Philosophies of Happiness: A Comparative Introduction to the Flourishing Life 9780231545327

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Philosophies of Happiness

PHILOSOPHIES of HAPPINESS A Comparative Introduction to the Flourishing Life

DIANA LOBEL

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2017 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lobel, Diana, author. Title: Philosophies of happiness : a comparative introduction to the flourishing life / Diana Lobel. Description: New York: Columbia University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017011392 | ISBN 9780231184106 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231184113 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231545327 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Happiness. | Happiness—Religious aspects. Classification: LCC B105.H36 L63 2017 | DDC 128—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011392

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America Cover design: Jordan Wannemacher

For Pippa,

a fountain of joy who brings happiness to all.

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 one Aristotle: The Life of Engaged Activity 13 two Epicurus: Happiness Is Pleasure 42 three Confucian Happiness: Ritual, Humaneness, Music, and Joy 55 four Daoism: Attentive Awareness and Effortless Ease of Action (Wu-Wei) 80 five The Bhagavad Gītā: Non-attached Action and the Universal Spirit 117 six St. Augustine: The Happy Life of the Soul 145 seven Maimonides: The Joy of Learning, Prayer, and Devotion 163 eight The Sufi Path of Love in ʿAṭṭār’s Conference of the Birds 186 nine Mindfulness, East and West 214 [ vii ]

Contents ten Dōgen’s Sōtō Zen and Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind 234 eleven Creative Engagement and the Art of Living 249 Conclusion 267 Notes 275 Bibliography 345 Index 375

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all those who have made this book possible, many of whom are named Brian or David: Brian Anderson, for his kind and generous technical assistance, far beyond the call of duty; Brian Jenkin, for his dedicated assistance on all levels—technical, scholarly, and collegial; Brian Loh, for countless hours of insightful reading and discussion of texts; Brian Marrin, for expert guidance in reading Greek texts; Bryan Turcotte, for generous editorial assistance; Brian Zitin (and Adam Hoffmann), for their sincere and dedicated existential quest; David Jennings, for his patient and stimulating guidance in reading Greek texts; David Konstan, for his rich discussion and comments on Epicurus; David Roochnik, for illuminating reading and discussion of Aristotle in Greek; David Wolfsdorf, for extremely generous and stimulating exchanges on Aristotle, Epicurus, theories of pleasure, and philosophy of mind; David Eckel for his warm collegiality; and David Frankfurter for his generous support as Chair of the Religion Department. I am also grateful to Wendy Czik, Jonathan Klawans, Deeana Klepper, Karen Nardella, and Stephen Prothero for their deep and kind support over the years. I thank Ian Cooley for his expert editing of several chapters and Colby Philips for editorial suggestions and our engaging and far-reaching exploration of texts. I am indebted to colleagues and students who generously read, discussed, and commented on chapters of the book, including Deborah Achtenburg, Madeline Aruffo, Robert Eno, Alan Fox, Anna Geary-Meyer, Sean Hannan, Steven Harvey, Warren Zev Harvey, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Raphael Jospe, [ ix ]

ACknowledgments Menachem Kellner, Amod Lele, James W. Morris, Shohaku Okumura, Bernard Septimus, Sassan Tabatabai, and Ithamar Theodor. I am also grateful for e-mail conversations with Julia Annas, John D. Dunne, Taigen Dan Leighton, Kaz Tanahashi, as well as Elizabeth Asmis, who shared a pre-published paper. I am particularly grateful to P. J. Ivanhoe for his generous guidance and interest in my work and to Robert Eno for his detailed comments and suggestions. I thank Wendy Lochner of Columbia University Press for her warm and enthusiastic support for the project and Susan Pensak for her adroit and sensitive editorial work. I would also like to thank Boston University’s Center for the Humanities and College of Arts and Sciences, which provided subvention funds for the book’s publication; Stephen Prothero, who generously located funds for indexing and facilitated the publication process in many ways; and Johnathan Kelly, who indexed the book. I am deeply appreciative of the communities of study and prayer that have so enriched my life, including the winter community that has provided the conditions for flourishing that made this book possible. I am grateful to Stan Dorn for our rich learning together over the years; Miriam Bronstein, Sandra Daitch, Dennis Friedler, Mirja Holmboe, Axel Knauf, Beth O’Sullivan, Catherine Tutter, and our study group for friendship and love for learning. I  appreciate Walter Ness and Barbara Brandt for their friendship and all I have learned in their presence; Tom Alden, for his wisdom, understanding, and compassion; Debi Adams and Adam Bailey, who have generously shared the gift of the Alexander Technique and the beauty of integration; and Tina Mulhern for more than my heart can ever say. My indefatigable assistants Rey Maguad, Alisa Granada, Taylor Kwok, Khea Chang, Karissa Ly, Ivy Zhang, and Diane McLaughlin saw this book from its acceptance through editing and production. Alisa Granada and Taylor Kwok miraculously produced the bibliography. May their kindness, generosity, and devotion ever be rewarded. I dedicate this book to my family, Albert, Francine z”l, and Janet Lobel, and my extended family, including John Paul, Katrina, and Pippa. May they always enjoy the happiness they so warmly give and richly deserve.

[x]

Philosophies of Happiness

Introduction

Eudaimonia as Human Flourishing What is happiness? What is it to live a balanced, healthy, and fulfilling life? The topic of this book is happiness in the sense described by early Greek philosophers—eudaimonia, or what it is to flourish as a human being. Just as a plant can take in the sun and flourish, so a human being can thrive and realize his or her purpose in life. This need not be a purely individual or selfcentered pursuit. The supreme vow one takes in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition is to relieve the suffering of all beings. Likewise when we strive for social justice or work to assuage the suffering of the poor, our goal is to offer others the chance for a happy life. We will see that the flourishing life in its broadest sense aims to realize the purpose of human living by contributing to something larger than oneself. Nevertheless, many of us today associate happiness with a feeling— whether something immediate, like joy or pleasure, or something more long lasting, such as contentment or satisfaction with our lives. One contemporary theorist, Daniel Nettle, identifies three levels of happiness.1 The first level is an immediate felt sense, emotion, or feeling, like pleasure or joy. We wake up in the morning, see the sunlight, and feel good about being alive. This is the sense in which one says “I feel happy today.” The second level adds a cognitive component, a judgment about how our life is going overall. When a dear grandmother asks, “Are you happy?” she is asking a deeper, more [1]

IntroductIon penetrating question than about our immediate feeling of pleasure. And to say we are happy does not demand that we feel pleasant emotions all the time. Usually when we say we are happy we are making an assessment that we are living the life we are meant to live. The second level of happiness thus involves a complex of cognition and feeling. It is when we feel good about our life and where it is going as a whole.2 A third level of happiness is the life of eudaimonia, the good life, in which one flourishes and realizes one’s potential. This is an objective rather than a subjective assessment. A person who is happy in this sense is thriving. The child in kindergarten is playing creatively, stretching his or her abilities, making friends and growing; an adult is involved in creative projects in his or her work, family, and community. The life of eudaimonia will usually include moments of pleasure and joy and a sense of satisfaction that one is living life as one should. It is thus inclusive, comprising both an objective assessment and a sense of subjective joy and satisfaction. Now Nettle himself—along with philosopher Daniel Haybron—objects that the literature of philosophy and psychology has conflated two distinct senses of happiness. They argue that when we say, in common conversation, “I am happy,” we are describing a psychological condition, whether an immediate sense of pleasure or joy (level 1 happiness) or an assessment of satisfaction with our life as a whole (level 2 happiness). In contrast, these theorists suggest, when an ancient philosopher such as Aristotle speaks of eudaimonia, he is not describing a psychological condition but is rather making a normative, evaluative claim of what is the best life for a person. In response to this objection, I will show that in his theory of pleasure Aristotle in fact brings together psychological and normative dimensions of happiness. Pleasure for Aristotle is the appreciation and enjoyment of our valuable activities. When we engage in activities that actualize our potential, we experience the greatest degree of fulfillment. For eudaimonists such as Aristotle, the life of valuable activity is the most intrinsically rewarding and fulfilling life.3 Happiness is indeed the activity of flourishing as a human being; pleasure is the psychological dimension of human flourishing. Eudaimonia is the subject of this book. We will use this term drawn from Greek philosophy to look at what it is to live a full human life in a broad range of philosophical and religious texts and traditions: the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Epicurus; the Chinese traditions of Confucius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi; the Hindu Bhagavad Gītā; the Japanese Buddhist tradition of Zen; [2]

IntroductIon the Western traditions of Augustine, Maimonides, and ʿAṭṭar’s Sufi tale Conference of the Birds; and contemporary research into mindfulness and creative engagement. Following Aristotle, I will argue that the happy life will also bring the most pleasure and satisfaction. Genuine or authentic happiness is living as we are meant to. We experience the deepest satisfaction when we fulfill our sense of purpose. These traditions and approaches to a flourishing life are quite diverse, but certain themes will emerge. 1. The first building block of a life of happiness is attentive awareness. Each of these thinkers builds a flourishing life on attentive awareness to one’s own mental and physical activities, the world around us, and the larger whole in which we participate. Happiness includes appreciation of the beauty and value of our moment-to-moment experience. Rather than rushing to the next, more valuable activity, we can pause to appreciate the spaciousness and value of the present moment of awareness. We can cultivate appreciation for the mundane and even painful moments of living. 2. The second building block is effortless ease of action, guided by intuitive wisdom. This brings vitality and efficacy to our activities. 3. The third building block is relationship and connection. Human beings need to feel we are part of a larger, interconnected whole. 4. The fourth is love or devotion; human beings connect to the whole not only with the mind, but affectively, with heart and spirit. 5. The fifth is creative engagement. Humans flourish when we draw upon the full range of our resources and fully participate in the projects of our lives. 6. The sixth is meaning, significance, and value. Flourishing lives have objective import, worth, and purpose. The texts and traditions we will study express these components in varied ways. Some will include a theistic focus—the notion that there is an Absolute Reality or divinity at the center of the universe. Certain traditions envision this reality in personal terms, as a being with whom one can relate and interact; we will find this in the fourth-century Church Father Augustine, the Hindu Bhagavad Gītā, and the Islamic Sufi tale Conference of the Birds. Others will point to a ground of being or impersonal spirit, such as the Dao of the Daodejing, or simply a normative moral order, such as Heaven (Tian) in the Confucian Analects. The Soto Zen tradition speaks of Buddha Nature or [3]

IntroductIon suchness, a quality of wisdom and compassion at the heart of reality. Aristotle and Maimonides present a worldview that is fundamentally biological—a vision of the way nature is—and yet at the same time normative, since life and being are good and beautiful. The aim of this book is to explore human traditions with regard to wellbeing and flourishing in their diversity. One might object that perhaps visions of the good life are so radically different across cultures and historical periods that we cannot use the term happiness, much less eudaimonia, to describe them. In response, I would note that my goal is not to make specific comparative claims but rather to allow us to hear harmonies and resonances across traditions, while noticing the distinct and unique features of each worldview.4 For example, the philosopher’s contemplation on the God of Aristotle—who is thought thinking itself—is far from devotion to the God of the Bhagavad Gītā, a Supreme Person who lives within the human heart and loves and cares for all creatures. And yet both scientific philosophy and religious devotion offer individuals the opportunity to participate in a larger order that is good, right, and significant. We will discern certain common themes across a spectrum of visions of what it is to flourish as a human being, a family resemblance that suggests the common core of what makes a rich life. At the same time, we will be attentive to nuanced differences and look for the beauty, richness, and power of each vision.

Eudaimonia as Human Flourishing: The Aristotelian Framework The book is not a study of Aristotelian philosophy per se. Nevertheless, Aristotle offers an indispensible philosophical framework for investigating what it is to flourish as a human being. A few initial words about his views in the context of ancient Hellenistic ethical theory will help us frame the issues, which will be addressed in varied ways across traditions. We have noted that many contemporary discussions of happiness in the West—whether in the fields of philosophy, psychology, or political theory— echo ancient debates over the highest human good, described by the Greeks as eudaimonia. For example, contemporary theorists of the discipline known as positive psychology have identified three forms of happiness: the pleasant life, centered on positive emotions and the avoidance of discomfort; the en[4]

IntroductIon gaged or flow-inducing life, in which we actualize our potential and experience creative engagement; and the good or meaningful life, in which we find satisfaction through the pursuit of meaning.5 In ancient times, the questions of happiness and the highest human good were debated between hedonistic philosophers such as Epicurus, who emphasized the pursuit of pleasant states and the avoidance of pain, and eudaimonist philosophers such as Aristotle, who emphasized self-actualization. Aristotle’s approach combines the second and third of the forms of life identified earlier: the life of engagement and the life of meaning. Aristotle insists that happiness is not the mere pursuit of pleasure. Thus while the English term happiness may seem to connote self-gratification, Aristotle insists that the life of self-gratification does not afford genuine happiness. Genuine happiness is activity of the soul, in accordance with virtue or excellence, and is a life of objective significance.6 Aristotle asserts that both ordinary and cultivated people call the highest human good happiness (eudaimonia) and suppose that living well (eu zên) and doing well in action (eu prattein) are the same as being happy.7 Thus there seems to be a general basis in ancient Greek ethics as well as in common parlance for his insistence that happiness is an activity, not a feeling or a state. Happiness is something we do; it is living the best life we can. Greek philosophers often make an equation between happiness and health. Health is the best functioning of the physical body; happiness is the best functioning of the whole human being. There is therefore an intimate connection between happiness and human excellence. The Greek term for excellence or virtue, aretê, does not have the moral connotation that the term virtue does in English. The virtue or excellence of a knife is to cut well; the excellence of a human being is to live well. Happiness—the flourishing of a human being, his or her living well—is the expression of human excellence. In contemporary moral discourse, it is often suggested that there is a tension between doing things for our own happiness and moral virtue, which is other-centered. In contrast, Greek thought tends to justify moral virtue in terms of what is good for the agent—it benefits me to be just, courageous, and generous. But these virtues also benefit others, and thus there is an intrinsic connection between caring for others and our own happiness. Ancient ethical theorists argue that happiness lies in developing and exercising moral virtue.8 [5]

IntroductIon We may nevertheless find ourselves uncomfortable with what is sometimes called ethical egoism, the Greek focus on personal self-cultivation. Aristotle himself may have been aware of such a critique. Indeed, he addresses explicitly the charge that to love oneself or cultivate one’s own happiness is an egoistic pursuit. He describes astutely the difference between the egoist and the genuine self-lover. Egoists feed the lower parts of themselves—awarding themselves the greatest share in wealth, honors, praise, and bodily pleasures.9 In contrast, the genuine self-lover is someone who cultivates and expresses the highest capacity for virtue; self-love for Aristotle is not a feeling we have toward ourselves but a way of acting. To love oneself is to act toward oneself in a loving way, which is to become the finest person one can be. The self-lover “is always eager to excel everyone in doing just or temperate actions or any others expressing the virtues” (NE 9.8 1168b 25). Thus genuine self-love is actually the opposite of egoism. A culture based on self-love is one in which all strive to live nobly and justly and contribute to the common good: “those who are unusually eager to do fine actions are welcomed and praised by everyone. And when everyone competes to achieve what is fine and strains to do the finest actions, everything that is right will be done for the common good, and each person individually will receive the greatest of goods, since that is the character of virtue. Hence the good person must be a self-lover, since he will both help himself and benefit others by doing fine actions” (NE 9.8 1169a 8–12). Aristotle therefore holds that self-love and ethical self-cultivation are the foundation for genuine love for others. His ethical treatise is directed not only to the good of the individual, but the good of the community as a whole: “for though admittedly the good is the same for a city as for an individual, still the good of the city is apparently a greater and more complete good to acquire and preserve. For while it is satisfactory to acquire and preserve the good even for an individual, it is finer and more divine to acquire and preserve it for a people and for cities” (NE 1.2 1094b 8–11). The person whose aim is happiness or ethical flourishing is thus quite capable of self-sacrifice; “the excellent person labors for his friends and for his native country, and will die for them if he must” (NE 9.8 1169a 18).10 Aristotle’s ideal of happiness is therefore to be distinguished from the simple pursuit of individual pleasure. Nevertheless, while rejecting selfgratification as a worthy goal, he does carve out an important place for pleasure in the good life. He distinguishes carefully between mere gratification [6]

IntroductIon and genuine pleasure. The highest form of pleasure is the by-product of excellent activity, the appreciation of the worthwhile projects in which we engage. Contemporary political philosopher Martha Nussbaum—who is uncomfortable with the pure pursuit of pleasure expressed by the eighteenthcentury utilitarian thinker Jeremy Bentham—builds her capabilities approach on this Aristotelian framework, arguing that all human beings are entitled to develop core capacities for functioning with their attendant pleasures.11 She begins with the concept of the dignity of a human being, and what it is to live a life worthy of that dignity, drawing upon Karl Marx’s notion that the human being is “in need of a totality of life-activities.”12 Nussbaum outlines a list of core capabilities for functioning that all human beings have a right to develop; her proposal for global human rights is that all nations should ensure that human beings have the opportunity to express these core human capabilities.13 While she is critical of positive psychology’s emphasis on cultivating “positive” emotions, Nussbaum’s human rights approach shows a deep concern with the right of human beings to flourish to their full potential, including expressing their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual capacities.14 Nussbaum confirms what we will explore here in many cultural contexts—that human flourishing includes opportunities for awareness, relationship, emotional expression, creative engagement, and meaning.

Happiness, East and West: Overview Each chapter of the book explores the way a text or tradition approaches what it is to flourish in a human life. Chapter 1 begins with Aristotle (385–322 bce). Some scholars maintain that while Aristotle is eager to make normative, evaluative claims about the best life for a human being, he does not hold a theory of the psychological condition we commonly call happiness. In Chapter 1 we will discover that Aristotle does seriously consider the psychological gift of taking pleasure in life. For Aristotle, the happy life is a life of excellent activity; pleasure is the ability to enjoy and appreciate the valuable activities in which we engage. Pleasure enhances and reinforces the value of our pursuits. When we engage in activities that actualize our potential, we experience the greatest degree of fulfillment. All sentient beings take pleasure in being alive, from the tiniest amoeba to the fullest expression of life Aristotle calls God. For Aristotle, the biological activity of living itself is fundamentally [7]

IntroductIon good and beautiful. Aristotle maintains our lives acquire significance as we fulfill our biological purpose in a well-ordered and vibrant cosmos. In Chapter 2 we learn that while for Aristotle, pleasure is the by-product of a life well lived, for Epicurus (341–270 bce) pleasure itself is the supreme good and purpose of life. What is unique and unprecedented in Epicurus is the notion that it is our feeling nature rather than our reason that is and should be our guide; the affective drive of humanity reveals our highest good. Pleasure is the ability to attune oneself, through focused attention, to the pleasurable state or “hum” of one’s own being, whether sitting quietly or actively enjoying delightful pleasures of the senses. Episodes of delightful sensations remind us that living is fundamentally good. Happiness begins with attentive awareness to our own condition and blossoms to include sharing the goodness of living with others in friendship. Chapter 3 turns to the Confucian tradition. Like Aristotle, the Confucian Analects suggest that we can find happiness by participating in a larger normative order that is good and right. Confucius encourages his students to take joy in worthwhile activities: to engage in beautiful ritual forms, enjoy sublime music, and cultivate appropriate states of character and virtuous friendship. Confucius also celebrates attentive awareness, bringing full attention and dignity to both sacred rituals and all our human interactions. The Confucian tradition is unique in its emphasis on the importance of human relationships as the arena for human flourishing and its sense of the joy of ritual practices through which we can express our sacred dignity. In Chapter 4 we turn to the Daoist tradition, a complementary pole of Chinese culture that is in dialogue with the Confucian tradition. The Daodejing, traditionally ascribed to the sage Laozi, finds flourishing in a life of uncontrived action (wu-wei), flowing with a Way (Dao) of nature rather than ritually prescribed patterns of behavior. We can become fluid and malleable like water, overcoming all obstacles by an open, non-resistant stance. Attunement to the Dao, a way that is nurturing and quietly supportive, opens us up to the deepest resources of our nature. Zhuangzi, another early Daoist, offers colorful teachings on how to attune oneself to this natural order. With ironic humor, he advocates a joyful equanimity that can follow along with the flow of natural transformations, including a host of physical differences others might find grotesque, shaking up conventional standards of what is beautiful and ugly. Zhuangzi presents a spectrum of effortless action, from immersion in skilled activity to disengage[8]

IntroductIon ment from sense experience. The life of happiness for Zhuangzi is rooted in finding a center from which one can meet transformations with a playful sense of humor. His model of flourishing includes attentive awareness, effortless action guided by the patterns of the Way, and finding purpose and beauty in what is seemingly without use. In Chapter 5 we learn that the Bhagavad Gītā teaches an ideal of non-attached action (karma yoga), reminiscent of the effortless action we find in Chinese traditions but with a distinct theistic twist. This ideal resolves a tension between seeking spiritual liberation, which would seem to take human beings away from the world, and fulfilling our sacred duty. Karma yoga teaches human beings to fulfill their responsibilities in the world without attachment to the results of their actions. We can be fully involved in activity with loving dedication and without concern for external praise or blame. The Gītā teaches that this brings equanimity and peace, even in the workaday world. The culminating discipline of the Gītā is the discipline of love. When we devote our actions to a personal God, we are no longer alone in the quest for liberation and peace. Happiness for the Gītā is thus a life in which we engage in the world through non-attached action, identifying with an eternal spirit, and finding a Supreme Person in our heart to whom we can dedicate our lives. The Gītā can thus serve as a bridge to the theistic traditions of the West. In Chapter 6 we begin our discussion of Western theological thought with the fourth-century Church Father Augustine. Like the Gītā, Augustine suggests one can find the deepest source of happiness in devotion to a personal God, whom he describes as Being, Goodness, and Sweetness itself. Augustine’s God is thus an embodiment of absolute value, like Plato’s Form of the Good. Augustine discovers his God through intense struggle with his own impulses; like the Gītā, Augustine suggests that the quest for self-mastery can bring integration of conflicting urges, either through discovering a centering will in oneself or by surrender to divine grace. What human beings are searching for is the ground of their very being, which is infinite in value. Humans find authentic happiness in discovering a personal connection with the deepest source of our existence. In Chapter 7 we turn to the twelfth century Judeo-Arabic thinker Maimonides. Like Augustine, Maimonides finds ultimate fulfillment in a life of religious devotion. However, Maimonides’ God is not a personal companion like the God of Augustine, but a ground of being much like Laozi’s Dao— absolutely simple, transcendent, ineffable, and yet the source of all complexity. [9]

