Buddhism by the Book: A Review of Foundations of Buddhism by Robert Gethin

Oxford University Press 1998

Robert Wright assigned a part of this book for his “Buddhism & Modern Psychology” course that I took through Coursera. The book serves as an excellent introduction to Buddhist tradition and thought. It addresses the life of the Buddha, the development of Buddhist scriptures, traditions, and lineages, and more recent developments. Through a patient consideration of scriptures and traditions, we gain insight into crucial Buddhist doctrines such as those of anatman (no self) and dependent origination. These ideas challenge our common assumptions and are crucial to understanding Buddhism. Gethin's work serves as an adept guide into this new worldview.

Gethin also spends a good deal of the book addressing the various paths that Buddhist thought and tradition have taken over about 2500 years. He divides Buddhism into three main groups:

• southern Buddhism (the Theravadan tradition) centered Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos;
• eastern Buddhism found in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam based on the Mahayana tradition; and
• northern Buddhism based on the Vajrayana tradition of Tibet, Mongolia, Nepal, and Himalayan India.

Each of these traditions has now planted roots in the West:

•  S.N. Goenka, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Stephen Levine have taught the Theravadan tradition of insight meditation;
• D.T. Suzuki, Peter Matthiessen, the Beat Generation writers, and many others have promoted Zen Buddhism;
• the Dalai Lama, B. Alan Wallace, and Mathieu Ricard are noteworthy proponents of Tibetan Buddhism.

And this is just a truncated list of those teachers whom I've encountered. The list of those now teaching and promoting Buddhism in the West continues to expand.

Gethin serves an important purpose in his academic treatment of the tradition: he allows those of us new to Buddhism to identify and better understand the diverse traditions. This provides us with the background appreciate how the traditions have adapted to their new, Western environments. All religious traditions—or at least those that have spread across diverse cultures and times—have changed and adapted in response to each new culture encountered. The same is true of Buddhism. Yet it’s helpful to take in the story from the beginning to get a sense of the whole. The genealogy of a set of ideas serves a genuine and important purpose, and needn’t make one into a fundamentalist—far from it!

Anyone wanting to gain a comprehensive understanding of Buddhism, its traditions, and development, would do well to start with this book.

Emotional Awareness: A Conversation Between the Dalai Lama & Paul Ekman

Leading psychologist Paul Ekman received an invitation to a Mind and Life Conference with the Dalai Lama in 2000. He went because he knew it would it please his daughter, an admirer of the Dalai Lama. Ekman himself had no great knowledge of Buddhism and no religious beliefs or practices of his own. What happened as a result of this initial encounter changed Ekman's life, both personally and professionally. He hit it off with the Dalai Lama, experiencing a warmth and openness that affected him emotionally and that puzzled him as a scientist. And he learned things about the Buddhist tradition that triggered new perspectives and research agendas from him about the emotions and how we humans can learn to better cultivate them. This book records conversations held between Ekman and the Dalai Lama over several years. These transcripts and sidebars become a treasure-trove of insight into this most basic human (and animal) phenomenon that Buddhism has explored more than two millennia via introspection (meditation). Now science is taking a closer look at, especially with the advances in neuroscience and other techniques that provide us new ways of viewing and testing emotions. This book allows any reader can come away with a better understanding of how we live our emotional lives, and how we can cultivate those emotions for our own good and the good of those with whom we live. No small accomplishment.

The first two of the Four Noble Truths espoused by the Buddha state his assessment of the human condition. The First Noble Truth: Life is unsatisfactory. (More often, we see the original Sanskrit or Pali translated as “suffering”, but I agree that this word is perhaps too aggressive in its portrayal of the original insight.) The Second Noble Truth: The cause of suffering [or unsatisfactoriness] is attachment. Attachment, as you learn, can mean craving for something (greed), craving to escape something (aversion, hatred), or ignorance of the situation (delusion). So what has this to do with emotions? Via natural selection, mammals, and especially humans, developed emotions that refined our ability to approach or avoid. Mixed with our hyper-sociability (Jon Haidt), we developed a wide variety of emotions that attract or repel us from various perceived situations. Natural selection armed us over millions of years with these mind tools, but with the advent of civilization (living in cities instead of small hunter-gatherer groups), our array of emotions, such as anger and hatred, for instance, could lead us astray. Robert Wright argues in his course on Buddhism and Modern Psychology (now offered on Coursera) that Buddhism is an antidote to some aspects human behavior instilled in us by natural selection. Instead of acting on our feelings of attachment (“Yum, doughnuts! Let’s feast”) or aversion (“Your rotten SOB”), we learn to get between our emotions—developed for quick perceptions and responses—and our actions. This is a fundamental insight shared between HHDL and Ekman, each coming at the issue from their different traditions but finding a lot of agreement. Ekman calls a pause in our reactions a “refractory period”, which may be micro-moment, or—with cultivation—something much longer. 

