Category Archives: Buddhism

Verdant mountains usually walk

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In a museum not far from our house, there is a painting entitled “Zen Saying” by the great teacher Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768). Author of the koan “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”, Hakuin “was the most influential Rinzai Master in Japanese history” (Kasulis 1981, p. 105), and Rinzai is one of the three traditions of Japanese Zen.

The label translates the calligraphed words as: “Verdant mountains usually walk, barren women give birth at night.” The label also explains that the character for “usual” or “normal” (tsune) is here elongated in an unusual way–indeed, to the very “limits of legibility.”*

When I try to think about verdant mountains walking, I can form inferences. For example: if verdant mountains walk, we’d better stay out of their way! I cannot picture them walking without resorting to a cartoonish image. This is a limitation of my imagination, of language, or of the possible.

I can imagine that Hakuin–after decades of practice–had a different experience from mine when he thought of walking mountains and barren women giving birth. I can picture him having that experience without sharing it.

(By the way, Hakuin might have seen statements such as “The self exists” and “There is no self” as equally senseless paradoxes. In the Lankavatara Sutra, the Buddha says that dharmas are regular things that we believe we perceive, and non-dharmas are things that we make up without perceiving them, like horns on a rabbit or “the offspring of a barren woman.” A reason to try to imagine the non-dharmas, as in a koan, is to grasp the illusory nature of the dharmas.)

I cannot read Hakuin’s brushstrokes. I could, however, learn to read Japanese calligraphy, and I already know (roughly) what this text means. The characters are across a border of understanding from me, yet I can know what lies over there and can even shift the border by learning more from scholars and intermediaries.

I cannot feel what it was like to be the artist who painted this image, but I can learn many facts about his life, his genre, the koan he represents here, the tradition of koans, and his context. Again, Hakuin stands across a border, but I can indefinitely continue learning about what is on his side.

Right now, I am looking at a photograph of the painting, having recently seen the original. My mental state is reasonably calm but perhaps a bit distracted, since I am also typing. I know that I could see the same image while anxious or bored, and the whole experience would be different. I could even deliberately induce a state of anxiety. Then I would know that I had experienced the image while I was calm, but I would no longer be able to feel it the same way.

In short, there is a border around my current state of mind. I know what lies beyond it and can say (roughly) how it feels over there, but I cannot feel it now. I do know that the world for me always has a certain mood, which can change. In that sense, I know that my condition is temporal.

Expanding the scale of time, I can recall (sometimes vividly) what it felt like to be a child or a young parent with a child in arms. But those are memories rather than experiences. There is a border around my identity as a middle-aged person. I can see over it but cannot cross it.

I can imagine the permanent end of my own consciousness. But experiences turn instantly into memories, and not so with death. There is a border around the whole of a life. We can know what the world will be like without ourselves in it but cannot feel that absence. Hakuin experienced the end of his consciousness and left something for us that he can no longer know.

I am sitting and typing next to my dog. We each know and care a lot about the other. But Luca has no idea about Japanese Buddhist calligraphy, not even enough to form questions that are beyond his ken. He doesn’t know that he doesn’t know. I understand barely enough about Zen that I do know some of what I don’t know, but my dog’s example shows that there can easily be things entirely beyond any being’s capacity to grasp.

The Japanese word kyogai is important in Zen practice. It is often translated as “consciousness.” It turns out that it literally means “boundary” or “bounded place,” and it derives originally from the Sanskrit word visayah, in the sense of a pasture that has a boundary.

Think of an animal grazing in a space surrounded by hedges. Or think of Hakuin, with his specific language and mood, writing about verdant mountains that walk. The mountains are outside his pasture, and he is outside mine.

Mumon Yamada (1900-1988) taught:

This thing called kyogai is an individual thing. Only a sparrow can understand the kyogai of a sparrow. Only a hen can understand the kyogai of a hen and only another fish can understand the kyogai of a fish. In this cold weather, perhaps you are feeling sorry for the fish, poor thing, for it has to live in the freezing water. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it would be better off if you put it in warm water; that would kill it. You are a human and there is no way you can understand the kyogai of a fish (in Hori 2000)

This is not precisely true. We can understand a vast amount about the fish, including its ideal water temperature and details about its sensory organs and neurology. There is a sense in which we can understand the kyogai of the fish and the fish cannot. It presumably has no grasp of the category of kyogai (or to draw from a different tradition, Umwelt). However, it is correct that we can never know how it feels to be a fish. We can’t even feel as we ourselves do in a different mood. And who knows what kyogai we cannot even imagine?

