“‘Can man truly know himself?’1 This question is undoubtedly one of the most persistent of human thought. Every great philosopher must seek to answer it, or to show that it is unanswerable. The idea that ‘we cannot [more reasonably] truly know who we are, in part or in whole, and be who we are at the same time‘ (herein our idea) can be overcome, but not through any straight-forward statement or argument. The idea is deeply rooted in our Western psyche and though at times it has been shaken by great Western thinkers, modernity as we know it has been dominated by this and similar propositions (i.e. the simpler ‘we cannot know who we are and be who we are’). The roots of this question do reach the very metaphysics upon which modernity is (albeit shakily) constructed. Here I hope to provide a brief understanding the history of our error and suggest an alternative metaphysics.

The Greek philosopher Socrates certainly believed that man could truly know himself. This is accomplished through acknowledging and understanding the limits of one’s own knowledge. Through clever dialectic Socrates unveiled the claims to knowledge of others, leaving them, and the later readers of Plato’s Socratic dialogues in a state of perplexity. It is only from the acceptance of perplexity that we may begin the journey to full self-knowledge. It is through the method of dialectic that man encounters perplexity.

However the acceptance of perplexity is not easy; the democratic Athenian society certainly did not, sentencing Socrates to death by hemlock. At his trial he provides us with perhaps the most quoted statement of philosophy, ‘…the unexamined life is not worth living…’ Many men will not accept this maxim, and to them our idea is uncontestable. But to those who do examine life, the prospect of knowing thyself, while simultaneously no less being thyself, becomes a goal worthy of great pursuit.

The Christian philosophy, which supplanted the great Greek tradition, also battled with this difficult question. Saint Augustine recognized that most of a man’s life is spent looking outward, upon the world; to understand himself, he must turn inward, to the soul. This strengthened the Christian belief that the world is not to be trusted, that the devil lurks in many worldly places, and that it is the soul, endowed upon each man by God, which should be attended to. Upon turning inward one escapes the temptations of the world and may begin the arduous acquisition of self-knowledge. At some point, Augustine believed, man could experience his own soul. This was the culmination of Augustine’s quest. The soul, the seat of the self, was to him not fully knowable, as it was endowed by God, himself not fully knowable. To experience this soul, however, meant for Augustine that man truly is free (the choice to look within must be made by each person) and that this freedom could lead to what accounted to him as a proof of God, the soul.

The Augustinian, and later Thomistic (after Saint Thomas Aquinas), conception of the freedom of man to look upon himself dominated the Middle Ages and still play a major part in the thought of modern man. This conception has come under great scrutiny, however, by the Modern thinkers. The rise of Modernity in the West was a period following the Renaissance (14th and 15th centuries AD), which revived the thought of the great Greek civilization. The Modern age, which I choose to date as beginning at 1500 brought the discovery of ‘The New World’ by European explorers, the discovery that the heavens do change by Johannes Kepler, the Protestant Revolution by Luther and Calvin, and other changes that would forever change Western society. No longer could man simply trust the claims of Augustine and Aquinas, following the (until then) supreme authority of the Catholic Church. Competing claims of authority arose, both religiously and secularly, and people had to choose among them.

As Stephen Garvey notes as an implication of our idea, ‘we are left with no ground to assert morality, ethics, legality, or society, except from a position of power.’ With the uncertainty of the Modern age, we are returned to the position of Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic. Thrasymachus argued that no objective grounding for morality could be established and that what is right is merely the benefit of the stronger. The contemporary Critical Theorist Jurgen Habermas, influenced heavily by World War II, came to much the same conclusion. Habermas warns us that the concepts we have for such things as morality or society are nothing more than the concepts of the winning side of an ongoing historical power struggle.

Yet our current age of uncertainty mustn’t be understood as a failure of philosophy or a state of uncertainty for all. Habermas and other social historians are right to show that our current state is not the necessary product of history, that we are, historically speaking, in the hands of chance. Hegel, and later Marx, emphasized the forces of history upon man, arguing that the great man may only rise to the crest of the historical wave, but cannot reach beyond it. Freud and other ego-psychologists emphasized the forces of society and early upbringing, arguing that our greatest objectively valuable achievement is simply to ‘get right’ with society (neurosis is defined as the inability to function within society); beyond that, there is again, no grounding. Yet many attempts have been made, mine among them, to show the grounding for these terms in a super-historical realm. The three great traditions of Western Ethics: Virtue ethics, Deontology, and Utilitarianism represent the best attempts thus far to ground our concepts of ethics, society, etc. My approach is to combine these Western theories with like ideas in Buddhism, arguing for a developmental approach to ethics which culminates in true self knowledge and true self being.

