Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic

INTRODUCTION

With the growing interest in Buddhism in recent years, various new modes of therapy, such as mindfulness-based cognitive-behavioral therapy, have incorporated certain theories and practices from Buddhism. Proponents of these approaches attempt to offer the essence of Buddhist mindfulness meditation without what is perceived as the unnecessary baggage of its beliefs and rituals. Others, both psychologists and nonpsychologists, who regard themselves as Buddhist or are at least sympathetic to Buddhism, promote what they call agnostic, or secular, Buddhism, in which the teachings of the Buddha are denuded of anything ordinarily associated with “religion.”¹ Despite their aversion to many of the ideological and institutional elements of Buddhism, many such practitioners are clearly motivated by compassion and truly wish to help alleviate the suffering of the world, even if their beliefs diverge from those accepted in traditional Buddhist lineages.

These rapid assimilations of Buddhism often ignore the fact that most forms of psychotherapy are embedded in the ideological framework of scientific materialism, which is fundamentally incompatible with all schools of Buddhism.² There is no doubt that Buddhism must adapt to the rapidly changing social and ideological environment if it is to retain its vitality and relevance in the modern world. But if those who adapt it are not knowledgeable about traditional forms of Buddhism, their assimilated “essence” of mindfulness meditation will bear little resemblance to mindfulness as taught by the many schools in the first 2,500 years of Buddhism’s evolution. As these adaptors break continuity with earlier forms of Buddhism, the name may survive, but extensive mutations may render the original species extinct.

A growing number of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists have also recently begun to study the behavioral and neurological effects of Buddhist practice, with a primary emphasis on mindfulness meditation. Their scientific studies have demonstrated the neurophysiological correlates as well as physiological and psychological benefits of mindfulness practice, boosting the credibility of claims for the value of meditation as a whole.³ Here another kind of assimilation is taking place, in which Buddhist meditation—with little or no reference to Buddhist ethics or worldview—has become an object of scientific inquiry to be studied under laboratory conditions.

Some psychotherapists, including researchers in the new field of positive psychology, are exuberant about their ability to develop methods that deliver the benefits of meditation without requiring years of dedicated practice. Likewise, some neuroscientists are promoting the notion that the only way to understand the nature and efficacy of meditation is by studying the brain. Richard Davidson, one of the leaders in this field, expresses his own optimism about this “neurocentric” approach to meditation research: “At the end of five years, we should know how meditation works and what brain connections are exercised or strengthened.”⁴

Appropriation of Buddhist practices into a materialistic paradigm is common in scientific studies of meditation: the brains and behavior of meditators are studied, but first-person insights into the nature of the mind—especially those that challenge the beliefs of scientific materialism—are generally ignored. Meditators in such studies are generally treated as subjects rather than as peers or true collaborators with their own methods of inquiry that may be just as rigorous and replicable as those of science. In some cases, Buddhists do collaborate with scientists in choosing which meditations to study and how to investigate them. However, insights into the nature of the mind gained through meditation rarely find their way into scientific papers, and any Buddhist assertions that contradict a materialist view of the mind are quietly dismissed. The first-person experiences that form the basis for such assertions are simply not counted as “evidence.”

In these various ways, Buddhism is rapidly becoming incorporated into modernity, but often with little attention given to the ways this ancient tradition is radically at odds with many beliefs and values in the modern world. Meaningful engagement of Buddhist theories and practices with the mind sciences depends on meditators, psychologists, and scientists understanding their many dissimilarities. Before we can bridge the divide between the two, the nature and extent of the divisions that separate them must be well understood.

BUDDHIST WORLDVIEW, VALUES, AND WAY OF LIFE

Throughout the modern world, Buddhist meditation is frequently taught by itself, with scant reference to Buddhist worldview, ethics, or way of life. This is not so much a matter of decontextualizing Buddhism but of recontextualizing it within the framework of the modern worldview, values, and way of life. Whether one is a traditional Buddhist or a modern, secular agnostic, the beliefs and perspectives that constitute one’s worldview, values, and way of life are always inextricably interconnected. Our worldview largely determines what we value, for we will not value that which we consider unreal or unimportant. These values in turn strongly influence our way of life. In our pursuit of happiness, we devote our time and energy to that which we value. Of course, the influences among these three elements are reciprocal: our way of life influences our values, and our values influence our view of the world. These elements arise and evolve in an interdependent fashion, deeply entwined. Radical changes in one are bound to lead to important shifts in the other two.

Meditation has everything to do with values: shifting from inauthentic, fundamentally deluded values to authentic, reality-based values. This begins with oneself but eventually extends out to all sentient beings. Such a shift can occur only in the context of a compatible worldview, and meditation can bring about deep and lasting changes only in the context of a conducive way of life. Ethical behavior supports the cultivation of mental balance and well-being, whereas unethical behavior undermines it. The influence is not one-way. A meaningful meditative practice is bound to inform and alter one’s view of reality, and it will also result in changes to one’s conduct, or way of life.⁶ These three elements are always profoundly interrelated.

While no single worldview, doctrine, or belief system dominates the modern world—the religions of the world retain a powerful vitality—scientific materialism exerts a pervasive influence on academia, public policy, and the media in the West, and in communist countries it rules all aspects of life. For Marxist regimes it has become a virtual state religion, with its own thoroughly integrated belief system, values, and way of life.

