Talking Heads - Not The Band

     During law school, three decades ago, I was taught that it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable. However, in recent years, I have lost count of how many times, on traditional and social media, I have seen "talking heads" from the far left and far right -- mostly the far right, since November of 2016 -- demonizing the other side or its arguments instead of focusing on the substance of those arguments.
     In these situations, I have come to feel some kinship with the Kalamas of ancient India. By way of background, after Siddhattha Gotama's enlightenment, he spent the rest of his life traveling around India teaching with members of his Sangha (the community of monks and nuns). One day, he came to a village of the Kalamas called Kesaputta, where the puzzled villagers sought his advice.
      It seems that some of the wandering ascetics who came to Kesaputta would explain their own doctrines, but then "disparage, debunk, revile, and vilify" the doctrines of other ascetics. However, when the second group of ascetics came to the village, they would also explain their own doctrines but then "disparage, debunk, revile, and vilify" the doctrines of the first group.
     Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation of the Buddha's advice to the Kalamas reads as follows:
          "Come, Kalamas. Do not go by oral tradition, by lineage of teaching, by hearsay, by a collection of texts, by logic, by inferential reasoning, by reasoned cogitation, by the acceptance of a view after pondering it, by the seeming competence of a speaker, or because you think, 'The ascetic is our teacher.' But when you know for yourselves, 'These things are wholesome; these things are blameless; these things are praised by the wise; these things, if undertaken and practiced, lead to welfare and happiness,' then you should engage in them."
Upon hearing the Buddha's teaching, the Kalamas exclaimed that it was "magnificent" and asked him to accept them as lay followers for life.
     I am not suggesting that all of us -- or any of us -- should become Buddhists, but if more of us followed the Buddha's advice to the Kalamas about evaluating the claims of competing speakers, I believe the quality of our contemporary public discourse would be improved. 
_______________

References:
     The passage quoted above comes from Bhikkhu Bodhi's In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (Boston, Wisdom Publications, 2005), AN 3:65, pages 88-91.
     For another translation of the same text, see Glenn Wallis' Basic Teachings of the Buddha (New York, Modern Library, 2007), Kesamutti Sutta, Sutta 4, Anguttaranikaya 3.65, pages 22-26. 

   

   

An Eastern View Of The Middle Way

     I was educated in the Western intellectual tradition. My initial exposure to Buddhism was in two college courses on East Asian Civilization. Naturally enough, to the extent theology was discussed, the focus was on the Mahayana Buddhism of China and Japan. I did not become familiar with Theravada Buddhism, which originated in India, until after an episode of severe depression about 15 years ago.
     Siddhattha Gotama lived in northeastern India more than 2,000 years ago. Tradition has it that he was a Prince and that his father (a local or regional King) attempted to shelter his son from the harsher realities of life. It was not until he became a young man that Prince Siddhattha managed to slip outside the palace grounds. There for the first time he came upon -- among other things -- a sick person and a corpse. Siddhattha was shaken to the core, and left his family to become a wandering contemplative. He practiced severe austerities for several years with a small group of mendicants, but apparently was not satisfied with his progress. Determined to achieve enlightenment, Siddhattha meditated under a tree all night until he became the Buddha (the awakened one).
     The Buddha's first teaching was given to the contemplatives that he formerly practiced with; it begins as follows:
          "There are two extremes that are not to be embraced by a person who has set out on the path. Which two? The practice of clinging to sensory pleasure in sensory objects. This practice is lowly, common, ordinary, dishonorable, and unprofitable. And the practice of exhausting oneself with austerities.This practice is distressful, dishonorable, and unprofitable.
          "Not tending toward either of these extremes, a tathagata -- a person who has come to know reality -- has completely awakened to the middle way. The middle way engenders insight and understanding, and leads to calmness, to direct knowledge, to full awakening, to unbinding. So what is that middle way completely awakened to by a tathagata? It is precisely this preeminent eight-component course; namely, sound view, sound inclination, sound speech, sound action, sound livelihood, sound effort, sound awareness, and sound concentration. This is the middle way, realized by a tathagata, which gives rise to vision and knowledge, and leads to calmness, to direct knowledge, to full awakening, to unbinding. ..."
     The text quoted above is taken from Glenn Wallis' excellent contemporary translation of, and commentary upon, the Buddha's first discourse (citation below). Those interested in a more traditional, less secular, but still excellent translation and commentary should consult Bhikkhu Bodhi's version of this passage (also cited below). There are interesting differences between the two renderings, but both translators agree on the use of the phrase "middle way."
     In my next post, I will consider a Buddhist text (sutta in Pali, sutra in Sanskrit) which -- like Aristotle's Ethics -- is still applicable today.
_______________