(Note: this section is derived, with few changes, from my paper ‘Buddhism, Politics, and Happiness’ see below) Bringing the ethics of Buddhism into the West by comparing a Western system with certain doctrines and practices from Buddhism provides some illumination, but ultimately falls short of a comprehensive understanding of Buddhist ethics in each case. However, a dialectic approach between Buddhist ethics and each of the classical Western theories will provide a distinctly deep understanding of the complexities of Buddhist ethics. The comparisons herein with Utilitarianism and Aristotelian Virtue ethics will borrow liberally from Damien Keown’s book The Nature of Buddhist Ethics as his work is comprehensive and lucid. However, he does not attempt a comparison with Immanuel Kant’s Deontological model except for a brief comment or two, so that work will be original.

Utilitarianism, first exposited by Jeremy Bentham, defended and altered by John Stuart Mill, and revalorized more recently by philosophers such as G.E. Moore and Richard Brandt, is the moral system in which ‘the good is defined independently from the right, and then the right is defined as that which maximizes the good.’ (Rawls, p24) In Jeremy Bentham’s essay An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Utilitarianism is founded on the following maxim: ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure’ (Cahn and Markie, p326). Prima facia, this statement is congruent with the Buddha’s teaching of the Four Noble Truths as universal to all beings. However, the belief that these masters are sovereign is certainly doubtful given the Third Noble Truth, which states that dukkha (pain) can be overcome completely.

A further problem for both Utilitarianism and our attempt to understand Buddhist ethics on Utilitarian grounds is in understanding the ‘good’ or ‘pleasant’. Bentham held that the good was pleasure in the moment, giving no thought to higher or lower goods, let alone a form of ultimate or transcendent Good. John Stuart Mill worked to correct this pure hedonism by introducing higher pleasures (goods) such as philosophy and art appreciation as more valuable than lower pleasures of ‘wine, women, and song.’ However, by introducing new criteria for goods and pleasure, Mill begins to introduce non-utilitarian values (Keown, p169). Likewise, history, and religious history in particular, gives numerous examples of the valorization of pain or suffering to greater ends. Religious traditions around the world, including Buddhism, portray pain as transitive, often for the benefit of the sufferer and/or others (Glucklich, p28-29). The closest Utilitarian argument to the doctrines of Buddhism can be found in the Negative Utilitarianism of Karl Popper. His statement is that ‘all moral urgency has its basis in the urgency of suffering or pain. I suggest, for this reason, to replace the utilitarian formula ‘Aim at the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number’, or briefly, ‘maximize happiness’, by the formula ‘The least amount of avoidable suffering for all’, or briefly, ‘minimize suffering’’ (Popper, i. 235 n.6). Peter Singer argues likewise in relation to world hunger issues, ‘if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it’ (Mappes and Zembaty, p398). This illustrates the very important aspect of Utilitarianism: its emphasis on the immediate and clearly discernable issue of suffering. For the Buddhist it is likewise suffering which plays the role of initial catalyst for all spiritual/philosophical progress (Keown, p175).

Despite this conceptual similarity, however, Buddhist ethics cannot be considered strictly Utilitarian. There are several reasons for this, the first being that Buddhism does not define the right independently from the good. Actions in Buddhism are right in so far as it is motivated by araga (non-greed, liberality), adosa (non-hatred, loving-kindness), and amoha (non-delusion, understanding). And good consequences invariably (unless counteracted) follow right actions, even if they are borne out only in the next life. In this sense, Buddhism promotes an ethics in which the good transcends immediate and even temporally extended circumstances. In Buddhism, acts done out of generosity, loving-kindness, and understanding (though assuredly leading to good consequences) are not conducive of this transcendent Good if they are done with the motivation of merely attaining pleasure. Acting out of these right motives is a process of developing character and thus to be truly effective become a teleological journey beyond transient pleasures.