Victor Sogen Hori adds:

Kyogai can be said to change and develop, for it is a product of human effort. Thus one can say “His kyogai is still unripe” (Mada kyogai ga mijuku) or “His kyogai is still shallow” (Mada kyogai ga asai), implying that even though the monk has been working at overcoming his indecision, or fear, or pride, he still shows traces of self-consciousness. Finally, kyogai bears the quite personal imprint of the particular individual. One person’s way of acting in a fire drill, cooking in the kitchen, carrying on the tasks of daily life may be energetic and impassioned; another may do the same tasks coolly and methodically. Yet each may in his own fashion be narikitta in the way he acts. Thus one can say of monk Daijo’s way of performing some task, “That is typically Daijo kyogai.” (Hori 2000, p. 293).

If we can change our kyogai, how should we go about that?

We can ignore the boundaries (including the boundary of death) and graze in our respective pastures. This may be wise.

We can explore our own pasture and its boundaries to come to understand it fully. That is what Kant meant by a “critique” of reason–not a criticism of it, but an analysis of its structure and limits.

We can interact with people who have crossed our own boundaries. I am fortunate that a painting from the hand of one of the most famous Zen masters is in my neighborhood. To study that painting is to observe someone from a different time and context–and specifically someone who wrote about things “whereof one cannot speak.” Hakuin wrote koans not for himself but to benefit others, living and not yet born.

And we can try to cross the boundaries. A koan is a tool for doing that. The painting by Hakuin represents a verbal koan in Japanese characters. It is also a physical object that can work as a koan.

Dogen (1200-1253) comments on the koan, “Who can hear insentient beings speak dharma?” He says:

Only the insentient know the dharma they speak of,
just as walls, grass, and trees know the spring.
Ordinary and sacred are not hemmed in by boundaries,
nor are mountains and rivers; sun, moon, or stars.

“Zen Saying” is an insentient object that hangs on the wall of the museum. During a few seconds more than 250 years ago, Hakuin took a stick of hardened soot and glue, ground it with water, dipped a brush into the mix, and spread some of the blackness downward across the paper to make a long, imperfectly straight, sometimes translucent line that is unmistakably a brushstroke. That line is a bit of earth, a thing. It depicts nothing, but it means “usual,” contributing to a sentence about something so unusual that we cannot envision it.*

The line is a trace of the act of a specific man who long ago became insentient soot himself. The other insentient things around this work look different in its presence, as–according to Heidegger–a Greek temple that stands on the earth and presents itself as the home of a god makes a world appear:

The luster and gleam of stone, glowing by grace of the sun, first makes manifest the light of the day, the breadth of the sky, the darkness of the night. The temple’s firm towering makes visible the space of air. The steadfastness of the work contrasts with the weaving of the flowing sea, and in its own repose brings out the latter’s turmoil. Trees and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their contrasting shape and thus come to appear as that which they are (Heidegger 1964, pp. 669-70).

Standing in the presence of the “Zen Saying,” I sense my contrast with it and feel myself appearing as that which I am.

References: T.P. Kasulis, Zen Action, Zen Person (University Press of Hawaii, 1981); The Lankavatara Sutra, translated by Red Pine (Counterpoint, 2013; Victor Sogen Hori, “Koan and Kensho in the Rinzai Zen Curriculum,” in The Koan. Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism (2000); The Essential Dogen, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Lovitt (2013), p. 170; and Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” trans. Albert Hofstadter, in Philosophies of Art and Beauty, ed. Albert Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns (New York: The Modem Library, 1964). See also: thinking both sides of the limits of human cognition; ‘every thing that lives is holy’: Blake’s radical relativism; a Heideggerian meditation; nostalgia for now; Ito Jakuchu at the National Gallery; and on inhabiting earth with inaccessibly beautiful things

*I got that information from the label, but a friend tells me that the character that is so boldly elongated stands for “walk.” I also added the passage about the Lankavatara Sutra later.