Some proponents of materialism argue that adopting a materialistic worldview does not necessarily result in valuing only material things. Daniel Dennett, for example, writes:

Consider the two utterly different meanings of the word “materialistic.” In its most common everyday sense, it refers to somebody who cares only about ‘material’ possessions, wealth, and all its trappings. In its scientific or philosophical sense, it refers to a theory that aspires to explain all the phenomena without recourse to anything immaterial—like a Cartesian soul, or “ectoplasm”—or God. The standard negation of materialistic in the scientific sense is dualistic, which maintains that there are two entirely different kinds of substance, matter and . . . whatever minds are supposedly made of.⁷

This point is well taken, for it is obvious that not everyone who believes that all phenomena can be explained in material terms values only material stuff. Many are deeply committed to such ideals as justice, love, joy, beauty, and political and religious freedom. Dennett’s fundamental article of faith is that all these must be regarded as properties of matter—they all stem from interactions between the body and the physical environment, without any immaterial influences. He insists that “a good scientific materialist believes that mental health—spiritual health, if you like—is just as physical, just as material, as ‘physical’ health.”⁸ This implies that mental and spiritual health are to be attained through physical interventions, leaving little, if any incentive to introspectively probe the nature and potentials of one’s own mind and consciousness.

We humans are an odd species. Even when we have adequate shelter, clothing, food, and health care, we remain unsatisfied, looking for ways to find greater happiness. While some species, like dogs, may be content to lie down and nap after they have met their basic needs, many humans continue to seek more happiness, far beyond the call of survival and procreation. If we embrace a materialistic worldview, we will naturally seek satisfaction and fulfillment by turning our attention to the outside world, looking for novel sensory and intellectual experiences as well as new material acquisitions. Likewise, when we focus on decreasing our level of suffering and pain, once again our orientation will be outward, looking for scientific and technological breakthroughs to relieve our suffering.

Human desire for ever-greater happiness seems to be insatiable, and a materialistic worldview strongly supports materialistic values and a way of life centered on the never-ending quest of consumerism. In addition to the futility of such a strategy for both individuals and nations, there is a dilemma in equating human well-being with material pleasures: we value our possessions only on a relative basis. The pursuit of material well-being is invariably competitive, and the more everyone possesses, the less valued are our commodities. We tend to emphasize short-term outcomes, ignoring the long-term consequences of voracious consumption and the exploitation of the natural environment. In a world with a rapidly increasing human population and dwindling natural resources, unsustainable consumption inevitably generates conflict, misery, and socioeconomic collapse, accompanied by massive degradation of the environment.

A materialistic outlook that focuses our attention on the bounties of the external physical world simultaneously blinds us to the inner resources of the human heart and mind. If all our efforts go toward the alleviation of suffering and realization of happiness by external means, the inner ways that we might pursue the good life will be unexplored. A materialistic worldview provides no rationale for making a commitment to ethics or spiritual practice of any kind. Material values and consumerism are naturally aligned with materialism, which reduces meditation to a means for making a materialistic way of life more bearable. This point is illustrated by Dennett’s limited appreciation of a life devoted to meditative cultivation of the heart and mind:

Consider, for instance, those contemplative monks, primarily in Christian and Buddhist traditions, who, unlike hardworking nuns in schools and hospitals, devote most of their waking hours to the purification of their souls, and the rest to the maintenance of the contemplative lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. In what way, exactly, are they morally superior to people who devote their lives to improving their stamp collections or their golf swing? It seems to me that the best that can be said of them is that they manage to stay out of trouble, which is not nothing.⁹

Such a view rejects contemplative practice as a means to explore one’s own nature. Materialists may indeed meditate, but their reductionist perspective limits their motivations to stress reduction and physical health benefits rather than the pursuit of enlightenment.

It may be comforting for writers like Dennett to dissociate their metaphysical worldview from materialistic values and the consumerist way of life, which are devastating the natural environment and human society. Many materialists cannot conceive of science that is not embedded within a reductionist framework. In reality, the metaphysical ideology of materialism enjoys a parasitic relation with science. To use Dennett’s analogy, much as the lancet fluke and other parasites manipulate their hosts to engage in unlikely—even suicidal—behavior for the benefit of the parasite, so does the dogma of materialism manipulate modern science, barring it from the inner depths and resources of human consciousness.¹⁰

Four central themes in the Buddha’s teachings provide the framework for Buddhism as a whole. Regardless of our worldview, values, and way of life, all humans, like other sentient beings, wish to avoid suffering and pain and to find happiness. We differ from other sentient beings in our understanding of the nature of suffering and happiness, our ability to identify their underlying causes, our capacity to be free of suffering and to achieve genuine well-being, and the means we employ to realize our aspirations. These are the four realities known to aryas, the Sanskrit term for “noble ones” who have achieved the supramundane paths and results; they are commonly called the Four Noble Truths. We will now examine each of these truths from both Buddhist and modern scientific perspectives.

THE TRUTH OF SUFFERING

While the major Abrahamic religions all begin with the declaration of an article of faith based on divine revelation, Buddhism begins with a pragmatic and empirical analysis of the reality of suffering (Skt. duhkha). Rather than presenting a worldview with a metaphysical belief in a supernatural creator, the Buddha encouraged his followers to explore their own experience, with a primary emphasis on something that is a major concern for everyone: the reality of suffering and how we might be free of it.

In the Buddhist analysis, there are three levels of suffering to which all sentient beings are vulnerable. The first of these, called “the suffering of suffering,” is the blatant suffering we immediately recognize as physical and mental pain and discomfort of all kinds, from subliminal malaise to searing anguish. When we experience such suffering, our immediate response is to wish for it to go away, to try to get rid of it, and to avoid its recurrence. We employ a wide range of painkillers and psychopharmaceutical drugs to “manage the symptoms” of all kinds of mental distress, in addition to the age-old remedy of intoxication with alcohol or other drugs to forget our problems. In contrast, the Buddha’s recommendation is not to suppress the symptoms of blatant suffering but rather to examine them carefully, like a physician who carefully inspects all the symptoms before making a diagnosis.