The development of character, or virtue, is the central characteristic of Virtue ethics, founded by Aristotle, exalted by Nietzsche, and restated for our generation in Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. Aristotle, like the Buddha, held that the human telos is reached via a gradual, progressive process. Likewise, Virtue ethics does not propose that one should act out of virtue so that one can get a reward of happiness:

‘…the exercise of the virtues is not in this sense a means to the end of the good for man. For what constitutes the good for man is a complete human life lived at its best, and the exercise of the virtues is a necessary and central part of such a life, not a mere preparatory exercise to secure such a life. We thus cannot characterize the good for man adequately without already having made reference to the virtues.’

(MacIntyre, p140)

In Buddhism there are six paramitas (perfections, virtues) one ought to cultivate: generosity, morality, patience, vigor (energy), meditation, and wisdom (insight). The highest goal in Buddhism is not identical to any one of these perfections, but is instead the result of adequate perfection of them (an emergent property). All six of the perfections are ‘coordinate parts of the second-order end which is nirvana.’ (Keown, p201) Likewise, in Aristotle’s Magna Moralia it is stated that ‘Eudaimonia is composed of certain good things… it is nothing else beside these, it is these.’ (Keown, p202) As such, Aristotelianism avoids the weakness of Utilitarianism and yet it does not ‘fall into the other extreme’ of deontology either (Keown, p202). ‘[A]lthough [Aristotle] agrees with Kant in rejecting maximization schemes of all kinds in favor of a definitely structured life, he does not think of moral constraints themselves as imposed on persons without regard for (and even despite) their own good, as Kant… tends to do. In Aristotle’s theory, human good consists (partly) in virtuous action’ (Cooper, p88).

Critics of Virtue ethics have long been quick to note that virtues suggested by any given theorist tend to reflect the particular circumstances of that theorist. Aristotle’s virtues reflect those of an aristocratic Greek in the Fourth Century BCE. Those of Nietzsche, with his emphasis on self-mastery and nobility are different, and different still are the virtues espoused by Christian thinkers. The virtues, paramitas, set forth in Buddhism fall prey to this criticism as well. It is with this understanding that one must seek a source for ethics that goes beyond stated virtues, a source that is unchanging and universal. This source in Buddhism is the universal law of dhamma-niyama3, and it is found in Western ethical theory in Kant’s realm of reason.

The ethics of Immanuel Kant are at the same time the simplest and yet most difficult to understand of the major Western ethical systems. His ethics are simple because they are based primarily on the common ideas of duty, respect, and reason. The difficulty in understanding these terms in Kant’s ethics is that he considers morality to be objective and hence, universal, leading to arguably vague and overly formal moral maxims. The corresponding Buddhist ethics are likewise abstract and difficult to grasp. Both, however, provide the stability and universalizability that are lacking in the previous systems of ethics.

Immanuel Kant rests his moral system on a worldview that is sharply split between the realms of experience and reason. While Utilitarians sought to use experience, in terms of pleasure and pain, as a basis for ethics, Kant saw the realm of experience as fickle, determined by outside laws of causality and hence any ethics based on it could not be universalizable to all people in all situations. These outside laws lead one person to find pleasure in football and chocolate, while another enjoys philosophy and community service. The problem with such discrepancies in pleasures, which apply equally to pains, is that Utilitarian theory gives equal moral status to the actions which result in either pleasure. Kant, though his work predates Bentham and Mill, knew this path of reasoning well from pleasure maximization theories dating back to the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341? –270 BCE).

Actions based on the realm of reason, however, are not dependent upon one’s experiences in the world. In the realm of experience, imperatives (‘ought’ statements) are based upon hypothetical conditions: ‘if you want x, then you ought to do y’. Imperatives derived from the realm of reason are categorical (valid in all circumstances). ‘That there must be such a philosophy [that concerning categorical imperatives] is evident from the common idea of duty and of moral laws. Everyone must admit that if a law is to be morally valid, i.e., it is to be valid as a ground of obligation, then it must carry with it absolute necessity’ (Kant, p2). Kant’s assertion is that moral philosophy must rest on reason, free of hypothetical particulars and hence universal in its application. Near the end of the first section of the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals Kant states the maxim resulting from reason, his Categorical Imperative: ‘I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law’ (p14).

Because every person is capable of reason, every person is a moral being. A person acts in a morally praiseworthy manner when acting purely from consideration of the realm of reason. In doing so, Kant holds, one is acting from the good will, the source of moral worth in a person. Correspondingly, one’s action from the good will is one’s duty, the source of moral worth in an action. Kant makes it clear that those actions that just happen to conform to moral laws (those laws derived from pure reason, free of experience) are not of moral worth. Hence he stresses that morality is not an issue so much in actions as with Aristotle (nor consequences as with Utilitarians), but rather the will that motivates them (Marias, p295).

