North Carolina Society for Ethical Culture
Happiness, Buddhism, and Ethical Culture
By Chris Kaman, Adjunct Leader, N.C. Society for Ethical Culture
A platform talk given on February 25, 2001
I speak on happiness, Buddhism and Ethical Culture today not as an expert in Buddhism, but as someone exposed to enough Buddhism to understand some fundamentals, and as someone who has read two books by the Dalai Lama: Ethics for a New Millennium, and The Art of Happiness. The latter book is written by Howard Cutler, a psychologist who interviews the Dalai Lama, and also brings insights from psychology to the central points in the book. I also want to show how Ethical Culture is very much in sync with the teachings of the Dalai Lama as expressed in these books.
Buddhism teaches us that the world that we see is a world of illusion. For the nonBuddhist, the world is made up of a great diversity of plants, animals, of animate and inanimate things; each human being is a truly distinct being. Yet, that is an illusion according to Buddhism. The world is really a unified entity. We exist as part of that entity, but are not distinct, apart from it. When we are in unity with the universe, then we attain true peace, nirvana. To be in unity with the universe, we have to give up the idea that we are separate from each other, and from the rest of the universe.
Suffering and evil come into being when people act as though they are separate and distinct from the universe, from the natural world, as if their self really exists. The first of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths state that all life is suffering, caused by the desires of the self for pleasure, and material goods. Greed is insatiable because it does not satisfy the true needs of human life. Greed causes one to want more, in spite of what one has. So the cycle goes on, and on. We end up suffering from our wants, and attachments. We suffer from our attachments because then they are taken away from us, we feel pain.
The only way out of this life of suffering to renounce the self, its wants, and its attachments, and to follow the teachings of Buddha, and the Eightfold Path: right understanding, right purpose, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right alertness, and right concentration. If one does this, then suffering will cease, and one can enter into nirvana, the state of final liberation from the cycle of birth and death.
This oversimplified version of Buddhism I hope does reveal a very complex, and difficult to comprehend view of life at least to the Western mind which is trained to believe firmly in the self. In fact, the self is central to Christianity, which promises salvation to the individual who follows Jesus, resulting in an eternal reward in Heaven where our spiritual selves can still commune with our loved ones, and also enjoy the benefits of contemplating the glory of god. An of course, Western capitalism also teaches us that the self needs many things, and that happiness is dependent upon having those things.
This gulf between Eastern and Western thought is significant. The difficulty of traversing that gulf tends to keep Buddhism at bay in the US. Instead, Western culture seems to be seeping into the East, as capitalism spreads across the globe, even into China.
The Dalai Lama has taken both East & West and has joined them in a way which for me is quite compelling. In both books, he is making inroads into Western consciousness by avoiding talk of the self not truly existing. To the contrary, he seems to accept the notion of a self with wants and needs. He has diminished this core concept of nonbeing, but has raised other related concepts in such a way as to make them comprehendible, and at times intriguiging.
How does he do this? He has taken the concept of personal happiness, and built a new definition of spirituality, and ethics. I want to focus on the ethical component of his work, since it is built on his concept of happiness. The spiritual part of his books really does not take up much of this thoughts, and time. In fact, he does not even mention death and rebirth, reincarnation, or any other supernatural elements as requirements for his new paradigm. In the book Ethics for a New Millennium he does from time to time discuss the Buddhist approach, a theistic approach, and then a humanistic approach, showing how all three can be used to help guide the way down the path he is traversing.
At this point I’d like to introduce to you his vision, and his ethic, reflecting from time to time on its similarity to Ethical Culture.
The Dalai Lama believes that the pursuit of happiness, and the avoidance of suffering are the primary purpose of life. He believes this to be self evident. He believes that all human beings by nature seek happiness, and avoid pain. This is certainly Freudian, and appeals to most of us as reasonable goals in life. While many people may be unhappy, they are unhappy because they believe that a happier state is possible, but not within their grasp. Few people really choose to be unhappy, even if circumstances makes them feel that being unhappy is the only reasonable reaction to their situation. Even those who commit suicide seek to end their pain, to relieve themselves of their unhappy state. In fact, it has often been observed that those who do commit suicide appear to be quite happy in the days prior to their suicide, as they feel the relief beforehand of the ending of their pain.
