By Ryan Smith
The psychological theories of Buddhism have attracted much attention from Western writers, being lauded as both “modern” and “scientific.” As a rule, any prolonged study of psychology will inevitably spill over and become, at least in part, a study of personality as well. But while numerous titles on Buddhist psychology exist, works detailing a definite Buddhist theory of personality have so far proved elusive. I do not claim that this short article will be any different, but I can perhaps collect the scattered sayings on personality that exist throughout the Hinayana corpus, as well as draw up an outline of the general Hinayana theory of psychology.
This absence of a definite personality theory should come as no surprise, since many Buddhist writings deny the existence of abiding substances in favor of a process metaphysics in which substance is an illusion and everything is modes and conditions. As opposed to the Western view of personality as a composite of structural (fixed) and functional (fluid) elements, the Buddhist is more likely to view everything about the personality as fluid. A popular analogy in early Buddhism is that of comparing the mind to a flame; constantly changing and devoid of any fixed form.
Is-ought and Is-seeming
Following Hume, the Western study of personality has traditionally employed a sharp distinction between descriptive (is) and normative (ought) dimensions of personality. Describing a personality in normative terms (i.e. as good or bad) is seen as unscientific. Consequently, Western psychology has never been far from moral relativism (that is, the belief that there are no good or bad personalities, but simply different ways of being).
In the East, however, there is not as much of an is-ought divide as there is that of an is-seeming one. Ultimate reality is both descriptive and normative. Facts and values are intertwined. However, since most people’s thought-forms are constricted by a lack of transcendental cognition (or “Enlightenment”), they do not see true reality (is) but only a limited phenomenological perspective (seeming).
From the Western perspective, since phenomena simply are, it follows that the process of ascribing values to them is an “extra step” not warranted by the phenomena themselves. As opposed to this conception, the Eastern view holds that from the vantage point of ultimate reality, values and facts are not separate or simply a matter of perspective. This philosophy is not just found in Buddhism, but in Taoism as well, for example, where anything that happens in accordance with the Tao is by definition virtuous. (With regards to Buddhism, we might say the same of the dharma.) For the purposes of this essay we could say that the Eastern view regards some personalities as objectively better than others.
The Ethical Personality
In Western studies, ethics have traditionally been regarded as separate from the personality itself. One’s personality scores may predict that one would be more likely than average to run into what is conventionally considered “ethical problems.” But no judgment is made as to whether the person actually is ethical or not. To do that would be to confound values with facts.
Since Hinayana Buddhism holds that direct acquaintance with ultimate reality will reveal some modes of conduct as being objectively more ethical than others, a person’s ethical character can therefore be studied as a trait akin to other personality traits. However, to understand the problem of the ethical personality as conceived in early Buddhism, it will first be necessary to say something about Hinayana Buddhism’s general theory of psychology.
Dissatisfaction and Peace
The Buddha famously thought that all phenomenal life was dukkha. Often rendered as “suffering,” a more suitable translation would perhaps be “dissatisfaction.” Phenomenal life is a succession of needs and drives, which, through craving, demand to be satisfied. But at the same time, they can never truly be satisfied. Since phenomenal life is temporary, satisfactions do not last. Even if all material desires were granted, one would still age and eventually crave youth.
It is how a person deals with the challenge of dukkha that reveals his ethical personality. For example, if they lack introspection, many people will come to identify themselves with their cravings. However, since the satisfaction of cravings is fleeting, the identification of one’s self with one’s desires is bound to give rise to conflicts, disappointments, frustrations, and anxieties.
Buddhism holds that many of our cravings are actually marked by a deep-seated sense of conflict. For example, a man may desire to make love to a beautiful woman he just met and desire to remain faithful to his loved one at the same time. Since most people cannot see behind the veil of their own localized mental life, they are at the mercy of these conflicting cravings, leading to confusion and unease. Buddhists advocate meditation to bring these intra-psychic conflicts to the forefront of consciousness, as well as to make contact with a spiritual state that provides a bird’s eye view of these conflicting emotions.