An understanding of Buddhist ethics in terms of Kant’s duty-based, or deontological, ethics can be gained by examining these concepts along with Kant’s third and final section of the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Moralsin which he takes up a positive discussion of reason and the freedom that flows from acting from duty. Kant here states that people belong to two worlds: that of sense (experience) and that of understanding (reason). In Buddhism, this corresponds to the division between stained and unstained existence.4 Stained existence is anything composed of other things, which must fall apart when the composing, or supporting, conditions fall away. Unstained is that which is eternal, unchanging, and uncreated. Our focus upon and clinging to the stained world, Kant’s world of sense, is the source of suffering in Buddhism. In so far as we tend to unstained existence, we come to understand the underlying laws (niyamas) of reality, including kamma-niyama, that law concerning our willed, and therefore moral, actions. Likewise, the notion of ‘looking within’, which is so common to religious traditions, is espoused by Kant as the method of discerning the moral law.5

Acting in accord with the moral law one becomes autonomous, ruled from within, as opposed to heteronomous, subject to external laws. This correlates perfectly with the Buddhist distinction between the creative mind and the reactive mind. The reactive mind is literally dis-integrated, whereas the creative mind is one of integration which is the result of, amongst other things, self-respect. ‘Having made oneself ‘the norm’ one is setting oneself the highest standards of behaviour. This is self-respect. There are certain courses of action that one’s self-respect will not allow one to follow. They just would not be proper, not becoming, not worthy.’ (Sangharakshita, p126) Despite the pleasure attainable by certain actions, the creative, autonomous mind does not follow these actions precisely because the pleasures attained are fickle and unlasting; the loss of which leaves one in a sort of pain: ‘just as a lessening of pain is fancied to be real pleasure, So a suppression of pleasure is also fancied to be pain’ (Ratnavali v.362). In so far as one is creative/autonomous, one acts in accord with transcendent law (Moral Law for Kant, the niyamas in Buddhism).

The final likeness between Kant’s metaphysics of morals and the ethics of Buddhism is the difficulty in each in describing the highest state, or realm, of being. For Kant, this world ‘remains always a useful and permissible idea for the purpose of a rational belief, although all knowledge ends at its boundary’ (Kant, p61) Similarly in Buddhism, enlightenment has been described as seeing things as they truly are, and hence indescribable to those who see things in terms of their stained existence, clinging to appearances. ‘This idea,’ Kant continues, ‘produces in us a lively interest in the moral law by means of the splendid ideal of a universal kingdom of ends in themselves (rational beings), to which we can belong as members only if we carefully conduct ourselves according to maxims of freedom as if they were laws of nature’ [italics mine] (Kant, p61). One cannot help but believe that Kant, a pious Christian, is here speaking of heaven and urging our consideration that heaven itself is the result of our acting according to universal moral law. In Buddhism, the idea is similar: by no longer clinging to the shoreline of the sense world, we enter the flow of the niyamas which take us to the sea of nirvana. In Buddhism this letting go of the sense world has often been mistakenly criticized as passivity. Critics posit the binary possibility of either reacting to the sense world or not reacting (just passively letting the world go by). In Buddhism, as in Kant, however, there is a third possibility, one which transcends this binary position in which one is fully active, though drawing from the intelligible world, not that of sense. The divergences of Buddhist ethics from those of Kant can be found in the prior discussion of Buddhism’s likeness to both Utilitarian and Aristotelian ethics. Just as Utilitarian ethics have been called ‘swinely’, Kant’s rigid law of action has been criticized as overly demanding. The solution to such criticisms is to posit an ethics that both accepts and rejects these theories, depending on the development of the agent. In most cases the young are very outwardly focused; they are likewise very much seekers of pleasure. To attempt to compel them directly to Kant’s demanding ethics would be foolish, whereas compelling them to engage their own reason, if only as a means to the end of greater pleasure, will begin the process of moral thought. Virtue ethics may then be fruitfully introduced; as one who has sufficiently experienced reason will see the fickle, unlasting, unfulfilling nature of sensual pleasures and seek a higher ideal. Even these virtues, however, prove incomplete, as noted previously, and it is when one has seen the limit of virtue thus prescribed that one may fruitfully take up the quest for Kant’s kingdom of ends in themselves.