The beginning of compassion begins when we recognize not only that we have a right to happiness, but also do all other human beings, even all sentient beings. Indeed, the first requirement of happiness, according the Dalai Lama, is compassion. Against the conventional “wisdom” that we must take from others what we want in order to be happy, the Dalai Lama argues that we can’t truly be happy if we are unconcerned with other’s happiness. How can I be happy if I must be suspicious of others, untrustful of others, as well as manipulative and deceitful in order to maximize my self indulgence?
He argues that at our core we are gentle, and compassionate. Now that may bring cries of naivete, or foolishness, but he makes arguments here which psychologists, and other social scientists are only now coming to recognize. Infants seem to be prewired, most anyway, to seek human contact. They are attracted to faces. They turn their head towards the sounds of a human voice. They seem to thrive when touched with loving hands. And then they have that incredible sucking impulse. They want their mother’s breast. A mother’s milk won’t flow if she is angry, or upset, or hostile toward the child. It is only when there is tenderness from the mom, that the milk flows, and the child responds and relaxes, providing the mother with a pleasure that only a mother can know.
While children are certainly raised in environments which are harsh, and lacking in both gentleness and love, what type of human being does this create? Don’t we learn best when our teachers are patient, and kind, rather than angry, and condescending? Who wants to eat dinner as a family when there are only angry words, and explosive reactions? Do you really prefer to work with people who are aggressive, suspicious, and vengeful?
The Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest, while being quite valuable in explaining the evolution of the species, has thoroughly saturated our culture with what Olin calls the strife model of life. People like Olin Beall and the Dalai Lama are trying to reawaken us to the gentler side of our species. It is their argument, I think, that we have survived due to our compassionate nature, at least as much as due to our ability to survive in the harshest of environments. Had we been unable to cooperate with each other, we’d have been extinct long ago. Had we been so dependent upon aggression, hatred, and hostility, then why do our infants and children suffer then exposed to these from birth onwards? We know we can survive on very little, but isn’t the better question, “How can we thrive?” I mean thrive here in the Maslovian sense of self-actualization.
I won’t belabor this point. I did want to raise it because it is central to the Dalai Lama’s philosophy, as well as to the philosophy of Ethical Culture. Ethical Culture, as expressed in the 8 Commitments, believes that we all have a choice how we act, and that by attributing worth to all, that we can build a better world, and make our own lives more fulfilled. This is necessarily based on a positive view of human capabilities, and human potential. A review of much of the literature published by the American Ethical Union, whether by Felix Adler, John Lovejoy Elliot, or the other great leaders of the past or present, will show this belief in the human potential to improve itself. If we take this perspective seriously, we are more likely to act in ethical ways than if we subscribe to the dog-eat-dog strife perspective. Indeed, how we view our basic human nature really does affect how we act on a daily basis, it forms the basis on which we evaluate our successes and our failures.
Let’s now look specifically at happiness. Just what is happiness? Howard Cutler notes that our word for happiness comes from the Icelandic word which means chance, or luck. Indeed the western view seems to be that happiness is a desirable state, but that is only by chance that we obtain it. It thereby suggests that no matter what one does, that happiness will come and go from his or her life.
Many people confuse happiness with pleasure. Think about that. While pleasure may make one temporarily happy, elated, or joyful, the consequences of pleasure can also make one sad, depressed, angry, jealous, hateful. Pleasure is indeed a momentary thing, coming from the physical pleasures such as eating, drinking, or sex, as well as from the pleasure of being with friends, or reading a good book.