The Sanskrit word shanti describes a meta-cognitive background of mental tranquillity that provides a sense of equanimity and distance towards the more mundane contents of mental life. Shanti cannot be brought about by reasoning, however, but arises as an effect of meditation.
With the advent of shanti, we acquire a sense of “engaged distance” and “compassionate detachment” towards the events of our lives. Now, to those who have not experienced such states, these phrases sound quite impossible, as if deliberately designed to hedge their meaning. However, in spite of sometimes being criticized for being difficult to understand, early Buddhism is not deliberately mystical as much as it is espousing a doctrine that is conceived in states unfamiliar to ordinary mental life. Even now, after some 2400 years of Buddhism, there exists no adequate way to put the experience of shanti into words. However, the experience is not something made up, or even particular to Buddhism: It is a mental state that anyone can experience. Buddhism just goes further in its immersion and mapping-out of such states, and its subsequent cultivation of a philosophy at once wholly derived from them, supportive of them, and conducive to them. Indeed, as the Italian esoterist Julius Evola, who was familiar with many forms of “mysticism,” reported:
“It has been justly said of Buddhism that [its] … problems ‘have been stated and resolved so clearly and, one could almost say, so logically that, in comparison, other forms of mysticism seem incomplete, fragmentary and inconclusive.’” – Evola: The Doctrine of Awakening (Inner Traditions 1996) p. 6
Perhaps the simplest way of describing shanti is to say that, in achieving a sense of mental distance, we attain a third-party perspective on the events of our lives. Our cognitive pivot point shifts from the personal locus of ‘I-me-mine’ to the more detached perspective of ‘reality-as-such.’ Yet at the same time, this state is not a state of psychological dissociation where feelings and emotional involvement are withdrawn from events.[1] Hence, though initially cryptic, phrases like “engaged distance” and “compassionate detachment” actually turn out to make perfect sense once put in their proper context.
With the advent of such a third-party perspective on our lives, we see that with many of the things that we associate with dissatisfaction and discontent (such as not obtaining a promotion at work, or not being fancied in return by a love interest), it is really not these things in themselves that frustrate us, but our mental reaction to them. We are afraid that if we do not achieve or do a given thing, we will feel frustrated and be disappointed by its absence. But in such cases, it is really the fear of frustration and disappointment that drives us, and not these mental states in themselves since – with “compassionate detachment” – they are not that hard to bear.
The Flame that Crowds out Clarity: The Buddhist Theory of Hedonism
To understand how the Buddhists can take such a detached (though not exactly indifferent) view of many of the things that are normally regarded as the purpose of life itself, it will be necessary to say a few words about the Buddhist theory of hedonism. In the early Buddhist texts, hedonists are sometimes described as something akin to a personality type (not entirely unlike one of Plato’s soul-types in The Republic, which is ruled by base appetitive desires instead of higher principles like spirit or reason). However, the theory of hedonism in Hinayana Buddhism is really more of a metapsychological principle than a problem-complex affecting one type in particular.
In cracking this question, we must distinguish between the satisfaction of mundane cravings and spiritual delight. From a Buddhist perspective, even intellectual or creative pursuits, such as wanting to live “a life of the mind,” dedicating oneself to philosophy, art, or science, are still mundane cravings on par with wanting riches or lovers. Any pleasure that comes about as the satisfaction of cravings brings much satisfaction but little spiritual delight.
According to the Hinayana view, even the successful attainment of the object of one’s craving will not bring lasting happiness. We can name two minor reasons why this is so: For one, the object of one’s desire rarely lasts (and even if it does last, we will still age and die, thus losing it in the end). For another, mind familiarizes itself with and habituates to whatever is attained. Though some outcomes and conditions are objectively better than others, anything that is attained becomes a “new normal.” We might experience a little more happiness in the long run (or a little less), but we will not be liberated from the root dissatisfaction (dukkha) that besets phenomenal life with all its imperfections.