A similar tripartite conception can be found in the Lankavatara Suttra of the Yogacara school of Buddhism in which the Discriminating Mind, focused on good/bad, attraction/repulsion, etc, is the lowest mind; the Intuitive Mind, which is above the momentariness of external circumstances, sharing in the Universality of the universal mind, yet it ‘enters into relations with the lower mind-system [discriminating mind], shares its experiences and reflects upon its activities’, and the Universal Mind, which ‘transcends all individuation and limits… thoroughly pure in its essential nature, subsisting unchanged and free from faults of impermanence, undisturbed by egoism, unruffled by distinctions, desires and aversions.’ (Chapter V, The Mind System, 10-12) To accomplish this, there must be a ‘’turning about’ in the deepest seat of consciousness. The mental habit of looking outward by the discriminating-mind upon an external objective world must be given up, a new habit of realizing Truth within the intuitive-mind by becoming one with the Truth itself must be established’ (Chapter V, The Mind System, 20). Likewise, the development of an epistemological model will follow this same path from naïve outwardly focused, controlled by the constantly changing world; to a more narrowed conception of reality, focused on greater adeptness in a chosen field; to transcendent understanding, focused on the understanding of and acting in accord with universal law. In a sentence, the full ethical/psychological formula can be put as such: pleasure is better than pain, character and integrity are better than mere pleasure, and acting in accordance with universal law is better than mere character and integrity (each progression in fact encompassing the previous).

How does this overcome our idea though? Epistemologically, it asserts that we can truly know ourselves, though not necessarily logically. Logic/Reason is based on and derived from experience. Western phenomenologists and Tibetan Buddhists argue that reason is thus merely a secondary way of knowing; and that direct awareness is primary. The work by Western phenomenologists is based in great part on Gestalt (or form) psychology, which has shown that our perception (or our consciousness, see premise 3 from the ‘proof’ of our idea) is not representational, but is instead creative or co-creative. This means that when we normally look at an object, our mind actively imputes meaning upon that object, based on the background. The background in Phenomenology is generally restricted to the visual background, but expands to the other senses as well. The famous Gestalt psychology examples are numerous: the goblet/two faces, the equal parallel lines with inverted our extended arrows, the drawn cube, etc. Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit is another example; when initially presented with the image, the subject’s mind ‘sees’ either a duck or a rabbit (it is in fact an image which may be construed as either). Thus our experience is a result of both the external world and the preconceptions our mind brings to it.

This opens the way for the possibility of true knowledge of the self. But first we must establish that one can have true knowledge of anything. For this we may turn to Rene Descartes, the great doubter, who determined that all he could truly know was that he existed (cogito ergo sum; I think, therefore I am). The Buddhist agrees with this to some extent, but as phenomenologists and others have pointed out, Descartes does not clarify what the subject, ‘I’ is, to which thought and thus existence are a predicate. So he has only shown that thought and existence exist. The Buddhist says further that feelings exist, ideas and concepts exist, dispositions or habits exist, and physical matter or form exists. These are the five skhandas or heaps of experience around which our idea of ‘self’ is constituted. We have feelings, thoughts, ideas, habits, and physical form, and assume there must be some core or basis behind our experience. There are thoughts, and there is awareness of those thoughts, but there is no I or soul outside of the skhandas which has these.

The self is instead a result we draw based on them, based on reason, but not direct experience. The self is a functional definition of the totality of the skhandas, similar to the way car is a functional definition of the heap of plastic, metal, glass and rubber in my driveway. Where is the car? The car is actually a label we place on that stuff arbitrarily. So ‘car’ is ultimately in the mind. A proof of this can be made if we line up volunteers with stopwatches as we begin taking parts off of the car (hood, doors, seats, engine, tires, etc). Ask the volunteers to stop their watches when there is no longer a ‘car’ in front of them. Some will stop when the engine is removed, others when the tires are gone, some may wait until no recognizable ‘car’ parts remain (perhaps when all is left is some bolts and rubber hoses). If ‘car’ were somehow intrinsic to the object, everyone would have stopped their watches at the same time. But because we each impute ‘car’ differently, we each see ‘car’ in different arrangements of physical items. The thought experiment can be done with a range of items, depending on how they are taken apart (i.e. for a ‘table’ try putting it into a fire to slowly burn, asking volunteers when to say that the ‘table’ no longer exists).