IntroductIon Ultimate joy is experienced by a quiet mind, which through focused awareness receives intellectual insight and illuminated understanding of cosmic order. The flourishing life for Maimonides thus includes several intertwined dimensions: a philosophical and scientific quest for understanding; love and awe for the source of this magnificent universe; and engagement in acts of religious devotion, which connect us with both cosmos and community. Chapter 8 turns to Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭar’s thirteenth-century Persian tale Conference of the Birds, an allegorical poem that develops in a Sufi context the theme of mystical devotion. Whereas Maimonides gives his Sufi themes of mystical unknowing an intellectual framework, ʿAṭṭar shows a definite preference for love over intellect; love brings intuitive understanding and a relationship with the Truth that the pure intellect cannot fathom. Each of us has a trace of the divine within, which inspires longing for its full realization. In fact, each person has a mirror of God within his or her own heart, so that the search for God is actually a journey into the depth of one’s own being. The poem points to a journey toward God and a further journey within God. ʿAṭṭar describes a truly relational path, depicted in terms of passionate love; the secrets revealed between God and the soul are like intimacies between lovers. The text suggests that human beings find fulfillment in a divine truth that is both the source of the universe and a friend within one’s own heart. Chapter 9 explores the component of mindfulness in creating a happy life through the lens of both traditional Buddhist psychology and contemporary Western neuroscience. Classical Buddhist texts describe mindfulness on a spectrum from non-judgmental awareness of the present moment to one-pointed focus on an object of meditation; current research confirms that different styles of meditation may be appropriate to address varying cognitive styles. Neuropsychologist Daniel Siegel suggests that mindfulness practices can awaken a deeper sense of ourselves, a pure subjectivity that observes the world with curiosity, willing attention, and a non-judgmental stance. Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer has produced a body of research demonstrating the way a non-evaluative stance can awaken us to the authentic, experiencing self, which enables us to be flexible and creative in our approach to learning. Both Eastern and Western forms of mindfulness encourage us to make room in our lives for creative uncertainty so that we can be open to experience the world in original ways. Chapter 9 introduced [ 10 ]

IntroductIon Buddhist approaches to mindful awareness; this may be a distinctively Buddhist approach to happiness. Chapter 10 turns to the Sōtō Zen tradition, expressed in Shunryu Suzuki’s twentieth-century classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and its roots in the teachings of the thirteenth-century Zen teacher Dōgen (1200–1253). In contrast to theistic traditions, such as that of the Bhagavad Gītā and Sufism, the tradition of Sōtō Zen Buddhism describes the heart of reality in non-theistic terms. Dōgen teaches that not only do all sentient beings possess an original Buddha mind or Buddha nature, all beings are Buddha nature. All sentient beings have an innate quality of enlightenment or awakening. Zen practice is the activity of experiencing Buddha nature as a flowing moment-to-moment awareness. Suzuki likewise teaches that the heart of Zen practice is to approach each moment with an open beginner’s mind, willing to learn something new. Like Dōgen, Suzuki affirms the beauty and value of this world in all its imperfection and values the importance of learning through mistakes. Dōgen and Suzuki thus suggest several intertwined dimensions of what it is to flourish as a human being: to discover and express our original nature, a mind that is attuned to the vibrancy of each moment; to experience the interconnectedness of all being; and to develop attentive awareness to the beauty of nature, including its magnificent imperfections. In Chapter 11 we will see that contemporary thinkers argue that the flourishing life must also be a life of personal significance. Viktor Frankl locates the fundamental human drive in the quest for meaning; Frankl’s work demonstrates that human beings can transform even unimaginable suffering if they find in it some significance or purpose. Tal Ben-Shahar adds that human fulfillment includes dimensions of pleasure as well as meaning, present enjoyment as well as a vector of overall purpose. Thus he urges us to include in our lives activities of absorption and challenge, drawing upon Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of the flow experience. Csikszentmihalyi discovered that people are most happy when completely immersed in action such that they lose thought of themselves. When one is engaged in flow activity, the activity is so absorbing that we do not have time to question ourselves and our abilities; we receive immediate feedback from the activity, which increases energy and enjoyment. Csikszentmihalyi’s recent work, with Jeanne Nakamura, highlights the way human beings construct a life of overall meaning through vital engagement that creates a sense of relatedness to the world. Ellen Langer’s work likewise [ 11 ]

IntroductIon points to a path of flourishing through creative engagement, which she describes as our natural response to the world, the child’s experience of play. The concluding chapter thus brings together the six elements of a happy life identified at the beginning of this introduction: attentive awareness, effortless action, relationship and connection, love and devotion, creative engagement, meaning, and purpose.

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ONE

Aristotle The Life of Engaged Activity

Pleasure as Unimpeded Activity (Nicomachean Ethics 7.11–14) What can Aristotle teach us about happiness? Contemporary philosopher Daniel Haybron argues that Aristotle did not hold a theory of happiness, but rather one of human flourishing or well-being. Aristotle is concerned with what it is to live in a good or excellent way, to realize our potential, instead of the psychological state that in contemporary terms we call happiness.1 On this view, one could argue that a person might be fulfilling his or her potential as a human being and yet experience deep psychological unhappiness. In contrast, in the following chapter, I will show that Aristotle, in his theory of pleasure, does address the psychological dimension of happiness; he argues that pleasure is an important component of what it is to flourish as a human being. When we fulfill our potential, we experience pleasure; if we are not experiencing pleasure, we are not truly flourishing. Careful investigation of Aristotle’s theory of pleasure will thus add an important overlooked dimension to contemporary understanding of Aristotle’s theory of happiness. We will see that Aristotle suggests that the ability to take pleasure in healthy activities is a key to human flourishing. We begin with an overview of Aristotle’s views on eudaimonia, situating his discussion of pleasure within the larger themes of Aristotelian happiness. We then turn to a short introduction to Aristotle’s accounts of pleasure, followed by a step-by-step analysis of Aristotle’s arguments in Books 7 and 10 [ 13 ]

ArIstotle of the Nicomachean Ethics. The discussion of Book 7 offers a textual commentary, while the discussion of Book 10 is more analytical in nature. Students new to Aristotle will receive a basic introduction in the first section of the chapter; advanced readers will find a deeper analysis in the second section.

The Context of Eudaimonia: A Brief Introduction to Aristotle’s Ethics Aristotle begins the Nicomachean Ethics by arguing that every craft, action, and investigation aims at some good, so that the good is that to which all things aim.2 So far he sounds much like Plato, who speaks of one supreme good whose knowledge is the endeavor of all human striving. For Aristotle, however, it is not clear whether there is one supreme good or whether each thing aims at its own good. The latter seems to be the tenor of the continuation of the opening chapter. Aristotle suggests that there are many different goods and that in human life it is not clear how knowledge of some one abstract form of good, such as Plato posits, will help us in our lives. How can knowledge of an abstract Good help us become a better artist or dancer or physician? (NE 1096 a 10–1097a 14). If we need to go in for major surgery, we do not want to be operated upon by a physician who is expert at gazing upon the Good in itself—we want someone skilled in surgery, and not only in surgery but in our present condition. It is the empirical particular that counts in human life. While Plato is inspired by mathematics—an abstract, theoretical system—Aristotle is a biologist; he delights in classifying the characteristics of biological species. He is thus attentive to the importance of difference, variety, and the unique. The good is not one entity in all endeavors, but comes in many forms and flavors. While all agree that the human end is happiness, we do not agree on what happiness is. There are three principle lives or models for happiness. The life of gratification takes pleasure as the human end, positing that the purpose of human life is to amass the greatest degree of pleasurable experiences. Many of us live our lives this way; we have a difficult time distinguishing between pleasure and happiness. We believe happiness is a feeling, a matter of enjoyment. As we have noted, Aristotle dismisses pure gratification as a worthy end or goal of a human life (NE 1095b 15–20). The second competitor is the life of political activity, whose goal is honor. He points out that those who strive for honor ultimately want to be honored [ 14 ]

ArIstotle for virtue. But Aristotle objects to both honor and virtue as ultimate goals of human life. Honor depends on other people who honor us; Aristotle believes the highest human end must be something we can achieve ourselves, something that is our own and hard to take from us, not something that depends on others. Intuitively, he introduces the notion of self-sufficiency, that the human good is something that should depend on the agent and not something bestowed by fortune or by others. Virtue seems a more likely candidate for the human good, but Aristotle believes it to be too incomplete to be the highest human end. Virtue is a state a person might possess while asleep or inactive. Moreover, a virtuous person might suffer great misfortune. Aristotle asserts that no one would call such a person happy; he takes into account ordinary human intuitions about happiness. Happiness is a life of activity, a life in which we realize and activate our human potential. He thus introduces a third life, the life of study, whose goal is understanding. He puts off to Book 10 a final evaluation of which is preferable between the political life and the philosophical life (NE 1095b 15–1096 a 5). Aristotle is looking for what he calls the happiness that is the most complete, perfect, or final (teleion). The adjective teleion is derived from the noun telos, goal or end. Pleasure, honor, virtue, and understanding are choiceworthy for their own sake, but they are not in themselves complete; they are also chosen for the sake of happiness. One may have any one of these and nevertheless still be somehow incomplete. Happiness is the one end that is chosen for itself and never for the sake of something greater; it is the supreme or most desired end (NE 1097a 20–35). Eudaimonia is not only what we do in fact desire; it has the further connotation of the goal that is most desirable, what one should most value.3 We have an objective telos, a human perfection that is our natural goal; human well-being consists in developing our fundamental natural capacities.4 The end of the acorn is to become an oak tree; the end of a human being is to flourish, and the activity of human flourishing is happiness.5 Aristotle then adds to the notion of completeness that of self-sufficiency. A life is self-sufficient not in the sense that one can be happy in this life without any family or community. Human beings are social or political by nature; we need each other. So in what sense does happiness make us self-sufficient? Happiness is that which all by itself makes our lives choiceworthy and lacking in nothing. [ 15 ]

ArIstotle The term happiness thus connotes for us the component that makes us want nothing more out of life. What is happiness for us? “Happiness” (or in colloquial terms “heaven”) for us might be painting or swimming or writing. It is not that we want to paint all the time, but that this is the fruit or flower of our life; it is the activity that makes our life full and complete. Of course, Aristotle adds, we will need external goods like wealth, or goods of the body such as health and good looks, as components of a happy, successful, flourishing life. But the element of our lives that makes life worth living is the core of our happiness. Aristotle expresses this idea in the Eudemian Ethics by asking a pointed question: what is that for the sake of which we would choose to be born rather than not born? The converse is also implied: what is that without which we would choose not to be born?6 Many of us would say love and community; indeed, Aristotle devotes a large portion of the Nicomachean Ethics, two entire books of his treatise, to the subject of philia—friendship, affiliation, and connection. While this might be what we identify as happiness, Aristotle in Book 10 will argue that this is not the supreme happiness—it may fulfill our human nature, but not the divine aspect of who we are. Thus Aristotle recognizes various levels of the way we use the term happiness. On a conventional level, whatever makes me want nothing more out of life, whatever provides me with contentment or satisfaction, is what counts for me as happiness, even though it might not fulfill Aristotle’s criteria for the ultimate end of a human being. But genuine or authentic happiness is what fulfills my human and divine nature at its most complete; it is fully realized activity. Thus happiness is what perfects or rounds off the good life and cannot be improved by any addition. It is not counted as one among many goods, for it is the supreme, incommensurable good.7 The connotation of the term eudaimonia is thus that which everyone wants solely for its own sake. As the wise woman Diotoma suggests in Plato’s Symposium, “There is no need to ask further, “What is the point of wanting happiness [eudaimonia]? The answer you gave seems to be final [telos].”8 In our contemporary parlance, if a person says, “I’m in heaven!” or “This is Paradise!” we would not ask, “why do you want to be in heaven?” “Heaven” or “Paradise” represents that which we want or enjoy more than anything in the world. It is the goal of all desire and the most desirable state or activity. This is the connotation of eudaimonia—fully realized living.9 How then does pleasure relate to happiness? While most of us think of happiness as a subjective, pleasurable state, the Greeks generally drew a sharp [ 16 ]

ArIstotle distinction between happiness and pleasure. Happiness is an objective state comparable to health in the body. It is true that just as a healthy body feels good, it feels good to realize our full capabilities. Still, the actualization of our potential is an objective state, whether or not we are mindful of the good feeling. Eudaimonia is objective well-being; it is the flourishing of our potential. Just as a plant can flourish or thrive and do well, so a human being can be in a state of objective health. We can look at a person and say whether he or she is a genuinely thriving individual.

Aristotle’s Two Major Discussions We might then question what the role of pleasure in the good life is for such a sober philosopher as Aristotle. There are two major accounts of pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics, one in Book 7 and one in Book 10. Scholars have long puzzled over the existence of two separate accounts that overlap in themes. Is Aristotle intending a scientific account of pleasure? It would seem that he is not, because both accounts occur in the context of a book of ethics, not of psychology; there is no extended account of pleasure in his psychological treatise On the Soul (De Anima). The unique context of each discussion gives us a clue to its intended purpose. In Book 7 the discussion of pleasure arises in the context of a phenomenon known as incontinence or weakness of will. Why do we act against what we know we ought to do? It seems that it is desire and the pursuit of pleasure that causes us to act contrary to what we know is good. But if pleasure can lead us astray, must we conclude that pleasure is unqualifiedly bad, or are there some good pleasures? Can pleasure be a genuine good or even the highest good? The account in Book 7 attempts to determine whether pleasure deserves a place in the good life and thus might be thought of as a treatise on “Why Pleasure Is Not Necessarily Bad.”10 Book 10 discusses the highest good for a human being, eudaimonia. In this context, Aristotle is concerned with the relationship between pleasure and the highest good, happiness. What place does pleasure hold among the other activities of a good life? This treatise might be titled “Why Pleasure Is Good.” At the same time, we notice that Book 10 comes after the discussion in Book 9 of friendship, where the importance of pleasure in the good life has been affirmed. The discussion in 9.9, 1170a points out that virtuous friendship is [ 17 ]

ArIstotle pleasant and that life itself is pleasant and desirable for every living creature. This passage in Book 9 serves as a prelude to the discussion of the highest good in Book 10 and gives us an important key to the relationship of the highest good to pleasure. Thus each discussion arises within its own context and answers its own questions naturally.11 These appear to be two independent discussions that complement each another but show no awareness of one another. There are some overlapping points and some points of difference. Only Book 7 discusses arguments that all or some pleasures are bad in themselves, which makes sense in the context of the discussion of weakness of will. This book addresses itself specifically to the objections of those who think all pleasure is bad. Only Book 10 discusses the notion that pleasure is the supreme good. This makes sense in the context of the exploration of eudaimonia, the final good.12 It thus looks like Book 7 was an account originally incorporated in the Eudemian Ethics and that Book 10 is a later account.13 Let us begin with the account in Book 7. Aristotle is a down-to-earth thinker. He begins with what is commonly said by people, takes seriously all suggestions, and answers each objection.

Nicomachean Ethics Book 7: Is Pleasure Bad? Objections to the Notion That Pleasure Is Good (7.11) The first series of objections states that some people think that no pleasures are good, for good is not the same as pleasure. Others think that some pleasures are good, but most are bad. Still others think that even if every pleasure is a good, the best or highest good cannot be pleasure.14 Why do people think pleasure is not a good at all? Aristotle here sets forth and refutes Plato’s view of pleasure as a restoration to a natural state. The restoration or replenishing model is probably the standard model that had been accepted in Plato’s Academy; we find it articulated by Plato in the Republic, the Gorgias, and the Philebus. In this model, pleasure is the relieving of discomfort; it is thus necessarily tied to deficiency and lack and hence disturbance and pain. Accordingly, it is argued that every pleasure is a “perceived process of becoming toward a natural state” or is the fulfillment of something’s own nature. Pleasure would thus involve something coming to [ 18 ]

ArIstotle be better than it is: a thirsty body becomes satisfied; an ill body is restored to health. However, Aristotle thinks this view of pleasure does not make sense; he argues that the good lies in the end of satisfaction or health rather than in the process of restoration to this end. For example, when we build a house, the good is the full realization of the house. The process of building the house is not as complete a good or end as the house, which is the realization of the process. The goal must be a higher good; the end is higher than the means. Those like Plato who see pleasure as a process moving toward the achievement of an end fail to realize that they actually see the good in the end of health, not in the process of restoring health. From Aristotle’s perspective, the Platonic view of pleasure as a process fails on logical grounds. In contrast, for Aristotle himself, pleasure is an expression of health, fullness, and satiety rather than lack and deprivation. Aristotle’s major concern here is to replace the definition of the Platonic Academy—“a perceived restoration to a natural state”—with his new model, “unimpeded activity of the natural state.”15 For Aristotle, pleasure is not based on satisfaction of desire or removal of pain. Pleasure is much more intimately tied with the good; it is the full actualization or expression of our healthy nature.16

Not All Pleasures Are Good (7.12) These are all arguments that pleasure is not good at all. We can see how they respond to the discussion of weakness of will in Book 7, with its focus on the goal of moderation and the problem of pleasure overwhelming our ability to think and achieve the highest good. Aristotle then takes up objections to construing pleasure as in some sense a good. The first is that while it is not the case that pleasure is not good at all, not all pleasures are in fact good. One reason is that there are shameful and harmful pleasures; in fact, some pleasures actually make us ill. It is thus clear that not all pleasures are good; Aristotle as biologist conceives of the good of an organism as its health. The second objection argues that pleasure is not the highest good because it is not an end, but a process of coming to be, as we saw earlier. Addressing these objections one by one, Aristotle argues that they do not show that pleasure is not a good or even that it is not the highest good. [ 19 ]

ArIstotle Concerning the first objection, regarding the pleasures that seem to be bad, he argues that even some of these are not bad without qualification and might even be good for a particular person. Cough medicine is good for a person who is sick, but can be harmful for someone who is taking it for the wrong reasons. It is true that the process of restoring one’s health is not as complete as the goal of a restored state. Nevertheless, it may be choiceworthy for a person at a particular time—like cough medicine for the patient or an opioid to give relief to the suffering. Aristotle thus suggests that a painful remedy for sickness only appears to be a pleasure; it is good and pleasant only for those who are in the less than ideal condition of being ill. He has thus made a key distinction between subjective and objective dimensions of pleasure. Something can be pleasant to someone while not being a genuine pleasure.17 If someone takes pleasure in an activity that is unhealthy or morally corrupt, we do not deny that they experience the activity as pleasant. But pleasure is a normative concept. We do not say that what is pleasant to the ill person is genuine pleasure; genuine human pleasure is what is pleasant to the healthy example of the species. 18 Thus we are not forced to say that the “pleasure” taken by someone who enjoys hurting people can be called true pleasure for a human being. Pleasure per se is not bad, even if some of us take pleasure in activities that are harmful.

The Status of Restorative Pleasures What then is the status of pleasures that restore us to our natural state? Aristotle argues that restorative pleasures are only incidentally pleasant. They are not pleasant in themselves—they are not the genuine pleasures that good persons in their ideal healthy condition would choose.19 J. C. B. Gosling offers a vivid example. If we were to ask what the pleasures of a dog are, we would say running in the sun, retrieving sticks, being petted. Someone might object: but dogs when sick also like to sleep all day, to restore their condition of health. That is true, but when we look for the pleasure of each natural species, we look to the ideal condition of that species, a dog in its healthy, natural state. Just so, when we want to think about what is pleasant for a human being we look to the good person, one who has been habituated from an early age to enjoy healthy pleasures, and we look to that person when in a healthy condition.20 If someone has [ 20 ]

ArIstotle been raised under great pain and deprivation, he or she might look for reprieve to gang life or to spending days in a drugged condition; a person suffering from an illness or depression might want to lie in bed all day. But looking at such a person would not help us understand the highest human pleasure any more than it would help us understand the highest human good. 21 Furthermore, Aristotle seeks to give a universal account of pleasure, one that would hold for all pleasures. What things are genuinely pleasant for a healthy human being? What do all pleasures have in common that makes them count as pleasures? Thus he argues that since there are pleasures that do not involve pain or appetite, the essential nature of pleasure cannot be restoration, because some pleasures do not depend upon a prior lack or deficit. The paradigmatic example he gives is the pleasure of contemplation; it is not because our nature is lacking in something that we enjoy the activity of study.22 However, Aristotle never wants to deny the commonsense opinion. We thus need an alternative account to make sense of the pleasure of eating and drinking; it is not simply the restoration of our natural state. Aristotle’s response to this is ingenious; he defines pleasure as energeia (activity, activation, or actualization). This enables him to account for pleasure in a consistent way, across all the pleasures. Even when we are experiencing a deficiency of hunger or thirst, the pleasure we take comes from the part of our body that remains intact and healthy, not the part that is experiencing a deficit. Pleasure is in the activity, not in the restoration.23 How does this make sense of the pleasure of eating and drinking? It seems that we enjoy food more when we are hungry and drink when we are thirsty; nothing quite hits the spot as a cool drink on a hot day. Aristotle responds that the part of the body that feels the deficiency or discomfort of thirst is not the part that takes pleasure; relief from discomfort is what Plato would call a mixed pleasure, a pleasure predicated on pain. Aristotle argues, in contrast, that the part of us that is healthy and feeling fine can enjoy the pleasure of the drink. Our healthy constitution enjoys the exercise of the natural capacity to take in nutrition; the pleasure taken in restoration is the pleasure of the satisfaction of our natural appetites. Appetite is a healthy function of the human being; the exercise of this healthy function through eating is a pleasure.24 [ 21 ]

ArIstotle

Pleasure and the Process of Coming to Be and Change (Genesis and Kinēsis) Thus he has refuted the argument that pleasure is a restoration to its natural state. Next he addresses the argument that pleasure cannot be the good, since it is a process of coming to be, and the process of coming to be cannot be as good as the result. It is true that he sees goods as ends. However, he argues that pleasures are not processes of coming to be, nor do they all involve comings to be; rather, they are activities, which are their own ends. Pleasures exist when we are exercising our capacities, and pleasure is a sign that we are expressing ourselves most fully, realizing our potential as living beings. There is no further end to taking pleasure, just as there is no further end to such activities as seeing or contemplating. What does he mean when he says that pleasures are activities and an end? This assertion is related to Aristotle’s technical distinction between process (kinēsis) and activity (energeia), alluded to here but expressed more fully in other passages.25 A kinēsis is a process or change understood as having an end distinct from itself. In any one moment a kinēsis is incomplete; it is moving somewhere. If we are building a house, we cannot say in any one moment that we have fully built the house. It is a means to an end that exists in the future, outside itself and not yet fully realized.26 Processes are an example of such movements toward an external end. An activity, in contrast, has its end within itself. When we are singing, our singing is complete in the moment. Even if we are only singing part of the aria, each moment of the singing is complete and whole within itself. When we are seeing, the seeing is complete in the moment; even if we have not seen the entire Parthenon, the seeing is a complete realization that needs no other moment to complete the sight of what we have seen. That is the nature of pleasure; it is not going anywhere. Pleasures are activities, and thus they hold their end within themselves. Pleasure doesn’t come to be through our processes, for example of restoring our body. Pleasure exists when we are in activity and when we are exercising our faculties and capacities. Every moment of pleasure is a complete realization. When we are enjoying something, we do not want to rush to complete it, nor do we need to wait until it is over to begin enjoying it.27 We appreciate and savor each moment of the pleasure. David Roochnik gives the example [ 22 ]

