ChatGPT recommended Stephen Batchelor's "Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times" I dipped into it yesterday and have immediate problems. Despite his vast training I don't feel Batchelor "gets it" yet. Of course that assumes I do ;-)
This past post "Why I struggled with Heraclitus when I first read him; What is so hard about Flux?" made me think to write this one. They are on the exact same thing.
TL;DR;
Batchelor is looking for a fixed ethics. But the essence of sin is basing decisions upon a fixed view of our self. The very worst decisions like saving face, protecting reputation etc based upon things like revenge, anger, insult are based upon preserving the integrity of a fixed view self. A false self if we stop to consider for a second who is protector of this fixed image! To become ethical is to seek a removal of the fixed and enter the lived. So a "fixed" ethics is literally a horned rabbit and a total misunderstanding of Buddha, Socrates and also Heraclitus.
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So Batchelor states that the teachings of Gotama and Socrates do not determine formulae for ethics. Situations are uncertain and ethical questions remain perplexing.
"Gotama and Socrates embodied and enacted an ethics of uncertainty. Although they came from different cultures separated by thousands of miles, they both advocated a life of questioning and self-examination. Any situation in life that presents us with a significant dilemma and calls for an appropriate response, is, by its very nature, a site of uncertainty. [Chapter 30]
However this seems to me wrong. Gotama and Socrates did teach absolutely exact ethics. Gotama the Dharma and Socrates the Logos. They both mean "path." Where this is different from what Batchelor is looking for is there are no Newtonian Laws for human behaviour. It is not fixed, it is a journey. You cannot just say "do not each meat." Human beings are not robots! Indeed were they Godel has shown us the laws would self contradict (or be incomplete). Such a Newtonian Project for Ethics is provably doomed.
Now a monk was saying to me only a few days ago that Buddha had to come up with rules for his sangha the Vinaya Rules is the most complete set of these. But they must be understood in context of the way the world actually is. No two situations are the same, so no two decisions are the same. Modern Western law courts do recognise this. While there are statute books, judges are not robots and they take into account the case specifics. If a "new" situation is found they make a "new" ruling. This is different from conservative ethics like Sharia (I believe) where the Law is already written. and it appears Batchelor is looking for such an ethics himself. What Buddha did was look broadly across the Sangha and refine some rules that fitted "most" situations. If people are like ball bearing dropping through a Galton Board the majority of paths go near the centre. Buddha's Law are just to nudge those people back on track.
But some times we face truly extraordinary circumstances. And this captures where Batchelor may be on the wrong path himself. I have 3 examples from Buddhist texts:
One example would be the pilgrimage to a Buddha high on a mountain in China. The weather worsened on the way up and rather than get lost in the mist going down the monk led the group to the Buddha whereupon to their alarm he broke the arms off the wooden statue and made a fire. They reminded him the karmic consequences of desecrating a Buddha and he simply replied its not a Buddha it is wood. Under different circumstances obviously they are right. See "uncertain" ethics is simple.
Another more profound example is the master and disciple while travelling to a monastery arrive at a swollen river where a woman is unable to cross. The master gives here a piggy-back across and then they continue on their journey. A few days later the troubled pupil stops the master and reminds him of a central monastic rule never to touch women under any circumstance. The master replies that he only touched the woman while he carried her, but then he put her down, meanwhile the pupil has been carrying her ever since. This is a fundamental teaching in the Dharma that the cause of "Sin" (term borrowed from Christianity where it means for an arrow to miss the mark - which is exactly Buddha's teaching) lies in grasping itself not in what is grasped (which is empty). Like the statue above, the master was carrying someone across the river, that she was female or a Buddha was not what he grasped.
The third example from the Buddhist cannon is comical in its extremeness but it reminds people like Batchelor that there is no fixed quality to the Path. A family with a baby are on a journey across barren land when they become hopelessly lost. They cannot find any food and grow hungry and weak and it becomes clear they are not going to survive. The husband says to the wife he is happy to sacrifice himself but she says I couldn't carry the baby by myself. The wife offers and the husband says he would never live down the shame of abandoning her. So they kill and eat the baby. If they are later questioned "but you killed and ate your baby" they--like above--will answer "no we killed and ate food." Interestingly you see this calculus played out very commonly in nature indeed. It is actually a good strategy in many situations. But we baulk at such a thought. I would never do that. Well also you have never been lost in a desert with this decision to make, you are literally not on this path.
The fear then is if we legalise child murder for food don't we weaken the protections against children? And that is exactly the crux of the issue. Ethics does not lie in the rules. People are not robots. If your ethics comes from the statute book you are dead and not living, which is also no ethics. Ethics is for living people on a path.