The second kind of suffering identified in Buddhism is called the “suffering of change.” This does not suggest that change itself necessarily brings suffering, but rather that attachment to things staying as they are produces a sense of unease and anxiety. Sooner or later, all the people, things, places, and objective situations that we grasp onto as sources of happiness and security pass away, and the more we are attached to them, the more we suffer when such change occurs. Even while we are enjoying the objective supports of the “good life,” they are not ultimately satisfying, for the deeply rooted impulse to find something more and better drives us onward, seeking novelty and striving for greater satisfaction.

The third kind of suffering is called the “ubiquitous suffering of conditioned existence,” sometimes reduced to the cliché “life is suffering,” but that sound bite is misleading. This is the deepest form of suffering identified in Buddhism, and it represents our inherent vulnerability to suffering of all kinds. The underlying empirical hypothesis is that as long as we grasp onto our own individual identity, or ego, as an unchanging, unitary, independent self, we are prone to all kinds of physical and mental suffering. Our egoistic identification with our bodies and minds as being truly “I” and “mine” makes us fundamentally vulnerable.

According to the Buddha’s view of consciousness, which he reported based on his own direct, contemplative discoveries, the reality of suffering does not cease at death. As comforting as it might be to think that all our problems will end the moment we die, this is based on the uncorroborated notion that all possible states of consciousness depend upon a living physical organism. On the night of his enlightenment, the Buddha reportedly saw the fallacy of this assumption, and his discovery of the continuity of individual consciousness both before and after this life has been confirmed by thousands of adept contemplatives over the past 2,500 years. Contrary to popular misconception, the Buddhist assertion of reincarnation is not a fatuous belief in one’s own immortality, but rather an existentially daunting recognition of the truth that suffering never ceases of its own accord. Death is no escape, only a transition from one unsatisfying mode of existence to another, repeated for as long as we continue to grasp onto our independent personal existence.

Theories of reincarnation have long met with fierce resistance, disdain, and ridicule from the scientific community. The British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), cofounder with Darwin of the theory of evolution, closely examined the empirical evidence suggesting that consciousness continues after death and finally concluded that the materialistic reduction of the mind to the brain was unwarranted. Nevertheless, when presented with the theory of reincarnation, he abandoned his cool scientific objectivity and allowed his passions to dominate: “The whole conception of re-incarnation appears to me as a grotesque nightmare, such as could only have originated in ages of mystery and superstition. Fortunately, the light of science shows it to be wholly unfounded.”¹¹ This attitude characterizes many of even the most open-minded scientists in the past century; needless to say, committed scientific materialists dismiss any evidence that supports the hypothesis of reincarnation.

Like Wallace, the great empiricist William James rejected scientific ma- terialism and concluded that consciousness continues after death, but he also rejected the notion of reincarnation. More broadly, he failed to grasp what Indian contemplatives meant when they described the reality of suffering and the illusory nature of the self and the rest of nature. To James, like many of his contemporaries, this smacked of “oriental pessimism and nihilism,” which he believed depicted “the whole phenomenal world and its facts and their distinctions to be a cunning fraud.”¹² In contrast to Indian notions of the cyclic nature of existence, James expressed the confidence of his era in the principle of progress, which presents the deepest significance in life as entailing an actualization of novel ideas that continues from moment to moment and from one historical era to the next.¹³ Buddhism does not describe the whole of human society as progressing from one generation to the next, nor does it emphasize the ideal of economic, technological, or scientific progress, with its focus on the physical universe and mastery over it. But it does posit another kind of progress, entailing the fresh rediscovery—from one individual to the next and from one generation to the next—of the inner causes of suffering and of the means to gaining ultimate, irreversible freedom from suffering and its sources.

THE TRUTHS OF THE SOURCES OF SUFFERING AND THEIR CESSATION

A sentient being’s physical body is extremely vulnerable to injury and disease from the outside world, let alone the discomfort and misery of aging and death. Mentally, virtually anything in our social and physical environments can catalyze distress in one individual while simultaneously arousing joy or indifference in others. One person may succumb to debilitating depression even though blessed with wealth, a loving family, and supportive friends; another may be subjected to wrongful imprisonment and torture and yet respond with equanimity and compassion. What accounts for the differences in our susceptibility to anxiety, restlessness, boredom, malaise, frustration, and depression?

The Buddha traced the essential causes of all mental suffering to three root mental afflictions. The most fundamental of these is reified grasping onto our bodies and minds as “I” and “mine,” which creates a dualistic bifurcation between ourselves, as subjects, and the rest of the world, as objects. This core delusion is the taproot of all suffering. From this radical separation of subject and object, dualistic awareness experiences objects—including other sentient beings, things, places, and situations—as pleasurable or unpleasurable. The innate desire for pleasure gives rise to the mental affliction of craving for pleasurable objects, viewing them as actual sources of happiness. Other objects appear to dualistic awareness as disagreeable or as preventing us from acquiring and keeping pleasurable objects, and the mental affliction of aversion arises in response. Because the object of craving is seen as a true source of well-being, its attractive qualities are exaggerated and its unattractive aspects marginalized, and then the object is fixated upon with desire. The object of aversion is viewed as a true source of suffering, its disagreeable qualities exaggerated and its positive aspects marginalized, and then the object is fixated upon with anger and aggression. These three mental afflictions lie at the root of all other mental imbalances, and they endlessly perpetuate dissatisfaction and misery in all the vicissitudes of life and death.