ArIstotle of a massage; the experience takes us out of time.28 We don’t want it to be over so that we can “complete it”: we enjoy every moment. Compare the tourist who wants to “do the museum,” as if it were a process to complete, to the genuine lover of art who savors the viewing of each painting. Pleasure is a signal that we are on the right track, that we are engaged in activity worthwhile in itself. If we ignore this signal, we fail to fulfill a part of our telos. To fulfill our aesthetic or sensory nature—as well as our intellectual and moral nature—is part of our genuine human end. Thus Aristotle subsumes even sensory pleasure under the category of activations of our faculties for engaging with the world.29 Pleasure is unhindered, healthy functioning.30 It might sound odd to us to define pleasure as unimpeded activity. However, upon reflection, we can see that this is no more odd than to define happiness as activity in accordance with excellence. In both cases, Aristotle defines in an objective fashion concepts that we, in modern parlance, are accustomed to define subjectively. We can perhaps best understand this with the help of a useful distinction offered by G. E. L. Owen. Accounting for the difference between the account of pleasure in Book 7 and that in Book 10, Owen argues that in Book 7 Aristotle is speaking about the activity that gives one pleasure, as when we say that listening to music or gardening or being with friends are pleasures; he thus defines pleasure as an unimpeded activity itself, as in the phrase “music is my pleasure.” In Book 10, by contrast, Aristotle is accounting for the experience or mental state of enjoying the activity. We might say that listening to music brings me pleasure. He thus defines pleasure as what makes for the completion or perfection of the activity, and this is presumably the enjoyment we take in the pursuit.31 Book 7 focuses on what is enjoyed—music, gardening, or being with friends—while Book 10 focuses on what it is to enjoy these pleasures.32

Pleasure as the Chief Good (7.13) Plato’s conception of pleasure was based on bodily pleasures, which always involve depletion and restoration.33 In contrast, Aristotle wants to include pleasure as a genuine feature of the good life, a pure good not qualified by lack. Thus in 7.13 he makes an argument that puts him close to hedonists such as Epicurus and Eudoxus, who see pleasure as not only a genuine good but as the highest good.34 [ 23 ]

ArIstotle In 7.12 he has argued that some think no pleasure is a good, because the good and pleasure are not the same thing. Thus, to be pleasant is not in itself to be completely good, because something can be pleasant and yet harmful to one—for example, heroin or cocaine. However, even if certain pleasures are bad, there is no reason why some pleasure or other should not be the highest good.35 Therefore the highest good could be pleasure not as pleasure per se but as the pleasure of a particular kind of engaged living, the pleasure of excellent activity. In 7.13, then, Aristotle suggests that the highest good may be a kind of pleasure.36 He bases this argument upon his characterization of good as the actualization of excellence. Each state or capacity of a human being has certain activities it is meant to fulfill. The acorn has its telos of becoming an oak tree; a dog enjoys exercising its capacities of running, playing, and engaging all its faculties. In Book 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle offers his wellknown definition of happiness as activity of the soul expressing complete virtue or excellence.37 In Book 7 he echoes this definition, telling us that happiness is the unimpeded activity of all states—in other words, of all capacities for excellence or some one of them.38 Happiness thus lies in the expression or actualization of our potential; when we are fully expressing all we can be, we are most fulfilled. Thus Aristotle’s definition of pleasure in Book 7 is quite similar to his definition of happiness in Book 1 as the complete expression of activity, unhindered by any deficit. Moreover, he has left open the possibility that the highest good might be some kind of pleasure.39 Given that pleasure is a genuine good and the happy life contains all genuine goods, pleasure must be a feature of the good or happy life. It thus makes sense to weave pleasure into our conception of happiness, for happiness is understood to be complete or perfect.”40 In Book 1 Aristotle included a technical definition of what it is to be complete; an end is complete if things are done for the sake of it, while it is not done for the sake of anything else. Here in Book 7, however, he seems to be using complete to mean inclusive or comprehensive. If happiness is complete, it cannot lack any good and thus must include pleasure.41 Aristotle’s argument that pleasure is unimpeded activity also makes sense of his surprising assertion in Metaphysics 12.7 that the activity of God, the Unmoved Mover, is pleasure (hedone he energaeia toutou). Since the Unmoved Mover’s activity is unhindered by any impediments, and unimpeded activity is a pleasure, God’s activity of [ 24 ]

ArIstotle thinking is a pleasure; indeed, God’s activity is the most perfect and continuous of all pleasures.42

All Pursue One Pleasure: The Pleasure of God Aristotle even suggests that this divine pleasure might be what all living beings are unconsciously pursuing. Like the hedonists Eudoxus and Epicurus, Aristotle suggests that the fact that all sentient beings, both humans and animals, pursue pleasure is evidence that pleasure is in some sense the highest good. Aristotle thinks as a biologist: what creatures aim at is their good, that which ensures their survival.43 At the same time, each being has its own good and hence its own form of pleasure; while they all pursue pleasure, they do not pursue precisely the same form of pleasure. But then he adds a caveat: perhaps they do in fact pursue the same pleasure, rather than the one they think they pursue, since everything by nature has something divine in it.44 One interpretation of this passage is that all are unconsciously pursuing the ultimate pleasure, which is the unimpeded activity of contemplation, the activity of the Unmoved Mover. This is similar to Aristotle’s argument that all living beings love life, activity, and perception; it simply feels good to be aware, awake, and alive. Moreover, it is not simply the capacities for perception and thought but their active exercise that most fully constitutes living, and their active exercise is signaled or capped by pleasure. We see here Aristotle’s natural teleology, his sensibility as a biologist. If all beings in nature desire pleasure, pleasure must have a function to ensure the species’ good.45 There is an urge in every creature to realize its natural purpose. He thus suggests that this desire is a divine urge in each being for its good, that which will further its life. There is a universal desire for good, even though each species seeks its own unique good.As Sarah Broadie suggests, this universal good may be the sheer pleasure of being alive, as Aristotle suggests in 9.9, or the urge for approximation to the divine, as he suggests in On the Soul (De Anima). In De Anima 2.4 Aristotle writes that plants and nonrational animals participate in the divine through biological continuation of their types. Thus even the desire for reproduction is a desire to imitate the divine, to perpetuate the beautiful, divine order of eternal species.46 God always enjoys the highest pleasure: the continuous activity of thinking, which is eudaimonia. We, however, also have a bodily nature, which seeks [ 25 ]

ArIstotle to exercise other faculties and enjoy other pleasures. Aristotle seems to suggest that this desire for variety is a defect, rather than a virtue, for God enjoys a single, simple pleasure continually; it is a pleasure of rest rather than of motion.47 Nevertheless it is a pleasure of activity (energeia), not simply of static being. While actualization is not movement, it is the activation of potential; this actualization may be regarded as “rest” in the sense of being continuous, ongoing, and in that sense unchanging. Aristotle’s pleasure in rest has a vector, a teleological drive for the activation of excellence.48

Summary: Pleasure in Book 7 Aristotle’s accounts of pleasure, happiness, and the good are not as far apart, then, as they might seem at face value. The good is that to which all things aim. Things aim toward realization of their telos; every being has an innate drive toward realization of its nature.49 All biological beings at the most fundamental level desire living and find living pleasant and good in itself. The pleasant thus seems to be a biological signal toward what is good; living beings are biologically designed to take pleasure in the realization of our nature and the perfection of our faculties.50 Life is good and something to be enjoyed. When we are actualizing our capacities, we are engaged in pleasurable activity.

Pleasure as Completion and Perfection (Nicomachean Ethics 10.4–5) We find the heart of Aristotle’s own account of the place of pleasure in the good life in 10.4–5. Since I have briefly introduced the themes of this positive account of pleasure already, here I will focus specifically on the sense in which pleasure completes activity. Scholars have noted what seems to be a contradiction or discrepancy between Aristotle’s account of pleasure in Book 7 and his account in Book 10. While Book 7 defines pleasure as unimpeded activity of a natural state, Book 10 argues that pleasure completes or perfects activity. The discussion is complicated by the fact that the Greek term teleion can mean either complete or perfect. In each passage, we will need to ask what he means by the notion of teleiosis—completion or perfection? [ 26 ]

ArIstotle I will be introducing some technical philosophical vocabulary here and offering a detailed textual analysis, but I will do my best to bring the general reader along. If the general reader reads slowly and attentively, I believe he or she will find in the technical discussion of Aristotle surprising affirmation of the value of pleasure in our lives, which begins with the attentive awareness of our own perceptions and thoughts.

Three Kinds of Completion or Perfection (Teleiosis) Aristotle begins 10.4 by stating that what (ti) pleasure is, or what sort of thing (poion ti) it is, will become clearer if we start at the beginning (1174a 13–14). Scholars have pointed out that Aristotle does not precisely define what pleasure is; 10.4–5 aims at clarifying what sort of thing it is, sometimes moving from strict philosophical analysis to poetic metaphor. He begins by analyzing the phenomenon of seeing. Seeing seems to be complete at any moment; it does not lack anything that will come along later to complete its form. Pleasure seems to be like that as well; pleasure is a whole, complete in every moment. There is no pleasure whose form will become more complete if it takes a longer time to come to be (1174a 14–20). Aristotle is drawing here upon the distinction between a process (kinēsis) and an activity or activation (energeia), which he developed in the Metaphysics, the Physics, and briefly in Nicomachean Ethics, Chapter 7. Kinēsis, or process, occurs as the movement through a series of successive stages or parts, with any given part remaining incomplete (ateles) on its own (1174a 27). At any moment prior to the last—and sometimes even then—only a part of the entire process has been achieved; kinēsis requires the passage of time to attain full completion. Building a house is an example of a kinēsis. When we are laying the foundation, the rest of the structure is incomplete; we have not built the house when we just have the cornerstone in an otherwise empty lot. Anything that is in ongoing motion or process is not complete in form (teleian to eide) except—if at all—in the duration taken as a whole (1174a 29). The movement or process needs a certain amount of duration to be quantitatively whole, completed, finished.51 Pleasure, in contrast, is always complete in form in the sense that it is a complete whole in every moment; it is thus not a process (kinēsis) or coming to be (genesis).52 Like an activity (energeia) such as seeing, or a point or a [ 27 ]

ArIstotle unit, it has no parts; it cannot be quantitatively divided. Since pleasure admits of no division, it does not come to be in partial, successive stages and does not require the passage of time to attain completion. When we are taking pleasure, the experience is just right in itself; it needs nothing further to complete or perfect it. As we have noted, David Roochnik gives the example of a massage—delightful, relaxing, invigorating in every moment, so that it takes us out of time.53 Pleasure is complete in itself; it does not need any other element or more time to make it more perfect.54 Aristotle goes on to introduce another sense of completion or perfection at 1174b 14. He tells us that “every sense faculty engages in activity in relation to its object, and it acts perfectly (teleios) when it is in good condition and acting in relation to the noblest or finest (kalliston) of objects. . . . And this activity will be most complete (teleiotate) and most pleasant (hediste).” When Aristotle says here that this activity is most complete and most perfect, he seems to be noting a dimension of value.55 Thus, here at 1174b 14–1174b 21, he uses qualitative terms such as good, best, noblest, finest, most excellent, most perfect, and most pleasant. It is not just that pleasure doesn’t lack any parts and doesn’t need more time for its completion, but that it is the most perfect of its kind.56 Thus what is involved here is not the question of being partial or incomplete in contrast to being whole or complete, but a question of gradations of excellence in perception—for example, in how well we hear or see. When a well-trained, perceptive ear hears transcendent music, the finest activity of music appreciation takes place. Activity can be complete or perfect to some extent, but it is most complete or perfect when a well-honed sense faculty meets in a perfect fit with the finest object of perception.57 Finally, Aristotle talks about completion or perfection in a third way, which adds to the dimension of value we have just seen. When the formal conditions of pleasure are present—well-honed faculties, beautiful objects to perceive—we find pleasure, and when pleasure arises our pleasure itself further perfects the activity. However, he notes that “pleasure completes the activity, not in the same way as the object of the sense faculty and the sense faculty complete it when they are both good, just as health and the doctor are not responsible in the same way for one’s being healthy. . . . Pleasure perfects the activity, not as the inherent disposition does, but as an added end/perfection (epigenomenon ti telos) like the bloom of well being that comes on those in their prime” (1174b 21–1175b 3). [ 28 ]

ArIstotle We will analyze the rich and suggestive metaphors of health and the bloom of well-being in a moment. Let us first review the three kinds of completion or perfection we have seen: 1. Temporal or quantitative: pleasure is complete in the sense of being whole and not lacking any part at any moment in time. 2. Qualitative1: activities are complete or perfect when our sense faculties and objects of perception are of high quality.58 3. Qualitative2: pleasure gives our activities an additional perfection, one of value.59

What is the perfection that pleasure adds to our activities? Here it may be useful to turn to the way contemporary philosophers of mind describe pleasure.60 One notion is that pleasure is a distinctive feeling, analogous to the sensations of hot and cold. According to this interpretation, every pleasurable activity would have a distinct “pleasure sensation” to it—whether we are engaged in playing the piano, listening to our favorite jazz music, drinking a cool drink on a hot day, or laughing with our favorite companions.61 However, this seems to be precisely the kind of view Aristotle wants to refute. He insists in Book 10 that the pleasure of one activity is quite different from that of another; the pleasure must be judged in accordance with the value of the activity. A second view is that pleasure is a “hedonic tone,” a pleasant quality of experience that all instances of fine perception share, like a quality such as intensity, which can be a feature of a wide variety of experiences across perceptual faculties.62 Perhaps savoring a cool drink, inhaling the rich scent of sandalwood, or even savoring an elevating insight share a pleasant texture of experience. This view, too, seems to contrast with Aristotle’s emphasis on the difference between differing pleasures: only the just person finds pleasure in justice, while the musician enjoys playing fine melodies. The theory that seems to fit best with Aristotle’s description of cognitive pleasures is what has been termed by philosophers the pro-attitudinal view of pleasure.63 It seems that what Aristotle has in mind is an attitude of liking or enjoyment; liking, enjoying, or valuing our perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and virtuous activities adds richness to our experience. We can see this idea suggested in a fascinating passage from Aristotle’s treatise On the Soul (De Anima): “Sense-perceiving then is like bare asserting (phanai) or thinking (noein); but when the object is pleasant or painful, the soul [ 29 ]

ArIstotle does something like (hoion) affirm (kataphasa) or negate (apophasa) the object, and then it pursues or avoids it.”64 Pleasure thus seems to be something like a positive evaluation of experience. We take a walk on a beautiful day and fully enjoy our limbs touching the ground, the scent of the spring air, the radiant glow of the morning sun. We meet an old friend and relish laughing about endearing times we have spent together. While Aristotle does not fully spell out a theory of conscious pleasure, in light of this suggestive passage we might say that for Aristotle pleasure seems to be the appreciation of the quality or goodness of our own sentient activities. Pleasure is a visceral appreciation of the value of our present engagement, the ability to love and value each moment we experience.

Pleasure as Appreciation of Value: Nicomachean Ethics 9.9 Let us see how a key passage in Nicomachean Ethics 9.9 supports this hypothesis. For Aristotle, life is a form of activity (energeia). He also argues that living is pleasant in itself, since it is a good thing, and that it may seem that all desire pleasure because all have an urge for life. It thus seems that Aristotle conceives of all the activities in which we engage as variations on the fundamental activity of living.65 Living is a form of actualization or activation of potential, and the variations on this are activating our various faculties toward their objects. Musicians exercise their hearing faculties on melodies, students exercise their intellects on philosophical problems. Since living is good in itself, when we activate our expressions of living we bring this goodness into realization. In Nicomachean Ethics 9.9 Aristotle identifies sense perception and thought as the chief or most fundamental expressions of living: “Living is defined in the case of animals as the capacity for sensation (aisthēsis); in the case of human beings, as the capacity for sensation and thinking. But a capacity refers to its activity, and the chief thing lies in the activity. It appears then that living lies chiefly in perceiving or thinking.” Pleasure stems from our recognition of the good activities of perceiving and thinking present within ourselves, which we derive from self-awareness: “Someone who sees is aware that he sees, and one who hears [is aware] that he hears, . . . To be aware that we perceive or think is the same as to be aware that we are [alive] . . . to be aware that we are alive is pleasant in itself (since [ 30 ]

ArIstotle life is by nature a good), and to be aware of some good thing as present (huparchon) in us is pleasant.” As all of our perceptual and cognitive activities are reflexive—that is, we not only perceive or think, we are at the same time aware that we are perceiving or thinking—we can always appreciate the goodness of the activities in which we are engaged. In other words, pleasure is what philosophers of mind call an attitude—a psychological stance or orientation—toward an object; it is an attitude of appreciation or taking pleasure in our activities of living.66 Thus pleasure is not something we can pursue in the abstract. It is only by whole-hearted participation in activity that we experience pleasure; pleasure is the by-product of an engaged life. The prime example of this is the activity of the Unmoved Mover. We have seen that in 7.13 Aristotle suggested that perhaps all beings unconsciously seek to imitate one activity—that of God, whose pleasure is perfect because the Unmoved Mover is always engaged in the most valuable cognitive activity. In Metaphysics 12.7 Aristotle writes that while we can enjoy the best kind of life for only a short time, “[the Unmoved Mover] is always in that state, because its activity is also pleasure. And for this reason waking, perception, and thinking are most pleasant, and hopes and memories are so on account of these.” Pleasure thus lies in conscious, self-reflective activity, even the pure activity of being awake and alive. Indeed, Aristotle begins the Metaphysics with the assertion that all human beings by nature desire to know, and emphasizes our affection for the senses, especially the sense of sight. We resist going to sleep or breathing our last breath because we take joy in our awareness and perception of the world. Aristotle’s notion that pleasure begins with the joy of basic awareness and perception thus has interesting resonance with what other traditions call the pleasure of attentive or mindful awareness. When we perceive without pleasure, our perception is incomplete, imperfect. Complete perception takes in not only the “fact” of an activity but its value as well. This explains why pleasure is an additional telos or perfection. The perception of something as good adds goodness or value to an activity. When we appreciate an activity’s value, we give the activity our all; we are fully engaged in the experience, whether that of seeing, active listening, learning, or ethical action. Pleasure is thus not just a psychological attitude, but a mode of engagement in activity, a mode of enjoyment.67 [ 31 ]

ArIstotle

Virtuous Activity, the Goodness of Life, and Friendship (9.9) Thus far we have sketched Aristotle’s theory of pleasure as enjoyment of cognitive and perceptual activities. However, Aristotle’s theory of happiness is most often associated with expression of virtuous activity; how then does our analysis of pleasure and enjoyment in Aristotle’s thought relate to moral virtue? Aristotle asserts that we cannot be called virtuous unless we take pleasure in virtuous activity. This is akin to an aesthetic pleasure, like the pleasure in music: “the excellent person takes pleasure in actions expressing virtue and objects to vice, just as a musician enjoys fine melodies and is pained by bad ones.”68 We can thus extend the view of pleasure as perception of value to ethical virtue; we appreciate the value and goodness of the ethical activity of ourselves and others.69 In Nicomachean Ethics 1.10 and 9.4 Aristotle points out the difference between the virtuous and the vicious. The virtuous will always be happy; their well-being arises precisely from the activities they appreciate and in which they take pride. When we engage in actions in accordance with our values, we can never be miserable: “The good person is at one with himself, and desires the same things in his soul considered as a whole. He wishes for himself what is good and does it, since it is characteristic of a good person to strive for what is good, and he does it for his own sake, since he does it for the intellectual element, which is what each person seems to be.”70 The person we call an egoist is one who feeds the lower part of him or herself. The genuine self-lover is one who does the most for the best parts of him or herself, choosing to live with kindness and empathy. Such people are not conflicted; they want to live and be preserved and do so especially for the element with which they think. Such people wish to spend time with themselves, since they find it pleasant to do so. Their memories of past actions delight them and hopes for the future are good, and so both are pleasant. And their minds have a wealth of things to think about.71 Aristotle thus asserts that while living is good and pleasant in itself, those who feel good about their activities are most in a position to appreciate the fundamental goodness of life. Just as we take appreciation in a beautiful life well lived—that of a Rosa Parks who stands up for justice, a Mother Theresa who cares for the sick and unfortunate, immigrant parents who make sacrifices for their children—we can also appreciate the very gift of life, of perceiving and thinking, that we enjoy within ourselves. We can [ 32 ]

ArIstotle appreciate this through self-reflective awareness.72 Aristotle can thus ask whether the fundamental object of our desire is pleasure or simply living itself: do we desire life for the sake of pleasure or pleasure for the sake of life? They appear inseparably united; there is no pleasure without the activities of living, and pleasure completes every activity. We began this section by observing that we most associate Aristotle’s theory of happiness with exercise of excellent activity; it thus might seem odd for Aristotle to take up the hedonist suggestion that the purpose of life is pleasure. However, our analysis of Aristotle’s theory of pleasure and happiness shows that this is not out of keeping with his thought. For Aristotle, the telos of our lives is to fully activate our capacities. Since the exercise of our faculties culminates in pleasure, when we realize our purpose as human beings we will experience the greatest degree of pleasure as well. We have noted that in the Politics Aristotle affirms that “life contains some measure of well-being and of sweetness in its essential nature.”73 We all desire pleasure because pleasure gives us a taste of life, and everything desires to be alive.74 To taste pleasure is to taste life, which is the fundamental source of goodness. When we have cultivated appreciation of the gift of life within ourselves, we also have a fundamental desire to share our appreciation of life with others. We stand in relationship to others as we do to ourselves; genuine friendship extends from the positive relationship we have cultivated with ourselves.75 A friend is “another oneself,” someone with whom we can grow in virtue. Since we can see others more clearly than ourselves, we can learn from their actions and take pleasure in their virtue.76 Friendship is a kind of shared awareness in which our own pleasurable appreciation of life is mirrored and intensified by cultivating it with others.77 We need others to genuinely take pleasure in life; it is difficult to actualize our ethical character all by ourselves. We need community to become fully human.78 In the Eudemian Ethics Aristotle goes so far as to value the pleasures of ordinary life, so important is the worth of sharing activities and perceptions with others: But still nonetheless a friend really means, as it were, a separate self. To perceive and to know a friend, therefore, is necessarily in a manner to perceive and in a manner to know oneself. Consequently to share even vulgar pleasures and ordinary life with a friend is naturally pleasant (for it always involves our simultaneously perceiving the friend), but more so to share the more divine pleasures; the [ 33 ]

ArIstotle reason of which is that it is always more pleasant to behold oneself enjoying the superior good.79

The basis of friendship is sharing all the activities of life—from doing the laundry and washing dishes, to volunteering at a soup kitchen, taking a Big Brother or Sister to the theater, or introducing community college students to the wonder of philosophical discovery. We enjoy sharing our perceptions with others. The mirroring and intensification of awareness we develop in genuine friendship is an essential feature of the flourishing life.