Pagels, the Gnostic Gospels

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Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels (1979) hardly needs a review from me. It won the National Book Award and has been listed among the 100 most influential works of the 20th century. However, I hadn’t read it until lately, and I can recommend it with the following summary.

Pagels classifies early Christians into two large groups, each of whom based their beliefs on sayings of Jesus that we can plausibly date to the earliest Christian period.

One group called themselves catholic (universal) and orthodox (right-believing). They taught that God was omnipotent and perfectly good, which meant that creation must be good, yet distinct from the Creator. The whole story of creation was divinely planned and hinged on the Incarnation, when God and nature came together in the figure of Christ. Jesus experienced physical resurrection, which will also happen to all people, whether saved or damned. By participating in the actual, embodied, and universal church (with its emerging structure of bishops, priests, and deacons), any person could be saved. Salvation required faith in the core doctrines of the Church, which represented sufficient knowledge. Christians were obliged to profess their faith even in the face of persecution, and martyrdom was understood as a sacrifice for the church. Everyone who confessed and practiced the sacraments belonged to that one living body.

Pagels calls the other group gnostics, although few of them may have used that name. They saw nature as rife with suffering and confusion; hence no omnipotent and benign force could have created it. Instead, they told various stories that explained present reality as a mistake caused by at least one powerful force interposed between us and the true divine. Like everything physical, the body was a trap. However, the soul was a piece of the divine, and some people could discover this truth through introspection and meditation—even including the use of mantras. We were not saved by the divine but could rather discover that we had always been fully divine. This discovery or knowledge (gnosis) was liberating. Gnosis was essentially individual, not assisted by belonging to any church, which would attract misguided human beings. Courting martyrdom for an ill-advised church was certainly a waste. True knowledge might be ineffable, or it might require concealment, or it might be specific to each questing soul, but in any case, it went far beyond what one could read in an explicit statement of faith. And the process of discovering it might be more important than the result.

Pagels understands these two views as rival theologies (structures of ideas), but she emphasizes that living persons in social contexts experience ideas, and ideas can influence social institutions that then shape people. She argues that the orthodox or catholic view prevailed because it reflected people’s lived experience of embodiment—we love our own bodies—and because it organized individuals into a functioning institution, the church, that was able to sustain itself. Even today, after many schisms, denominations as different as Eastern Orthodoxy and Pentecostalism share the same anti-gnostic roots. Gnostics were too otherworldly and individualistic to prevail.

Gnostic ideas have sprung up regularly since classical times—for instance, Blake was in tune with the gnostics, whether he knew those authors or not—but gnosticism has inspired individuals rather than large movements.

Although it’s interesting to compare religious views, one should be careful. Highly abstract statements of ideas from different traditions can look similar, yet actual religions are networks of people who share experiences, practices, and concrete stories. For that reason, even if a 2nd-century gnostic sounds like William Blake—or like a Zen practitioner—their experiences were vastly different.

Buddhists and Brahminic Hindus had many actual contacts with gnostics during the Roman era. According to shared Christian tradition, Thomas ended his life in India. Pagels writes that his biography could suggest the influence of Indian ideas on gnosticism and its critics. Thomas is the biblical figure who has the most explicit relationship with Jesus’ embodiment after the resurrection. In the canonical Gospel of John, Thomas doubts that Jesus has returned in his physical body, and Jesus encourages him to touch him—as if to refute gnosticism (John 20:27). But there was also a whole gnostic Gospel of Thomas, in which Jesus teaches the disciple that they are equals as fully divine and incorporeal souls.

It doesn’t seem that a huge amount has been written about gnosticism and the Dharmic religions since Pagels. She already cites Conze (1967), which still comes up as the main source on this topic today. I think that recent scholars have been skeptical of Pagels’ categories: they think that the gnostics were too diverse and they overlapped too much with the orthodox to qualify as a separate group. I cannot assess this trend, except to note that categories are always simplifications and subject to challenge, and Pagels seems pretty persuasive. Anyway, I suspect the gnostics would have found more success if they had accepted the Buddha’s Middle Way, but that idea might have struck them as a snare.