The fundamental delusion of reifying ourselves and the duality of subject and object also plays a crucial role in the perpetuation of the other underlying cause of suffering, namely, karma. This term, literally meaning “action,” refers to voluntary acts of the body, speech, and mind that are aroused and conditioned by the delusion of self-grasping. As an individual engages in such deeds, mental imprints are stored in a subtle continuum of mental consciousness that allegedly continues from one life to the next. These imprints, or “karmic seeds,” influence the kinds of rebirth sentient beings take, as well as their personalities, habits, and abilities and the various environments and situations that they encounter from one lifetime to the next. Karma is not fate, nor is it predestination, for we continuously accumulate fresh karma with each deliberate act, and this influences our present and future experiences. The central point of the Buddhist theory of karma is that virtue leads to well-being while nonvirtue leads to misery. We constantly sow the seeds of our future by means of our behavior, just as we reap the harvest of our past conduct in the present. This view of karma by no means precludes the roles of other causal factors, such as genetics, brain chemistry, and numerous other influences from society and the physical environment. Karma, along with these other factors, may catalyze mental suffering; however, delusion, craving, and aversion are said to be the fundamental causes of misery. If these three were absent, mental suffering could not occur.

The assumption that an objective universe exists independently of consciousness has been held by many Western philosophers since the time of the ancient Greeks, and it is at the core of Descartes’ dualistic view of reality, which continues to exert a strong influence on current scientific thinking. Aristotle was one of many early Western thinkers to propose that craving and hostility are intrinsic to human nature, and that when they are experienced in appropriate situations, expressed in appropriate ways, and engaged in to appropriate degrees, there is nothing wrong with them.¹⁴ This continues to be the view of many psychologists today, who assume that self-grasping, craving, and aversion as described in the Buddhist tradition are adaptive traits acquired through the process of natural selection. Such qualities are viewed as part of human nature and not inherently afflictive. On the contrary, they are seen as aspects of a healthy, normal life, to be experienced along the lines suggested by Aristotle.

In the Western tradition of clinical psychology and psychiatry, no single individual has been more influential than Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. He was a giant of twentieth-century science—notwithstanding current views regarding his form of psychoanalysis—and the extent of his influence today on the un conscious assumptions of the mind sciences is easily overlooked. Moreover, a small but influential group of researchers, including Antonio Damasio, head of neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, use Freud’s insights as a guide to their research. In their view, his psychological map is still the most coherent and meaningful theory of the mind, and Damasio argues that “Freud’s insights on the nature of consciousness are consonant with the most advanced contemporary neuroscience views.” Jaak Panksepp, the influential psychobiologist and neuroscientist who coined the term “affective neuroscience,” adds, “Freud should be placed in the same category as Darwin, who lived before the discovery of genes. Freud gave us a vision of a mental apparatus. We need to talk about it, develop it, test it.”¹⁵

Freud had a great deal to say about the origins of human suffering, not only in psychoanalytical terms but also in the broader context of human civilization. He concluded:

We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other.¹⁶

Freud believed that the suffering we experience in our engagement with human civilization is due to the inadequacy of the regulations governing the mutual relationships of human beings in the family, the state, and society. Viewing suffering as resulting from the body and the external world, he advised that we must submit to the inevitable, and we may even have to regard the third kind of suffering as “a piece of unconquerable nature,” namely, “a piece of our own psychical constitution.”¹⁷

Many mental health care professionals today concur with Freud’s assessment of the human condition, arguing that mental disease can be traced primarily to brain chemistry, genes, and the physical and social environment. There is also widespread belief in the scientific objectivity of our drugs, diagnostic categories, and theories of the mind, in the assumption that they transcend cultural trends and beliefs. But recent research by anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists indicates that mental illnesses are different throughout the world, because they are always conditioned by the views, values, and ways of life of specific cultures. Clinicians in the West create the diagnostic classifications of mental illnesses, which are published as worldwide standards, and pharmaceutical companies invest enormous sums of money to develop and market medications to treat them. This globalization of Western ideas about the nature and treatment of mental illness is sadly reminiscent of European global imperialism from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, in which Europeans exploited those whom they conquered, spreading their worldview— considered as immutable, universal truth that surpassed all other beliefs—along with their diseases, which wiped out entire societies.¹⁸

Cross-cultural psychiatric research shows that the Western understanding of all mental illnesses, such as depression, is profoundly influenced by cultural beliefs and expectations. Mental health care providers, drug companies, and patient-advocacy groups typically regard mental illnesses as “brain diseases” in which the patient has little choice or responsibility. As journalist Ethan Watters comments, “The mental-health ideas we export to the world are rarely unadulterated scientific facts and never culturally neutral.”¹⁹ Derek Summerfield of the Institute of Psychiatry in London writes, “Western mental-health discourse introduces core components of Western culture, including a theory of human nature, a definition of personhood, a sense of time and memory, and a secular source of moral authority. None of this is universal.”²⁰

From a Buddhist perspective, the materialist view of the human mind—reduced to a composite of electrochemical processes occurring unconsciously in the brain—is profoundly alienating and depressing precisely because it is essentially delusional. Watters writes:

If our rising need for mental-health services does indeed spring from a breakdown of meaning, our insistence that the rest of the world think like us may be all the more problematic. Offering the latest Western mental-health theories, treatments, and categories in an attempt to ameliorate the psychological stress sparked by modernization and globalization is not a solution; it may be part of the problem. When we undermine local conceptions of the self and modes of healing, we may be speeding along the disorienting changes that are at the very heart of much of the world’s mental distress.²¹

The only cure for this culturally induced mental illness is to awaken from our culturally acquired delusion so that we can grapple more effectively with our habitual mental afflictions. The process of adopting a Buddhist view of human nature and the world around us is actually designed to induce a profound disillusionment with all mundane concerns, which is bound to result temporarily in a sense of depression. This has served as a motivating force for many Buddhists to take monastic ordination or devote themselves to a life of solitary contemplative practice. From the perspective of modern clinical psychology, such disillusionment and malaise could easily be diagnosed as clinical depression, calling for therapy, including drugs, to restore the renunciate to the Western “norm.” In the United States, one fourth of the population has a diagnosable mental illness, and from a Buddhist perspective, even what passes for normal mental health looks more like mental illness—for which the only cure is a radical shift in one’s worldview, values, and way of life.