References:
     Bhikkhu Bodhi, In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (Boston,Wisdom Publications, 2005), Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, SN 56:11, pages 75-78.
     Glenn Wallis, Basic Teachings of the Buddha (New York, Modern Library, 2007), Sutta 9, Samyuttanikaya 5.56.11, pages 36-39.
 

What Did Aristotle Mean By Boasting?

     As promised in my first post, I will be focusing on Aristotle's discussion of the doctrine of the mean in this post. However, I want to let all of my readers -- both of them -- know that in my next post, I intend to consider an ancient Eastern perspective on moderation.
    My first exposure to the classical Greek thinker Aristotle was in college: I recall reading parts of the Poetics in English class, and some of the Politics in a Philosophy course. In law school, I had a course in which we read the Rhetoric. But the subject of this post is the Nicomachean Ethics, which I only got around to reading in the past decade. Aristotle discusses his concept of the mean in Book II of the Ethics. He makes clear that he is not focusing on the mean in relation to things. In mathematics, by way of illustration, Aristotle observes that between 10 and 2 the mean is 6. Instead, he is concerned with the mean in relation to humans, especially regarding moral virtue. For Aristotle, this virtue is the mean between two kinds of vice: excess and deficiency. He says, for instance, that between the deficiency of cowardice and the excess of rashness lies the mean of courage. However, Aristotle acknowledges that not every action admits of a mean: for example, adultery and murder and theft are evil in themselves.
     One reason that that a philosopher like Aristotle is still being read and published more than 2,000 years after his death is that his ideas still have application to the modern world. So I will end this post with a quote from Book IV of the Ethics, which could have been written about President Trump's character yesterday:

          "Let us now deal similarly with those who exhibit truth and falsehood in their speech and actions, i.e. in their pretensions. Well, the boaster is regarded as one who pretends to have distinguished qualities which he possesses either not at all or to a lesser degree than he pretends. ... Falsehood is in itself bad and reprehensible, while the truth is a fine and praiseworthy thing; accordingly the sincere man, who holds the mean position, is praiseworthy. ... The boaster is considered to be the opposite of the sincere man. ..." 

_______________
             
References:
     The passage quoted above can be found on pages 105-107 of the Penguin Classics version of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Penguin Books, London, 2004; original translation by Thomson, revised by Tredennick, introduction by Barnes); Aristotle's main discussion of the doctrine of the mean can be found on pages 40-49.

Memo From Mediocristan

     During the last four years at my most recent employer, I worked on risk management issues. His discussion of risk is what initially brought me to Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Although Taleb's focus is on financial risk -- among other topics -- and mine was on insurance, I would recommend this book to anyone in either field.
     Perhaps the main argument of The Black Swan is that the modern world has become a place that Taleb calls "Extremistan" but that the tools most thinkers use to understand it -- for example, the bell curve -- come from the ancestral place he calls "Mediocristan."
     However, as a former history major, I was pleasantly surprised by Taleb's extensive discussion of ancient Western thinkers. At the risk of oversimplifying his complex arguments, the Greek philosopher Plato is the ancient villain of The Black Swan, due to his tendency to place everything into pure, well-defined, and rigid conceptual categories. (Note that there is no shortage of modern villains in the book, including mainstream economists). Taleb's ancient hero is the pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus, who arguably has the best philosophical name ever, and who believed that the only route to tranquility was via the suspension of judgment.
     But I was also surprised by the fact that the Greek philosopher Aristotle -- although he is referenced in a few other places in the book -- is not mentioned by Taleb during his discussion of "Golden Mediocrity" (in chapter 15 of The Black Swan).  My understanding is that Aristotle was the first Western thinker to systematically discuss moderation, and it is to that discussion -- from his Ethics -- that I will turn in my next post.
__________

References:
     Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York, Random House Trade Paperbacks, Second Edition, 2010).