Could it be that the Buddha’s cautions regarding hedonism were unfounded and/or grossly exaggerated? In his support, Robert Wright justifies in logical terms the language we have just seen in the Dhammapada, however backward it may sound, when thus explaining a dilemma inherent in the human condition:
The concept of “evil”, though less metaphysically primitive than, say, “demons”, doesn’t fit easily into a modern scientific worldview. Still, people seem to find it useful and the reason is that it is metaphorically apt. There is indeed a force devoted to enticing us into various pleasures that are (or once were) in our genetic interests but do not bring long-term happiness to us and may bring great suffering to others. You could call that force the ghost of natural selection. More concretely, you could call it our genes (some of our genes, at least). If it will help to actually use the word evil, there’s no reason not to.
What light, if any, does this explanation cast on the Buddha’s attitude toward pleasure? Enough to unveil certain implicit assumptions in his analysis of the unconscious mechanisms at work in the process –something which he didn’t go into in detail in his teachings, perhaps because he deemed it superfluous for an audience like his, brought up in a culture that had long studied and contemplated these matters.
Beyond the experience of pleasure itself, the great danger the Buddha denounces time and again in the Dhammapada is careless distraction, due to the automatic consequences it brings about: the fixed stimulus-response loops we repeat in our minds, which bring about compulsive behavioral patterns that tend to escape our notice.
All human beings are subject to attachment and thirst for pleasure.
Hankering after these, they are caught in the cycle of birth and death
[the constant rebirth in the mind of the “three unwholesome roots” or identities].
Driven by this thirst, they run about frightened like a hunted hare,
suffering more and more.
How could that be? Because in daily life one is often faced with a choice between alternatives, one of which holds a visible and instant reward, while the other offers no apparent recompense; and it is the seductiveness of that reward, in the form of pleasure, which generally leads us to choose the easier path until it becomes a habit. Such is the underlying analysis in the Buddha’s admonishments, which on occasion are compressed to the point of seeming bland truisms unless we care to “unzip” them in a way that makes sense:
Evil deeds, which harm oneself, are easy to do; good deeds are not so easy.
What kind of picture of human motivation emerges from this Buddhist psychology? As loaded with Christian connotations as it may sound, it too hinges on the dicey concept of temptation. There is no need, however, to understand the term in a religious sense: all that “temptation” really means is that human experience often occurs in the form of a crossroads, with one option that promises instant gratification but is sterile or even harmful in the long run, and another that is difficult and presents no obvious recompense but is correct and subtly nourishing for oneself and others. Whether we are on a spiritual path or not, this predicament constitutes a meaningful part of human experience in all cultures and eras.
According to this view, were are enmeshed in the psychological dynamics of our various addictions and the great danger the Buddha warns against is living heedlessly on auto-pilot, because this particular pilot has very clear ideas of its own that nevertheless seldom promote our long-term well-being –and, furthermore, has access to a veritable arsenal of candies with which to entice us on our road to perdition and then keep us numbed out in our ill-fated detour. This pilot, who is really nothing but an impersonal process, is what Buddhism personifies in the figure called Mara, whose mastery over our lives has devastating consequences:
The compulsive urges of the thoughtless grow like a creeper.
They jump like a monkey from one life to another, looking for fruit in the forest.
When these urges drive us, sorrow spreads like wild grass.
Contrary to what is often claimed, the problem for Dharma is not so much desire as such but craving, due to the compulsive element it contains. There is in craving something external that overwhelms and subdues its host, so to speak, to its wishes; it does not tolerate opposition well nor does it gladly suffer questioning or deferral. In fact, it’s an unwholesome inertia that drags us to those behaviors we have reinforced through assiduous practice, turning them into ever deeper ruts which become increasingly difficult to break away from. Whether we call it “Mara” like Buddhists do or “the ghost of natural selection” like the Darwinists, it is a typical example of a vicious circle in which each wrong step increases the likelihood that the next step will also being incorrect –and thus a good example of how mundane karma works:
If a man is tossed about by doubts, full of strong passions,
And yearning only for what is delightful,
his thirst will grow more and more,
and he will indeed make his fetters strong.
Like a spider caught in its own web is a person driven by fierce cravings.
So this, in a nutshell and in plain English, is what the Buddha is saying: beware of the subconscious programming that leads you to seek pleasure, because in the end it does not defend your interests but others that are alien to you, harmful to your ultimate well-being, and moreover invalid in the overall scheme of things.
Is the Buddha’s message more acceptable when clothed in these terms? Hopefully, yes, insofar as it is more understandable. In the end, the great advantage of applying an evolutionary approach to the Buddhist perspective is, in my opinion, that it makes moralizing superfluous; it is enough to explain temptation as a set of instructions reinforced in the human mind through repetition (that is, conditioned) along the many millennia of our evolution as a species, despite being prompted by and adjusted to circumstances widely different from those we enjoy today. That, in large measure, is the tragedy of the modern human being: that the material and social conditions we live in have superseded our genetic programming, and yet that obsolete program is still up and running: a seemingly inexhaustible source of friction and suffering for all, men and women, elderly and young, rich and poor; in a word, for all human beings, precisely because they are human.
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