Words&Dirt

It’s been nearly a decade since my favorite undergraduate philosophy professor introduced me to Owen Flanagan. Flanagan is part of a vibrant but relatively new philosophical niche: naturalized ethics. The field plumbs the depths of philosophical history, plucks out tidbits that harmonize with modern findings about the capabilities and constraints of the embodied mind and human communities, and rejects the rest as outdated nonsense. In my view, naturalized ethics is one of the only specializations in academic philosophy with a bright future. Given that comparative philosophy would also make that list, one might expect The Bodhisattva’s Brain to be a terrific book. And it is––sort of.

Flanagan’s project––applying the naturalist mindset to the ancient tradition of Buddhism––is a worthy one, but his approach hits home only sporadically. Like many writers trained in the Western analytic style, he often gets lost in abstruse discussions of terminology, unnecessary repetition, and insoluble quests for the murky origins of ideas, dispositions, and behaviors. Not all of these discursive moments are without value or philosophical merit, but none of them helps make The Bodhisattva’s Brain an inviting text for the reader. Here’s an example of just how needlessly confusing Flanagan can be:

I sometimes use the terms enlightenment and awakening (bodhi) and wisdom (prajna; panna, Pali) interchangeably––often as enlightenment/wisdom. For parallelism, I use virtue/goodness, or just one or the other, to refer to a life of good conduct (sila), especially a life of great compassion (karuna), as well as a character that embodies eventually, the divine illimitables or abodes (Brahma-vihara), compassion, lovingkindness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Such a character would be a saint, an arahant, a bodhisattva, possibly a Buddha. (16, emphasis his)

This might not seem too complicated for specialists embedded in Buddhist lexicons, but it’s poorly written by any standard. As shown here, Flanagan often has trouble deciding exactly what words to use when describing situations, ideas, or qualities, so he often just sprays vocabulary across the page. I do not believe he does this indiscriminately, but will confess that I was often unable (or unwilling) to put in the work to follow the denser sections of this book. I simply didn’t feel like there was enough intellectual meat at stake. Flanagan is also fond of superscripting in order to identify different uses of the same word (e.g. happiness according to Aristotle vs. happiness according to Buddha). He makes a decent case for why superscripting is effective, but more often than not it comes off as merely annoying.

Despite these drawbacks, certain aspects of Buddhism are in dire need of naturalization, and Flanagan has more than enough tools for the job. Flanagan is roundly skeptical of fashionable claims that Buddhism leads to “greater happiness,” pointing out that we don’t even have a satisfactorily unified definition of what “happiness” means. His critique of individuals and organizations that seek to capitalize on the idea that practicing Buddhism will necessarily make people “better” is harsh and refreshing. We lack both the terminological consistency as well as the scientific apparatus to verify such claims:

The tools we currently use are simply not powerful enough to yield fine-grained descriptions of the mental states of subjects that would enable us, for example, to say: “Look, there is the joy; there is the compassion. Notice how different the joy looks from bliss, and how compassion looks different from lovingkindness.” Combining various existing technologies, including doing assays of neurochemicals, might enable us to make such assertions afters studying large populations of subjects. But that is a long way off. Meanwhile the only meta-analysis that has been done so far on the good effects of Buddhist meditation on mental and physical health over the last fifty years (through 2002) by Ospina et al. (2007) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services claims that the results are inconclusive. (51)

Flanagan doesn’t reject the validity of using empirical observations to learn more about happiness and human flourishing, but merely cautions that we shouldn’t overstate the significance of preliminary findings:

This sort of inquiry provides a truly exciting, unique, and heretofore unimagined opportunity for mind scientists, practitioners, and philosophers from different traditions to join together in a conversation that combines time-tested traditions with newfangled gadgetry to understand ourselves more deeply and to live well, better than we do now. On the other hand, we need to avoid overrating brain imagery and what it shows. (58)

Flanagan’s other main focus on the naturalization front is to expose and excise the mumbo-jumbo that still passes for good sense in some Buddhist circles and societies, leaving the practical core of the belief system relatively intact. He does a great job of breaking down and dismissing nonmaterial interpretations of consciousness, and pulls no punches when taking on the internal contradiction faced by Buddhists who believe in reincarnation:

Most East Asian and Southeast Asian Buddhists I have asked believe in literal reincarnation where one’s soul, one’s atman, or a Buddhist facsimile of atman, enters different bodies depending on how one’s previous life has gone…The Dalai Lama has told me in a private audience that he doesn’t believe in reincarnation in this literal sense. This is good because the view is impossible to make sense of. The details of how reincarnation could even begin to work for a being that has no-self presents serious logical problems. Prior Indic religions as well as the Abrahamic traditions in the West have the resources, in virtue of believing that each person possesses an individual atman or soul, to make sense of reincarnation; Buddhism does not––at least not if the view involves me going on after I die. (131-2, emphasis his).

