The Anti-Buddha

by

Jake Shannon

"New struggles.- After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave- a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead: but given the way men are, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.- And we-we still have to vanquish his shadow, too."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882)

I

    With Buddhism attracting more and more attention today I feel compelled to share my thoughts about Buddhism. In an attempt to kill two birds with one essay I hope to explain why I no longer find Buddhism satisfactory while simultaneously providing a brief introduction to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietszche.

    Before making clear Buddhism's difficulties, let me briefly propose an alternative philosophic approach inspired by one of my very first philosophical and stylistic influences, the German individualist Friedrich Nietzsche. The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, "several times said of Nietzsche that he had more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was ever likely to live" (according to Ernest Jones, a biographer of Freud). Like many youths seduced by Nietzsche’s philosophy, I admired his übermencsh in Thus Spake Zarathrustra, his attacks upon authority, slave morality, religious superstition, and his harsh sarcastic tone. He seemed to prick the surreptitious bubbles of the status quo. With such polemics as "If it does not kill me, it makes me stronger" and "God is dead", his writings are perhaps a bit over the top, but nonetheless as I reread them, they inspire excitement and convey a richness that I did not appreciate upon my first reading, nearly a decade ago.

    Had I understood Nietzsche's perspectivism properly I could have seen it for the safeguard that it was, a warning against philosophic system-building.  Instead, I understood his perspectivism as an argument for a plurality of truths (none of which can be the correct one).  This interpretation undermined all of his provocative assertions from the very beginning.  How could I take him seriously once I discovered that he did not take the truth seriously?  What I now know and did not then, was that Nietzsche was a champion of self-criticism. His "Attempt at a Self-Criticism" (written for the "new" 1886 edition of The Birth of Tragedy) is "one of the finest things he ever wrote" according to esteemed translator and scholar Walter Kaufman. His writings ask much of the reader, so much so than an uncritical one may dismiss his actual intentions. Nietzsche's writings were purposely unsystematic and self-contradictory to urge his readers to think for themselves.  That is why he writes in Thus Spake Zarathrustra;

"Now I go alone, my disciples, You, too, go now, alone.  Thus I want it...  Go away from me and resist Zarathrustra!  And even better: be ashamed of him!  Perhaps he deceived you...  One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil...   Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you."

    If, as Nietzsche writes, "Wisdom wants us: She is a woman, and always loves a warrior", then I believe that Nietzsche was a true warrior for wisdom born of independent thought. He opposed blind obedience to systems of faith, especially those with a "leader" (of a religion, philosophy, or any human system for that matter) in favor of finding one's way as a realist and rational being.

    Much has been written about Nietzsche nihilism and disbelief in the "truth" that I would not ask the reader to defend him based merely upon my interpretation. Those who have not read Nietzsche may have heard horrible untruths such as Nietszche was a some sort of irrationalist or precursor to the Nazis. Such distortions are usually told by those who have not read Nietzsche.  In a section of one of Nietzsche's last works, Ecce Homo (the critical assessment of his own "Birth of Tragedy") makes his view of life clear;

                "This ultimate, most joyous, most wantonly extravagant Yes to life represents not only the highest insight but also the deepest, that which is most strictly confirmed and born out by truth and science.    Nothing in existence may be subtracted, nothing is indispensable- those aspects of existence which Christians and other nihilists repudiate are actually on an infinitely higher level in the order of rank among values than that which the instinct of decadence could approve and call good.   To comprehend this requires courage and, as a condition of that, an excess of strength:   for precisely as far as courage may venture forward, precisely according to that measure of strength on approaches the truth.  Knowledge, saying Yes to reality, is just as necessary for the strong as cowardice and the flight from reality- as the ‘ideal’ is for the weak, who are inspired by weakness."

II

    As an undergraduate, I explored many literary avenues, one of which led to Buddhism. As usual, I started doing a little looking around and found a few books to satisfy my curiousity. I opened Rev. Dr. Walpola Rahula's book What The Buddha Taught and read the following paragraph,

    "Among the founders of religions the Buddha (if we are permitted to call him the founder of a religion in the popular sense of the term) was the only teacher who did not claim to be other than a human being, pure and simple. Other teachers were either God, or his incarnations in different forms, or inspired by him. The Buddha was not only a human being; he claimed no inspiration from any god or external power either. He attributed all his realization, attainments and achievements to human endeavor and human intelligence. A man and only a man can become a Buddha. Every man has within himself the potentiality of becoming a Buddha, if he so wills it and endeavors. We can call the Buddha a man par excellence. He was so perfect in his 'human-ness' that he came to be regarded later in popular religion almost as 'super-human'... Man's position, according to Buddhism, is supreme. Man is his own master, and there is no higher being or power that sits in judgment over his destiny" (What The Buddha Taught, Rahula, pp. 1) 

    Reading this with an ear towards Nietzschean rhetoric one might understand why Dr. Rahula’s Buddhism had such a pull upon me.