Happiness has often been contrasted to contentment, one being more joyful, the other being a more serene, acceptance of one’s condition in life. Contentment is what the Dalai Lama suggests as the true source of happiness. The basis for contentment does not come from acquiring what one wants. Rather contentment comes from wanting what one has. Clearly, he has not renounced attachment, as traditional Buddhism has. He is trying to put some reigns on our belief that happiness comes from material gain, or from success itself. To me this sounds very much like the basis of the simplicity movement.
Now how does one become content? Here both Buddhism, and traditional psychology come to agreement; I’m thinking of Albert Ellis, in rational-emotive therapy. This branch of psychology believes that it is not what happens to us that is critical to our mental state, it is how we respond to what happens to us. It is our perceptions of our condition which cause us to act with either anger, or sadness, or joy. While this may seem obvious, it does fly in the face of much of the Western conceptions about life. How many movies are made about the benefits of contentment? Over and over again, we watch movies, television, and read books about people whose happiness ebbs and flows based on what happens to them, rather than on how they perceive their situation.
One does take the first step to happiness by recognizing the difference between pleasure and happiness. This concept is not new, nor unique to Eastern thought. Aristotle taught the difference between real and apparent goods. An apparent good is anything which on the surface seems appealing. Apparent goods are those culturally based things which one acquires, or learns to want. Real goods are basic to human beings, such as the need for food, water, love, sex, and even knowledge. In other words, those things we need in life. Even the Rolling Stones know this, in a song I forget the name of, which goes that you don’t always get what you want, but you usually get what you need. Nevertheless, this distinction is one we perhaps intuitively know, but when stated outwardly, can remind us throughout our lives, to look beyond the issues of pleasure, or want. I’m not saying that we eliminate pleasure, but that we bring wisdom to the pursuit of pleasure, that we must know ourselves well enough to know whether this or that pleasure, if pursued will contribute to our happiness, or possibly thwart it. What usually does make for a good movie is when someone opts for the quick, instant pleasure, only to then suffer in their work or home life as the consequences of that pleasure reach fruition.
Education and learning are tools we can use to help us learn about happiness, both in the general sense, and specifically in our lives. Education helps us to learn about ourselves, society, and the physical world around us. Lifelong learning can take place via books, courses, lectures, film, and friends. As science expands our awareness of the world around, and within us, we must remain open to new ideas, and concepts. One of Ethical Culture’s 8 commitments is the belief that lifelong learning will keep us closer to an ethical path, that we never reach a state of knowledge where learning is no longer necessary.
Learning includes for the Dalai Lama, learning about positive and negative emotions, and actions. Just what are negative emotions? Anger, hatred, jealousy, and their resulting actions of violence and aggression. Now I had a problem with labeling anger as negative, because this implies “bad.” I have read many books about anger, and have experimented with various strategies in handling anger in my life. At one point the prevailing, or at least a strong tendency in psychology was to emphasize the display of anger, to get it out, rather than suppressing it, or denying it. For those of us who are quick to anger, this was a reassuring recommendation. However, in the last 30 years there has been a real evolution of this position. While no psychologist today would claim that denying the presence of anger is healthy, how one reacts to it is now the real issue. Anger is now thought of a a symptom of something else being wrong. Whether it be peevishness, or more chronic anger, anger is like pain, it is an indication that something is wrong, either in our values, or our relations with others. Here is where discipline, and wisdom is called for. Stating your anger in appropriate ways is more healthy than an outburst. Resolving the problem generating the anger is more important than in retelling the problem over and over. Studies have shown that dwelling upon the anger, and retelling the problem over and over does not diminish the anger, indeed it causes it to increase in intensity.
The Dalai Lama does introduce the term “afflictive emotions” when discussing negative emotions. I think this term is more meaningful. Afflictive means that the emotion takes a toll on the person who is experiencing it, it interferes with the person’s ability to feel compassion, to experience inner peace, to feel happiness and contentment. I think that this is obvious, yet how many of us allow small things to get us upset? I can be quite peevish at times, and i guarantee you that if i do not control it, it controls me, affecting my relations with both my family, and my co-workers.