See also: notes on religion and cultural appropriation: the case of US Buddhism; are religions comprehensive doctrines?; a mistaken view of culture; individuals in cultures: the concept of an idiodictuon; and Zenobia of Palmyra.

core curricula without the concept of the West

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This post is prompted by Stanford’s new Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) requirement. Stanford makes no claim to present something called “Western Civilization” in chronological order. Instead, it assigns texts about common themes from diverse sources. I basically want to endorse this approach (which is not unique to Stanford).

Shared readings provide the basis for focused conversation that can encompass disagreement. I also see an argument for choosing works that illuminate the ideas, values, and institutions that have become globally dominant in the wake of European imperialism, which we can assess both critically and appreciatively. However, I cannot see a legitimate rationale for selecting authors and texts that are labeled “Western.”

Important lines of influence have always crossed any border that would demarcate the West, which has itself been deeply diverse. The word “West” sometimes names the countries where the majority populations are seen today as white, but that is an indefensible basis for selecting sources. A tenable justification would have to explain how something called the West is both internally consistent and intellectually distinct (whether for good or ill); and I don’t see a basis for that.

It’s true that some works from non-European regions extoll community and denounce individual selfishness or advance holistic and integrated metaphysical views. These texts are taken as evidence that “the West” is uniquely materialistic, dualistic, and individualistic. But authors from traditions like Buddhism would not have taken the trouble to argue so forcefully against materialism and selfishness if those values had been limited to people thousands of miles to their west. Their elaborate and sometimes urgent arguments to their own compatriots provide evidence that the values labeled “Western” have actually been widespread in many times and places. Meanwhile, Europe has produced powerful voices for mysticism, communalism, and deep ecology.

I’ll quote a passage from Leo Strauss, not to criticize him individually (even though I once published a roman-à-clef about him), but as an illustration of a view that I think was commonplace not long ago:

All the hopes that we entertain in the midst of the confusion and dangers of the present are founded, positively or negatively, directly or indirectly, on the experiences of the past. Of these experiences, the broadest and deepest—so far as Western man is concerned—are indicated by the names of two cities: Jerusalem and Athens. Western man became what he is, and is what he is, through the coming together of biblical faith and Greek thought. In order to understand ourselves and to illuminate our trackless way into the future, we must understand Jerusalem and Athens.

Leo Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens: Some Introductory Reflections“ (Commentary, June 1967)

One premise here is that modern European ideas derive from two main sources, classical Greece and ancient Judaism. Perhaps Strauss also thought that the resulting ideas were good or true, although I suspect his own view resembled the deeply skeptical argument that he attributes to Nietzsche in the same article.

Regardless of Strauss’ ultimate position, my focus here is not the claim that it’s valuable to understand the intellectual history that flows from “biblical faith and Greek thought.” I object to following that history only through European countries and their colonies.

We might envision Athens as a label for a set of contesting ideas that emerged in the Greek classical period, and treat it as node. We might likewise use Jerusalem as the name of a node that represents the various strands of ancient Judaism. Some thinkers of the Hellenistic period connected these nodes, forming the basis of Christianity. For example, when John writes (in Greek), “In the beginning was the logos,” he combines these two sources.

Zooming out from those two nodes, we can identify many influences on both. The Hebrew Bible describes a people who were profoundly connected to Egypt and Mesopotamia. Greek thought drew on the same sources, plus South Asia and perhaps Scythia. For example, Pyrrho of Elis may have been a Buddhist and was certainly influenced–as were several other Greek philosophers–by his travels in India.

The nodes labeled Athens and Jerusalem then radiated influences on many periods and places. Leo Strauss was an expert on the ways that Greek philosophy and Hebrew scripture shaped classical Islam. One center of medieval Islam was Spain, from which Greek and Jewish ideas and texts spread to Catholic Europe. The first people to depict the Buddha in statuary were Indo-Greeks, while Catholic monasticism may be modeled on India’s bhikkhus and sanyasis. Examples of such radiating influence could be explored endlessly.

It is then very odd to name the zone that was influenced by Athens and Jerusalem as “the West.” The influences of Greece plus ancient Judaism extend, for example, to predominantly Muslim Indonesia, which lies at the east end of Asia. Jerusalem is also in Asia, and Athens is far to the east of (say) Marrakesh. Until the 1800s, the word “west” referred to a compass direction and bore no other implications. The first use that I can find that clearly defines the West in terms of culture–or race–is from 1892, around the apogee of European imperialism. By the way, one reason that the phrase “Western civilization” then became prevalent was a deep anxiety about the condition and prospects of Europe, especially following the First World War.