    "Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic.  If anything at all, it is realistic, for it takes a realistic view of life and of the world.  It looks at things objectively (yathabhutam).  It does not falsely lull you into living in a fool's paradise, nor does it frighten and agonize you with all kinds of imaginary fears and sins.  It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the world around you is, and shows you the way to perfect freedom, peace, tranquillity and happiness" (ibid., pp. 17). 

    What could be better?  Realism, objectivity, freedom, peace, tranquillity and happiness; it sounds like a perfect system. I was soon to discover, however, that these noble ends of Buddhism could not be achieved by Buddhist means.

    First a little history. Buddhism is a religion named after the Buddha, or Enlightened One. The Buddha was an actual man, a prince in fact, named Gautama (in Pali, Gotama) who lived in Northern India during the turn of the sixth century B.C.  Sifting fact from fiction in the story of Gautama, historical scholars tell of a prince who abandoned his wife, child, and life of luxury in search of the spiritual cure for suffering.

    His search starts with severe ascetism. Unfortunately, Gautama wastes nearly six years of his life at the feet of sado-masochistic teachers before he realizes that such methods will not lead to a spiritual cure for suffering. During his search he becomes frustrated and, determined to discover Nirvana, he decided to sit beneath a bodhi tree and not get up until he found the pathway to Nirvana.

    He lived a long life, dying at eighty, and spent by meditating and propounding his views to his follower-monks.

    I do not intend to write a blanket dismissal of Buddhist philosophy. There are some quite attractive aspects to the Buddhist philosophy, relatively speaking. In a short book called What I Believe Bertrand Russell wrote, "God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion, find no support in science. It cannot be said that either doctrine is essential to religion, since neither is found in Buddhism." Buddhism does not oppose science and reason in the same way and to the massive degree that Christianity historically has. Nietzsche validates this assertion in Human, All-Too-Human where he writes,

"knowledge, science-insofar as science has existed-raising oneself above other men through the logical discipline and training of thought, were just as much demanded among the Buddhists, as a sign of holiness, as the same qualities were repudiated and pronounced heretical in the Christian world where they were held to be signs of unholiness" (page 154, Basic Writings of Nietzsche).

    The Buddhist "holy" respect for science and objectivity is a function of the Buddhist view of psychology and epistemology. Buddha saw mind, not as a spirit opposed to matter, but as an integrated and conditionally free-willed [cetana] part of oneself. The mind-body dichotomy of Descartes’ Meditations that has become so deeply planted in Western culture and religion does not exist for Buddha. In fact, Buddhists are atheists and are known for their dislike of dichotomies. Interesting here is Aldous Huxley’s etymology of bifurcation,

"the root meaning ‘two’ should connote badness. The Greek prefix dys- (as in dyspepsia) and the Latin dis- (as in dishonorable) are both derived from ‘duo’. The cognate bis- gives a pejorative sense to such modern French words as bèvue (‘blunder,’ literally ‘two-sight’). Traces of that ‘second which leads you astray’[a reference to a quote from the Moslem/Hindu poet-saint Kabir] can be found in ‘dubious,’ ‘doubt’ and Zweifel--for to doubt is to be double-minded" (Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, page 10).

    Descartes has enriched Western culture with his coordinate geometry, but when viewed in light of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, one can accept his mathematics without having to accept his dualistic metaphysics, or his whole system for that manner.

    If a Buddhist were to read Descartes they might probably prefer the converse formulation of Descartes’ famous "I think, therefore I am", that is "sum ergo cogito." Consciousness is a function of the brain in the way that digestion is a function of the stomach. This consciousness [Vinnanakkhandha] "is a reaction or response which has one of the six faculties [eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind] as its basis, and one of the six corresponding physical phenomena [visible form, sound, odour, taste, tangible things and mind-objects, that is, an idea or thought] as its object" (What The Buddha Taught, page 23). Consciousness not only perceives, but perceives "something", that is, reality. For the Buddha, reality exists as witnessed by the senses. This sounds more common-sensical than Descartes’ somewhat Augustinian system where the "I" is "really distinct" from any real embodiment. What is interesting here is that Buddhists treat the mind as one of the senses, not as the integrator and conceptualizer of data that it seems to be. Perhaps this failure to recognize consciousness as a processor of sensory data has relations to the Buddhist's chronic dismissal of the ego called Anatta, or The Doctrine of No Soul.