After spending time defining emotions—different from moods, we should note—the two discuss how we might learn to tame them (and not, as some think Buddhism suggests, eliminate them). Here we learn of the benefits of meditation as a mechanism for developing awareness, a meta-awareness (B. Alan Wallace) that allows us to observe the development of an emotion within us and thereby make a conscious decision about how we shall (or shan’t) act in response to the impulse. This ability, along with the conscious cultivation of compassion, allows us to take ourselves in happier and more sociable directions than the naturally selected traits of our emotions might push us.

The above is just a taste of what the book covers. In addition to insights into basic and ongoing Western scientific research about the emotions and the Buddhist insights cultivated over 2000 years, we learn about the participants, especially Ekman. Ekman’s insight that he changes over the course of these conversations (estimated at about 39 hours) is really moving. Ekman grew-up with a very difficult father, and Ekman shares insights he gains about himself and that relationship. Ekman’s growth of insight and appreciation gives the book an emotional (in a very good way!) valence that adds spice to the wonderful scientific and Buddhist knowledge and wisdom that we garner through it. 

The emotions are an endlessly fascinating topic. The quality of our lives is a function of our emotions. Much of morality and ethics revolve around our emotions and how we handle them. Indeed, not just Buddhism, but all of the Axial religions and philosophies—later Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Socratic philosophy and its progeny, especially Stoicism, Confucianism, and aspects of Taoism and Hinduism—are efforts to re-direct human conduct from older, more atavistic (and now less well-adapted) traits vested in humans via natural selection. These religions and philosophies (philosophy, that is, “as a way of life”, in the words of Pierre Hadot) developed in response to a very different environment (civilization) than that of the hunter-gatherers from whom we descended. The challenge to us is to use the wisdom of these traditions and refine them (no more required, I suspect) to best fit our contemporary needs. This book goes a long way in forwarding that project. We must thank Dr. Ekman and the Dalai Lama for their courage in reaching across traditions to help us find our way.

P.S. This is a second take on this book. Indeed, blog 5/682 (i.e., near the beginning of my blogging) addresses my listening to this as an audio book. It was definitely worth a second take!

Meditation: Growing Understanding

This is just one of many studies that show the benefits of meditation. I think that the author doesn't probably know how much work has been done already on this topic by people like Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, to name but one researcher that comes quickly to mind. (If you want more information, you should check out the Mind and Life Conferences sponsored by the Dalai Lama, where he brings together scientists with Buddhists to share perspectives and common concerns. They have some very interesting exchanges and the scientists have provided some very interesting information about meditation, the practice of compassion, emotions, and so on.) Anyway, this article might whet your appetite to meditate. My willpower waxes and wanes on this. I do find that a great night of sleep is the very best thing for the brain.

A Farewell to Alms and Emotional Awareness

I began A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World by Gregory Clark (2007) today. Clark argues against Jared Diamond of Guns, Germs, and Steel fame, as well as those like Pomerantz, who argue that colonies and coal provide the explanation of the Great Divergence (i.e., why Britain and then Western Europe zoomed to a dominant position via the Industrial Revolution). Our visit to Cameroon spurred this interest, as the gap between the Cameroonian standard of living and ours is so great. Why? In reading Clark’s introduction, he sets forth his basic tenants. First, until the 1800’s and the Industrial Revolution, most parts of the world remained nearly equally poor. In fact, humankind may have been worse off on the eve of the Industrial Revolution than it was as hunter-gathers over 8,000 years ago. Until the Industrial Revolution, humans lived in a Malthusian world. However, in Britain, because of culture, the Industrial Revolution took off. Clark argues that coal and colonies did not distinguish Europe from China and Japan. Indeed, Clark suggests that certain attributes, such as delayed gratification and hard work spread into British society before (or more effectively than others), perhaps even through genetic changes. Finally, in his introduction, Clark reminds us of the weird but often-cited fact that we are no happier, and perhaps less happy, than our much poorer ancestors. Indeed, in our recent trip to Cameroon, we found the villagers where we stayed quite warm and welcoming,  and on the whole happy. Clark suggests that envy is the problem; perhaps, he says, the envious will inherit the earth.

I’ve been listening to the Dalai Lama (voice-over by Richard Gere) and Paul Ekman in the audiobook of Emotional Awareness (2008). The conversation is fascinating. Ekman the Western scientist has obviously been very impressed with his introduction to Buddhist thinking in the areas of consciousness, awareness, and emotional control. Today he and the DL discussed compassion and how we can cultivate it. Do we need to have suffered? How can we foster universal compassion? Ekman and the DL seem to agree on a lot, and it shows for me the deed empirical wisdom of this aspect of the Buddhist tradition, the Buddhist psychology (and Buddha was perhaps the greatest psychologist-therapist).