Howard Cutler also brings to light recent studies of indicating that those who tend to be angry most of the time do suffer more health problems than those who do not, and especially more than those who tend to have warm, intimate relationships (not sexually speaking) with many other people. He cites a study at Duke University where a study of over 1,000 heart patients found that those who lacked a spouse, or close confidant were three times more likely to die within 5 years of the diagnosis of heart disease as those who were married or had a close friend. He quotes other studies to illustrate how having intimate relationships with people is good for one’s health.
Intimacy is the subject of two chapters in the book on happiness. Eric Fromm is cited as recognizing that the one thing that all humans tend to fear most is the threat of being separated from other human beings. British psychoanalyst John Bowlby has written that intimate attachments are the “hub around which a person’s life revolves” and that these intimate attachments gives “strength and enjoyment” to everyone who participates in that intimate relationship. He claims that current science and traditional wisdom are “at one” in this regard.
Intimacy is defined by the Dalai Lama as sharing ones innermost self with others. He believes this to be possible with many people in one’s life, not just with one or two people. In fact, he advocates abandoning the idea that there is only one person in life with whom we can be intimate, that special someone who we fall in love with, the one and only. He believes that such expectations contribute to the high failure rate of many marriages. He does not advocate abandoning marriage, but rather that it should be focused on true intimacy with the recognition that we may develop close relationships with other people outside of marriage,close in the sense of sharing our inner feelings and thoughts, not close in the sexual sense. I won’t pursue this here, but this chapter is very honest in its examination of the pitfalls of our conception of romantic love.
Now I must pause to remind you how far this is from central Buddhist teaching as I understand it, which emphasizes a life with no attachments, since attachments cause suffering, and the ending of suffering is the goal. This represents a real transformation for the person who is essentially the authoritative spokesperson for Tibetan Buddhism. I have never found the anti-attachment philosophy in Buddhism appealing. I am attached to my family, and would not shrink from the suffering resulting from that attachment.
What other elements contribute to a happy, and contented life? Patience is the second necessary requirement according to the Dalai Lama. But what is patience? Withholding anger? Suppressing frustration? Biting one’s lip? He introduces the term “so pa” from Tibetan Buddhism. This term is equated with patience, but means more. It means being able to withstand troubles, and suffering. There is an intentional resoluteness in this concept, rather than an unreasoned reaction. To be truly nonviolent, one must practice forbearance, and fortitude.
Patience, or “so pa” requires other practices for it to work, to become a reality. In fact, these practices will help one cope with all types of suffering, not just with anger, or frustration. One practice is that of shifting one’s perspective. One reason we often feel anger and frustration is that we personalize our pain. We interpret all that happens to us in terms of it’s impact on ourselves. Here’s a quote from Jacques Lusseyran, blind from the age of 8, who fought in the resistance against the Germans, and ended up at Buchenwald: Unhappiness, I saw then, comes to each of us when we think ourselves at the center of the world, because we have the miserable conception that we alone suffer to the point of unbearable intensity.
By examining what happens to us from the perspectives of others, we can gain insight into our own problems, and learn how to react to our own suffering, how to put it into proper perspective. How many times have you been told not to be upset, that others have it much worse? The intent behind this is good, is to help you shift your perspective. Yet the danger is to tell someone not to feel a certain way. I think the first step is to admit how you are feeling, to be honest about the feelings of jealousy, or resentment. The next step is then to shift perspectives.
So how we think we appear to others is not necessarily how they see us. Let me give you a personal example. I have had difficulties with one of my peers at work. While this was difficult for me, I did try to see her perspective, to understand how she could react to me in the way she did, which was quite contrary to how I saw myself. I also remained focused, with some difficulty, on my desire to be the best I can be, and to bring out the best in others. Corny yes, but I take it seriously. By examining myself from her perspective, I realized that my actions were not appropriate. Rather than reacting to the more negative elements in her reaction to me, I focused on how I could change her perspective of me to that which I think is the real me. This required me to open up more to her, to let her see the human being in me, rather than to close up, and distance myself from her, no matter how tempting that was. Our relationship is much better now. Please don’t think I am holding myself up as a model. What I want in life worked in this instance. That’s all I am saying.