Pleasure and Fit: The Bloom of Maturity We have seen that for Aristotle pleasure indicates a fit between subject and object of perception. It is an experience of rightness or appropriateness, like the comfort of an old shoe or an old friend.80 Is pleasure the activity itself, or something additional?81Aristotle seems to be describing the character of an activity that allows us to experience it as pleasant, rather than some abstract quality of “pleasure” separate from the activity itself.82 In our analysis this special character is that we are engaged in the activity with an appreciation of its value. Perhaps we can shed light on this if we examine the metaphor of the flourishing of those in their prime. Recall the passage: “Pleasure perfects the activity, not as the inherent disposition does, but as an added end/perfection (epigenomenon ti telos) like the bloom of well-being that comes on those in their prime.” Aristotle has given a clue to this metaphor earlier in the passage with an additional metaphor: “The way in which pleasure perfects the activity is not the way in which the perceptible object and faculty perfect it when they are both excellent, just as health and the doctor are not the cause of being healthy in the same way.”83 The doctor and the particular medical treatment he or she prescribes can bring about the realization of health. However, in a deeper formal sense, it is health—the healthy condition of the body itself—that makes us healthy. Likewise, a perceptive musical ear and transcendent music can bring pleasure into realization, but it is pleasure itself that crowns the activity and makes it perfect. The bloom of pleasure arises with the elegant fit between subject and object; it is the whole that results from the rightness of this relationship. We take in a sweeping vista; [ 34 ]

ArIstotle the light hits the landscape in a certain way. The perfection of the moment is a gestalt awareness; pleasure in this view is like a whole that cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts, just as the bloom of healthy flourishing cannot be reduced to any one feature of the body. Nevertheless, the bloom is in some sense an added end or perfection, in that while age may bring maturity and refinement, not all those in the prime of life are so graced.84 Note the key term epigenonemon (added on): “Pleasure perfects the activity, not as the inherent disposition does, but as an added end/perfection (epigenomenon ti telos) like the bloom of well-being that comes on those in their prime.” A key to this passage may be found in the way the term epigenomenon is used in Nicomachean Ethics 2.3. Aristotle suggests there that the sign of someone’s virtue is the pleasure that is added (epigenomene) to the virtuous activity.85 No one is called virtuous who does not take pleasure in ethical action; the pleasure taken in ethical activity shows one’s full maturing as an ethical agent.86 Hence Aristotle emphasizes we must be raised from childhood to find enjoyment or pain in the right things.87 Taking pleasure in that which is good is a sign of the maturity and flowering of our character. Likewise, in 10.5, the additional perfection of pleasure is like a mature beauty that is added to an activity when full engagement and attentive awareness are present. Thus, at 1175a 31 and 34, Aristotle may be telling us that once pleasure comes on the scene, the additional perfection of pleasure brings about the full maturing or flourishing of the activity in which we are engaged.88 This pleasure is the crowning perfection of all our activities, which, taken together, perfect living.89 Christopher Shields suggests the analogy of overtones in music. A Bach cantata played in an acoustically fine hall creates overtones that add to the overall beauty and perfection of the work. The overtones are part of the formal perfection of the piece, but they can also be seen as an added bonus, the culmination and fruition of the beautiful fit between the singers, the hall, and the listeners.90 Pleasure is a genuine added value that enhances activity, the icing on top of the cake. Aristotle therefore suggests that we have good reason to pursue pleasure, since it is what allows life to flourish.

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Pleasure Enhances Activity At 10.5, 1185a 31, Aristotle further explicates the perfection of value. He does not describe this in the explicit language of perfection (teleiosis), but as a qualitative improvement or enhancement.91 Aristotle tells us that activities are made more rigorous, longer lasting, and better by pleasures related to them (1175b 15). Pleasure related to an activity improves it, because those who engage in activity with pleasure show better and more accurate judgment (1175a 31). Thus it may be that for Aristotle actualization is not a binary matter of imperfect or perfect. Aristotle does not say here that pleasure enhances perfect activity; there are gradations of actualization and of pleasure. Pleasure may be an added good or perfection when any suitable faculty and object meet and not only the most excellent ones. If the activity is not formally perfect—that is, if the subject and object of perception are not at their finest—then the further engagement that pleasure brings will in turn improve the activity. A child struggling with geometry is not a perfect mathematician, but her pleasure in mathematics certainly improves the activity of mathematical discovery; she will be able to study longer, with more accuracy and engagement.92 Pleasure may therefore motivate us to further pursue an otherwise incomplete activity. Pleasure also enhances engagement at the moment of activity, improving the attention and intentionality we bring to our pursuits. A listener with an attuned listening ear will take pleasure in the cellist’s beautiful Bach suite. As she takes pleasure, her listening will be enhanced; she will notice with greater discernment and clarity intricacies in the music’s texture. Where do we see the importance of full attention and engagement? We find this at 1175a 8–11: “For at first our thought is stimulated and engages vigorously in relation to them, as happens with people’s sense of sight when they are looking at something; but afterward our activity is not like this and we lose interest, and for this reason the pleasure is dimmed as well.” This last citation shows us from whence contemporary philosopher Gilbert Ryle derives the notion that for Aristotle pleasure is a mode of engagement in activity. What is required is not just a perfect sense faculty and sense object; these create formal perfection alone. Pleasure also requires the attention and engagement of the human subject. This helps explain why, unlike the Unmoved Mover, human beings cannot be in a state of pleasure all the time: [ 36 ]

ArIstotle Nothing human is capable of continuous activity and so no continuous pleasure comes about, since pleasure follows upon the activity. And some things delight us when they are new, but less later, for the same reason. For at first our thought is stimulated and engages vigorously in activity in relation to them, as happens with people’s sense of sight when they are looking closely at something; but afterwards our activity is not like this and we lose interest, and for this reason the pleasure is dimmed as well. (10.5 1175a 5–10)

While pleasure increases our participation in the moment, human beings at some point lose focus and attention. Pleasure follows upon activity and is connected to engagement and stimulation; pleasure is not the activity itself (as it was said to be in Book 7), but an appreciation of value that accompanies activity. Thus pleasure for Aristotle is an attentive, affective awareness or mode of participating in the activities of our lives; the passage in 9.9 suggests that this quality is the meta-awareness of a good fit. Further, there seems to be some quality of attention required, since Aristotle acknowledges that attention wanes when we get tired; thus pleasure fades as well. He also recognizes that different people have the capacity for differing pleasures depending on their preferences and quality of attention.

Pleasures Differ in Kind (10.5) Aristotle insists, in 10.5, that pleasures vary in kind. Activity is augmented or enhanced by pleasure, and that which augments a thing must be akin (oikeian) to it. Thus the pleasure related to one kind of activity is different from the pleasure that perfects a different activity. There is an affinity (sunokeosthai) between a pleasure and its associated activity; David Wolfsdorf speaks of a psychic depth and “organic intimacy” between a pleasure and the activity that gives rise to it.”93 In contrast, pleasures not directly related to an activity disrupt that activity.94 For example, while the pleasure of study can enhance study, the pleasurable sound of beautiful music can distract us from concentrating on those studies. Our evaluation of pleasure varies as well, depending on the nature of its associated activity. The pleasure of a good activity is good, that of a bad one [ 37 ]

ArIstotle bad. Aristotle notes that desire for an action is praised or blamed, even though desire is separate in time and distinct from activity. All the more, then, does the character of an activity determine the value of pleasure, which is so inseparable from activity that there is a question whether activity is the same thing as the pleasure. How can we separate the enjoyment of a walk from the walk itself?95 Pleasure is not simply a neutral “feeling” detachable from the specific activity in which it arises; one cannot simply detach the pleasure of piano playing and attach it to dancing. There is not a neutral feeling of pleasure—a “hedon” that can be quantified and achieved in a variety of ways—three hedons from Mozart, seven from Bach.96 And yet, Aristotle adds, pleasure does not seem to be identical with the activity of thinking or perceiving; it would indeed be odd to say that pleasure in thinking or seeing is the same as thinking or seeing itself. However, since pleasure is so intimately related to these cognitive activities—and the two do not appear separately—they seem to some people to be the same.97 In Book 7 Aristotle does identify pleasure and fully perfected activity, activity that is freely engaged in and unhindered. In Book 10 pleasure is not identical to but closely affiliated with activity, as the engagement that gives the activity full value.98 Pleasures thus correspond in value to what Aristotle terms the purity of the activity. Sight, hearing, and smell are purer than touch and taste, since they are further removed from their object. Contemplation is for Aristotle the purest and most pleasurable—presumably, since it is completely removed from the physical and allows for the union with the most abstract and formal entities, including God.99 Theoretical contemplation thus contains the greatest pleasure, as Aristotle notes in a fragment from an early popular work, the Protrepticus: “Complete and unimpeded activation [energeia] contains within itself delight, so that the activation of the theoretical intellect must be most pleasant of all.”100 While animals seem to have pleasures corresponding with their specific function, there is a great diversity of pleasure within the human species according to each person’s condition. Someone in a defective condition will find a fit with activities that are actually harmful. Contemporary research supports Aristotle’s observation; we have become acutely aware of the way adolescents in particular seek to relieve psychological pain by causing physical harm to themselves as well as others.101 Aristotle’s empirical observations are [ 38 ]

ArIstotle astute; he notes that excessive pain leads people to seek out excessive pleasure as a remedy. These excessive pleasures become intense, which is why people pursue them. Moreover, he notes that people desire these intense bodily pleasures precisely because they are incapable of experiencing other kinds of pleasure.102 Aristotle thus suggests that those habituated to seek pleasure in things that are not naturally good (e.g., violence, harming others) will have trouble finding pleasure in the ordinary pursuits of life, while those habituated to healthy pleasures do not need to have pleasure added through artificial means.103 What we are habituated to develops our sense of what is pleasurable. Such artificial pleasures are also sought to remedy pains; they are remedial pleasures, a kind of self-medication. Genuine pleasure is not meant to replenish or remedy a lack or imbalance.104 Among the respectable pleasures, which is the distinctively human pleasure? The pleasures that complete the activities of the genuinely happy person are human in the fullest sense. Other pleasures, like the activities to which they belong, are human in a secondary or lesser degree; we achieve a lesser degree of happiness in our exercise of these other capacities.105 We have noted that those who take pleasure in the finest human pursuits do not need pleasure added on to their lives as a kind of ornament; they find intrinsic pleasure in excellent activity itself.106 A person nurtured from childhood to take pleasure in giving charity, helping the homeless, engaging in mutual, loving relationships, continually expanding the range and subtlety of his or her physical, intellectual, and emotional capabilities, will grow to enjoy a satisfying life. Such a person will not need to add artificial thrills to achieve a sense of pleasure; pleasure is built into the healthy activities of daily living. Thus our moral development can be seen by those things in which we take pleasure: Each person finds pleasure in that of which he is said to be fond, as a horse lover finds it in a horse, and someone who likes wonderful sights finds it in a wonderful sights (or lovers of the theatre find it in plays). In the same way, a lover of justice finds it in the sphere of justice and in general a person with virtue finds pleasure in what accords with virtue. . . . For no one would call a person just if he did not enjoy acting justly, or generous if he did not enjoy generous actions. (1099a 8–20)

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ArIstotle The virtuous person is someone who genuinely enjoys virtuous activity, which Aristotle regards as naturally pleasant for human beings. When we take pleasure in what is not pleasant by nature, our pleasures conflict with one another; by contrast, when we take pleasure in what is pleasant by nature, there is a harmony between our various goals in life.107 We can weave the activities of our lives into an integrated whole that is both objectively excellent and intrinsically pleasurable. This is Aristotle’s ideal of eudaimonia.108 *  *  * We have seen that in Nicomachean Ethics 10.4–5 a well-prepared sense faculty and a good sense object jointly act as efficient causes making for a complete sense experience. This type of complete experience is of high quality (like a high-resolution audio tape) and high value (the experience possesses intrinsic value); to hear, see, or think well is a valuable human experience. The goodness of the instrument and object efficiently bring about an experience that is not only technically good but also rich and valuable. The ability to fully enjoy the natural pleasure of our senses makes their activities bloom. As David Roochnik expresses it, there is a feedback loop.109 For example, the more we take pleasure in visual experience, the more our capacity for good seeing can flourish; perhaps our eyes won’t get better, but our ability to perceive fine distinctions in a landscape may. As long as our faculties are in full exercise, there will always be pleasure. As our capacity to enjoy them increases, so pleasure blossoms, like that of the mathematician appreciating more complex proofs or the music listener who can fully appreciate the complex texture of a Bach cantata. Aristotle extends this natural view of pleasure to the ultimate pleasure, that of the Unmoved Mover. Insofar as God is in activity (energeia), there is pleasure, the full exercise of the natural capacity for thought. Any non-sensate being can “take pleasure” in the activity of thinking, since this does not require sensation.110 We should note, however, that this kind of pleasure can apply even to a plant. The natural exercise of the plant’s activity of flourishing is itself pleasure; its activity of living is pleasure just as the Unmoved Mover’s activity of thinking is. This would seem to be the view of Book 7: pleasure is simply the unimpeded exercise of a living being’s faculties. The Book 10 account seems [ 40 ]

ArIstotle to add the dimension of being aware that we are exercising our faculties; our enjoyment makes the activity bloom. Thus all of life experiences pleasure, from the Unmoved Mover to the simplest plant. For the naturalist, teleological Aristotle, pleasure is the full expression of life itself. Aristotle has described pleasure as the appreciation of activities of awareness. Learning to flourish is thus a process of cultivating our appreciation of the basic activities of living. Just as moral training is a process of learning to take pleasure in acts of moral excellence, training in pleasure is learning to enjoy fulfilling our capacities for engaged living. Every moment can be experienced with heightened awareness and appreciation of the beauty and miracle of biological life. The flourishing life for Aristotle is one in which we engage in attentive study of the world, fulfill our intellectual and moral capacities, and appreciate the significance of our activities in a beautiful and vibrant cosmos.

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TWO

Epicurus Happiness Is Pleasure

FOR ALL ANCIENT Hellenistic thinkers, eudaimonia is a normative, evaluative concept; eudaimonia is the best human life. Aristotle’s perspective on eudaimonia as a life of excellent activity is challenged by Epicurus (341–270 bce), who maintains that pleasure itself is the good—indeed, the highest good. To understand Epicurus’ understanding of the good life, let us begin with some historical background. Epicurus was born in 341 bce and set up his school, the Garden, in Athens in 307–6 bce. We know the teachings of Epicurus from various sources. First, we have some manuscript transmissions— Diogenes Laertius devotes the entire last chapter of his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 ce) to Epicurus, including three entire letters (Letters to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoecius) and the collection of Principle Doctrines.1 We also have papyri of Epicurus and other Epicureans and a wall carving by Diogenes of Oenoanda that features both Epicurean doctrines in his own words and extensive quotations from Epicurus himself. Finally, there are many references to Epicurus’ teachings by non-Epicurean writers such as Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch—some tendentious and polemical, but interesting reflections of the ways Epicurus’ teachings were understood in the ancient world.2 The most controversial and shocking assertion for which Epicurus is known is that pleasure is the highest good. As we have seen, all Greek philosophers spoke in terms of a final end or telos, a natural goal that is the good [ 42 ]

epIcurus life for a human being. Epicurus made the revolutionary assertion that the final goal of life for a human being is to live pleasurably. Why is this so shocking? Plato, Aristotle, and the other Hellenistic schools all agree that the best life for a human being is eudaimonia, well-being or human flourishing. Though we translate that term as happiness—which in our contemporary conception seems to involve some element of pleasure— ancient Greeks generally drew a sharp distinction between happiness and pleasure. Plato and Aristotle certainly held that pleasure was a good, even an intrinsic good, and a worthy component of the good life. But pleasure was seen as a by-product of the flourishing life, not its constituent or goal. How then can Epicurus argue that pleasure is the good and the goal of life? The terms Epicurean and hedonist have negative connotations in modern parlance precisely because Epicurus was misunderstood, from his own day to the present. We assume that a hedonist is someone who aims at the greatest degree of sensual pleasure, and does so immoderately and indiscriminately, without concern for those around him or her. And as the eighteenthcentury utilitarian John Stuart Mill noted, we judge that pleasure is unworthy as the goal of a human life; “better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.” The satisfaction of desire seems animal-like and lowly, not in keeping with the grandeur that should be the goal of a human life.3

The Discipline of Desire All our sources make clear that Epicurus did not simply identify pleasure with the satisfaction of desire. Moreover, while he saw physical pleasure as a key component of the good life, he did not view pleasure as the whole of it. Epicurus drew a distinction between desires, arguing that some are natural, others vain. Even of the natural desires, some are necessary and others not. Of the necessary desires, some are necessary for happiness, some for the repose of the body if it is to be rid of its uneasiness, and some for life itself.4 A medieval textual commentator adds examples to explain what Epicurus means here. Necessary desires are those that bring relief from unavoidable pain. If we don’t drink when we are thirsty, we become more and more parched. Drinking when thirsty relieves our distress; thirst is also necessary for life itself. Natural desires that are not necessary are desires that merely diversify and embellish the pleasure without removing the pain, for example, [ 43 ]

epIcurus the desire for luxury food. While the desire for food is necessary for life, the desire for caviar is not; we do not need fancy foods in order to live. Vain or groundless desires are desires for crowns or statues put up for our honor. Such things are not natural, not necessary for life, and not necessary for the body’s comfort or the soul’s happiness (KD 29).5 How do we achieve a pleasurable life? Is it by fulfilling all our desires? No, there is a subtle and careful discipline we must achieve. Thus for example, if we are in a desert and are thirsty, at first we may drink because we need to do so to live. As our body becomes replenished, we then want to drink to continue to quench our body’s thirst, for we are still too uncomfortable to be able to relax and enjoy ourselves. Finally, when the body has become comfortable, we can enjoy those last few sips, which will bring us into a state of true comfort. And then we can sit in the shade with our loved ones and take part in the natural joy of living. Thus the key to a pleasurable life is to chiefly fulfill those desires that are both natural and necessary. We can also fulfill natural non-necessary desires in moderation, to vary our pleasure. In Vatican Sayings 21 we learn that there is a place for desires; we should realize their necessary role in human life: “We must not compel nature but persuade her; and we shall persuade her by fulfilling the necessary desires, and the natural ones if they do no harm, harshly rebuking the harmful ones.”6 This is Epicurus’ cognitive therapy; ongoing contemplation of these distinctions will help us make good choices in life. We should use Epicurus’ cognitive therapy to realize that desires for honor are vain and to guard against attachment to non-necessary embellishments on life’s necessities, which become vain as well. Every time we make a choice, we should ask ourselves, is this desire natural? Is it necessary? Is this a luxury I don’t really need? In Vatican Sayings 73 Epicurus asserts that this question should be applied to all desires: what will happen to me if the object of my desire is achieved and what if it is not?7 Pleasures that do not bring pain if we don’t fulfill them are not necessary, and we can certainly be content without them.8 It is best not to habituate ourselves to luxuries, lest we become attached to things we do not really need and grow discontent without them. If we realize we do not need the latest technological device, we won’t feel deprived if we don’t have it. It is easy to be content when our needs are few. If we modify our addictive desires, transforming them into things we prefer but can live without, we will find more contentment in our lives. [ 44 ]

epIcurus We thus need prudence or practical wisdom (phronēsis) to take the correct approach to our desires, to fulfill those that will genuinely bring us the greatest overall pleasure in life. Note that Epicurus enjoins a process of rational meditation. We must reflect (analogisteon) on our desires. While Epicurus will argue as a psychological hedonist that all living beings do in fact desire pleasure, he also argues as an ethical hedonist that a process of rational reflection enables us to channel our natural desire for pleasure so that we can achieve genuine happiness: “Unwavering contemplation of these distinctions knows to direct every choice and avoidance to the health of the body (sōmatos hygieian) and freedom from disturbance (ataraxia) of the soul, for this is the goal (telos) of blessed living. For the sake of this we do everything, in order that we may neither be in pain nor tremble fearfully” (LM 128).9 Ancient ethical theorists all argued in terms of a final end, an ultimate goal in life. Epicurus here defines the aim or end (telos) of the blessed life as health of the body and freedom from disturbance (ataraxia) (LM 128). In the next few lines, however, he states that pleasure (hēdonē) is the beginning (archē) and end (telos) of the blessed life. It looks then that freedom from disturbance— plus health of the body—describes the kind of pleasure that constitutes our final end.10 He develops this point further in 131, explaining that when we say that pleasure is the end we do not mean the pleasures of sensuality. Rather, “by pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul”; it is not revelry and drinking bouts but “sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul.” (132). He goes on to tell us that the life of pleasure is actually constituted by a life of practical wisdom and virtue: Of all this the beginning and greatest good is practical wisdom (phronēsis). Thus practical wisdom is a more precious thing even than philosophy, from it spring all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot lead a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honor and justice, nor lead a life of prudence, honor and justice, which is not also a life of pleasure. For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them. (132)

Epicurus could not be clearer. He is distinguishing himself from a contemporary school, the Cyrenaics, who were pure sensualists and advocated [ 45 ]

epIcurus seeking the immediate pleasures of the moment instead of future pleasures that might be greater. He does not deny the pleasures of the body and its sensual enjoyments—in fact, certain statements attributed to him suggest that all pleasures are rooted in those of the body—but the primary sense in which pleasure is our final end is that it is the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul. And the kind of life that will promote such a state of being is the life of virtue. While in theory he argues that virtue is a means to the end of pleasure, in practice, virtue is inextricably linked with the life of pleasure.11 Now if the pleasant life is bound up with virtue, and if what Epicurus means by pleasure is really a lack of pain and discomfort, why confuse his critics and call the final end pleasure, as do the Cyrenaics? Cicero and other critics thus charge Epicurus with equivocating on the meaning of pleasure. Why use the same term pleasure to refer to the sweet sensations of the body and the state of painlessness? One answer to Cicero’s charge is that Epicurus may hold that the state of being undisturbed by physical or emotional suffering is itself a pleasurable one. The highest pleasure is the state of freedom from anxiety, pain, and fear and the secure confidence that we will remain in this state of joy. This stable pleasure—which he will term katastematic pleasure— is also the necessary foundation for all the variations of joy we might encounter in life. In order to enjoy the dynamic variations of pleasure (kinetic pleasure), we need to enjoy the underlying stable sense of peace.

Pleasure as the End: From Archē to Telos To develop a more articulated understanding of what Epicurus means by pleasure as the telos, let us return to his statement in the Letter to Menoeceus 137. Unwavering reflection [theōria] on these things knows to direct every choice and avoidance to the health of the body and the undisturbedness [ataraxia] of the soul, since this is the ultimate end [telos] of blessed living. For we do all for the sake of this, in order that we may be free from pain and fear. When we have attained all this, the storm of the soul is dissolved, seeing that the living creature does not have to go as if in need of something that is lacking, nor to look for anything else by which the good of the soul and the body will be fulfilled. It is then and only [ 46 ]

epIcurus then that we feel the need of pleasure—when we are pained because of the absence of pleasure [hēdonē]. Wherefore we call pleasure the beginning [archē] and [telos] of blessed living. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting point of every choice and avoidance, and to it we come back, using pathos as the standard by which we judge every good. And since pleasure is our first and kindred good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure, but often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them.