    That is where I must refuse Buddhist doctrine. I disagree philosophically with the central teachings of Buddhism, primarily Buddha's concept of dukkha, and the "Four Noble Truths" that derive from it. The Pali word Dukkha (or the "First Noble Truth") represents the Buddhist's rather pessimistic view of life that in ordinary usage means "suffering." Dukkha tells followers of Buddhism that suffering is the way of the world and that to alleviate suffering one needs to eliminate all desire. This focus upon the existence of suffering and the elimination of desire seems somewhat masochistic and frustrating. It completely ignores the desire for the cessation of desire, ad infinitum. It all seems strange to me. I do not believe that it is possible to eliminate desire, therefore to ask someone to alleviate suffering by eliminating their desires seems to be a doomed project. My best argument here is to petition the reader to honestly have one day without desiring anything. It is impossible.

    Happiness (sukkha), on the other hand, is the result of pursuing and achieving goals which aid in one’s survival, well-being, and prosperity. Anyone may define well-being and prosperity in completely different ways since any two people’s minds and goals are as different as any two snowflakes, but survival always means satisfying basic desires like those for food, shelter, and companionship that minimize dukkha. To act against one’s natural inclination to want to survive by willing the cessation of "desire" is not only Buddhist, it is suicidal.

    The "Second Noble Truth" reveals the source of dukkha to be "thirst" or desire. Again, here I found much to disagree with Buddhism. I find desire to be a virtue, not a vice. Desire is a natural function of being alive. Desire does not cause suffering per se, as the Buddha maintains. Instead desire acts as an individual's impetus for inventing the means to alleviate suffering. It is desire that drives one to achieve, to create, to fight for survival and satisfaction. However, to desire one must be self-interested that first assumes a "self" in which to have interest. (Now desire can also drive some to kill, destroy, and lie. However, to blame desire for the evil actions some use to attain the objects of their desires seems simpliciter to me.)

    Buddhism meets this challenge by dismissing the self as an illusion in the concept of Anatta, or the Doctrine Of No Soul. To the Buddha, the self or Atman (ego) was an ever-changing composite of the Five Aggregates, namely matter, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. For Buddha, since these five composites were in flux, they somehow ceased to exist. Obviously, this is a non sequitur. (At least Heraclitus thought the stream you are standing in exists, although it is not the same one you were standing a moment ago.) Obviously, because something is dynamic does not doom it to non-existence. As far as I can tell by introspection, my ego does exist, albeit dynamically. This is not to say that I am defending the Cartesian "Cogito Ergo Sum." What I am saying, however, is that a "sum" implies "cogito". I think the phrase should read "Sum ergo cogito."

    The Third and Fourth "Noble Truths" try to cement one’s involvement in Buddhism by first easing one's anxiety about dukkha. The "Third Noble Truth" says that it is possible to end dukkha. The Fourth tells you that you can do so by following the "Path" (i.e., Buddhism) to Nirvana. In essence this "Path" says there is a middle path between the false alternatives of hedonism and asceticism, in a clear misuse of the mean.

    Nietzschean individualism liberated me from the philosophical doctrines of Buddhism.

    "The end of Christianity -at the hands of its own morality (which cannot be replaced), which turns against the Christian God: the sense of truthfulness, highly developed by Christianity, is nauseated by the falseness and mendaciousness of all the world and of history; rebound from ‘God is the truth’ to the fanatical faith ‘All is false’; an active Buddhism" (Nietzsche excerpted The Will To Power from Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, page 110, edited by Walter Kaufmann).

Buddhism has a strong pull spiritually, particularly to those in need of direction philosophically. Its strong orientation towards an awareness of reality is definitely a virtue. Yet I cannot fundamentally endorse Buddhism due to its dismissal of the ego and focus upon the existence of suffering. In my opinion, to call self-interested desire the cause of suffering is misdiagnoses of the highest degree and dooms the Buddha's followers to a cynical life of quiet defeat where pain is confirming and prosperity bitterly endured. Self-interested desire is the impetus for cures to suffering. (Tangentially, read Connie Zweig’s The Death of Self in a Postmodern World for very different interpretation of the relationship between Nietzsche and Buddha in The Truth About the Truth, edited by Walter Truett Anderson.)  I found Buddhist teachings useful at one point in my life and encourage others to pursue the "enlightened" way, but not uncritically. I think the Buddha put it best when he described Buddhism as a raft that one should use when one comes to river. Use the raft to cross the turbulent waters. Once you have reached the other side safely, do not carry the raft upon your back clumsily. Leave it behind and continue along your journey.