Though both of these reservations are covered in Hinayana philosophy, none of them are really the major reason why the attainment of one’s desire will not bring lasting happiness. No, the major reason why phenomenal attainments cannot bring liberation is that attaching to them will diminish the sense of “engaged distance” – the third-party perspective on one’s own life – while conditioning the mind to seek the satisfaction of craving as the remedy for dissatisfaction. Not possessing the third-party perspective, we identify with the shifting and ever-insatiable desire that burns in our body and mind like a flame that crowds out mental clarity. We do not know that we need the counterweight of meditation, for as the Samyutta Nikaya says, the mental perspective gained in meditation is like a “vision that is like something never heard of before,” completely unlike ordinary Thinking, Feeling, Intuition, and Sensation.[2]
Starting from the same dissatisfaction that troubled the Buddha, some Western traditions, such as Stoicism, have espoused the need to change the way one views the objects of one’s cravings, as seen here in Marcus Aurelius:
“How marvelously useful it is for a man to represent unto himself meats, and all such things that are for the mouth, under a right apprehension and imagination. As for example: This is the carcass of a fish; this of a bird; and this of a pig. And again more generally: This … excellent, highly commended wine is but the bare juice of an ordinary grape. This purple robe [i.e. the garment of high rank] is but sheep’s wool, dyed with the blood of a shellfish. Likewise for coitus; it is but the rubbing against base innards, and the excretion of a little bit of slime, with a certain kind of convulsion. … How excellently useful are these lively fancies and representations of things, thus penetrating and passing through the objects, to make their true nature known and apparent! You must employ this [mental] technique for as long as you live, and upon all occasions. Especially when matters are commonly apprehended as desirable and worthy of great respect, you must take care to uncover their triviality, and to behold their vileness, and to take away from them all those conventionalities, under which they are made to seem desirable.” – Marcus Aurelius: Meditations VI.13
While there are some points of contact between early Buddhism and these Stoic techniques, a discussion of their differences will prove helpful. The end-goal of the Stoic exercises is the mental state of apatheia (literally indifference); indeed, becoming as firm as a rock at the edge of the sea, unshakable no matter what waves may break against it. To this end, the Stoic de-conditions himself from the lure of phenomenal objects (good food and drink, high rank, intercourse with an attractive lover and so on) by focusing his attention on their baser aspects. Buddhism too might apply such “negative visualization” techniques, but its end-goal (nirvana) is really quite different from the Stoic’s apatheia.[3] Whereas the Stoic might devalue the allure of the coveted object and leave it at that, the end-goal of Buddhism is neither to devalue nor to value the object, but to cognize its bare reality, encompassing both its compelling and repelling qualities. Its goal is not to be dissociative, but mindful. If Buddhism cultivates “engaged distance” and “compassionate detachment,” Stoicism has only distance and detachment.
Thus, from a Buddhist perspective, the Stoic regimen only serves to replace plus with minus, when what is really needed is an understanding of the relation between plus and minus itself. Achieving the end-goal of Stoicism, you successfully dissociate from the events of phenomenal life, but you still fail to understand the nature of the conflicting shower of ego-attitudes that constantly bombard your consciousness. Like a shore which can only be surveyed once one has reached the other side of a river, only those who have achieved the supra-mundane third-party perspective on reality that is the end-goal of archaic Buddhism can objectively understand the condition in which they formerly found themselves.[4]
NOTES
[1] In his book ‘Zero Degrees of Empathy,’ professor of psychopathology at Cambridge University, Simon Baron-Cohen remarks on a Buddhist monk who exhibited “engaged detachment” by remaining serene, even as he was clearly empathizing with a distressed other: “Whatever the monk was doing was clearly abnormal, it doesn’t fit my definition of empathy. … The detachment of the normal empathic response to my mind disqualifies the monk from being a candidate for a super-empathizer.” See: Baron-Cohen: Zero Degrees of Empathy (Allen Lane 2011) p. 121
[2] Samyutta Nikaya 36.24; 12.10
[3] It is expedient to interject here that neither Buddhism nor Stoicism contends that the true natures of coveted phenomenal objects really are all negative, as these visualization techniques might otherwise suggest. The objects themselves are neutral; it is the practitioner’s mental state – his apprehension of the object – that may be better or worse; more conducive or less conducive to the goal of attaining apatheia or nirvana.
[4] Evola: The Doctrine of Awakening (Inner Traditions 1996) p. 49
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Image made by artist Georgios Magkakis.