Let us analyze this subtle passage. First Epicurus describes the ultimate goal of life, the human telos, as physical health and mental ataraxia. This is what a later passage will term katastematic pleasure—the pleasure of the stable constitution. When we are in that state, we do not need to go out seeking additional pleasures. In the katastematic condition—the absence of pain or disturbance—the uneasiness of the soul is dissolved, for body and soul are perfectly content. The good of the body and soul are fulfilled in their own state of peace. The child in its mother’s lap is warm, secure, and satisfied. Thus Vatican Saying 33: “The flesh’s cry is not to be thirsty, hungry, or cold. For one who is in these states and expects to remain so could rival even Zeus in happiness.” Note the caveat we find here: “and expects to remain so.” We find a similar sentiment in a fragment from Epicurus’ lost work On the Goal cited by Plutarch: “For the stable condition of the flesh and the reliable expectation concerning this contain the highest and most secure joy for those who are able to reason it out” (Non posse 1098d; emphasis mine). The infant experiences bliss in the warm hearth of its parents; both children and animals can experience a kind of katastematic hēdonē. But Epicurus seems to conceive of degrees of katastematic pleasure, which follow a path of development that depends upon Epicurean wisdom. The reliable expectation that such peace and security will continue is something we need to cultivate through reason. Thus Alexander of Aphrodisias, in his supplement to Aristotle’s On the Soul, writes: “The Epicureans maintain that what is first congenial to us, unqualifiedly, is pleasure, but they say that as we get older this pleasure becomes more fully articulated.”12 We may be able to enjoy a natural state of pleasure, but a deep and lasting sense of psychic and physical harmony requires wisdom, cultivation, and effort. Epicurus continues his discourse in the Letter to Menoeceus: “When we are pained because of the absence of pleasure (hēdonē), then and only then do we [ 47 ]

epIcurus feel the need of pleasure. Wherefore we call pleasure the archē and telos of blessed living.” If we are in a state of katastematic pleasure, why would we need to go and seek kinetic pleasures? We might gloss this passage: “when we are pained because of the absence of kinetic pleasure, this is a signal that we have not attained the state of genuine katastematic pleasure.” Pleasure is the archē and telos of blessed living. It is the archē, the starting point and foundation, in that all children and animals seek a state of physical and mental comfort. It is also the telos: we must reflect on the self-sufficient goodness of this state to realize that it is unwise to pursue every unnecessary sensory desire. It is the starting point of every choice and avoidance, and to it we come back, using feeling (pathos) as the standard by which we judge every good.

The pursuit of pleasure and retreat from pain are the natural starting point of every choice and avoidance in all living beings from infancy on. But we must also return to pleasure as reflective adults, realizing what will bring stable and lasting pleasure. And thus we realize that we should not, like the Cyrenaics, choose every sensory pleasure of the moment, but discriminate rationally in order to create a life of the most genuine pleasure. Note that Epicurus admonishes the reader to use feeling (pathos) as the standard by which we judge every good. One might argue this suggests that the pleasure that is our genuine telos is simply a matter of the instinctive responses (pathē) of the irrational soul. But notice that we are judging choices and avoidances; Epicurus is calling upon us as rational beings to make wise choices. Moreover there is a path of development or refinement in our pursuit of pleasure. The language of pathos, however, does suggest that, in contrast to the ethical tradition of Plato and Aristotle, for Epicurus the ultimate standard of our choices is not the virtues, but pleasure and pain, although he is also careful to assure us that pleasant living will necessarily entail fine and just living. This is unique and unprecedented: contrary to the PlatonicAristotelian tradition, he is asserting that feeling (pathos) both is and should be the basis for judging the good. To summarize: Epicurus seems to hold that the natural state of the body and mind, even unadorned with sensuous variety, is the greatest human pleasure and our highest good. We are born with a natural compass; it is our instinctual feeling nature that guides us to our good.13 But we are also born with reason, whose purpose is to guide our feeling nature so that we may achieve [ 48 ]

epIcurus what is in fact the greatest and most stable pleasure. Contrary to Plato in the Republic and the Phaedrus, Epicurus does not see instinct and reason as at war, but rather as natural partners.

The Relationship Between Katastematic and Kinetic Pleasures: The Evidence of the Principle Doctrines We have established that the goal for Epicurus is the stable state of painlessness and lack of anxiety. This is achieved with the guidance of both our desiring nature and reason. We might think that the desiring nature always moves toward kinetic pleasure—beautiful sights, sounds, sensuous delights. What then is the relationship between katastematic and kinetic pleasures? This question brings to mind a critique raised by Cicero: how does the natural desire for sensual pleasures lead to the goal of desireless contentment? To answer this question, let us read a few of Epicurus’ principal doctrines. In Principle Doctrines 3 we read: “The limit of the magnitude of pleasures is in the removal of all pain. Wherever there is a taking pleasure, for as long as it lasts, there is neither enduring pain nor suffering, nor both together.” The foundation of all pleasure is painlessness. There is something that all pleasure has in common: lack of distress. In this way, Epicurus shares much with the Buddhist tradition. For both, the summum bonum (supreme or highest good) is defined first of all in negative terms: freedom from suffering, grief, and fear. However, this does not mean that the goal is limited to a state defined by lack; there are resources for Epicurus to answer the charge of the Cyrenaics that the removal of all suffering leaves one in the state of a corpse. For example, as David Wolfsdorf points out, all pleasure requires consciousness; given that the state Epicurus describes as painless is conscious, one is not in the state of a corpse. The katastematic state by definition is one that includes sensation or consciousness; it possesses what may be described as a “hedonic tone,” a phenomenologically sensed experience.14 When we take away all pain, we are in a basic state of pleasure. We see that achieving this basic state of pleasure can be a matter of satisfying our basic needs—we are neither hungry nor thirsty nor cold. Contrary to Cicero’s claim, therefore, it is not necessarily true that infants desire kinetic pleasure. Instead, they may instinctually desire the state of freedom from hunger, thirst, and cold. When the infant is hungry, thirsty, and cold, she may be in [ 49 ]

epIcurus no mood for play; when satiated, warm, and comfortable, she may enjoy being tickled or played with. The removal of all suffering defines the magnitude in quantity of all pleasures, but this may also be the starting point (archē) for ultimate pleasure. This basic katastematic condition can be varied qualitatively. In Principle Doctrine 18 we read: “Pleasure in the flesh does not increase once the pain of lack has been removed; it is only varied (embellished).” All pleasures depend on the state of relaxed contentment, but may vary it. The enjoyment of Beethoven, for example, is a kinetic embellishment of enjoying the natural pleasure of our own being.15 What is it, then, that brings mental pleasure, the freedom from anxiety and fear? The doctrine goes on to explain: “The limit of pleasure in the mind comes to be by the reasoning out of those very things and things like them that used to furnish the greatest fear in the mind” (KD 18). The reasoned understanding of things that used to cause the mind the greatest fear brings mental freedom. In the context of the passage, it seems that one must understand the nature of physical pleasure and the fear our body has of not getting enough; the mind thinks it is lacking because it has not enjoyed unlimited sensual delight. Once we understand that the limit of pleasure is painlessness—that to be in a stable, painless state is our greatest joy—we have peace of mind, since we don’t need to go about seeking kinetic pleasures, as we saw before in the Letter to Menoeceus.16 Katastematic mental pleasure lies in the mature, reflective understanding that reasons about what is most important and grows to value the state of painlessness above all else: we are more content and are in a better position to enjoy whatever delightful pleasures come our way than when we think we need them to be happy. When the mind realizes that there is a basic hedonic tone underlying all pleasure, it understands that we can take as much pleasure in a quiet evening at home as at an ecstatic concert or aesthetically rich dance. Knowing that we have it in our power to enjoy continuous pleasure—whether the kinetic embellishments or the quiet state of peace—we no longer need to fear the loss of kinetic pleasures, because we already have all we need for a secure, balanced state of mind and body. Thus while infants and animals may enjoy a degree of freedom from anxiety, the ultimate degree of mental pleasure requires adult reasoning and understanding. To return to the Doctrine, Epicurus writes that reasoning “about these things and things like them” leads to mental peace. “Things like them” may [ 50 ]

epIcurus refer to the fear of the gods and death. Once we have concluded through Epicurean wisdom that there is nothing to fear in death, meditation on death can bring the greatest pleasure. We have the peace of knowing we can fully enjoy each moment of life, not needing life to go on longer, as we will see in the next two doctrines. “Unlimited time and limited hold the same pleasure, when one measures the limits of it by reason” (KD 19). On the face of it, this makes no sense. How can unlimited time and limited time afford the same degree of pleasure? But if we use Epicurean wisdom to evaluate pleasure, it makes perfect sense. Pleasure is a matter of quality, not quantity. Thus Epicurus does not follow the utilitarians in applying a quantitative hedonistic calculus to determine the greatest amount of pleasure. What we want to achieve is a stability of pleasure, a lasting quality that is independent of time. When we have achieved a reasoned understanding of the physical nature of the universe, we no longer need to fear capricious gods or death; we thus achieve a pleasure that is of the same quality, whether experienced for one moment or many years. This is an understanding achieved by the mind, not the flesh: The flesh takes the limits of pleasure as unlimited, and unlimited time provides it. But the mind, taking the reckoning of the goal and limits of the flesh and dissolving the fears of eternity provides the full and complete life, and no longer has need of unlimited time. Nevertheless neither does it shun pleasure, nor even when circumstances provide the leading out from life, does it come to an end as though lacking something of the best (life). (KD 20)

There are no limits to the desires of the body; whenever a desire is satisfied, it craves something more. Since for desire there is never enough, the body craves unlimited time to satisfy all its urges. Hence the body’s fear as it approaches death: there is so much it hasn’t seen, felt, and experienced. However, the fear of death is expelled when the mind comes to value as the greatest pleasure the basic state of having no pain or anxiety. Nor need one shun the kinetic embellishments of pleasure. One might think that tasting the pleasures of boys, women, and fish would awaken unlimited craving of the flesh (LM 137). Epicurus teaches that we can discipline our desires so that we realize we need only satisfy natural, necessary desires. Then we needn’t fear when the kinetic embellishments arise. If we [ 51 ]

epIcurus have disciplined our craving cognitively, realizing these are simply enjoyable preferences, we are free to enjoy these pleasures without addictive attachment. To summarize, it is clear that Epicurus believed that the highest pleasure is the stable pleasure of complete calmness of soul and lack of pain. Human beings in that state can enjoy the kinetic pleasures that sweeten the senses: music, art, nature, sensory delights. Pleasure comes from sufficiency, not lack.17 When humans experience lack, we are in danger of falling prey to what Epicurus sees as unnecessary desires, the desire for things that are wholly superfluous, such as wealth and honors, and desire for very specific ways to fulfill natural desires—luxury foods rather than simple fare, complex technological devices rather than simple modes of communication, states of ecstasy or intoxication rather than natural states of joy. However, Epicurean wisdom teaches that in fact we do not need much to live a rich and fulfilling life. When we experience a state in which we are satisfied and complete, we can enjoy all the variations that life brings.

Theory of Perception, Atomism, and Pleasure Epicurus is an atomist. Without exploring the details of his atomic theory, let us examine the way his atomism rounds out his theory of pleasure.18 The foundation of Epicurean epistemology is known as the “canonic,” a series of criteria by which sound judgments are made. There are two main criteria of judgment: sense perception (aisthēsis) and feeling (pathos).19 Sense perception gathers information from the world through the medium of sense organs, which discriminate sense objects. As Elizabeth Asmis explains, “Aisthēsis is directed at objects other than one’s condition, whereas a feeling (pathos) is an awareness of one’s own condition.”20 We experience our own condition as pleasant and familiar or unpleasant and alien. This is because the pathē refer to atomic conditions. When we are met by information from the external world, the atoms of our sense organs are either preserved in their natural flow or find their natural flow disrupted. We experience the preservation of the natural flow or order of our atoms as familiar, appropriate, and “right”; its disruption we experience as alien, inappropriate, and unpleasant. Pleasure is what preserves our sense of natural flow; pain is what disrupts it.21 [ 52 ]

epIcurus Pleasure is thus what philosophers of mind call an “intentional state”; it contains an awareness and primitive response to the object of awareness, even at the level of the atoms of our sense organs. Pleasure thus entails what philosophers of mind call an “attitude”—a psychological stance or orientation— toward an object. Every pathos has a feeling tone of either pleasure or pain, attraction or aversion. A pathos contains an awareness of an object and, at the same time, a “liking” or “disliking” of that object.22 In Asmis’ words, unlike sense perceptions, feelings represent “an attitude, pro or contra, concerning the object of awareness. To attend to something pleasant is to be attracted to it; to attend to something painful is to have an aversion from it.”23 How does this atomic theory shed light on Epicurus’ understanding of pleasure? The Cyrenaics recognized only one form of pleasure, kinetic pleasure. They view the katastematic condition as one of a corpse; if there is no satisfaction of desire, there is no pleasure. Epicurus, in contrast, recognizes two forms of pleasure: katastematic and kinetic. Katastematic pleasure is the pleasure of a settled condition, kinetic pleasure that of a moving condition. However, we can now see that this terminology is somewhat confusing, because in fact both conditions contain movement. In the katastematic condition, the atoms move in natural, smooth patterns, whereas in pain these patterns are disrupted. In kinetic pleasure, the atoms move in patterns of pleasurable excitement. We might therefore translate kinēsis here as “stimulation”: both types of pleasure preserve patterns of the motion of atoms, but the kinetic patterns are more excited ones, produced by external stimulation.24 Kinetic pleasure is thus that which occurs when the organism in its natural, katastematic state of pleasure is stimulated in a way that preserves its natural flow.25 Thus the capacity to experience katastematic pleasure consists in attuning oneself, through an act of focused attention (epibolē), to a pleasurable state of one’s own being.26 It is constitutional pleasure. Whether we are sitting quietly in meditation or moving dynamically in sacred dance, the rhythm of our being is preserved. A Beethoven symphony goes through many moods— some quiet and contemplative, others furious and triumphant; they all share a quality of harmonious pattern. Human beings too, go through many moods, but can discover a harmonious pattern in the motion of their atoms through moments of both quiet rest and active engagement. This is why Epicurus can term both katastematic and kinetic pleasure pleasure. What they share in common is the preservation of a certain [ 53 ]

epIcurus psycho-physical harmony, which a living being finds familiar, appropriate, and non-disruptive. Kinetic events such as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring contain much dissonance, excitement, and agitation, but may provide stimulation that harmonizes with one’s natural flow. The sound of a jackhammer, in contrast, is disruptive and creates agitation that most find alien to our natural pattern. Thus the rhythm of sacred dancing, art, and music are variations on the harmonic atomic motions of sitting quietly. Epicurus suggests that if we become familiar with the basic rhythm of our being in its quiet state, we can preserve this harmony when going out into moving forms and return in contentment to quiet—not preferring one over the other. Epicurus taught that discovering this art is the key to happiness. Epicurean wisdom involves recognition that since moving pleasures cannot continue unabated, excitement alone does not bring genuine and lasting happiness. Katastematic pleasure, as the harmony of the natural being, is by definition lasting and stable. When we have tempered and disciplined desires, we can learn to appreciate this as the highest joy. Then, without fear of attachment to excitement and without fear of loss, we are free to enjoy the kinetic pleasures that come and go.

[ 54 ]

THREE

Confucian Happiness Ritual, Humaneness, Music, and Joy

LIKE ARISTOTLE AND EPICURUS, Confucius emphasizes that human flourishing is grounded in the virtues of living in a community of people who share the commitment to ethical self-cultivation. Confucius is sometimes described as a virtue ethicist; he has faith that by developing stable character traits, human beings sensitize themselves to the appropriate way to act in particular situations.1 Aristotle’s method of character development is to begin by learning from a virtuous person the principle of the mean and then practicing moderation in one’s activities. Confucius’ instrument of moral development is the practice of ritual (li). Ritual develops one’s character and enables us to cultivate the key Confucian virtues, which are grounded in humaneness (ren). Thus there are also significant differences between Western and Confucian virtue ethics. While ritual is notably absent from Plato and Aristotle’s ethical program, it is essential to ethical self-cultivation in Confucianism.2 It is often thought that Confucianism and Daoism are opposite poles of Chinese culture: Confucianism is concerned with civilization, culture, rules, formality; Daoism represents nature, spontaneity, independence, and an antiauthoritarian spirit. One is the classical pole, the other romantic, one the public, the other the private; one the yang, masculine assertive spirit of conformity, the other the yin, feminine quiet spirit of non-conformity.3 In truth, as in the yin-yang symbol itself, these polarities are in fact intertwined. Edward Slingerland has suggested that a motif that runs through both traditions is [ 55 ]

confucIAn HAppIness that of wu-wei action, an umbrella term he uses to describe a spectrum of types of activity that is effortless and unselfconscious and yet accords with the normative order of the cosmos.4 I will argue here that the theme of attentive awareness likewise runs through both Confucian and Daoist texts. The key virtue of Confucianism is ren, which is variously translated as benevolence, humanity, humaneness, human-heartedness, co-humanity, or goodness. In certain Confucian texts, such as the Mencius, the term refers to the specific virtue of benevolence, while in Confucius’ Analects—which will be the focus of this chapter—the term has come to take on the cumulative sense of “a whole embracing all the separate virtues.”5 Ren always has an interpersonal dimension; it is that which happens in twoness, between individuals. Two other key terms are li, ritual propriety, and yi, appropriateness, rightness, or righteousness. Li must always be tempered by and intertwined with ren. First we will examine some key terms and concepts. Then we will explore the following themes through central passages of the Confucian Analects: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

On Heaven On Li and Ren: Ritual (li) and Humaneness (ren). Self-Cultivation as Mastery Ritual, Music, and Joy Attentive Awareness in the Confucian Tradition Confucian Happiness

Before we embark on our study of the Confucian Analects, let us say something about the text. The English term Analects (“brief sayings”) reflects the Chinese title Lunyu, which has been rendered as “classified teachings,” “selected sayings,” or “collected records” of conversations between Kongzi (Master Kong, Confucius, 551–479 bce) and his students.6 The text was traditionally read as a unified work recording actual historical conversations transmitted and recorded by disciples. Modern scholars tend to see the work as having been brought together over a process of several centuries and as reflecting an evolving tradition about Confucius and his teachings. Thus scholars tend to discern historical layers within the text as well as signs of editing by contending branches of the tradition with differing understandings of the teachings and their significance.7 Among questions historical interpreters debate are the topic of the “one thread” Confucius suggests [ 56 ]

confucIAn HAppIness underlies his teachings, the question of whether he taught about Heaven and metaphysical matters, and his understanding of key concepts such as humaneness (ren) and the intertwined virtues of devotion (zhong) and reciprocity (shu).8 For the purpose of this brief overview, we will consider the work as it has been treated historically by the tradition: as a unified work reflecting Confucius’ own views, while at certain points dipping into scholarship hinting at the diversity of views and historical layers scholars have detected in this rich and complex collection.

Key Terms and Concepts We have noted that both Confucius and Aristotle taught a version of virtue ethics, an approach to ethics that centers on developing certain character traits so that we respond appropriately in moral contexts. Both put forth a goal of the flourishing life, what it is to become a fully realized, fulfilled human being, and both see human beings as embedded in community. Confucius emphasizes these values in the key virtue of ren.9 Ren is homophonic, that is, it shares a sound although not a character with the word for human being. The character shows a human being and the number two. Thus within the ideographic symbol for this key virtue is the notion that we become fully human only in relationship, in twoness. As David Hall and Roger Ames suggest, there are persons and there are persons.10 To become humane is to become a fully realized, mature human being who exhibits the key characteristic of what it is to be authentically human.11 The person who exhibits this is the junzi.12 This term is often translated as gentleman, but has also been rendered as cultivated individual, fully realized person, mature person, exemplary person, noble person, humanity at its best. The term, which literally means “son of a ruler,” originally referred to someone born into the noble class, but Confucius turned it into a moral term. No longer based on birth or social standing, to be a junzi is now the quality of a sage, one who has realized him or herself through moral self-cultivation. How does one develop and express the virtue of ren? The key to moral self-cultivation for Confucius is li. Li, often translated ritual propriety, encompasses civility, the way things should be done, and etiquette as well as [ 57 ]

confucIAn HAppIness ritual. Its original provenance was the rituals of sacrifice in the royal court. Confucius extended this term from its context in ancestor worship and sacred rite to include all of life.13 As Herbert Fingarette points out, his innovation was thus to encourage us to make all life a kind of sacred social dance.14 If nobles treat each other with respect in the royal court, we can extend this reverence to the way we treat human beings in every interaction.15 Confucius thus suggested one should bring the attentiveness, dignity, and presence one finds in specifically royal or religious situations to all our  human relations, investing life with a sacred dimension.16 Confucius thus introduces a new dimension of happiness; we flourish as human beings through our ritual patterns of behavior in community. Our exploration of the Confucian Analects will thus include investigation of ritual as a dimension of human life. Relationships are central to Confucian culture. The Doctrine of the Mean, an early Confucian classic traditionally attributed to Confucius’ grandson, Zisi, expresses the notion that human interactions include Five Constant Relationships: parent and child, spouse and spouse, elder sibling and junior sibling, elder friend and junior friend, ruler and subject.17 These are hierarchical, asymmetrical relationships, but they nevertheless reflect mutually entailing virtues.18 Like Aristotle, Confucius believes we have greater obligations to our family members than to others and holds that family obligations are very specific. This doctrine is often paired with the Rectification of Names, which we find in the Analects, the notion that language must conform with reality: a father should be a father, a prince a prince.19 Words must accord with meanings, and persons must live up to their roles. Confucius’ intuition was that we become who we are through relationships. Modern Western psychology, in contrast, has inherited a bias toward the individual. From Descartes on, we have come to think that we are minds disconnected from bodies; likewise Freudian psychology, while recognizing the influence of early childhood experiences, nevertheless focused attention on the individual as an atom, isolated from the social unit. Confucian psychology portrays instead a contextual self, a self that discovers who we are through interactions.20 Western family systems theory has moved in that direction, understanding individuals as belonging to family and larger social systems.21 The cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict posited that certain emotions, such as shame, are not inherent to the individual but are discovered in human relationship.22 Likewise, for Confucius, we discover who we [ 58 ]