By learning to shift our perspectives, we also can begin to appreciate the concept of dependent origination, another Tibetan Buddhist concept. This concept is the third and most accurate vision of how they believe the world works. The first level is cause and effect. This effect is caused by this other thing. Here, each thing appears to be separate and distinct. The second level of understanding is the realization that there is a mutual dependence between the parts and the whole. Like a car engine, the various parts must work together for the whole thing to function. If any one part fails, or performs poorly, it strains or reduces the performance of the whole. Take this concept one step further, we have dependent origination. This is the concept that all phenomenon are dependently originated, no thing has a truly independent existence. Everything we see arises out of an indefinite series of interrelated causes and conditions. Therefore our every action has implications for ourselves and others. Understanding others involves understanding the complexities which revolve around that person. Dependent origination is used to understand any phenomenon in life, not just human relations.
Once we recognize this, which I think most of here really do, then we can begin to understand the world in a more objective, and mature way. Yet to do so requires compassion, and empathy, openness and honesty. I will attest to the value of this in my own life, although I was not familiar with these specific concepts. I have matured, and learned to humble myself by shifting perspective, by seeing the interdependency and interactions, by removing myself from the center of the world, and realizing that I am a small part. This does not diminish my self esteem in any way. These concepts are only meant to help one move from a universe focused on one’s self, to one where one’s self is part of a larger whole. The emotional impact of this is profound.
So, we build our patience not only through holding our angry outburst, but by learning to shift our perspective, and to focus on the larger world, rather than only upon ourselves. We do so with intention, as part of a larger approach to life which focuses on compassion for others, based on everyone’s desire to be happy. By respecting others’ right to be happy, we change how we act and react to those around us, as well as those far beyond our communities, and national borders. An ethic based on this is not one based on legalistic formalities, but requires sensitivity to others, honesty, and staying focused on what is important in life.
I think these concepts and ideas put forth by the Dalai Lama are quite compatible with the concepts put forth by Felix Adler, the founder of the movement we call, “Ethical Culture.” While Adler tended to focus on “bringing out the latent potential in others” as opposed to respecting others’ right to happiness per se, clearly doing the former right, will cause the latter to happen. Adler’s concern for others, and his recognition of the link between our own fulfillment and that of others is striking in its similarity to what is being advocated by the Dalai Lama. Let me quote from Adler’s book on Religion & Duty as paraphrased by Stanley Wayne of the Ethical Society of Boston:
“We shall grow in the attempt to help others to grow. Every human life is valuable, because in all dwells the same spiritual life. Neither individualism, nor altruism is the satisfying doctrine. People grow and develop in proportion as they help others to grow and develop. The mission of spiritual beings is to make apparent what is only latent. The attempt to actualize the potential in others, unfolds resources dormant in ourselves. This dedication to self and others harmonizes the ever conflicting claims of individualism, and altruism. The good of oneself, and the good of others, emerge together.”
Sometimes I wish that Ethical Culture had such a prominent, and eloquent spokesperson as the Dalai Lama. While we all appreciate the lack of dogma, and creed in this movement, we are also left to look to others such as the Dalai Lama to help elucidate the principles which are very akin to what Adler tried to do. Adler’s writings are difficult to comprehend, but quotes such as the one above clearly show he was in touch with ideas and concepts which today are still relevant. On the other hand, the benefit of not having such a spokesperson is that we are free to find as individuals whatever writings, and teachings help us in our quest to improve our relations with each other. Each of us is indeed on a journey through life, a journey where we search for meaning, and for inspiration. So we each come here with our own search for happiness, and for ethical living. If we listen to, and learn from each other, we will enrich ourselves, and those around us. Thank you.
Last Modified: Sunday, October 23, 2005
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