The ‘self’ is the same, it has no clear beginning, no clear end. The mistake people make is to assert that there must be something under our skhandas making them possible. This is a metaphysical leap, based in great part to John Locke’s theory of substance (that which stands under the qualities of an object we can perceive). But again, this notion, what I call ‘substantialism’ has no empirical basis; further it cannot be tested or disproved by experiments, it is 100% unscientific. A similar notion regarding the paths of the planets existed prior to Kepler and Galileo. This theory was that the planets hold their regular wandering paths through the heavens because they are in special grooves which allow their easy passage. Without such grooves, it was thought, the planets could not hold a regular path. The same mistake is made with Lockean substantialism: without this support for things we perceive, what is it that glues attributes together; why does hardness always accompany a cool temperature and clarity in glass if there is no substance of glass which holds these together? Locke’s substance is ultimately unidentifiable; replacing the order provided by God with a deity of his own.

‘Glass’, instead of being a godlike substance underlying observable attributes, is instead a label placed on them every time we encounter them (given that we speak English!). In this sense we can know ‘glass’ as a label placed on objects in the world. If we understand the ‘self’ as a similar imputation by the mind, we can see how knowledge of the self may be gained. Knowledge of the self begins with the understanding of dependent-coordination, by which all things have causes and conditions. When these causes and conditions fall away, so does the object. The causes and conditions of the ‘self’ are, as mentioned already, feelings, thoughts, ideas, habits, and physical form.

By calming the mind through more centered or directed actions, one can gain direct and thorough knowledge of this (right now all you have is a theoretical understanding). To develop understanding of the self you need three things: the theoretical understanding expressed here, developed concentration/clear perception, and mature ethics (laid out above). Developed concentration is something that anyone can develop, and most people have in certain situations. One of my favorite examples is of the baseball batter: he must have absolutely clear perception of the ball leaving the pitchers hand, he cannot be thinking about the last pitch or the post-game party or anything else whatsoever. Painters and musicians attain a similar state when in the ‘flow’ of their work. In fact, a new movement in Western psychology is the study of ‘flow.’ Academics like me feel in the ‘flow’ when writing papers or discussing philosophy; everyone feels it sometimes, but no one has studied the state or its effects as much as Buddhist contemplatives. The opposite of ‘flow’ or clear perception comes in many forms including states of emotional turmoil, physical sickness, and expectations in science (theory-laden observation).

These three aspects of ones life, when cultivated together, simply give rise to a full understanding of the self. The way this occurs is difficult (some would say impossible) to express. The example cited in Buddhist texts is of a frog going into the water to tell a tadpole what life on land is like: ‘you don’t breath water there, you don’t swim, etc’ – all the frog can give is negations of what it’s like in the water because the tadpole has no conceptual structure to understand the way life is on land. Reason in this case is impotent; all the frog can do is help the tadpole to get onto land himself to experience it. Reason can be used, as I hope it has been here, to point the way; but a reasoned argument cannot give the understanding to another person. The way is not through reason, but through the dismantling of the metaphysical assumptions we have made in error. Given a correct metaphysical view, reason can then be employed to truly know who we are. The issue about being who we are at the same time is not a problem when we do not presuppose that our identity is separate from our thought. The more reasonable proposition then is that we can truly know who we are (a combination of the five ever-changing skhandas). Our knowledge is at first theoretical, through reason/deduction and later, with clear perceptions and a simple, ethical life we see/know who we are directly. Being who we are is then natural and complete, not severed from those aspects, including knowledge (of who we are), which construct the self.”

Justin Whitaker September 5 2004

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1. For simplicity I will use ‘man, mankind, or humanity’ to refer to all Homo sapiens, regardless of gender. Likewise generic terms ‘him, himself, and his’ do not imply gender specificity when referring to ‘man, mankind…’
2. Sponberg, Alan; lectures from Introduction to Buddhism, 2000-2003. University of Montana
3. Niyama is an important aspect of both Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. In Buddhism it can be defined as ‘law’ but ‘constraint’ works equally well. There are five such constraints: bija-niyama: biological, the law that determines growth and death in any living thing; mano/citta-: unwilled operations of the mind; karma-: willed actions of the mind, body, and speech; uti-: physical constraints; and dharma-: constraints derived from the transcendental order (Bowker, p704).
4. In Buddhism, the dualistic worldview is itself seen to break down, and as such it is pragmatic rather than metaphysical. Further, some forms of Buddhism are overtly antagonistic to our use of (and potential dependence upon) reason, namely Ch’an (Zen). Vajrayana Buddhism, that of Tibet, privileges the use of imagination over reason to overcome sensual attachment. Likewise in the Buddha’s early teachings, at a certain level reason itself is an impediment to be left behind.
5. ’Looking Within’ as a prescription to understanding ethics is in this way unique amongst the stated Western ethical theories. Utilitarianism looks within only so far as discerning pleasure from pain and then focuses outside to the observable consequences of actions. Virtue-Ethics, too, is more outward-looking as one discerns virtues from the actions of others and one’s fulfillment, eudaimonia, came as a result of cultivating such virtues. Antagonism to looking within is nowhere greater than in Nietzsche, who considers it a kind of sickness. However, the idea is not novel in the West; one can find it in the works of Plato, Plotinus, Augustine and Aquinas.