Studying a canon of works that relate to Athens and Jerusalem has value. For one thing, it’s an opening to discuss extraordinarily diverse and contesting ideas. But defining its scope as the countries where most people have had white skin is untenable.

See also: the history of the phrase “the West”; Europa was an Asian woman, and other thoughts on the definition of Europe; to whom do the ancient Greeks belong?; Jesus was a person of color; The lack of diversity in philosophy is blocking its progress (in Aeon)

does doubting the existence of the self tame the will?

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I like the following argument, versions of which can be found in many traditions from different parts of the world:

  1. A cause of many kinds of suffering is the will (when it is somehow excessive or misplaced).
  2. Gaining something that you desire does not reduce your suffering; you simply will something else.
  3. However, one’s will can be tamed.
  4. Generally, the best way to manage the will is to focus one’s mind on other people instead of oneself. Thus,
  5. Being ethical reduces one’s suffering.

In some traditions, notably in major strands of Buddhism and in Pyrrhonism, two additional points are made:

  1. The self does not actually exist. Therefore,
  2. It is irrational to will things for oneself.

Point #7 is supposed to provide both a logical and a psychological basis for #4. By realizing that I do not really exist, I reduce my attachment to my (illusory) self and make more space to care about others, which, in turn, makes me happier.

Point #6 is perfectly respectable. Plenty of philosophers (and others) who have considered the problem of personal identity have concluded that an ambitious form of the self does not really exist. (For instance, David Hume.)

But if the self doesn’t exist, does it really follow that we should pay more attention to other people? We might just as well reason as follows:

  1. The self does not really exist. Therefore,
  2. a. Other people do not really exist as selves. Therefore,
  3. a. It is irrational to be concerned about them.

Or

  1. The self does not really exist. Therefore,
  2. b. It is impossible for me to change my character in any lasting way. Therefore,
  3. b. There is no point in trying to make myself more ethical.

Striving to be a better or happier person is not a sound reason for doubting the existence of the self. This doubt may do more harm than good. If there actually is no self, that is a good reason not to believe in one. But then we are obliged to incorporate skepticism about personal identity into a healthy overall view. The best way might be some version of this:

  1. The self does not really exist. Nevertheless,
  2. c. I would be wise to treat other people as if they were infinitely precious, durable, unique, and persistent things (selves).

I think it is worth getting metaphysics right, to the best of our ability. For example, it is worth trying to reason about what kind of a thing (if anything) a self is. However, I don’t believe that metaphysical beliefs entail ways of life in a straightforward way, with monotonic logic.

Any given metaphysical view is usually compatible with many different ways of being. It may even strongly encourage several different forms of life, depending on how a person absorbs the view. Thus I am not surprised that some people (notably, thoughtful Buddhists) have gained compassion and equanimity by adopting the doctrine of no-self, even though the same doctrine could encourage selfishness in others, and some people may become more compassionate by believing in the existence of durable selves. In fact, many have believed in the following argument:

  1. Each person (or sentient being) has a unique, durable, essential being
  2. I am but one out of billions of these beings. Therefore,
  1. It is irrational to will things for myself.

The relationship between an abstract idea and a way of being is mediated by “culture,” meaning all our other relevant beliefs, previous examples, stories, and role-models. We cannot assess the moral implications of an idea without understanding the culture in which it is used. For instance, the doctrine of no-self will have different consequences in a Tibetan monastery versus a Silicon Valley office park.

We cannot simply adopt or join a new culture. That would require shedding all our other experiences and beliefs, which is impossible. Therefore, we are often in the position of having to evaluate a specific idea as if it were a universal or culturally neutral proposition that we could adopt all by itself. For instance, that is what we do when we read Hume and Kant (or Nagarjuna) on the question of personal identity and try to decide what to think about it. This seems a respectable activity; I only doubt that, on its own, it will make us either better or worse people.