William James is not alone in regarding Indian spiritual traditions as promoting a kind of pessimism and nihilism. But Buddhism, unlike modern psychology, proposes that mental afflictions are not innate to the human mind. They are rooted in ignorance and delusion, so they can be irreversibly dispelled through direct insight into the nature of reality. In this way, one is freed from both karma and mental afflictions, resulting in a state of eternal, timeless bliss, or nirvana. Although this ultimate goal may not be realized in this lifetime, the essential purpose of sentient existence is to free ourselves from the fundamental causes of suffering, over the course of multiple lifetimes, by coming to know reality as it is.

In stark contrast, the modern view of human nature is that we have evolved through natural selection in such a way that all our mental processes have survival value, including egotism, attachment, and hatred, despite the grief they bring us.²² They are intrinsic, inescapable features of the human mind; any attempt to defeat them could only be a futile and frustrating endeavor. Freud sums up the modern materialistic view by declaring that there is no possibility of achieving the goal of the absence of pain and displeasure and of experiencing lasting pleasure: “all the regula tions of the universe run counter to it.”²³ From a Buddhist perspective, the view that an individual’s consciousness terminates at death is utterly nihilistic, and the belief that there is no possibility of gaining freedom from suffering, except through personal annihilation, is deeply pessimistic and self-defeating.

THE TRUTH OF THE PATH TO THE CESSATION OF SUFFERING

Within the Buddhist context, spiritual practice, or “dharma,” refers to a worldview, meditative practice, and way of life that lead to a lasting state of genuine happiness. To understand what this means requires making a clear distinction between mundane, hedonic pleasures and genuine happiness. Mundane pleasures are those that are aroused by pleasant stimuli derived from such things as material possessions, meaningful relationships, satisfying work, and sensual, aesthetic, and intellectual activities. We may also seek shortcuts to such stimuli by directly influencing the brain with chemical or electrical stimulation. Although some hedonic pleasures may be very meaningful, such as those from personal relationships and work, any pleasures we experience solely due to physical stimulation of the brain are transient and meaningless at best.

We seem to experience hedonic pleasures in our engagement with the world, but genuine happiness arises not from what the world provides us but from what we bring to the world. This is a quality of well-being—not simply a pleasurable feeling—that results from the quality of our lives, the health and balance we cultivate in our hearts and minds, and experiential insights into fundamental aspects of our own nature and our relation with the rest of the world. The pursuit of hedonic pleasure is intrinsically competitive and easily leads to strife and conflict among individuals, communities, and nations. The pursuit of genuine happiness, in contrast, draws from our inner resources, so one person’s experience of a high degree of genuine happiness doesn’t diminish anyone else’s experience. In fact, one person’s experience of such well-being may inspire others to tap into their own inner reservoirs of well-being.

This distinction does not imply that the pursuit of hedonic pleasure is incompatible with the pursuit of genuine happiness. The Buddha referred to four kinds of relative happiness that depend on time and circumstances.²⁴ The first of these is the happiness of possessing material goods that are honestly acquired. The second is the happiness of enjoying one’s wealth and leading a virtuous life. The third is the happiness of being free of debt. The fourth is the happiness of having a clean conscience, based on a way of life rooted in nonviolence and altruism; the Buddha called this blamelessness far superior to the first three kinds of pleasure. Rather than implying that hedonic pleasure is antithetical to genuine happiness, the Buddha indicated that such things as adequate housing, clothing, food, and medical care are valuable supports for the practice of dharma.

In Buddhism, the pursuit of genuine happiness is inextricable from the pursuits of understanding and of virtue. Misery stems from ignorance and harmful conduct; genuine happiness stems from understanding and the cultivation of virtue. There are many aspects of reality that can be understood with no basis in virtue and with none of the resultant benefits of genuine happiness. Likewise, many virtuous deeds may be committed with very little understanding and without producing any deep sense of satisfaction or well-being. But insight and wisdom that free the mind of its afflictions and lead to genuine happiness can be experienced only within the context of a virtuous way of life accompanied by exceptional mental balance.

In the secular world, in contrast, the pursuits of happiness, understanding, and virtue are often seen as unrelated or even incompatible. The materialist view of happiness focuses almost exclusively on hedonic well-being, which has little to do with virtue or wisdom.²⁵ Likewise, the materialist pursuit of knowledge, especially by way of scientific inquiry, has little to do with virtue or genuine happiness. Finally, materialism is silent concerning virtue, because the word means nothing in the context of natural selection, survival, and procreation. The notion of “virtuous brains” isn’t often mentioned. But from a Buddhist perspective, happiness, knowledge, and virtue that are unrelated to one another are devoid of meaning or lasting value.

The foundation of all Buddhist practice is ethics, which fundamentally requires leading a life based on two principles: nonviolence and altruism.

Buddhists are encouraged to avoid any behavior of body, speech, or mind that needlessly harms oneself or others, and they are encouraged to be of service to others when the opportunity arises. This is very similar to the universal theme in the world’s spiritual traditions of treating others as we would have them treat us. But Buddhist ethics also includes environmental ethics: treating the animate and inanimate environment so as to nurture life in the present and future generations.

From another perspective, ethical conduct consists of behavior that is conducive to our own and others’ genuine happiness, while unethical conduct is behavior that undermines our own and others’ genuine happiness. If hedonic and genuine happiness can be differentiated in objective, behavioral, and physiological aspects, this would enable an empirical science of ethics to identify behaviors that support and undermine genuine happiness. The significance of such a science for humanity at large could be revolutionary. Individuals and communities that pursue ethical ways of life may flourish socially and environmentally, living in harmony with each other and the rest of nature.