confucIAn HAppIness are in a social context; we become who we are as human beings not simply through the spontaneous expression of emotion, but by disciplining the heart-mind (xin) through ritualized patterns of behavior. This insight had a sociohistorical origin. Confucius lived in the later time of the Spring and Autumn Period States. The most famous commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals provides a frightening picture of life before and during the time of Confucius, with horrendous activities of unfamilial behavior, including murderous family coups. In Confucius’ home state of Lu, the authority of the dukes, tracing back to the Duke of Zhou, had been usurped by the Three Families, a group of powerful clans. One can thus understand Confucius’ impulse to assert traditional, fixed social roles: a parent should act as a parent; a ruler should embody genuine morality.23 Confucius projected back a moral continuity from the original righteous Sage Kings Yao and Shun, to the Civilization of the Zhou, the historic template of his moral ideal. His sense was that if we could return to the ritual patterns of the Zhou, life would flow smoothly and harmoniously. It is often asked whether Confucianism is a religion or whether it is not rather an ethical humanism. It is true that Confucian tradition does not feature a prominent notion of deity. However, there is a clear metaphysical basis for the Confucian vision of the Way (the Dao). The character dao is based on the characters for “head” and “to run.” One of its basic meanings is that on which one goes, a path or road, a headway. This meaning was extended to mean method, truth, or principle. It thus came to refer to a way of doing something, or an account of such a way, and can be used as a verb to connote giving an account of such a way. It can thus mean to follow a path or teaching or to regard a path as one’s own, and by extension came to signify the correct way or basic metaphysical principle of reality.24 The Confucian tradition as early as the classical Confucian teacher Xunzi, drew upon the Doctrine of the Mean to develop a cosmological dimension to Confucius’ teachings. Thinkers from the late Warring States period on came to hold that Confucius believed that the Way of the Zhou was the basic metaphysical way of the cosmos, that by following this Way one would be in harmony with the order of the world. He believed the key to the moral rectification of his society was to return to the prescriptions of li carried out in a perfectly orderly manner by the Zhou. Li are thus based in ancient tradition, but tradition itself is rooted in something deeper, the way things are. Ritual patterns are ingrained deep in the cosmos. This is not unlike the [ 59 ]

confucIAn HAppIness notion underlying Indian Vedic culture that the universe is created and sustained by ritual. For the Hindus, ritual is not just a human sphere; humans participate in the larger ritual patterns of the cosmos. For the Hindus, dharma is the way things are; likewise, for certain Confucians, li is rooted in the way things are and should be.25 The rituals of many cultures are patterned upon the rhythms of nature: morning, noon, and evening prayers, festivals marking the rhythms of the seasons. Rituals also mimic the cycles of natural transformations of energy: wood is combusted into fire, which creates smoke, which ascends. In winter all things die or hibernate; they awaken miraculously in the spring. By attuning ourselves to the rhythms of nature, human beings function more harmoniously in the cosmos. By creating patterns of ritual behavior, human beings attune our social behavior to harmonize with orderly patterns in the natural world.26 This illustrates two ways in which Confucianism is deeply religious. Confucians see themselves as part of a deep metaphysical structure of the cosmos; they attune themselves to both the natural and social order. While both Confucians and Daoists view the Dao as rooted in the cosmos, Daoists emphasize attunement with the natural world, while Confucians emphasize the sphere of human culture. For both, humans following the Way seek to harmonize with the Way of Heaven or Nature (Tian).27 Heaven for Confucius is a vaguely anthropomorphic force, one to which he became attuned over a long process of inner development. Heaven has a will for both Confucius himself and for his society. Early Chinese civilization featured Di, an ancestral deity or deities. During the time of the Zhou, focus shifted from Di to Tian, a more inchoate anthropomorphic force, a shift in focus Confucius continued.28 Confucius also represents somewhat of a shift from focus on the worship of ancestor spirits to focus on the living beings in one’s own family and social context, the key virtue of filial piety or reverence (xiao). It is not clear whether Confucius was agnostic about the living existence of ancestors in spirit. What is clear is that he believed one ought to express familial reverence through the familiar ritual patterns of one’s society, both to the living and to ancestors who have passed. The later Confucian Xunzi developed a thoroughly naturalistic theory of ritual. As Xunzi expresses it, rituals do not make the rains fall or the winds blow, nor do they bring benefits from the ancestors. What rituals do is civilize us as human beings and express our reverence and dependence on those who have gone [ 60 ]

confucIAn HAppIness before us as well as our dependence on the natural forces of the universe.29 We have mentioned the central Confucian virtue of ren. Another term for virtue, de, signifies the power of virtue or moral example embodied by the junzi.30 It came to be seen as a kind of moral charisma that not only a ruler, but any morally cultivated person could develop by living among other morally cultivated people. Such moral charisma gave one a “magnetic capacity to draw, influence, and inspire others.”31 For Confucius this moral power became a model to emulate for all those around one who possesses it. Another central Confucian ideal is wu-wei harmony. While this ideal is often associated with Daoism, Edward Slingerland has shown that the ideal permeated ancient Chinese culture and is deeply embedded in the Confucian nexus. The goal of ritual patterning is to develop an effortless ease of action, one deeply attuned to the Will of Heaven and expressing li in harmony with what context demands. The li themselves must be embedded in yi, rightness or appropriateness. The centrality of yi highlights the fact that not every situation that arises will be covered by prescriptions of li, and at times one must apply the broader standard of yi to determine the appropriate way to act.32 David Hall and Roger Ames describe yi as an aesthetic sense for what is fitting in a particular context, so that one needs the sense of yi or rightness to have a feel for how to apply the li.33 We have thus sketched an overview of Confucian values. Confucianism seeks to bring the mindfulness and attentiveness of sacred ritual to every domain of life. It does this through carefully prescribed relationships and ritual actions, but also through a gradual process of attunement so that one knows how to apply the ritual demands appropriately in every context. There is thus a sensitivity and involvement required; it is not enough to copy patterns pro forma. Like a classically trained pianist or dancer, one must fully appropriate the choreographed score in order to sensitively interpret it, bringing forth the nuances of the score with genuine individuality, to make it one’s own. This can also be compared to study of great literature or sacred texts. We can all read a Shakespeare sonnet; the master of literature can fully bring the work alive, plumbing the depths of its paradoxical beauty. Someone who brings out the significance of a line of poetry unveils the beauty embedded in the work. Thus ritual patterns are scores upon which one can improvise and explore. Without forms, human beings [ 61 ]

confucIAn HAppIness would have no shared language with which to convey emotions or express significance.34 Before we turn to the text itself, let us investigate briefly the concept of Heaven in Confucius’ Analects. This will help us place the Confucian moral world within the larger context of the cosmos.

On Heaven We have mentioned that Chinese culture features a Way (Dao) of Confucius and a Way of the Daoists.35 While neither Dao is conceived of as a personal Being, a related conception, “Heaven” (Tian) at times does bear the characteristics of personal intention and will.36 Heaven is a complex concept in Chinese thought; Tian is a kind of higher power, conceived by some as an anthropomorphic being, by others (such as Zhuangzi and Xunzi) as the impersonal workings of nature. Tian was the name of the supreme deity of the Zhou people, who was seen to take special interest in the welfare of China. When the founders of the Zhou overthrew the Shang Dynasty, they claimed that they were receiving the mandate of Heaven to establish a new era of virtue in China.37 Thus Heaven was seen as the source of the mandate to the emperor (the “Son of Heaven”) to rule with ritual correctness. In Confucian times, writes Edward Slingerland, “‘Heaven’ refers to an anthropomorphic figure— someone who can be communicated with, angered, or pleased—rather than a physical place. From Zhou times on, Heaven is viewed as the source of normativity in the universe, the all powerful Being who, when pleased with proper ritual conduct, charges its representative on earth with the Mandate to rule, as well as the power of virtue that made realizing the Mandate possible.”38 Heaven was also viewed as responsible for everything beyond the control of human beings (things relegated to “fate”). In the Analects Confucius seems to regard Heaven as responsible for entrusting him with his mission to restore the cultural patterns of the Zhou, the set of cultural practices and texts collectively known as ‘the Way.’”39 Thus Confucius says the following about Heaven: a. “at fifty I understood Heaven’s Mandate” (Analects 2:4). b. “It is Heaven itself that has endowed me with virtue. What have I to fear from the likes of Huan Tui?” (7:23).40 [ 62 ]

confucIAn HAppIness c. “Now that King Wen is gone, is not culture (wen) now invested here in me? If it had been the will of Heaven to destroy this culture, it would not have been given to a mortal (like me). If Heaven intended this culture to perish, it would not have given it to those of us who live after King Wen’s death. Since Heaven did not intend that this culture should perish, what can the people of Kuang do to me? (9:5).41 d. If I have no ministers and yet you act as if I have, who do you think I am going to fool? Am I going to fool Heaven? (9.12). e. “Alas there is no one that knows/recognizes me! . . . but there is Heaven that knows me” (14.35).42 For Confucius, Heaven is probably not a full-fledged anthropomorphic God; Confucius’ conception of Heaven may be closer to a vaguely conceived moral force, a source of moral norms, a moral order. Nevertheless, in the Analects Confucius expresses a clear sense of heavenly destiny, a deep faith in the goodness of Heaven’s Way. In the words of Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Kongzi (Confucius) believed that Heaven has a plan for human beings—their proper end is a just, peaceful, harmonious, and flourishing society—and that Heaven chose him to play a special role in the realization of this plan—to preserve, codify, and propagate the dao or Way that enables human beings to achieve this end.”43 Confucianism has often been described as a kind of humanism; there is indeed a strong social dimension to Confucian ritual. However, many scholars, particularly those influenced by the later movement known as NeoConfucianism, also note a cosmic dimension in the Confucian tradition. For example, scholars such as Tu-Wei Ming point to a sacred cosmic order described by the Doctrine of the Mean, an early Confucian text that postdates the Analects, which speaks of humanity forming a triad with Heaven and Earth.44 A cognate view is expressed by another scholar of Neo-Confucianism, Julia Ching: We may call these [Chinese religions] the “religions of harmony” because of the known Chinese effort in directing attention to harmony between the human and the cosmic as well as harmony within society and within the self. . . . The harmony between the human and the heavenly orders, perceived simply as natural or cosmic and social harmony, made some observers dismiss the presence of any transcendence in Chinese civilization. . . . Scholars on one or the other side of the transcendence/immanence debate are not so much in fundamental disagreement [ 63 ]

confucIAn HAppIness about Chinese religion as they are about the definitions of such terms as transcendence and immanence, and whether these should always be considered as mutually exclusive.45

Thus, Confucians may see a principle of transcendent value in the immanent Way of the Confucian li. With this background, let us take a journey through the text of the Analects to explore further some of the key themes in Confucian mindfulness and flourishing.

On Li and Ren: Ritual and Humaneness 1:1. To learn and then have occasion to practice what you have learned—is this not satisfying? To have friends arrive from afar—is this not a joy? To be patient even when one’s talents are unrecognized—is this not the mark of the exemplary person?

The Analects opens with a beautiful statement on pleasure and delight. Is it not a pleasure to learn and to repeat or practice from time to time what has been learned? Confucianism is known as a kind of scholasticism, featuring an elite social group of literati; the Chinese term for this elite is ru. Robert Eno has shown that this was a distinct group who gathered around a teacher to study and practice the ritual arts.46 It is true that from the seventh century on the Confucian Classics were instituted as the basis for examinations for civil positions, and in 1313 the commentaries of the great NeoConfucian scholar Zhu Xi (1130–1200) were made the standard interpretations of the Classics for these examinations. But for the Confucius of the Analects, learning was not simply book knowledge. While he did bid his students to study classic texts such as the Odes, the purpose of this imbibing was to sensitize oneself morally so as to develop certain character traits. Thus the purpose of learning is putting learning into practice. The learning Confucius is describing here is ritual practice—learning for the sake of doing. We see a similar dynamic in early Rabbinic culture; the Jewish sages of the Mishnah debate which takes precedence, learning or practice? They conclude that learning is for the sake of putting into practice.47 By the same token, both Confucian and Rabbinic cultures emphasize that practice is deepened when [ 64 ]

confucIAn HAppIness enriched by the fruits of one’s learning.48 Just as the Buddhist strives to put into practice what he or she has gleaned from a profound dharma talk, the Confucian’s delight is to embody the ideal of ritual study. Confucius expresses in the opening analect the view that ritual itself is deeply enjoyable. Human beings love building the skill of self-mastery, and ritual practice is one way to do this. Ritual is an art form; it is closely related to the arts of music and dance. Eno has indeed shown the early literati (the ru), the class from which Confucius arose, to be ritual enthusiasts, enacting elaborate sacred dances—far from the image of sober, disembodied scholastics alone with books.49 Learning ritual patterns is central to self-cultivation and moral self-transformation; it is thus that we can become acutely attuned to ourselves and our partners in the sacred dance of life. This is not unlike the process of training or apprenticeship in an art or guild. We study with a master and imitate traditional forms—for example, norms of calligraphy, poetry, playwriting, academic scholarship, or jazz riffs. At first our products may seem like awkward imitations. As we proceed, we develop our own unique style and flair, in which we may vary slightly from the patterns of the master while adhering to the basic patterns of the art.50 Likewise, when children are trained to say please and thank you, they may do so grudgingly at first. As they mature, children develop their own gracious style of giving and expressing appreciation; parents are thrilled to see children carry on inherited values, making them uniquely their own.51 Ritual is by its very nature interpersonal, particularly in the Confucian context. We see the interpersonal dimension of li articulated clearly in the second and third sentences of the opening analect. Is it not delightful to have friends coming from afar? Is one not a humane person if we do not feel hurt even when we are not recognized by others? While Aristotle insisted one must live with friends, Confucius also recognizes the friendship of kindred spirits who live in distant lands and meet one periodically for community. There is nevertheless a debate about the role of friendship in Confucius. Does Confucius recognize the friendship of equals?52 Confucian friendship is what Aristotle speaks of as the friendship of virtue. Human beings need one another to learn together and grow in ethical self-cultivation. Confucius insisted he could learn from every person, whether choiceworthy traits or traits to avoid. But the ideal for Confucius is to have friends whom we can emulate, those whose virtue is higher than our own, so that our association with them helps us grow in virtue.53 [ 65 ]

confucIAn HAppIness I have mentioned that the Confucian self is a contextual self; we become who we are in family and community. In Confucian culture we discover our identity in the context of the five constant relationships; in Analect 12.11 we hear that a prince should be a prince, a minister a minister, a father a true father, and a son a son.54 We have mentioned that this was a conservative response to an anarchic situation, an assertion of fixed standards, but there is also the larger question of attunement to others. The framework of constant relationships and appropriate virtues offers clear guidelines for our human interactions. And we should note, too, that for Confucius the greatest delight lies in being surrounded by like-minded individuals who tell the truth and support one another in growth. Confucius did not want to be artificially bolstered, but rather spoken to honestly; when he was dying, he did not want his students to give him a mock ceremony as if he were a high functionary in a state.55 Likewise Confucius did not artificially bolster his students, such as Zigong, who was at times the target of rather pointed criticism or dry irony. He taught students each according to their abilities, with an acute awareness of the character traits of each. Like the Platonic dialogues, the Confucian Analects show us the values of a teacher enacted in specific teaching relationships. Confucius offers varied responses to questions according to the level and needs of his student; he demonstrates the art of what is called in the Buddhist context skillful means (upāya), recognizing that doctrines are not fixed but function as teaching tools appropriate to the needs of the student. The final part of the first analect offers a bittersweet lament about the exemplary person who does not feel hurt even when not recognized.56 Confucius was obviously pained that he was not acknowledged in his age. If this is an authentic saying of Confucius, it offers an insight into his own selfawareness, an illustration of the notion that we teach best what we most need to learn; the teacher receives the first teaching. We can hear an inner dialogue of the Master teaching himself an important lesson. While Confucius died without seeing his vision implemented in a reigning state, he could maintain his personal goal of focus upon the values of the Confucian tradition.57 “To be patient even when one’s talents are unrecognized—is this not the mark of the exemplary person?” We can hear in this statement the poignancy of Confucius’ own self-perception in his generation. The Analects includes several exhortations to its listeners to maintain their moral selfintegrity, without concern for recognition from others.58 [ 66 ]

confucIAn HAppIness

Li: The Role of Ritual When we turn to the twelfth analect of the opening chapter we come to the central role of li: 1.12 When it comes to the practice of ritual, it is harmonious ease (he) that is to be valued. It is precisely such harmony that makes the Way of the Former Kings so beautiful. If you merely stick rigidly to ritual in all matters, great and small, there will remain that which you cannot accomplish. Yet if you know enough to value harmonious ease but try to attain it without being regulated by the rites, this will not work either.59

It is true that Confucian culture is highly orchestrated, but it would be a mistake to presume that ceremony is a matter of patterned form alone. The rectification of names means one cannot be a true father or ruler or daughter in name alone; we must fully embody the ritual practices our role entails. Nor is intent alone sufficient. From the Confucian perspective, it is not enough to feel grateful to another person; one must express gratitude through words and gestures of thanks. We express respect through greeting someone when we see him or her; otherwise, our friend feels neglected.60 A recent study of ritual theory, Ritual and Its Consequences, has added an important corrective to modern emphasis on inner sincerity alone as the crucial dimension of ritual.61 Nevertheless, it is clear that Confucius emphasized the integration of ritual practice with an appropriate sense of respect: 3:26 The Master said, “Someone who lacks magnanimity when occupying high office, who is not respectful when performing ritual, and who remains unmoved by sorrow when overseeing mourning rites—how could I bear to look upon such a person?” 2.7 Ziyou asked about filial piety. The Master said, “Nowadays ‘filial’ means simply being able to provide one’s parents with nourishment. But even dogs and horses are provided with nourishment. If you are not respectful, wherein lies the difference?”

Both ritual form and respect are crucial; while it is clear that for Confucius filial piety must be expressed through the cultural patterns of li, ritual must also be carried out with genuine reverence and dignity. [ 67 ]

confucIAn HAppIness Indeed, every tradition and art form must mediate between form and spirit; Analect 1.12 suggests the ideal of their integration. Clinging rigidly to formal constraints can stifle the expression of beauty, but even freeimprovisational jazz has forms—there are basic patterns and melodies to which we return as a touchstone. Free improvisation alone with no structure does not create harmony. Harmonious ease without being regulated by ritual forms does not create beautiful expressions of culture or interpersonal attunement. Confucius talks about being regulated or disciplined by ritual; ritual has the function of disciplining our native “stuff” (zhi). However, unlike later Confucians such as Mencius and Xunzi, Confucius does not explicitly articulate a view on whether humans are innately good or bad. He seems to think that it is not necessarily that our native endowment is bad, but that it needs to be disciplined and tempered by ritual; those who grow up not knowing the ritual forms of their culture are at a disadvantage. Research confirms that self-discipline is a key to human flourishing. A classic study at Stanford University showed that children who learn to say no and discipline themselves succeed in the future. Psychologist Walter Mischel tracked children who could defer gratification for a treat; years later those who were able to wait longer were found to have accomplished their goals and succeeded socially.62 Being able to say no has also been shown to be a boon out of depression.63 Research thus supports the Confucian intuition that there are few things more empowering than a sense of self-mastery, being able to guide our impulses so we can attain what we truly want in life. In the Confucian view, self-mastery is the fruit of a lifelong commitment to moral self-cultivation, culminating in an effortless ease of action that radiates from the individual and has a powerful, salutary effect on others. Confucius illustrates the process of self-development by which he grew to embody this moral ideal through his celebrated spiritual autobiography: “2.4 At age fifteen, I set my heart upon learning; at thirty, I took my stand [my place in society]; at forty I became free of doubts; at fifty I understood the Heavenly Mandate; at sixty my ear was attuned; and at seventy I could follow my heart’s desires without overstepping the bounds of propriety (the architect’s square).” This precis shows Confucius’ own path of learning for selfcultivation. He attuned his ear to the heavenly mandate (ming), a cosmic sense of the way the observances of li express the will of heaven.64 Cultivating harmonious action entails a long process of practicing traditional forms and at[ 68 ]

confucIAn HAppIness tuning oneself to them. Then one is able to know what the present situation and context demand—both through having internalized a repertoire of ritual actions and through a keen sense of how specific ritual actions might apply to the situation at hand.65 By age seventy, Confucius had been so shaped by traditional forms that any tension between norm and inclination had dissolved; his desires naturally came to harmonize with ritual tradition. However, while Confucius did believe that the ritual patterns of the Zhou expressed the rhythms of the cosmos, one must be careful of clinging to the forms alone, without the quality of humanity they are meant to inculcate. Thus Confucius emphasizes that ritual must go hand in hand with humaneness, as we see in his reflections on ritual and the arts.

Ritual, Aesthetics, and Moral Self-Cultivation 3.3 A person who is not humane [ren], what does he have to do with ritual [li]? A person who is not humane [ren], what has he to do with music?

This analect is reminiscent of an oracle from the Biblical prophet Isaiah: “Of what use are your many sacrifices to me? says the Lord. . . . When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you, even when you pray at length, I do not hear; your hands are full of blood. Wash, cleanse yourselves, remove the evil of your deeds from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, strengthen the robbed, perform justice for the orphan, plead the case of the widow.”66 What is the meaning of sacrifice or prayer if one’s hands are full of blood from human violence?67 In both the Confucian and Biblical texts, the speaker is not rejecting outward ritual forms. Rather, the outward form ideally will be matched by commitment to the Way and to expressing the spirit of the ritual. A person who is adept at ritual and music yet lacking in humanity has missed the point of the forms. The point of ritual is not just to harmonize with the culture’s tradition or with the cosmos as a whole; the point is also to become a person sensitized to fellow human beings. Ritual attunes with a sacred order of both society and cosmos; ritual fosters humaneness.68 Eno points out that ancient Chinese culture featured a different conception of the self, one that extends beyond the physical body. According to this [ 69 ]

confucIAn HAppIness contextual notion of self, our external actions are part of defining who we are, as are our position in family and community. Hence in order to transform ourselves, we must transform the way we interact with the world. Since Descartes, many of us in the West have defined the self as an inner thinking subject; thus we conceive of self-transformation as an inner emotional or cognitive process.69 In contrast, if we think of the self as defined through our interactions with others, then the means to transform the self is behavioral; the project of ritual action (li) thus makes sense as the vehicle for becoming humane.70 To be a humane person does not consist primarily in a set of inner thoughts or feelings, but in the way we interact in community. We cultivate humanity by behaving in ritually prescribed ways with our fellow human beings.71 We find a similar pointed critique in 17.11: “When we say, ‘the rites, the rites’ are we speaking merely of jade and silk? When we say, ‘music, music,’ are we speaking merely of bells and drums?” Ritual is not defined by its outer trappings of fine jade and silk ornaments, any more than music is confined to the instruments that produce it. It is easy to confuse ritual with pomp and circumstance, forgetting the need for sensitive ritual practice.72 In our opening Analect 3.3, Confucius also draws an inextricable connection between ritual practice and the cultivation of an ethical character. Those who are engaged in perfecting ritual forms without the commitment to becoming humane have lost sight of the fact that ritual practice is meant to cultivate ethical sensitivity. At the same time, Confucius is equally adamant that moral sensitivity in turn must be expressed through the proper ritual form.73 Indeed, we see a love for the formal beauty of ritual in the following analect: “3.17 Zigong wanted to do away with the practice of sacrificing a lamb to announce the beginning of the month. The Master said, ‘Zigong! You regret the loss of the lamb, whereas I regret the loss of the rite.’” The lamb sacrifice had originally been part of a larger ritual that was no longer being practiced by the rulers of Lu, the province in which Confucius lived. However, the lamb sacrifice was continued by certain leaders of Lu who wanted to keep alive the ancient tradition. For Zigong, this was a waste of a lamb, since the full ritual was no longer practiced. For Confucius, however, to continue the practice is a way to keep a cultural memory alive, even while mourning the loss of its full ritual enactment.74 Confucius’ response to the lamb sacrifice in this analect calls to mind the relationship to sacrifice we find in Rabbinic Judaism. For the Talmudic rab[ 70 ]

confucIAn HAppIness bis, studying the sacrificial rituals was a way of preserving the memory of ancient Israelite religious practices even when they could no longer be carried out once the Jerusalem Temple no longer stood. This perspective was carried over into medieval and modern times. For example, the great medieval codifier Maimonides held that sacrifices were instituted to wean the Hebrews from pagan rituals; nevertheless, sacrifice continued even in the absence of those practices. The ritual instituted is preserved, even if its original rationale no longer applies. Vestigial rituals are maintained out of love for the system itself. The ritual universe of the Zhou has a peculiar aesthetic beauty to which Confucius is exquisitely attuned; for Confucius, one cannot separate aesthetic beauty from moral sensitivity. We see a vivid expression of the role of beauty and the arts in moral self-cultivation in a series of analects that begins with 3.23: 3.23 The Master was discussing music with the Grand Music Master of Lu. He said, “What can be known about music is this: when it first begins, it resounds with a confusing variety of notes, but as it unfolds, these notes are reconciled by streams of harmony, brought into tension by means of counterpoint and finally woven together into a seamless whole. It is in this way that music reaches its perfection.”