See also: notes on religion and cultural appropriation: the case of US Buddhism; Buddhism as philosophy; how to think about the self (Buddhist and Kantian perspectives); individuals in cultures: the concept of an idiodictuon. And see “The Philosophic Buddha” by Kieran Setiya, which prompted these thoughts.

Montaigne the bodhisattva?

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Several influential philosophical traditions assert that everyone is equally important. Since other people outnumber each of us–by billions–we should count ourselves and our interests for almost nothing.

That is a direct implication of classical utilitarianism. Sam Bankman-Fried endorsed it in an interview with Adam Fisher, conducted while he was actually stealing money for himself. (But hypocrisy does not invalidate a moral principle.) Another crisp statement comes in Shantideva’s classical summary of Buddhist ethics, probably written in the 700s CE. Shantideva recommends that we

meditate intently on the equality of oneself and others as follows: ‘All equally experience suffering and happiness. I should look after them as I do myself. … When happiness is liked by me and others equally, what is so special about me that I strive after happiness only for myself … Without exception, no sufferings belong to anyone. They must be warded off simply because they are suffering. Why is any limitation placed on this? If one asks why suffering should be prevented, no one disputes that! If it must be prevented, then all of it must be. If not, this goes for oneself as for anyone … This is why Supushpacandra, although undergoing torture at the hands of the king, did nothing to prevent his own suffering out of sacrifice for many sufferers. … Those who have developed the continuum of their mind in this way, to whom the suffering of others is as important as the things they themselves hold dear, plunge down into the Avici hell as geese into a cluster of lotus blossoms [to save the souls condemned there.]

Shantideva, 8.90, 8.95, 8.102-3, 8.106-7.

Michel de Montaigne acknowledges that “most of the world’s rules and precepts do adopt such an attitude, driving us outside ourselves and hounding us into the forum in the interests of the public weal.” These philosophies advise “that one should forget oneself on behalf of one’s neighbour and that, compared to the general, the individual is of no importance” (Montaigne, “On Restraining Your Will,” 1580, III, 10, p. 1137). Montaigne even says that his father held this view, and it motivated the elder Montaigne to be a devoted public servant.

Nevertheless, Montaigne dissents. He acknowledges one good thing about trying to treat every other person as just as important as ourselves. It teaches us not to be overly attached to our private interests, just as a “bowman, … to hit his target, raises his sights way above it”–or just as “to straighten a piece of bent wood we bend it right over backwards” (p. 1138).

In other words, striving to count ourselves for almost nothing counters the fault of caring for ourselves alone. But our real target should lie between the extremes of self-negation and self-love. For …

the true degree of love which each man owes to himself is … not false love which makes us embrace glory, knowledge, riches and such-like with an immoderate primary passion, as though they were members of our being, nor a love which is easy-going and random, acting like ivy which cracks and destroys the wall which it clings to, but a healthy, measured love, as useful as it is pleasant. Whoever knows its duties and practises them is truly in the treasure-house of the Muses: he has reached the pinnacle of human happiness and of man’s joy. Such a man, knowing precisely what is due to himself, finds that his role includes frequenting men and the world; to do this he must contribute to society the offices and duties which concern him. [C] He who does not live a little for others hardly lives at all for himself: ‘Qui sibi amicus est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse.’ [Know that a man who feels loving-friendship for himself does so for all men – Seneca] The chief charge laid upon each one of us is his own conduct: that is why we are here. For example, any man who forgot to live a good and holy life himself, but who thought that he had fulfilled his duties by guiding and training others to do so, would be stupid: in exactly the same way, any man who gives up a sane and happy life in order to provide one for others makes (in my opinion) a bad and unnatural decision.

Montaigne 1580, p. 1138.

Montaigne’s position requires a defense. After all, every person is equally valuable, in an objective sense, so why shouldn’t we act accordingly?

First, Montaigne argues that to promote everyone else’s welfare requires ambition. It means climbing the ladder of authority in order to influence the social order. Montaigne is highly skeptical of ambition, seeing it as a snare. Most people who attain high office are actually unable to accomplish much, yet they are quick to take themselves far too seriously:

Most of our occupations are farcical: ‘Mundus universus exercet histrionem.’ [Everybody in the entire world is acting a part — Petronius]. We should play our role properly, but as the role of a character which we have adopted. … I know some who transubstantiate and metamorphose themselves into as many new beings and forms as the dignities which they assume: they are prelates down to their guts and livers and uphold their offices on their lavatory-seat.