So this belief that Socratic and Buddhism ethics is "uncertain" and the desire for a fixed ethics hides this profound error that the world is fixed. He has not made it into Heraclitan thought, he is still Platonic. (see the linked blog post)
So to complete Batchelors project how do we have a statute book? How do we write a book on ethical guidance?
Well the first thing would be get enlightened. Christians say "sIn" to illustrate that the core of sin is "I." When we rebelled against God in Eden we placed ourselves first. When we sin we decide we are self sufficient and the source of things. The important caveat given what I say below is that it is true we are sufficient, but we need be careful which "I" we are talking about. The "I" that asked "why are there things?" is the authentic I. The dangerous I is the one in the mirror, the one we think, the one that is obviously an "after touch" on reality the one we clean up before posting on line. The true I does the posting, the fake one is what is posted. The "I" in "sIn" is the fake one. Batchelor doesn't seem to get this distinction. Once we see our true self as the source of everything, even the fake "I", then we are freed from chasing that Narcissistic image. It is literally empty, soulless, a doll and puppet, and as dead as painting in a gallery. When it raises its hand it is really you doing that not it. Waste no time on it and you will not sin. This is the only ethics there is.
However for those who still confuse there image with themselves--and for a select few this confusion disappears in a flash of insight like Eckart Tolle, but for the rest of us like me it is a steadily chipping away--we have rules to help our ball bearing go towards the centre.
So what are the rules on child murder and consumption? Buddha does not condemn the parents above. But obviously we are in risky territory. There is a great risk that we kill the child because it is weak, cannot fight back, and perhaps we don't really need the meat we are just being greedy--altho that is unlikely. The test here is to determine whether the child was eaten to sustain the parents and that alone. If everything is above board then their path was good.
But we protest how can parents not protect their own child, surely that is their deepest desire, they would do anything for that child, and even if they doubt that, they have a duty to protect that child.
This is where Heraclitus, Socrates and Buddha part with Batchelor. Sure these are useful rules, but they do not capture the essence of Ethics. Ethics is lived, they is no playbook at all.
Now this seems wrong because our society has rules. We frown say on marrying cousins. We don't eat insects in the West as a rule. When people come round for dinner you know what they expect. If you serve insects you are in trouble.
But social norms are not Ethics. They are social like whether to wear a hat indoors, or whether to work on Sunday. We learn these rules, they make us belong, they frame and define our history, society and ourselves. They are fundamental, but they are not Ethics they are Mores.
But we protest some more are you saying that not eating babies is just a custom? Well there are odd things from history where Spartans used to throw their deformed children into a pit at Mount Taygetus, and in the Near East child sacrifice to Baal was rampant--something Abraham legendarily switched to lamp slaughter to set the Hebrews apart. And then we have mass sacrifices normalised in Aztec culture. We tend to say they are primitive and more "advanced" civilisation has progressed but this does not understand the essence of ethics. All this thinking is looking for a fixed rule book, that we more of less conform to. We are not robots, we are living things.
Right so Genesis. God said don't eat from either the Tree of Everlast Life or Tree of Knowledge. We ate from Knowledge and learned to tell good and evil apart. God did not like this and we got cast out of Eden. That is slightly confused as Evil is exactly disobeying God. So really what happened was the disobedience in the first place was the Sin the tree doesn't matter. We already made up our mind and did what we wanted for our self (false mirror self) and that was the first Sin. It is allegorical that the first sin was actually what to eat which is the example element here. Once we start listening to that false self, the one before us in the mirror, then we can start to manufacture all kinds of problems and that is where "fixed rules" come in useful. Eve went wrong by tasting the fruit and deciding it was good.
This is work in progress but I think when we decide "this is good" we need be careful because the next question is "for who?" The simple "this is good" like the monk carrying the woman over the river is okay as long as it stop there. But the moment we enshrine that and go and tell Adam, and perhaps own this experience as "good" then we are now creating a fixed object that can become the centre of worship. I love these fruits, I want more, I'll tell people about them, this is what make me. Suddenly what was simple enlightened experience is now fossil experience. That fruit will never taste the same because we have so much expectation of it now, expecting it to always be just as good. This is now false self: we can see our self with that fruit in the mirror of the mind's eye. The fruit and the experience is now fake! So we struggle to get that "good" back and this is where we start to go wrong. Right I'm going on a fruit binge to try and get that "good" back. As our life spirals into addiction it is now that the law enforcement may pull us up by fixed rules. Rules of consent actually mean in the West that no one can intervene but the hospital may advise us to seek help as the fruit is now causing diabetes. This is the classic path of inauthentic self. It is the path that Buddha and Socrates warn against.
