At a certain point in The Moral Animal, after completing his summary of the main hypotheses and findings of EP, Robert Wright alters his course for a moment and briefly surveys the teachings of several spiritual traditions as a prelude to proposing his own answer to the human dilemma. It is in those pages where, after mentioning some ideas shared by diverse religious currents, he devotes a few glowing paragraphs to Buddhism and describes with seeming approval the Buddha’s project as implying a “fundamental defiance of human nature”.
Has Mr. Wright “gone Buddhist” all of a sudden? No, not at all; in fact, this brotherly embrace conceals an implicit jab. As Buddhists, we shouldn’t accept this judgment on its own terms, heroic though it may sound, without taking note of its polemic content regarding the Dharma, lest we overlook an absolutely crucial disagreement. Indeed, although Robert Wright highlights the enormous transcendence of the Buddha’s contribution –portraying him as a kind of Prometheus assaulting the Heavens out of love for mankind–, in so doing he takes for granted a notion of human nature far apart from what the Buddha himself claimed to have discovered through his own direct experience. What is human nature? That is the question; there lies the discrepancy; this is where we can best perceive the chasm that separates two methods whose criteria for truth are radically different.
The main problem with this verdict is that, contrary to what Robert Wright may assume, the real defiance of Buddha Dharma is not directed at human nature but rather at views of human nature such as that espoused by EP. Sure, the Buddhist path is full of challenges if we choose to thus understand its constant invitations to liberate ourselves from the tyranny of our habits, cravings and fears (no small feat, indeed); but none of that can compare in importance with the challenge the Dharma poses to the programming accumulated in our minds in the course of our eventful evolution –precisely because, unlike EP, it denies that it is an inherent part of human nature and sees much of it as an accidental and undesirable accretion. So, instead of defying human nature, Buddha Dharma poses a challenge to our self-complacency, to any idea that we cannot go beyond our inherited conditioning, because it is based on the experience of someone who did manage to break through; and, as long as one member of the species has done so, that same achievement falls within the realm of possibility for the entire species. Consequently, the Dharma declares itself available to all those who wish to try it for themselves, like so many others have done in the past, since it grants supreme value to first-hand experience (without which nothing in Buddhism makes sense, really) over any type of cognitive science. This and none other is the true spirit of Dharma, which explains the defiant tone of many of the Buddha’s expressions:
Better to live in freedom and wisdom for one day
than to lead a conditioned life of bondage for a hundred years.
as well as its refusal to compromise and its continuous encouragement to shed the chains that keep us bound to repetitive and harmful patterns of behavior. This is therefore Buddha Dharma’s starting point, an ambitious program within the reach of anybody with enough conviction and resolution to try it:
Cut down the whole forest of selfish desires, not just one tree only.
Cut down the whole forest and you will be on your way to liberation.
Here, on the thoughtless obedience to craving for pleasure, is where the Dharma concentrates its artillery in the first stages of the path to liberation. But it is important to realize that, contrary to religious and social systems, the Buddhist prescription does not operate via commandments dictated by and followed with the cognitive mind, but only advises to restrain the impulses of identity, firmly but gently, with determination, composure, and patience –just like one would restrain a wild galloping horse steadily and without jerking at the reins to avoid pulling horse and rider down to the ground. These are not peremptory commands issued from a higher authority, but advice transmitted to whoever may want to put it into practice, based on the experience of thousands of people who have been down this path before and have found out that sheer repression does not work.
For the Buddha, the problem exists in the human mind and is quite serious but, contrary to EP, there is also a total and definitive solution to it instead of a contract negotiated between individuals and groups trying to accommodate their diverging interests, as in the utilitarian stance. In the light of these observations it makes more sense now to read in full a passage from the Dhammapada, quoted before only in part, that completes the picture of the Buddhist restraint on pleasures:
Like a spider caught in its own web
is a person driven by fierce cravings.
Break out of the web,
and turn away from the world of sensory pleasure and sorrow.
If you want to reach the other shore of existence,
give up what is before, behind, and in between.
Set your mind free, and go beyond birth and death.
Such is the Dhammapada: under the guise of an innocent handbook for beginners, there lurks a subversive manifesto full of urgent calls to dethrone the three false kings (i.e., the identities) who have usurped the mind’s functions and the direction of our lives along with it. This image of crossing a river is quite frequent in Buddhist teachings, whose practical criterion is manifest in the Parable of the Raft: when all is said and done, Buddha Dharma is nothing but a means to cover that distance, after which, being as it is a disposable method, one can forget about Buddhism and all its paraphernalia unless he/she wishes to assist as a guide others who are making the same journey. Before that, however, he/she must have completed the course that separates this shore, stained Samsara (our experience of the world with identities and suffering), from the other shore, where human nature can unfold free from the impediments of inherited conditioning.
If you long to know what is hard to know
and can resist the temptations of the world, you will cross the river of life.
Cross the river bravely; conquer all your passions.
Go beyond your likes and dislikes and all fetters will fall away.
Cross the river bravely; conquer all your passions.
Go beyond the world of fragments, and know the deathless ground of life.
None of this is a quixotic call to embrace lost causes or to get bogged down in hopeless struggles. Although strenuous, it falls within the reach of human beings:
[The saint] has completed his voyage; he has gone beyond sorrow.
The fetters of his life have fallen from him, and he lives in full freedom.
Once again, the voice resounding in these fighting proclamations is light-years away from the numbed-out and ashen image of Dharma some divulge in their ignorance. Nobody says the journey is easy; in fact, perhaps no other method shows a deeper and more detailed understanding of the difficulties involved. On account of that lucidity, Robert Wright acknowledges a hefty dose of wisdom in the advice of those who, like the Buddha, mistrust the alluring charms of pleasure:
In all these assaults on the senses there is a great wisdom –not only about the addictiveness of pleasures but about their ephemerality. The essence of addiction, after all, is that pleasure tends to dissipate and leave the mind agitated, hungry for more. The idea that just one more dollar, one more dalliance, one more rung on the ladder will leave us feeling sated reflects a misunderstanding about human nature; we are designed to feel that the next great goal will bring bliss, and the bliss is designed to evaporate shortly after we get there. Natural selection has a malicious sense of humor; it leads us along with a series of promises and then keeps saying “Just kidding”. As the Bible puts it, “All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled”. Remarkably, we go our whole lives without ever really catching on.
The advice of the sages –that we refuse to play this game– is nothing less than an incitement to mutiny, to rebel against our creator. Sensual pleasures are the whip natural selection uses to control us, to keep us in the thrall of its warped value system. To cultivate some indifference to them is one plausible route to liberation. While few of us can claim to have traveled far on this route, the proliferation of this scriptural advice suggests it has been followed some distance with some success.
On re-reading these paragraphs, I sometimes wonder if they’re not the most explicit validation of Dharma I have ever seen coming from the pen of a non-Buddhist. And this is so despite Robert Wright’s implication that such a course of action, no matter how valuable it may be, is uncertain in the long run and therefore impractical on a large scale. The silence of The Moral Animal when it comes to recommending a Dharma-like path is eloquent; still, that does not diminish one bit the light it sheds, almost willy-nilly, on the Buddhist project. In my view, few interpretations, even those of renowned masters, are able to underscore so efficiently the Dharma’s true wager. Nevertheless, if we choose to uphold Buddha Dharma, it is still essential to supplement this newly gained cognitive awareness with deep teachings, timely practices and a sustained day-to-day attention in order to match it with the warmth of inner transformation. Only thus may we further the blooming of the compassion and wisdom which for the Dharma are the truest expression of our hidden human nature.
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