Montaigne, 1580, pp. 1143-4.

Those who enter the fray to improve the world also become partisans for particular positions. They take views about how things should be and are prone to disparage their opponents. Montaigne, on the other hand, strives for intellectual humility and uncertainty, and he looks for value in all views. “I am firmly attached to the sanest of the parties but I do not desire to be particularly known as an enemy of the others beyond what is generally reasonable” (p. 1145). After all, “A good book does not lose its beauty because it argues against my cause” (p. 1144).

But why do we need authority or ideology to improve the world? Why not humbly give away most of what we possess? Perhaps Montaigne should have done that–and perhaps I should now. Although he doesn’t directly address this issue, he does argue that wealth is unrelated to happiness. “Metrodorus lived on twelve ounces a day, Epicurus on less; Metrocles slept among his sheep in the winter and, in summer, in the temple porticos; ‘Sufficit ad id natura, quod poscit.’ [What nature demands, she supplies –Seneca.] (p. 1141).

Montaigne acknowledges that people want more than the bare minimum of worldly goods, but that is because we have become habituated to surplus and are averse to losing it to other people. “If I lack anything which I have become used to, I [foolishly] hold that I truly lack it” (p. 1142). Better not to obtain it in the first place. That implies that sharing one’s surplus with others would do them little good.

But Montaigne’s main point–throughout his work–is that happiness is hard to accomplish. Fear of death and other human frailties beset us, regardless of our social circumstances. “We are never ‘at home’: we are always outside ourselves. Fear, desire, hope, impel us towards the future; they rob us of feelings and concern for what now is, in order to spend time over what will be – even when we ourselves shall be no more” (Montaigne, I:3, p, 11). We can address such faults, but to do so requires introspection and self-care. If everyone devoted themselves to helping everyone else, no one would accomplish happiness.

Since I began this post with Shantideva, I should present his probable rejoinder. He would agree with Montaigne that suffering is universal, and the only solution is inward. “Since I cannot control external events, I will control my own mind” (5.14). However, this Buddhist monk would recommend a different path from Montaigne’s. The more we fully grasp the suffering of the vast number of other sentient beings, the less space we have left to care about our own private interests. Caring about our interests–experiencing desire or craving–is the source of all unhappiness. Therefore, setting one’s aim, like an archer, at the good of all sentient beings is actually the best way to liberate oneself from suffering. “Whosoever longs to rescue quickly both himself and others should practice the supreme mystery: exchange of self and other” (8:120)

This doesn’t sound exactly like Montaigne. As I have noted, he rejects the advice to “forget oneself on behalf of one’s neighbour.” He famously retreated from the world’s struggle to read and write in his private tower, making himself his only topic. “My business, my art, is to live my life” (p. 425, from “On Practice”). Also, Montaigne claims modestly that he has not achieved “noble Stoic impassibility” (p. 1153), because he hasn’t accomplished his inner peace by exercising any kind of discipline. Instead, he just happens to be easy-going by temperament.

Still, Montaigne’s writing radiates curiosity and empathy for the vast variety of human beings whom he has encountered in books and life. He abhors cruelty. He offers gentle advice aimed at liberating us from attachment. For instance: “There are so many awkward passages that the surest way is to glide rather lightly over the surface of this world. We should slide over it, not get bogged down in it. Pleasure itself is painful in its deeper reaches” (p. 1136).

And perhaps his essays are a gift. “Here you have not my teaching but my study: the lesson is not for others; it is for me. Yet, for all of that, you should not be ungrateful to me for publishing it. What helps me can perhaps help somebody else” (p. 423, from “On Practice”). This is Montaigne’s way of plunging into hell as a cluster of lotus blossoms.

Sources: Michel Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1580), translated by M.A. Screech (Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition); Shantideva, The Bodhiicaryacatara, trans. by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton (Oxford University Press, 1995). See also: compassion, not sympathy; two criticisms of Effective Altruism; “you should be the pupil of everyone all the time”; was Montaigne a relativist?; John Stuart Mill, Stoic; introspect to reenchant the inner life; Emerson’s mistake; the sublime is social; Buddhism as philosophy; etc.