moralobjectivity.net: copyright Robert M. Ellis 2008
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The driving forces of conditioned existence are traditionally represented in the centre of the Wheel of Samsara (the diagrammatic representation of the endless cycle in which Buddhism claims we are caught) as three animals: the cock, the snake and the pig, representing greed, hatred and ignorance respectively. Of these, ignorance works together with greed, as we can only have greed for something that we are also under an illusion about, representing it in the way that suits us rather than getting to grips with its more complex and shifting reality. Hatred is seen as frustrated greed, for those we hate are those who prevent us getting what we want. These three forces together create the basis of the Second Noble Truth, traditionally providing an explanation as to why the world we experience is unsatisfactory. Once greed has arisen, we grasp for the object of our greed, thus setting up further conditions for ignorance in the future.
What exactly counts as greed? The Buddhist term translates the Pali word tanha, literally “thirst”, and sometimes also translated as “craving”. We are told by the Buddhist tradition that not all desires are greed or hatred: there is also good desire or dhamma-chanda, the desire for enlightenment. Nevertheless, greed covers quite a wide range of desires, from the desire to own a new Mercedes-Benz through to the very desire to continue to exist.
The insight that many people will readily recognise here is that greed does, indeed, cause a great deal of suffering. It narrows our mental states and impairs our judgements, making us obsessed with short-term objectives and leading us to neglect the bigger picture. Greed leads to conflict, corruption, environmental degradation, and neglect. Almost any problem in the world today can be traced to greed (or its frustrated version, hatred) in the mental states of the human beings involved.
So far, Buddhism appears to have struck an important truth. However, there will also have been many thinking Westerners who will have paused to wonder when first introduced to Buddhism, about the beliefs found in Buddhism that our lives themselves are a result of greed, that if we manage to purify ourselves of that greed we reach the ideal state of enlightenment, and that the ceasing of even a greed for life itself is morally and spiritually desirable. At that point they may have turned away from Buddhism, concluding that it is a “life-denying” religion. Alternatively, they may have carried on, choosing to set aside their unease because of experience that in practice Buddhism is often far from life-denying, but rather offers practices that greatly enhance life.
Many Buddhist practices have also arisen out of the experience of practitioners who recognise that “purifying” ourselves of greed is a hopeless project. Instead they focus on following the
The practices of Buddhism are well developed, and offer many useful methods of transformation, but the theory also seems to be deeply confused and is not fully devoted to supporting this practice. Not only is the language of purification frequently used (especially in Buddhist ritual) rather than the language of transformation, but the very symbol of everything that Buddhists are working for, the Buddha, represents an enlightened person who has purified themselves of all greed, up to and including even the desire for life itself.
The interpretation of the ideal of enlightenment is a big and complex issue that we will have to return to from many different angles. However, let’s simply stick to the point at the moment that the ideal represented by Buddhists is of a person without any greed whatsoever.
There seem to be several unnecessary assumptions in traditional Buddhist thinking here. One of these is that because many problems causing suffering or dissatisfaction have greed as one of their necessary elements, these problems can be solved by removing the greed. On the contrary, if we remove the greed, it may be that many positives are removed along with negatives. If we remove sexual desire, for example, not only are the problems caused by sexual desire removed (such as abusive or neurotic relationships, and overpopulation), but also the psychological fulfilments we gain through sexual activity, or from its consequences in the shape of committed sexual relationships and children.
Buddhists are often remarkably straightforward about sex, and Buddhist practice often attempts to be realistic in addressing the conditions created by sexual desire in our physical and psychological constitutions. Yet nevertheless, the ideal that is the symbolic, ritual and doctrinal focus of Buddhism is not one of transforming sexual energy positively and avoiding its unskilful use: instead, it is one of being entirely free of sexual desire. The ideal is constantly at odds with balanced, skilful practice.
Another unnecessary assumption made in traditional Buddhist thinking is that the weakening and/or transformation of greed, if carried on for long enough, necessarily leads to its complete disappearance. However, that it is good to reduce something does not necessarily mean that it is good to get rid of it altogether. This is something that every sane slimmer knows. There is a point where to lose further weight is to move beyond the point of balance and health and to enter the realm of obsessive anorexia. Perhaps it is good to reduce our level of greed by transforming it into skilful forms of desire, but it no more follows this that we should seek to extinguish greed than that a slimmer should try to starve themselves to death in pursuit of an idealised state of “health”.
It may be objected here that this point is already recognised in Buddhism in the distinction between greed (tanha) and desire for enlightenment (dhamma-chanda). The enlightened ideal, it might be said, is not to be free of all desires, but rather to only have desires that are completely objective, disinterested, and free of self-view. This ideal might be claimed to be transformational rather than purificatory, for the energy that we invest in greed simply needs to be transformed into a desire for enlightenment. However, this way of thinking about the Buddhist ideal apparently fails to recognise the ways that greed (rather than any other form of desire) seems to be an ineradicable part of our nature. We may be able to transform it to some extent, but that does not mean we can transform it completely. In some cases we may even manage a well-regulated state of celibacy, but we are still sexual beings. We may manage to avoid gluttony and neuroticism about food, but enjoyment of food will still be a very basic part of our being. We may have come to terms with the inevitability of death, yet we still desire to remain alive. If a Buddha is actually meant to be a person who has maximally transformed his greed, having only the ineradicable elements left, rather than someone completely without greed, the traditional depictions certainly often fail to present him in that way.
For the fact of the matter is that we are human, and that Buddhism has long ago abandoned the Middle Way when it has departed from a positive acceptance of that human state. We are beings full of lusts and appetites, and these are part of what makes us human in the first place. If the Buddhist account of what it is to be human is that we are saddled with greed of a kind that we really should get rid of even though we in fact cannot, then Buddhism offers no improvement on the belief in Original Sin found in traditional Christianity (which many Western Buddhists from Christian backgrounds started off by rejecting). We have no more practical chance of shaking off greed completely than of shaking off original sin completely.
The mistake made by traditional Buddhism is to accept a metaphysical view of unenlightened human nature as directed by greed, and enlightened human nature as entirely free of it. Like all metaphysical beliefs, this dogmatically over-simplifies the complex causal relationships we encounter in experience. This metaphysical belief is also in conflict with the practical benefits of Buddhist practice, which begin with our practical experience of being a human being with appetites and lusts. Buddhist practice should consistently be helping us to work with that experience, rather than subtly undermining our acceptance of it through contradictory ideals.
Everything that has been said here about greed can also be applied, mutatis mutandis, to hatred. As the Buddhist tradition recognises, hatred can be transformed into wisdom. However, it also seems likely from common human experience that we are stuck with some degree of hatred. We can turn our hatred towards things that are actually harmful rather than towards people that we merely project “evil” onto, and we can express our hatred only in controlled and appropriate ways, but common human experience does not suggest that hatred can be erased, at least without erasing much that is positive too. We seem unavoidably in rivalry not only with other human beings, but also with other forms of life, and such rivalry has many positive evolutionary functions in stimulating adaptation and effort that would not otherwise take place.
Were it not for some degree of hatred, I am sure, I would not be writing this book. However, my “hatred” of some aspects of traditional Buddhism seems to be controlled, balanced and subject to reflection. It is much less obviously negative in its likely effects than a gross unreflective hatred. The idea that a critique such as this should not be undertaken because it may be motivated by such controlled hatreds is based on assumptions of a kind that I cannot accept.
continue to part d: the possibility of progress
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