Bibliography from “Buddhism, Politics, and Happiness”

Bowker, John, ed. (1996) The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions: Oxford University Press, China

Cahn, Steven M, and Markie, Peter ed. (2002), Ethics: History, Theory, and Contemporary Issues, Oxford University Press: New York

Cooper, John M. (1975), Reason and Human Good in Aristotle, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA (Quotes from this text are taken from Keown)

Glucklich, Ariel, (2001) Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul, Oxford University Press: New York

Kant, Immanuel, (1992) Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 3rd edition, Hackett Publishing: Indianapolis

Keown, Damien (1992) The Nature of Buddhist Ethics, St. Martin’s Press: New York

MacIntyre, Alasdair, (1981) After Virtue: A study in moral theory, University of Notre Dame Press: Nortre Dame, IN (Quotes from this text are taken from Keown)

Mappes, Thomas .A. and Zembaty, Jane, (2002) Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy, 6th edn, McGraw-Hill: New York

Marias, Julian, (1967) History of Philosophy, Dover: New York

Popper, Karl (1962) The Open Society and its Enemies, 4th revised edn: Routledge, London (Quotes from this text are taken from Keown)

Rawls, John, (1980) A Theory of Justice, Oxford University Press: Oxford (Quotes from this text are taken from Keown)

Seligman, Martin, (2002) Authentic Happiness, Free Press: New York

Sher, George, Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics, Cambridge

John Knoblock, Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, “Life of the Buddha, Part II”

Sangharakshita (2001) Know Your Mind: The Psychological Dimension of Ethics in Buddhism, Windhorse Publications: Birmingham (UK)

Sri Dhammananda, K., Maha Thera, Buddhism and Politics, from “What Buddhists Believe”

Buddhist Texts:

Ratnavali, Hopkins, Jeffrey (*tr) (1998) Buddhist Advice for Living and Liberation: Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland, Snow Lion: Ithica, NY

Samyutta Nikaya LVI.11 Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta (Setting in Motion the Wheel of Truth), Translated by Piyadassi Thera

Response:

It is unclear to us how you more reasonably overcome the self’s apparent “no clear beginning [and] no clear end”, and we add, no clear (or complete) middle. We agree that “knowledge of the self begins with the understanding of dependent-coordination” (i.e. the causes and conditions for things from our limited perspective). But where does more reasonable complete knowledge of the self begin?

You assert that by calming the mind through “more centered or directed actions, one can gain direct and thorough [or complete] knowledge of the self”. Yet, what does a calm mind have to do with direct, thorough, complete knowledge? What is it about a calm mind that direct, thorough, complete knowledge is attained (and the unclear beginning, middle, and end of the self is overcome)?

From the calm mind position, you then qualify that a combination of theoretical understanding, clear perspective (i.e. calm mind), and mature ethics are necessary conditions for direct, thorough, complete knowledge of the self. Yet, what is it about these factors when combined that lead to complete knowledge, especially since they are more reasonably defined by incompleteness? (Viz., due to the comparative nature of human thought, and thereby its propensity for infinite regress, there is more reasonably no complete theory, ethic, or state of calmness.)

To make matters worse for your position, you acknowledge that the mechanism behind the combination of these three factors, which apparently leads to complete knowledge, is unknown. So all we are left with through your position, unless you can more reasonably demonstrate otherwise, is a possible way to attain complete knowledge of who we are (via. your so-called “correct metaphysical view” entailing a specific theory and ethic, and a calm state of mind).

Note, if you disagree with our equation of “direct and thorough” with complete, then we would like to know how crude directness and thoroughness defined by incompleteness more reasonably results in complete knowledge.

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