Although environmental ethics has come to the forefront of public attention over the past few decades, a much older attitude toward nature casts a long shadow over Western societies. Freud expressed the view of many of his contemporaries when he declared that the way for people to find happiness is by “becoming a member of the human community, and, with the help of a technique guided by science, going over to the attack against nature and subjecting her to the human will. Then one is working with all for the good of all.”²⁶ He took a particularly dim view of the “worldly wisdom of the East” and the practice of Yoga, which he interpreted as having the ideal of “killing off the instincts. . . . If it succeeds, then the subject has, it is true, given up all other activities as well—he has sacrificed his life, and . . . only achieved the happiness of quietness.”²⁷

Freud expressed great antipathy toward all religions, an attitude that remains prevalent in the mind sciences to this day. The religions of mankind, he declared, consist of mass delusions in which their followers seek to find happiness and security by a collective, “delusional remoulding of reality.”²⁸ In essence, religious practices result in “depressing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world in a delusional manner—which presupposes an intimidation of the intelligence. At this price, by forcibly fixing them in a state of psychical infantilism and by drawing them into a mass-delusion, religion succeeds in sparing many people an individual neurosis. But hardly anything more.”²⁹

Buddhist practice is centered on overcoming individual and mass delusion, including delusional tendencies we are born with and those we acquire from our social environment. It has nothing to do with killing off all instincts, though it does emphasize the value of overcoming those instinctual tendencies of egotism, selfish desire, hostility, and aggression that are harmful to oneself and others.

MINDFULNESS AT THE CROSSROADS

On the basis of an ethical way of life, the next dimension of Buddhist practice focuses on a wide array of meditative practices designed to heal mental afflictions and cultivate inner virtues that lead to one’s own and others’ genuine happiness. One mental faculty that is indispensible to all forms of Buddhist meditation is mindfulness (Pali sati). The Buddha referred to mindfulness in many of his discourses, and a concise definition was given by a second-century b.c.e. Buddhist monk named Nagasena, who described it as follows: “Mindfulness has both the characteristic of ‘calling to mind’ and the characteristic of ‘cultivating.’” He explained further:

Mindfulness, when it arises, calls to mind wholesome and unwholesome tendencies, with faults and faultless, inferior and refined, dark and pure, together with their counterparts. . . . Mindfulness, when it arises, follows the courses of beneficial and unbeneficial tendencies: these tendencies are beneficial, these unbeneficial; these tendencies are helpful, these unhelpful. Thus one who practices yoga rejects unbeneficial tendencies and cultivates beneficial tendencies.³⁰

In one of the oldest compendiums of Buddhist philosophy, the Dhammasangani, mindfulness is defined as the process of “recollecting, calling back to mind” as well as “remembering, bearing in mind, the opposite of superficiality and of obliviousness.”³¹ Translator Caroline Rhys Davids (1843–1922), one of the pioneers of Buddhist studies in the West, comments that the Theravada view of mindfulness “had much in common with the Western modern theory of conscience or moral sense [as] an inward mentor, discriminating between good and bad and prompting choice.”³²

Traditional Buddhist sources on mindfulness invariably emphasize the ethical dimension of this mental faculty as one to be cultivated in the practice of dharma. It entails recollection, presence of mind, and intelligent discernment between wholesome and unwholesome tendencies, enabling the practitioner to cultivate the former and reject the latter.

In the past few decades, the general public and mental health care professionals in particular have grown increasingly interested in “mindfulness meditation,” ostensibly drawn from the Buddhist tradition. But the popularized notion of mindfulness has diverged significantly from its traditional definition. Much of the popular awareness of mindfulness as a means to relieve physical and mental stress can be traced to the groundbreaking work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who in 1979 established the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. With a background in Zen and Theravadin Buddhism, Kabat-Zinn recast the definition of mindfulness in a secular way that many people have found enormously appealing and helpful: “Mindfulness can be thought of as a moment-to-moment, nonjudgmental awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a specific way, that is, in the present moment, and as nonreactively, as nonjudgmentally, and as openheartedly as possible.”³³ A similar operational definition coined by psychologists describes mindfulness as “a kind of nonelaborative, nonjudgmental, present-centered awareness in which each thought, feeling, or sensation that arises in the attentional field is acknowledged and accepted as it is.”³⁴

In accordance with the trends of clinical psychology and psychiatry over the past century, these modern definitions strip mindfulness of its ethical dimension and its association with the cultivation of virtue. Instead, they encourage us to embrace all mental impulses equally, whether beneficial or unbeneficial. This approach is clearly a response to the debilitating habit of mean-spirited self-judgment, which often results in depression, low self-esteem, and self-contempt. Such inwardly directed judgment is typically focused on oneself more than on specific negative modes of behavior or mental qualities. To remedy this habitual tendency, some modern psychologists idealize the principle of not judging one’s ex perience. In their version of mindfulness meditation, one is encouraged to avoid all these judgments:

•I criticize myself for having irrational or inappropriate emotions.

•I tend to evaluate whether my perceptions are right or wrong.

•I tell myself that I shouldn’t be feeling the way I’m feeling.

•I believe some of my thoughts are abnormal or bad and I shouldn’t think that way.

•I make judgments about whether my thoughts are good or bad.

•I tend to make judgments about how worthwhile or worthless my experiences are.

•I tell myself I shouldn’t be thinking the way I’m thinking.

•I think some of my emotions are bad or inappropriate and I shouldn’t feel them.

•I disapprove of myself when I have irrational ideas.

•Usually when I have distressing thoughts or images, I get angry that this happens to me.