So a family are found in the desert with no baby. When asked how they survived a whole month without food and water they deny everything. The authorities are suspicious and they are convicted for child murder and sent to gaol where they they are the most hated prisoners and are eventually killed by inmates.
There is no doubt it is a complex decision to make. But the lesson here is that there is no fixed gamebook. But this does not then mean that ethics is vague and shadowy. It is exact and we will make decisions that are exact. And if we can remove the ripples of the fake self then those decisions will be exactly correct as well.
Going back a bit he had written this:
"The question I had brought to Korea was this: “Why is there anything at all rather than nothing?” When I had first read these words a year or so earlier in Martin Heidegger’s An Introduction to Metaphysics, they sent shivers up my spine and brought my mind to a halt. I had at last found a language in which to express the inchoate, urgent, and unresolved feelings that had been steadily growing within me during my time as a Buddhist monk. This question seemed to be the very wonder Socrates regarded as the beginning of all philosophy. Zen training under Kusan’s guidance gave me a disciplined way of enduring and enhancing this wonder. [Chapter 20]
From this Blog's SRH enquiry there is an easy answer to Heideggar's “Why is there anything at all rather than nothing?” which is "who's asking?"
This question of Being is not the start of anything, it is the end. There is already a vast amount of mental machinery clicking into action to even get to this question. We should not be asking of the end of the process but asking of the machinery itself? What is the nature of the machinery that even gets as far as a question.
It is the Anthropic Principle. If there was really nothing then there would be no question. So the question is already proof of things a la Descartes. How can the "castle" that is this question ever hope to examine and provide a foundations for itself? Classic SRH.
So while Heideggar and Batchelor marvel at the view visible from the state of existing, the question they are asking is sneakily not "why are there things", but why are there things "for me."
However "me" is just an existing thing. So to really ask this question we need get beyond "me."
Obviously this is possible. If "I" exist then there is a "world" of things in which I exist. From the perspective of this world the question of "why are there things?" has a different flavour. It is more like "There are things."
This in fact is the Wow!! that Batchelors and other readers of Heideggar get. "Oh yes there are things"
But where it gets immediately confused is rather than see our self as just one of the things, we do a land grab and claim all that I see for myself. We try and place all this on the shoulders of myself. What is just "there are things" becomes "Look! Wow! I can see things! Chances of that!" We then like Batchelor feel this is the start of a great journey and go searching for foundations. Look the thing to note is it is already all there. You cannot add anything to existence, you cannot use the microscope to check if it is working.
These questions while seemingly at the start of the journey should be the end. When you become aware of things having absolutely no reason to be there you park the car and get out. This is the end of the journey. The reason is that you realise that you yourself have absolutely no reason to be here: you just are and that is the amazing fact. It us from that fact you may start a search, but it can't change the fact. From here you can go and do lots of things, but by SRH you can't add any more to your foundations. You are already here: the job is done, relax, nothing to improve, nothing to do, you made it already, 10/10, Grade A+ Distinction, Existence graduation gown and colours are yours. Where I feel Batchelor does not get it, is that he already made it. I mean: who is asking the question? who is meditation? who is searching? who will find the answer? If he doesn't already have a vehicle then no journey is possible. If he does already have a vehicle for absolute certain--else how could he do the enquiry and the journey--then what exactly is he searching for? It is Descartes all over again.
So why do I blog if we are all already here? It is because I like Batchelor am undoing the exact same mistaken journey. I have looked out on the world and thought wow there is something amazing here let me go and investigate. I can hoard up wisdom and understanding and I can help other people undertake the same journey to get to the foundational understanding and secret of the world.
BUT hello! STOP! Wait a second before you start. Don't you need to be standing on the secret to even make the journey? If you don't "know" it surely that doesn't matter, because without knowing it you are nevertheless hoping to find it. It means everything is working fine without "knowing" this esoteric secret. Knowing it doesn't appear to make any difference.
Paolo Coelho has a young shepherd go on his walkabout through the desert in search of the secret only to find it was where he started. Unfortunately I feel for this blog entry he finds buried gold which seems a bit abstract. It might be better if he went searching for some eyes or glasses. Eventually the Alchemist shows him a mirror and he realises he was wearing them all along. A moments reflection reveals how could he even have made the journey without them! That is what Batchelor has not seen yet.
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