distress, and suffering will be minimal. If we’re very unlucky – our lives blighted by war, poverty, disease – the stream of suffering can outweigh the good. But whether we’re lucky or unlucky, death will be waiting. The pain of losing loved ones and the knowledge that at some point we will cease to run around on this earth are things that the fortunate and the unfortunate have to share.
That a lifetime of busyness and striving to improve our life – make it perfect even – should end in death seems absurd, sometimes to the point of draining all meaning out of life. Who could blame us for wanting to forget all about it? And yet the awareness is there, poking us, not letting us avert our gaze for too long.