•Usually when I have distressing thoughts or images, I judge myself as good or bad, depending what the thought/image is about.³⁵

From a Buddhist perspective, one’s perceptions, emotions, thoughts, ideas, mental images, and other experiences are not oneself. Therefore, it is delusional to make such judgments about oneself, as an independent agent, based on transient mental events and processes. The resulting reification of oneself as “abnormal,” “bad,” and “worthless” is likewise misguided and results in needless suffering. Nevertheless, to suspend all judgments about the validity and ethical quality of one’s perceptions, thoughts, and emotions is to counter one form of delusion with another. This dismisses the tremendous value in cultivating and applying sound judgment to differentiate which emotions, thoughts, and intentions to embrace and act upon and which to reject and remedy in the most effective ways available. An essential feature of the Buddhist definition of mindfulness presented by Nagasena is recognizing which mental tendencies are helpful and which are unhelpful, so that one can then reject the latter and cultivate the former. This ethical dimension is deliberately omitted from the modern definitions of mindfulness, which sets them in opposition to Buddhist theory and practice.

Divorced from Buddhist views on the true sources of suffering and genuine happiness and from Buddhist values and ethical standards, these modern definitions of mindfulness have transformed a Buddhist practice into a secular exercise designed primarily to reduce stress and suffering, without getting at their fundamental causes. The value in this is proven by a rapidly growing number of scientific studies on the effects of mindfulness, but such practices are only a small, radically decontextualized fragment of the Buddhist cultivation of the mental faculty of mindfulness.

The discourses of the Buddha contain repeated references to mindfulness coupled with another mental faculty that may be called “introspection” (Pali sampajañña), sometimes called “clear comprehension.” This is a faculty of direct observation by which we monitor our physical and verbal behavior and also observe our own mental states and processes, such as discursive thoughts and mental imagery. The combined cultivation of mindfulness and introspection, tempered with the appropriate degree of effort, permits the development of highly focused attention, or samadhi. Mindfulness, introspection, and samadhi are three faculties central to all forms of Buddhist meditation, and Buddhists assert that all three can be developed to extraordinary degrees and with exceptional benefits.

The value of sustained voluntary attention has not been overlooked in modern psychology, but even William James, who wrote on this topic with insight and deep appreciation, was pessimistic about the possibility of developing it. He commented:

The possession of such a steady faculty of attention is unquestionably a great boon. Those who have it can work more rapidly, and with less nervous wear and tear. I am inclined to think that no one who is without it naturally can by any amount of drill or discipline attain it in a very high degree. Its amount is probably a fixed characteristic of the individual.³⁶

Furthermore, while Buddhist contemplatives maintain that with training it is possible to sustain one’s attention on any kind of object, James was insistent that “no one can possibly attend continuously to an object that does not change.”³⁷ The assumption that attention cannot be trained to any significant degree dominated the cognitive sciences through the twentieth century.

Psychologist Alan Allport suggests that, from an evolutionary perspective, our attention skills may be genetically hardwired so that we do not become too focused. If our ancestors’ attention could be overly concentrated, they might not notice environmental threats that could imperil their survival. However, if attention were so unstable that it was constantly shifting and fragmented, this “would make sustained, purposeful activity impossible and result only in behavioral chaos.”³⁸ Recent research has shown that meditation can indeed enhance attention skills, and scientific interest in this field is now growing rapidly.³⁹

While mindfulness, according to traditional Buddhist definitions, enables attention to remain focused continually upon a chosen object or process, introspection enables one to directly observe one’s own states of consciousness and mental activities. This metacognitive faculty plays a crucial role in Buddhist meditation as a means for understanding the nature of the mind and identifying which mental processes are beneficial and which are harmful. In contrast, the cognitive sciences have a long history of neglecting or marginalizing introspection as a means to explore the nature of the mind. Indeed, when cognitive scientists refer to metacognition, they often mean the ability to think about thinking, rather than inward observation.

This attitude can be traced back to the demise of the introspectionist movement in psychology at the beginning of the twentieth century and the corresponding rise of behaviorism. Although the scientific community is now aware of the limitations and errors of behaviorism, many of its underlying assumptions continue to dominate the mind sciences. B. F. Skinner insisted that all subjective experiences are in fact physiological processes “within the skin.” Although he did not deny that introspective experience takes place, he dismissed the possibility that mental activities or traits could be known well introspectively or that they could be modified directly.⁴⁰ He concluded:

The heart of the behavioristic position on conscious experience may be summed up in this way: seeing does not imply something seen. . . . To question the reality or the nature of things seen in conscious experience is not to question the value of introspective psychology or its methods. . . . So far as behavior is concerned, both sensation and perception may be analyzed as forms of stimulus control. The subject need not be regarded as observing or evaluating conscious experiences.⁴¹

Many cognitive psychologists today concur that all kinds of perception are a form of externally constrained hallucination, and when subjects describe their subjective experiences, their reports are regarded as “data” rather than as factual accounts.

Various Buddhist traditions give their own accounts of the illusory and misleading nature of ordinary perception; mindfulness and introspection are developed to enable more accurate observations of the mind and its relation to the rest of nature. These two faculties are also used to cultivate a wide range of mental virtues, such as loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, which are known as the four immeasurables.⁴² The Buddhist view is that each of these virtues, as well as many others, can be developed immeasurably, embracing all sentient beings equally in a spirit of heartfelt love and compassion. The growth of these virtues is said to facilitate the deepening of samadhi, which in turn supports the cultivation of insight, and both samadhi and insight give rise to genuine happiness.