When stripped of indefensible metaphysical positions, Buddhism still has much to offer––arguably more than any other religious tradition, once naturalized. Flanagan’s comparative strategy is to contrast Buddhist notions of flourishing with Aristotelian ethics, which he does with much technical zeal but only intermittent success overall. Many of his comparative points disappear into byzantine rabbit holes, but others jump off the page with the raw intellectual force that often seduces young minds to devote themselves to philosophical endeavors. Here are some of my favorite examples:

Suppose I have a great meal or a great sexual experience. It is over. I have good memories of the experience but I am disappointed that it is over. Why be disappointed? It was a good experience and now it is over. All good things come to an end. Things change, I change. That’s the nature of things. If I understand and accept this, my attitude to passing good experiences becomes more accepting. It is in the nature of the universe that all things myself included change. But I, this continuous being, had the experience. If it was good, I can revisit it in memory as often as I wish. That’s fine so long as I don’t make the mistake of wanting it again now, that exact same experience. Wanting in this way would involve a cognitive error, wishing for what is impossible: to possess what is in the past now, exactly as it was.

Or suppose I feel angry or guilty because I have been wronged or done wrong. In either case what is done is done, the bad act is in the past. I can clutch to its memory and remain furious or guilt-ridden. But why do that? Let it go with the aim of avoiding similar situations down the road. Remembering what went wrong so as to avoid similar mistakes is fine, but getting stuck in deep resentment or regret involves trying to hold to the now something that is in the then. It is a familiar fact that we can get a fair distance in screwing ourselves up trying to do this. But insofar as we succeed at undermining our own peace of mind, it is because we work to use our powerful memories to make what was then seem as if it is now, demanding that was is past now be just as it was then. This is what resentment is, grasping anger in order to feel it again. We are working to get memory to defeat time. Memory can’t in fact defeat time. But if we pull out the plugs it can seem to do so, and in seeming to do so it can, indeed it will, undermine the serenity and tranquility we sensibly seek. Letting go, not clutching to my self what is in the past, is made easier––in a therapeutic sort of way––if I possess two components of wisdom: first, there is understanding that I cannot defeat time because nothing can; second, there is understanding that the self that so tirelessly clings and clutches to what is over, despite seeming to be the selfsame self, isn’t. To think otherwise, and especially to hold what has disquieted my soul to my breast now is to try to work myself into something that I cannot be, a selfsame ego that can continue to hold in place now what is no longer there. What is it that is no longer there? Two things: the experience that I clutch and the self that had the experience. (125-6)

Look, it is guaranteed that you are in flux and get to live amidst the flux. And it is good that you are now able to live in and appreciate the moment. But there is something wrong with your attitude. Your craving/attachment is too strong. This is probably caused by the fact that you still hold on to the illusion that you are a permanent thing that can somehow possess or appropriate the flux. You aren’t, so you can’t. Enjoy the flux, but stop trying to possess it. (129-30)

Find some worthy goals and projects that suit you, and get fired up and passionate about them. Sure, work those projects from the here and now. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Delight in the small steps along the way. And don’t let the setbacks surprise or defeat you. But always remember, never forget, never lose sight of the fact that once you figure out what sort of worthy projects suit you, nothing less than the meaning of your life turns on doing your best to make them work out. Well, that and being as lovingkind and compassionate and unselfish as possible. Your job is to make sure you choose projects that do not diminish the prospects that when you die the story is one of a wise person who led, as far as possible, an excellent life. If you dedicate yourself to living wisely and compassionately and mindfully, then even if you, for some reason, miss out on knowing when and how the final chapter ends, we will rightly say that you led a good human life and flourished. If there were gods, they’d bless you. But there aren’t, so they won’t. But we, your fellows who remain alive and on our own personal journeys, will be grateful for who you were and how you were. You flourished, Buddhist style, and you increased our chances for doing the same. (162-3)

The common thread in these three passages is that they proffer wisdom without venturing too deeply into the particulars of Buddhism or any other philosophical/religious system of thought. They demonstrate not the intellectual products of a rigorous research project, but rather the dispositional effects of Buddhist thought on Flanagan’s body-mind. If a naturalized form of Buddhism has a major role to play in humanity’s future––as I believe it does––then this is perhaps its most precious gift: Not a set of rules for “virtuous” conduct or a lecture on humanity’s innate flaws and how to overcome them, but the transmission of a path, a way of facing suffering and mortality that eschews illusion and celebrates affection, enjoyment, and acceptance.

Rating: 7/10