This analect illustrates the interconnection of music, ritual, and moral selfcultivation, as music “serves as a model or metaphor for the process of self cultivation, starting in confusion, passing through many phases and culminating in a state of wu-wei perfection.”75 As we saw in Confucius’ autobiographical statement in 3.12, the goal is to practice ritual until the tension between our desires and the ritual form is erased and we naturally harmonize with the patterns of ritual. The theme of music is carried further in 3.25: “The Master said of the Shao music, ‘It is perfectly beautiful, but not perfectly good (shan).’ He said of the Wu music, ‘it is perfectly good, but not perfectly beautiful.’” To understand this analect, we should note that the characters “joy” and “music” create a graphic pun; the two words are represented by a single character.76 The Shao music is the music of the ancient sage king Shun. In Analects 15.5 we learn that King Shun ruled by wu-wei, ruling by not overtly ruling; he merely took up his ritual stance, and the whole kingdom responded. King Wu, in contrast, ruled by resorting to force; this stance [ 71 ]

confucIAn HAppIness is reflected in his music, which though aesthetically beautiful is not morally good.77 Convinced that music reflects one’s ethical character, Confucius senses in King Wu’s music the flaw that led to his inappropriate ritual action. Confucius is attuned to both aesthetic and moral dimensions of music, a fact we see graphically in 7.14, in another depiction of Confucius’ response to Shao music: “7.14 When the Master was in the state of Qi, he heard the Shao music, and for three months after did not even notice the taste of meat. He said, ‘I never imagined that music could be so sublime.’” The sublimity of Shao music lies in the combination of aesthetic beauty and the moral character it expresses; when ritual propriety and the arts are combined, the synergy can produce sublime rapture. One might compare this in a Western context to the transcendent quality of religious music in the setting of a brilliant classical composer—a Mozart Mass, Verdi Requiem, or Mendelsohn’s oratorio Elijah. The music has the capacity to move us by conveying both moral uplift and aesthetic beauty. Thus in 8.15 Confucius is not commenting on aural quality alone: “8.15 From the time Music Master Zhi begins, to the closing strains of the Cry of the Osprey—how one’s ears are filled with a wondrous ocean of sounds!” One interpretation takes the passage as describing the progression of a classical musical performance, which seems to have opened with a vocal solo and concluded with a grand chorus and orchestral finale, featuring the words of the Odes.78 Music plays a key role in ethical self-cultivation, in fact a crucial part, as Socrates tells Glaucon in Plato’s Republic: “Then aren’t those the reasons, Glaucon, that musical training is most important? First, because rhythm and harmony permeate the innermost element of the soul, affecting it more powerfully than anything else, and bringing it grace; such education makes one graceful if one is properly trained and the opposite if one is not.”79 Music is thus both a crucial force for ethical cultivation and a sign of one’s character.80 We have seen that Confucius himself was acutely sensitive to the joy of exalted music. Perhaps the power of music lies not only in its emotional impact, but in its exemplary quality of wu-wei harmony and attentive awareness. Musical training requires discipline and focus; like a martial art, music enables us to bring all the forces of our being together. The arts bring joy, appreciation of beauty, and rapture, but also require intense focus and discipline. To perform an orchestral ballet or a complex opera requires delicate interpersonal awareness, attunement to one’s fellow artists and performers. [ 72 ]

confucIAn HAppIness And as we have seen in 3.3, ritual and music must express as much as possible the spirit of humaneness. The process of achieving moral self-cultivation through ritual and music is detailed in the following analect: “8.8 The Master said, ‘Find inspiration in the Odes, take your place through ritual, and achieve perfection with music.’”81 The first component of the analect suggests that one can find one’s initial moral inspiration in the study of the ancient Odes.82 The second component of the analect is variously translated as taking one’s place or taking one’s stand, steadying one’s course, learning how to stand, or being given a firm footing. We recall that this was one of the stages in Confucius’ own process of spiritual growth; “at thirty, I took my stand” (2.4). We receive a further clue to this process in 16.13, where Confucius’ son Boyu tells us the instruction he received from his father: “if you do not learn the Odes, you will lack the means to speak” and “if you do not learn ritual, you will lack the means to take your stand.” It thus seems that by mastering ritual one can take one’s place as an adult within society.83 We are understanding of children who violate social norms, but adults in society must know the appropriate ritual means of expressing moral virtues. We thus develop positive moral attitudes through study of poetry and habituate ourselves in moral virtues through practice of ritual action. The final step of music represents the culmination of these two modes of self-cultivation; it can inspire the exaltation expressed by Confucius when he heard the music of the Shan.84 A famous passage from Mencius 4:A:27 expresses this path beautifully: Humanity is realized in the service of one’s parents, and righteousness is realized in obedience to one’s elder brothers; the fruits of wisdom are to understand these two things and never stray from them. The realization of ritual consists of their measured refinement; of music, in rejoicing in them. Where there is joy, then these two grow, and how can they desist from growing? When you too can no longer desist, then unconsciously your feet start tapping and your hands start dancing.85

Wu-wei harmony is expressed both in ritual actions expressing humaneness and in music and the arts, through which we can experience the joy of living the Way. [ 73 ]

confucIAn HAppIness

Attentive Awareness in the Confucian Tradition It might be instructive to step back at this point to reflect on what intentionality or attentive awareness means in the context of this tradition. There is a paradox here. On the one hand, when we think of intentionality we think of full attention to the present moment of experience. This would seem to be an acute awareness and sensitivity to our surroundings, our body, and the activity in which we are engaged. In contrast, Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi has outlined what he has called an experience of flow that might seem to be the opposite: we are so absorbed in what we are doing that we lose awareness of ourselves; we are lost in the activity itself.86 However, Confucius describes both dimensions of experience: acute awareness and full absorption in activity. For example, when a local ruler asks Zilu about Confucius, Confucius suggests he respond: “7.19 Why not just say something like this: ‘He is the type of person who becomes so absorbed in his studies that he forgets to eat, whose joy renders him free of worries, and who grows old without being aware of the passage of years.’” Confucius is thus able to become so fully immersed in study that he forgets himself. In an apocryphal story in the Book of Zhuangzi, about a dialogue between Confucius and his favorite disciple Yan Hui, this is taken in the direction of complete loss of ego in the infinite: “Yan Hui said, ‘I am not attached to the body and I give up any idea of knowing. By freeing myself from the body and mind, I become one with the infinite. This is what I mean by sitting and forgetting.’”87 The historical Confucius and Yan Hui would surely not use this kind of Daoist language. Nevertheless, there is an element of self-forgetfulness in the ability to become fully absorbed and engaged in studies and activities. In another anecdote we have seen, Confucius was so lost in the rapture of hearing the music of the sage king Shun that for three months he did not even notice the taste of meat.88 One form of focused awareness thus entails becoming completely absorbed in an activity such as study, dance, or a martial art or an object of meditation such as music. On the face of it, full attention and intentionality in ritual would seem to suggest the opposite of self-forgetfulness. In practice, however, the full awareness and focus of ritual may also lead to freedom from distracting aspects of self. We see this emphasis in the following much-quoted analect: “3.12 ‘Sacrifice as if [they were] present’ means that, when sacrificing to [ 74 ]

confucIAn HAppIness the spirits, you should comport yourself as if the spirits were present. The Master said, ‘If I am not fully present at the sacrifice, it is as if I did not sacrifice at all.’” Sacrifice to the spirits of one’s ancestors was the most basic form of religious observance in ancient China. One would offer food and drink to the spirits, who would descend in semi-corporeal form to partake of one’s offering.89 This analect has been variously interpreted. Is Confucius agnostic about the real existence of spirits? He may be saying that whether or not the spirits exist, what matters is his own full presence; he may be discounting the notion that mere formality alone is sufficient. The ritual does not work unless accompanied by genuine intention, by full presence of heart and mind. Sacrifice is thus both an expression of respect for the ancestors and an opportunity to grow in intentionality and awareness. The ritual enactments of Confucian culture serve as a kind of meditation in life. Confucius has expressed his conviction that he needs to be fully present in the sacrifices to the ancestors. Since he is also emphatic that we should be more devoted to living human beings than to ghosts and spirits, we can infer that we should bring full presence to all our human social encounters, as he expresses in 12.2. All civil life is conducted as a sacred ceremonial dance. Moreover, as we will see, Confucius is adamant that one must take joy in one’s ritual practice. Full presence, intentionality, and joy in ritual can raise one from the level of a distracted, divided self to a fully absorbed and focused self—the very opposite of the intrusive ego. Full presence in an activity can bring the loss of awkward self-consciousness that interferes with one’s flow. This is one dimension of harmonious experience, a kind of wu-wei or effortless action in the broad sense of the term. Being at ease in ritual means allowing the tradition to express itself through us; the ritual forms have become such an integral part of who we are that we express ourselves naturally in their idioms. There is an effortless ease of action—not only in ritual or meditative spheres, but in the sphere of human relations as well. While we usually associate attentive awareness and intentionality with ritual and meditative practices, the Confucian tradition offers an additional alternative. Our human interactions can also offer opportunities for intentional awareness: “12. 2. Zhong Gong asked about humaneness [ren]. The Master said, ‘When in public, comport yourself as if you were receiving an important guest; in your management of the people, behave as if you were [ 75 ]

confucIAn HAppIness overseeing a great sacrifice. Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. In this way, you will encounter no resentment in your public or private life (in your state or in your family).’’’ Interactions with other people are not undertaken on automatic. Rather, they should be undertaken with full presence, as if one were overseeing a great sacrifice. The Confucian Way thus offers us the opportunity for intentionality in every activity of our social lives. In Buddhism we hear the definition of mindfulness: “when we walk, we know we are walking; when we eat, we know we are eating.” Confucius adds the social dimension as a sphere of spiritual growth. When we interact with people, we are practicing the Confucian Way in its essence.90 However, we should be careful to contextualize Analect 12.2. Eno and others have called attention to the connection between 12.2 and 12.1. Analect 12.1 offers a strong statement that the core of humaneness is the practice of li, ritual propriety: Restraining yourself and returning to the rites constitutes humanity. If for one day you managed to restrain yourself and return to the rites, in this way you could lead the entire world back to humanity. The key to achieving humaneness lies within yourself—how could it come from others? Yan Hui asked, May I inquire as to the specifics? The Master said, “Do not look unless it is in accordance with ritual; do not listen unless it is in accordance with ritual; do not speak unless it is in accordance with ritual; do not move unless it is in accordance with ritual. Yan Hui replied: Although I am not quick to understand, I ask permission to devote myself to this teaching.

Eno notes that in our culture we do not normally think of the Golden Rule of 12.2 in terms of the highly ritualized mode of conduct outlined in 12.1.91 But if we think of the fact that Confucians saw the self as expressed in conduct, it makes sense that practice of correct conduct would constitute the way we become fully human and likewise express genuine reciprocity in our social interactions.92 12.1 is also an important source for the theme of self-mastery and moral self-cultivation through the practice of ritual, which we have already discussed in the context of 1.12. Analect 1.12 emphasizes the harmony brought about through self-mastery; 12.1 speaks of restraining and conquering oneself through the practice of ritual. Thus one becomes a fully human, integrated personality through the self-mastery that the practice of li requires. [ 76 ]

confucIAn HAppIness Eno has indeed described the unifying, holistic ideal of Confucian sagehood as embodying several dimensions of focus and intentionality. First, ethical action demands exquisite concentration so that one never deviates from humaneness. Second, the ideal of sagehood brings integration, linking one’s teaching and practice upon a single thread.93 Third, there is a sense of being in control; since one has a unified understanding of the world, one knows how to respond properly in all situations. Finally, this brings the dimensions of freedom, joy, and mastery. Ritual mastery brings the joy we associate with music and dance—the exquisitely choreographed integration of role, harmony, and social participation.94

Conclusion: Confucian Pleasure and Joy Ritual practice and social interaction with full intentionality should ideally include practicing the Way with love and joy. This culminates in the kind of effortless ease of action that is harmony with the Way: “6.20 One who knows it is not the equal of one who loves it and one who loves it is not the equal of one who takes joy in it.” Similarly, when Confucius expresses his deepest desire, he suggests that the goal of Confucian practice is being at ease in virtue: “To bring ease to the aged, to have trust in my friends, and to cherish the youth (5.26).” And more poignantly in 11.26: “To assemble a company of five or six young men and six or seven boys to go bathe in the Yi river and enjoy the breeze upon the Rain Altar, and then return singing to the Master’s house. . . . I am with Zengxi!”95 Confucius thus aspires to a kind of effortless joy, a thorough immersion in ritual practice in which ritual becomes a dance in which one can gracefully lose oneself. Dance indeed is a fitting metaphor for the kind of wu-wei Confucius exemplifies, as the early ru were engaged in ritual dance and song.96 There are moments in dance in which one is fully aware of one’s every motion, and others in which one becomes completely lost in the dance. These are two sides of the beauty of Confucian practice: attentive awareness and spontaneous, effortless ease. In our discussion of Aristotle and Epicurus, we asked two related questions: what is it to take pleasure or joy, and what are things in which people take pleasure? We conclude our study of Confucius by returning to the opening analect, which describes three things in which the sage takes joy: learning [ 77 ]

confucIAn HAppIness for the sake of self-cultivation, having friends visit from afar, and not minding if one is not recognized. That is, one finds joy in appreciating the intrinsic values of Confucian self-cultivation.97 When we are attuned to what we genuinely value in life, we find little importance in honor, material luxuries, fame, and approval and can take pleasure in the simple joys of friendship, family, and community. There is indeed a Stoic strand to Confucius’ thought; the greatest source of joy is our own virtue.98 The key to flourishing is taking pleasure in the kind of people we can become and the simple pleasure of living in harmony with others and the Way of the universe. To hear the Way is a source of delight: “In the morning, hear the Way; in the evening, die content” (4.8). We realize how good it is that there is a moral order to the universe and a way to align ourselves with it; the Way embodies normative ritual patterns whose rhythms bring joy and harmony. We are in right relationship with the world.99 We have noted Confucius’ conviction that “to understand [the Dao] is not as good as to delight in it; to delight in [the Dao] is not as good as to find joy in it” (6.20). In Chapter 7 we will see a similar progression in the thought of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides—a connection between understanding, love, and joy. Of course there are significant differences between the two thinkers as well. Maimonides, like Aristotle, takes joy in cognitive understanding, while Confucius’ brand of wisdom is not purely discursive or theoretical; it is understanding of the way things are and the best way to live. The final stage is when we embrace the Confucian Way wholeheartedly as a way we ourselves can follow. Ivanhoe points to the significance of the pairing of music and joy brought out pungently by Mencius. Like moral self-cultivation, music can take us over and bring us joy even despite ourselves; as Mencius expresses it, our feet start tapping and our hands start dancing.100 We realize we are growing—and there is no experience like it. To learn and to grow are experiences that bring deep and lasting fulfillment.101 Key to Confucius’ conception of joy, as Ivanhoe brings out elegantly, is a sense of giving ourselves over to something greater—social solidarity and connection to others, to the past through tradition and to the present through family and community.102 Confucius is aware of the power of selftranscendence; the sense of being connected to a larger whole can be a powerful motivating force, whether for goodness and health or for the unwholesome. Thus Confucius notes: [ 78 ]

confucIAn HAppIness 16.5 People take joy in three things that help them and three things that injure them. To find joy in the regulation provided by ritual and music, to find joy in discussing the goodness of others, and to find joy in having many worthy friends— these things help. To take joy in extravagance, to find joy in desultory wandering, and to take joy in feasting—these things injure.

We therefore see in Confucius as we did in Aristotle that pleasure and joy are normative concepts. To take pleasure in what injures is not proper, and thus it is not accurate to call this pleasure. Pleasure is what the good person enjoys: the harmony provided by ritual and music, appreciating the goodness of others, delighting in friendships that help us grow. Ritual and music enhance our sense of self-mastery; they bring us disciplined spontaneity, freedom, and joy. We know that anarchy is not freedom; we can be at loose ends not knowing what to do with ourselves. We find a deeper sense of freedom within a structure—giving ourselves the pleasures our mind, body, and emotions can genuinely enjoy in balanced measures. Plato, Aristotle, and Confucius thus stress the importance of moral education; we must educate our senses to take pleasure in those things that will bring us genuine fulfillment. Happiness for Confucius lies in cultivating our full humanity and expressing humaneness in our interactions and relationships. We can thus enjoy the harmony that arises from practice of ancient cultural forms and attunement to a moral order that is good and beautiful.

[ 79 ]

FOUR

Daoism Attentive Awareness and Effortless Ease of Action (Wu-Wei)

We have seen that Confucianism and Daoism can be understood as two poles of Chinese religious culture that also share a common heritage and vocabulary. The Confucians and Daoists were but two of the so-called Hundred Schools of Thought that emerged during the period of the Warring States (480–222 bce), all disputing the Way or Dao to be followed. The Daoist tradition itself has a long and complex history;1 the two most well-known texts of the early or nascent Daoist tradition are the Zhuangzi, attributed to Zhuang Zhou (fourth century) and the Daodejing, attributed to a figure known by the honorific Laozi (Old Master).2 These two texts will be the focus of this chapter; we will see that the Daodejing in particular shares with Confucius’ Analects a vocabulary and sets of interests. Let us then read some of the chapters of the Daodejing and Zhuangzi with a view to clarifying the two texts’ views of happiness and intentional awareness, in light of Confucian culture.

The Daodejing The Dao that can be dao’ed is not the constant Dao The name that can be named is not the constant name.3 Nameless: the origin of heaven and earth Naming: the mother of ten thousand things. [ 80 ]

dAoIsm Empty of desire, perceive mystery. Filled with desire, perceive manifestations. These have the same source, but different names.   Call them both deep—      Deep and again deep: The gateway to all mystery

The term Dao was used in a variety of ways in Chinese culture. We have seen that a dao is a way of doing things, a teaching, a path or roadway. Confucius considered that by following the way of the ancient Zhou Dynasty, one could attune oneself to the basic patterns of the cosmos. One of the principles that would set all of society in harmony and order was the rectification or correcting of names. To correct the chaos and anarchy that had developed during the period of the Warring States, where parents and children were involved in unfilial behavior including murderous coups, Confucius asserted, “Let the ruler be a ruler; the minister, a minister; the father, a father; the son, a son.4 People should behave in accordance with their roles; names should conform to reality, and reality should accord with names. Everyone has a rightful place within a well-ordered cosmos, beginning with the five constant relationships. Confucius thus expresses a supreme optimism about the power of names to express, define, and order reality. Names have healing power. In contrast to this vision, Laozi opens the text with the bold declaration that names do not capture reality; the Dao that can be dao’d is not dao. The first line of the text has six characters, three of which are dao. As a verb, dao means to say or to tell. The first character is Dao, a way. The next is “canbe”; the third is dao as verb (“way/tell”); the third is “not”; the fourth is “enduring/constant/lasting” and the final is dao.5 Hence: “The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way.”6 What is a dao that can be spoken of? A dao can be the prescriptive way one is to do things: the dao of the father, the dao of the son. And then there is the overarching dao of Confucius, the body of teachings and ritual practices he transmits from the ancient Zhou as his remedy for the ills of his society and his vision of harmony and human flourishing. But this kind of dao, a dao that can be spoken of, prescribed in positive terms, and followed is not the constant, enduring dao, says Laozi. A name that [ 81 ]

dAoIsm can be named and rectified—prince, ruler, father son—is not an enduring, constant name. There is something more subtle in reality than the teaching one can set forth in language and the name that tells us our role-defined duties. There is the Nameless, which is the beginning of heaven and earth, and the named, which is the mother of the myriad living beings. There is a pattern of naming that gives birth to all things; behind and logically prior to it is the nameless, the origin of heaven and earth. Laozi’s advice is that there is a way to flourish that does not rely on formally given roles and guidelines for living. Laozi’s dao is what one scholar has called a non-dao, the non-prescriptive way.7 Rather than looking for that which confines and defines reality in predetermined roles, we are bidden by this text to let go of formal names and attributes. There is an undefined Way, whose mysteries we can observe by eliminating our preferential desires. When we arrive at a state of non-being or nothing (wu) and non-intentional doing (wu-wei), we begin to perceive the mystery of that which is in itself unmanifest and acts without intentional striving. By contrast, when we are in an ordinary state of possessing desires, we can perceive its manifestations. The state of being without desires allows us to perceive the Way that is itself without desire; the state of desire allows us to perceive the manifest world in which there are things to do, to pursue, to achieve. Laozi is not telling us to live in the unmanifest world alone, but to maintain the fluidity to move between the unmanifest and the manifest, as the Dao itself does. As he will tell us in Chapter 52, The world has a source: the world’s mother Once you have the mother,   You know the children Once you know the children,   Return to the mother.