Over the past century, relatively little research in psychology has focused on virtues such as loving-kindness, compassion, and genuine happiness. This neglect can be traced in part to the mind-set of Freud, which was shared by many of his contemporaries. In his view, all kinds of affection are simply manifestations of aim-inhibited sexual desire. Regarding Christ’s commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, which is equally central to Buddhism, Freud countered that such an ideal is simply impossible to fulfill and it is better not to try. Civilization already imposes great sacrifices in terms of our sexual drives and aggressiveness, seriously hampering our ability to be happy. He concluded, “In fact, primitive man was better off in knowing no restrictions of instinct.”⁴³

Freud’s antipathy toward religion and his impoverished understanding of human virtues have influenced the course of twentieth-century psychology, which in turn has affected Western versions of Buddhism. Some advocates of “mindfulness meditation,” for instance, vehemently argue against the deliberate suppression of any mental vice. Mindfulness meditators are encouraged to lovingly embrace whatever arises in their mind; even if contempt or malice comes up, one is simply told to be pres ent with it. Strict adherence to this instruction implies that one should not deliberately cultivate mental virtue, for this signifies a lack of acceptance of what manifests naturally in the mind. Some go so far as to declare that ethical distinctions are meaningless and that everything arising in the mind is to be accepted equally. Such views reflect the absence of ethics in modern psychology, but in Buddhist practice they represent only one potentially dangerous strategy out of many practical approaches to mental vices and virtues.

BRIDGING THE DIVIDE

The preceding discussion illustrates many of the profound differences between Buddhism and the mind sciences, all stemming from the fundamental incompatibility of Buddhism and the worldview, values, and way of life promoted by scientific materialism. The global dissemination of scientific knowledge and modes of inquiry has been a tremendous boon; the proliferation of technology has been a mixed blessing; but the dominating influence of scientific materialism has been utterly toxic. One of the greatest tragedies in this regard is the dogmatic insistence that if you accept science, you must also accept materialistic metaphysical beliefs. A majority within the scientific community in the United States rejects such intellectual tyranny. Even though scientists in the United States overwhelmingly accept Darwinian evolution as the basis for understanding the development of life on Earth, according to a recent survey, 51 percent of scientists say they believe in God or a higher power, while only 41 percent say they do not.⁴⁴ Despite the enormous growth in influence of scientific materialism, which currently dominates public education and the media, the portion of scientists who believe in God has remained fairly constant over the past century.⁴⁵

Among the schools of psychotherapy that developed in the twentieth century, those that are most incompatible with Buddhism, such as behavior therapy, are the ones most firmly rooted in scientific materialism. By the 1960s, the profound limitations of a purely behavioral approach to psychotherapy had become increasingly evident; this gave rise to cognitive therapy, which recognized that certain beliefs and attitudes lie at the root of psychological and behavioral problems. In particular, proponents of this school argued that underlying beliefs about the self, others, and the world influence the way a person perceives situations, and these perceptions arouse certain thoughts, emotions, behavioral responses, and physical symptoms. This approach to the diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems represented a great step closer to the Buddhist perspective.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, cognitive therapy and behavioral therapies merged in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which advocates a primary focus on cognitive therapy but also incorporates behavioral methods. This integrative technique is even more consonant with Buddhist views and methods of treating suffering, and among all the 250 schools of psychotherapy, CBT is supported by the most empirical evidence.

Since the introduction of mindfulness into clinical psychology, due initially to the innovative work of Kabat-Zinn and his system of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), various forms of mindfulness-based therapy have been devised. A central goal of these approaches is to change one’s relation to one’s thoughts rather than attempting to modify them.⁴⁶ Although this also plays an important role in Buddhist practice, as commented earlier, there is much more to the Buddhist cultivation of mindfulness and to healing the afflictions of the mind.

The limitations of mindfulness-based therapy without a context of ethics and values are partly addressed in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), which emerged during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Like mindfulness-based therapy, this approach focuses on noticing and accepting thoughts and feelings in the present moment. However, ACT also focuses on identifying and committing to one’s values and living in accord with them. This development continues the convergence with Buddhist views and methods, even though the references to values in ACT are not guided by ethical principles.

Another nucleus of convergence appears in the development of positive psychology, which was originated in 1998 by Martin Seligman. This approach shifts the focus from curing mental illness to nurturing positive states of mind and thereby discovering authentic happiness. In Seligman’s view, this can be done by 1) cultivating positive emotions so that one can derive greater enjoyment of life; 2) entering into a state of “flow,” a state of absorption characterized by intense concentration, loss of self-awareness, and a feeling of control; and 3) experiencing greater meaning, purpose, and well-being by devoting oneself to noble causes and positive relationships. Positive psychology also encourages the active cultivation of virtues, including such qualities as wisdom, courage, love, justice, temperance, and transcendence.⁴⁷ A central theme is the focus on meaning and self-realization with the cultivation of eudaimonia, which Aristotle called the chief human good. Psychologists have defined such well-being as the degree to which a person is fully functioning, or living well.⁴⁸ These recent trends in psychotherapy indicate a bridging of the divide between Buddhism and the mind sciences and an increasing potential for reciprocal benefits.

Buddhists, cognitive scientists, and clinicians are all prone to becoming trapped in their respective dogmas, and this often begins in childhood. As Daniel Dennett rightly comments, “Some children are raised in such an ideological prison that they willingly become their own jailers . . . forbidding themselves any contact with the liberating ideas that might well change their minds.”⁴⁹ By being exposed to multiple worldviews, values, and ways of life, children and adults can make informed choices that have the best chance of satisfying their own considered goals, rather than simply going along with the herd. Dennett cautions, “It was European germs that brought Western Hemisphere populations to the brink of extinction in the sixteenth century, since those people had had no history in which to develop tolerance for them. In this century it will be our memes, both tonic and toxic, that will wreak havoc on the unprepared world.”⁵⁰

The way forward is always via educational advances. Children could be taught the beliefs, values, and customs of the world’s religions and wisdom traditions in addition to the beliefs, values, and customs of scientific materialism, clearly distinguishing science from materialism. Both the positive and negative aspects of religious and secular traditions could be studied, without ignoring or favoring any one over the other.⁵¹ Such cross-cultural education may well give rise to unprecedented degrees of open-mindedness and innovation that will herald a broadening of horizons for science and the spiritual traditions of the world alike.