The unmanifest, the source, is the key to understanding this phenomenal reality. In order to understand the world of manifestation, we must continually return to its source in the hidden. Once we understand the silent, absolutely simple Dao we can understand the process of movement, change, desire, and fulfillment. We need not get caught up in the world of movement, change, and desire if we always remember to return to the source. [ 82 ]

dAoIsm Laozi thus points us to an ineffable, mysterious Way behind the manifest ways and beings of our multiple world. As we let go of desires, names, rules—fixed modes of defining reality and fixed roles we strive to achieve— we come closer to a mystery at the heart of reality. There is a mysterious Way that acts without intention. It is a mother of the myriad living beings, but acts without conscious will.8 Now we have seen that Confucius also believes in a powerful, mysterious force that acts behind the scenes without words or will. This does have a name—Heaven or Nature (Tian). He argues that Heaven does not speak, and yet the seasons change and the rains fall.9 He too would like to imitate the Way of Heaven by acting without striving and speaking without words. But he realizes he cannot; he has been called upon by Heaven to be the bell clanger that wakes people up.10 Laozi, too, implicitly violates the principle he articulates at the opening of his work. The true Dao, he tells us, is ineffable—and yet he feels moved for eighty-one chapters to speak about that which cannot be spoken. He chooses the language of poetry, image, and pointing, as the constant Dao cannot be arrived at through logical, discursive argument. The Daodejing is a teaching text, one meant to prod us to a way of experience and living. What more do we know about this ineffable source of all and what it can provide as a way of being? The Dao is described as empty (4) and as nonbeing (40). This emptiness and lack of being do not signal a void or a lack, but rather pregnancy, openness. It is non-defined, delimited being, and thus spacious and open to all possibilities; the Dao’s emptiness is really limitlessness. We are reminded of Aristotle’s pungent remarks about the infinite. Most people think that the infinite is that which contains all things, but if it contained all, this would make it finite. Rather, the infinite is that to which one can always add.11 Here, too, the lack of defined being signifies the limitlessness of pure potentiality. What does this sense of pure potential give us? The openness of endless possibility: Dao is empty—  Its use never exhausted. Bottomless—  The origin of all things. [ 83 ]

dAoIsm It blunts sharp edges,  Unties knots,  Softens glare,  Becomes one with the dusty world. Deeply subsistent— I don’t know whose child it is. It is older than the Supreme Spirit (Shangdi)

(4)

Precisely because it is empty, its use is never exhausted. It is like a bellows: Heaven and Earth And all the space between Are like a bellows: Empty but inexhaustible, Always producing more

(5)

This is the process of the world of manifestation, to always produce more from the inexhaustible dao. Heaven and earth are not kind (ren); the myriad things are straw dogs to them—like sacrificial animals that are discarded after the sacrifice. Whereas, in Confucian thought, Heaven is the source of the virtue that Confucian finds within himself, the source of moral injunction and moral order, for Laozi, Heaven is not endowed with the key Confucian virtue of human-heartedness (ren). Heaven and earth are impersonal sources and processes. And yet discovering this source makes available to us an endless flow of energy: The valley spirit never dies It is called the mysterious female The entrance to the Mysterious Female Is called the root of heaven and earth Endless flow Of inexhaustible energy [ 84 ]

dAoIsm Thus, although the Dao is source of all, Laozi prefers to describe it in feminine imagery. The female is the fertile, the fecund. It is the root of heaven and earth—the world of manifestation. By tapping into it, we align ourselves with an endless source of creativity. If we stay with the manifest, our energy and creativity can dry up; when we remember to return to the source, we arrive at a spirit that never dies, a source of unlimited creativity. The Laozi is drawing here on the mythic imagery of ancient Chinese culture, which most probably featured a female valley spirit; now he identifies the endless female spirit with the Dao. Likewise, he tells us that the Dao is older than Shangdi, the ancestral spirit of the Shang dynasty, adopted by the Zhou as its high god. The Dao is older than the manifest gods. In Chapter 1, it looks like it is naming that gives birth to heaven and earth. That is, when we do not name, we are in the presence of the unnamed Dao; when we name, we divide and classify reality. In Chapter 25, we see something like a cosmogonic myth, which offers another basic principle of the Dao—spontaneity, naturalness, being so of itself (ziran): Something unformed and complete Before heaven and earth were born,12 Solitary and silent, Stands alone and unchanging Pervading all things without limit It is like the mother of all under heaven, But I don’t know its name—  Better call it Dao.  Better call it great Great means passing on Passing on means going far. Going far means returning. Therefore,  Dao is great,  And heaven, [ 85 ]

dAoIsm  And earth,  And humans. Four great things in the world. Aren’t humans one of them? Humans follow earth Earth follows heaven Heaven follows Dao. Dao follows its own nature (Dao fa ziran).

Dao is prior to heaven and earth, like the mother of all under heaven. It looks like the unchanging is the source of all change; it passes on into the world of manifestation, returning or reversing back to the unmanifest. We may also see here a response to Confucian ordering of the world. The Dao is the source of heaven, earth, and humans, but humans are only one great thing in the world among the others—like the tiny figures we see in Daoist art, among the breathtaking landscape of water, mountain, and sky. Even the greatest thing in the Confucian cosmos—Heaven—follows Dao. And what does Dao follow? Dao follow its own nature, spontaneity, to be so of itself (ziran).13 In the Confucian worldview, Heaven has a mission, entrusted to Confucius—to restore the moral order of the civilization of the Zhou. For Laozi, in contrast, Dao is non-purposive; it is simply what it is. For Confucius, a lack of rules and moral guidelines led to the anarchy of the Warring States period; rules and guidelines free us by giving us the discipline that brings harmony to society. Anarchy is not freedom, but chaos. For Laozi, the law of the Dao is to act naturally, spontaneously, without intention, and this is the way of being upon which we should model ourselves. As Dao acts in a way that is ziran, we should also aim to be so of ourselves. We see clearly the difference between the Confucian approach and that of Laozi in Chapter 57. While Confucius sees the role of governance as creating strict laws and guidelines to discipline humanity in a civil way, Laozi sees this approach as counterproductive: The more prohibitions and rules   The poorer people become.

[ 86 ]

dAoIsm The sharper people’s weapons,   The more they riot. The more skilled their techniques,   The more grotesque their works. The more elaborate the laws,   The more they commit crimes. Therefore the Sage says:   I do nothing (wo wu wei) And people transform themselves   I enjoy serenity And people govern themselves   I cultivate emptiness And people become prosperous.   I have no desires And people simplify themselves.

We find here a beautiful threefold resonance. The Dao acts in a way that is so of itself; the sage follows, by acting with unforced, effortless ease (wu-wei), and thus has a therapeutic effect on those around him or her.14 The sage’s cultivation of emptiness brings the people back to a state of emptiness; as the sage lets go of desires, the people are led to simplicity. When a sage pulls back, letting go of desires, the effect upon others is to return to a place of simplicity and authenticity. While for Confucius laws are nurturing and efficacious, for Laozi they are constraining and cause backlash. Laozi has faith in human nature in its raw simplicity: Be careful in valuing words. When the work is done,     Everyone says, We just acted naturally.

(17)

To be sparing in words is what comes naturally.

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[ 87 ]

dAoIsm Thus the Dao acts in a way that is spontaneous (ziran) and without intentional striving (wu-wei). The sage acts like the Dao, and the wu-wei action of the sage brings forth a wu-wei response in all those around the sage. Naturalness (ziran), effortless action (wu-wei), and emptiness (wu) are thus intertwined ways of talking about the qualities and characteristics of the Dao, although the Dao is beyond qualities and characteristics.15 Emptiness is what is not there; it is the empty space that gives us use: Thirty spokes join one hub, The wheel’s use comes from emptiness. Clay is fired to make a pot. The pot’s use comes from emptiness Windows and doors are cut to make a room. The room’s use comes from emptiness Therefore,     Having leads to profit.     Not having leads to use.

A wheel can turn and a carriage can roll only by relying on what is not there, the empty space at its hub; likewise, a room’s use comes from its spaciousness. We forget that it can only be put to use by virtue of Nothing.16 Laozi’s point is of course not simply about wheels that turn and pots or rooms that need space to contain things. He wants to point us to the subtle interstices of reality, to the space from which our creative ideas flow.17 We tend to look at the manifest, what is and is clearly seen; Laozi bids us to look at the spaciousness and potentiality that makes possible what is. We look at the product, the end result; we forget that being emerges from potentiality, from nothingness: Reversal is Dao’s movement Yielding is Dao’s practice. All things originate from being. Being originates from non-being

(40)

Like the Dao itself, the Daodejing practices a reversal of values. What is ordinarily valued is the assertive, the masculine, doing, achieving. Laozi bids us look at the quieter way nature produces: through yielding, the feminine, [ 88 ]

dAoIsm the receptive, acting by allowing.18 Robert Hendricks suggests the analogy of a field that nurtures and produces the fruits of spring without “doing” anything.19 It is the supportive presence that quietly allows fruits to ripen in their own season: Dao bears them De nurses them Events form them Energy completes them. Therefore the ten thousand beings Honor Dao and respect De Because they do not give orders But endure in their own nature. Therefore Dao bears them and De nurses them,  Rears them  Raises them  Shelters them  Nurtures them  Supports them  Protects them Bears them without owning them Helps them without coddling them Rears them without ruling them. This is called original De.

(51)

The term de is sometimes translated as power, potency, efficacy, or virtue. It is that which the individual “gets” from the universal Dao.20 A plant is nurtured quietly by the nutrients of the field. A child is nurtured, sheltered, and protected by the parent who stands by and allows her to express her own individuality, in contrast to the one who pokes and prods—like the character in Mencius who pulls up sprouts to try to help the grain grow and inadvertently destroys them.21 Wu-wei is thus a way of being that supports and [ 89 ]

dAoIsm nurtures growth without being aggressive, intrusive, or overbearing. This is a way of teaching as well as ruling: The softest thing in the world Rides roughshod over the strongest No-thing enters no-space This teaches me the benefit of no-action Teaching without words, Benefit without action— Few in this world can attain this.

(43)

The most powerful teaching is the power of example—the touch of a hand, the energy of pure presence. When the sage stills himself, the quiet radiance is felt by all around him or her. The silent, open, empty potency of the Dao is the most powerful source of action and instruction. Without going out the door,  Know the world. Without peeping through the window,  See heaven’s Dao. The further you travel,  The less you know. That is why the Sage  Knows without budging  Identifies without looking  Does without trying.

On a macrocosmic social level, this is a primitivist chapter: a call to return to a small, agrarian, non-citified culture in which one need not travel beyond the gates of one’s village. On a microcosmic individual level, the text issues a call against the accumulation of scholastic knowledge in favor of a higher type of knowledge, knowledge of heaven’s Dao, that one finds by letting go [ 90 ]

dAoIsm of action, desire, and accumulation.22 Ringing criticism is given to the false knowledge of the Confucian sages and literati in a series of three pungent chapters, 18–21: Banish learning, discard knowledge; People will gain a hundredfold. Banish benevolence [ren], discard righteousness [yi]: People will return to duty and compassion. Banish skill, discard profit: There will be no more thieves. These three statements are not enough. One more step is necessary: Look at plain silk; hold uncarved wood. The self dwindles; desires fade.

(19)

We find here a direct attack upon and undercutting of key Confucian values. The Confucian Analects open with an ode to the delight of learning; humaneness (ren) and righteousness (yi) are key Confucian virtues. But Laozi sees in their embrace the danger of hypocrisy. It is embrace of the unmanifest, symbolized by uncarved wood, that brings out the best in people.23 Accumulation of scholastic knowledge and expertise in Confucian ritual lend themselves to hypocrisy and pretense, as we see in the process of devolution expressed in Chapter 18. This biting passage presents a vision of the pristine Dao we have seen in Chapter 25—a time when all held to the great Dao naturally. It is only when we lose the original Dao that we begin to prate about values such as humaneness (ren) and righteousness (yi): Great Dao rejected  Benevolence and righteousness appear Learning and knowledge professed:  Great hypocrites spring up. Family relations forgotten:  Filial piety and affection arise. [ 91 ]

dAoIsm The nation disordered:  Patriots come forth.

The core Confucian values of ren and yi are thus artificial responses to loss of natural virtue, the sign of a fall from an age when all were in natural harmony with the great Dao. Access to the Dao gives rise to a natural process of learning; scholars boast about knowledge proudly only when this natural way of learning has been lost. It is when the natural affection children have for their parents has been lost that filial piety must be prescribed; it is when natural feelings of connection to country have been lost that we see conspicuous flag raising. For Laozi, Confucian values are about display; they are an artificial imitation of natural values. In turn, striving after these artificial goals takes us farther from attunement to our natural virtue. Chapter 20 reverses the irony of the previous two chapters, offering a portrait of the author himself, a rare snapshot in which he speaks in the first person: People are wreathed in smiles As if at a carnival banquet I alone am passive, giving no sign, Like an infant who has not yet smiled Forlorn, as if I had no home. Others have enough and more, I alone am left out. I have the mind of a fool, Confused, confused. Others are bright and intelligent, I alone am dull, dull Drifting on the ocean Blown about endlessly. Others have plans, I alone am wayward and stubborn I alone am different from others Like a baby in the womb. [ 92 ]

dAoIsm In Chapters 18 and 19 irony is pressed against the Confucian literati who proudly display their learning and virtue, through effort and exertion straying farther and farther from natural goodness. In Chapter 20 irony is pressed against the author, who describes himself as a passive infant, drifting with no plans and the mind of a fool. In contrast to the deliberate, purposeful action of the aggressive leader, the simpleton follows the spontaneous, nondeliberate non-purposeful action of the Dao. The beauty of the passage is that the irony is probably not thoroughly tongue in cheek. In contrast to the stern confidence of the polished scholastic, the holy innocent no doubt does feel foolish. Like the child in the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes, the fool sometimes wonders, “Am I the only one who sees that he has no clothes?” Everyone else is so intelligent; am I the only one who is dull and confused? Sometimes the fool is so far ahead he thinks he is behind.24 Chapter 38 offers a detailed investigation of how the original Dao is lost. Those in touch with original Dao possess unselfconscious virtue and act without ulterior motives. As virtue becomes more and more conscious and the product of striving, it has less and less the character of genuine virtue (de), the quality and potency one possesses by being in touch with the Dao. Losing the Way brings sham virtue, human-heartedness (ren), righteousness (yi), and the rites (li). The rites are the wearing thin of loyalty (zhong) and trust (hsin). Thus we develop artificial and contrived virtues and forms of external expression as we move farther from the original Way. And the prescription of Laozi is a reversal of this process.25 By letting go of artificial desires and contrived social forms, we get back to the natural and what is so of itself. One potent image of the natural is the uncarved wood (pu). Pure unformed potentiality, it is both what exists before it is carved into a particular form and what is left over when something has been carved from it. Thus it represents that which we do not normally value, the devalued and neglected. When we regard the good as good, the ugly is born and we have created the category of the bad.26 We value the flower and devalue the fertilizer that enables it to grow; we forget that the flower and the fertilizer are intertwined features of the Dao.27 Male and female, day and night, yang and yin are intertwined, mutually entailing polarities. Laozi holds up the side of the polarity we normally tend to devalue (the feminine, receptive, that which is invisible and not there) as a corrective to our tendency to value the formed, complete, and that which is there. Returning to uncarved wood reminds us of the potency of the hidden, undervalued dimension of reality.28 [ 93 ]

dAoIsm Water is another potent image central to the Daodejing: “the best good is like water” (8).29 Water is lowly, malleable; it takes on the shape of its container. Yet we underestimate the power of water; “the softest thing rides roughshod over the hardest; no-thing enters no-space” (43). Water can wind its way into crevices where nothing else can enter and can erode the hardest rock. Likewise a quiet, allowing, receptive stance can overcome opposition more powerfully than aggressive resistance. We have seen that the Daodejing speaks of the Dao in at least three ways. The Dao is an ineffable absolute, a reality that existed prior to heaven and earth, a one that exists prior to the many (1, 25, 40). It is also an immanent Way of nature, an ongoing abiding presence, manifest in the rhythms of nature and the cycles of return (40, 42). Finally the Dao is spoken of as a way of living of those in accordance with the cosmic and immanent Dao, a way of flourishing.30

Zhuangzi: Attentive Awareness and Effortless Action We introduced our study of Chinese traditions by pointing out that the theme of effortless action bridges the Confucian and Daoist traditions; this theme also serves as a bridge between Laozi and Zhuangzi. The book we know as Zhuangzi is a compilation of stories that offer fascinating guidance on how to nurture a carefree and flourishing life. What makes Zhuangzi delightful is his playful and ironic spirit, his appreciation for characters that are outside the mainstream—hunchbacks, criminals, those who have lost limbs or grown tumors—and down-to-earth examples of skill mastery illustrating a way of living that is both relaxed and focused. Indeed, Zhuangzi may have been impressed by the relaxed, effortless nature of skilled actions and extended this vision to express his ideal of psychological openness, cognitive flexibility, and a way of flowing along with life that brings equanimity and freedom. There are several principle terms and concepts that Zhuangzi uses to describe the ideal of effortless action: non-action (wu-wei), emptiness (xu), and carefree meandering (you). Some scholars describe this cluster of concepts and related ones such as “following along” and “flowing” under the umbrella term wu-wei;31 others are more cautious and restrictive in their use of the phrase.32 The term wu-wei itself—literally non-doing—probably refers to [ 94 ]

dAoIsm action that is not initiated by rational deliberation but is guided by intuition, vital energy (qi), or spirit (shen). Scholars have chosen various translations for wu-wei to convey a form of activity that is without deliberation, striving, or contrivance. I will use the term effortless action, with the caveat that I do not mean to imply lack of exertion, but action that arises without rational deliberation. Regardless of terminology, most commentators notice that Zhuangzi describes varied kinds of effortless action—some passages describe carefree meandering, others skilled activities or knacks, others complete loss of self. We will look at examples illustrating each kind of effortless action. We will begin by examining passages that use the actual terms wu-wei and carefree meandering (you). We will then turn our attention to knack stories in the inner and outer chapters, to descriptions of fasting of the mind and emptiness (wu), and to teachings on cognitive flexibility and acceptance of what is. We should note that the book we have as Zhuangzi is a compilation of several strands. The original strand probably written by the historical Zhuang Zhou is known as the Inner Chapters, Chapters 1–7.33 A second strand is known as the Outer Chapters, Chapters 8–22, compiled by the School of Zhuangzi. I will include material from these two strands. A third and fourth strand, those of the Primitivist and the Yangists, will not concern us here.

Effortless Action (Wu-wei) and Carefree Meandering (You) The phrase wu-wei occurs only three times in the inner chapters. The first passage associates it directly with free and easy wandering or carefree meandering. This passage occurs at the end of the first chapter, which has most likely been given that title (“Carefree Meandering”) by the editor, Guo Xiang.34 The character Huizi scorns Zhuangzi’s words, which he says are as useless as a gnarled and bumpy tree. Zhuangzi turns the scorn into praise for the usefulness of that which is seemingly useless. The tree becomes a metaphor for the broad and open, free and easy way of being that characterizes Zhuangzi’s ideal: “Now if you have a great tree and think it’s a pity it’s so useless, why not plant it in the realm of Nothingwhatever, in the wilds which spread out into nowhere, and go roaming away to do nothing at its side, ramble around and fall asleep in its shade?”35 [ 95 ]

dAoIsm This sentence gives a good entry into one kind of spontaneous activity. The passage describes roaming in non-action, a kind of “spiritual rambling,” discovering a way that has open vistas, escaping restrictions of space and time.36 One scholar points out that it is significant that two key terms in the Zhuangzi relate to traversing.The central principle of Daoism is a way (dao), and wandering (you) offers the manner in which Zhuangzi suggests we traverse the way of life—a carefree, rambling, open fashion, unrestricted by strict constraints of set times and purposes.37 The text reflects the yearning many of us feel to break out of fixed, rigid boundaries and simply wander the world.38 The ideal is also reminiscent of one style of meditative practice. Many commentators have noted in the Zhuangzi traces of meditative techniques that result in loss of self, such as that adumbrated in the celebrated dialogues between Confucius and Yan Hui, which we will examine further on in the chapter. The ideal of spiritual rambling may suggest not only wandering the physical world but a meditative practice like that of Buddhist Open Presence meditation. In this practice, rather than choosing a particular object of focus, the meditator invites an open state of mind that allows in whatever enters the mind and just as easily allows it to go.39 Likewise, spiritual wandering is a mode of living that is effortless because there is no purpose other than to soar unrestricted. At the same time, we can note, as Alan Fox points out, that even meandering may have an ultimate destination.40 The butterfly may flit from flower to flower but nevertheless gathers its food; likewise the river meanders, avoiding obstructions by flowing around them, but eventually reaches the sea. This is living in the slow lane rather than the fast lane, following the indirect, not the obvious path, taking the scenic route through life. It is a delightful blend of purpose and openness—the purpose of life is to be open and responsive to what the moment brings. The second use of the term wu-wei occurs in an ironic lament in which Zhuangzi creates a fictional dialogue between the character Confucius and his disciple Zigong. Confucious sends Zigong to investigate two friends (among them “anti-Mengzi/Mencius”) mourning their friend Master Sang-hu (Mulberry Door) in a decidedly un-Confucian manner.41 Zigong is appalled. “Excuse me! Does it accord with ritual to sing over a corpse?” The two laugh, as Zhuangzi did when he was told his teachings were useless, and ask, “What does he know about the meaning of ritual?” Zigong is flabbergasted, lamenting to Confucius, “What kind of men are those? Correct behavior is nothing [ 96 ]

dAoIsm to them, as though their physical bodies were something external. They sing overlooking the corpse without even changing expression. I don’t know what to say about them. What kind of men are they?” Confucius, however, is pensive and purely descriptive rather than horrified as he reflects to Zigong upon the differences between himself and these men. “Those are men who wander outside the rules (fang). I am one who wanders within them.” The term fang can either mean “realm” or “rules, methods, procedures.” Both meanings may be suggested here—the social realm, and society’s rules, standards, and definitions. As Paul Kjellberg notes, “By questioning these things, the friends live simultaneously outside of the rules and outside of the shared social realm.”42 And yet in some sense Zhuangzi’s character Confucius recognizes that they possess a way of being that is beyond his in a positive way. He goes on to describe the Stoic-like stance of these friends: “Even now they have joined with the Creator as people to wander in the single breath of heaven and earth. . . . To men such as these, how could there be any question of putting life first or death last? Idly they roam beyond the dust and dirt; they wander free and easy in the service of non-action (wu-wei).43 Why should they fret and fuss about the ceremonies of the vulgar and make a display for the ears and eyes of the common herd?”44 Life and death are equal to these friends; they are immune to being troubled by such natural transformations. The image of wandering beyond the dirt and dust implies that they likewise don’t feel constrained by arbitrary social conventions such as Confucian rituals.45 Confucius suggests here that he is still constrained by both the natural and social order. He goes on to contrast his way with that of Meng-sun as well: “Meng-sun doesn’t know why he lives and doesn’t know why he dies. You and I, now we are asleep and haven’t waked up yet. But in his case, though something may startle his body, it won’t injure his mind; something may alarm the house [his spirit lives in], emotions will suffer no death. Meng-sun alone has waked. Men wail and so he wails, too—that’s the reason he acts thus.”46 Thus Meng-sun has achieved the equanimity that protects him from suffering; compared to such sages, Confucius and Zigong are asleep. Parallel to the ideal of the Buddha (literally, “awakened one”), such a sage is described as truly awake. Meng-sun follows the social convention of mourning, but has realized the joyful equanimity that protects him from the ravages of ordinary human emotions. This Stoic equanimity, tinged with a distinctive [ 97 ]

dAoIsm quality of freedom and joy, is a feature of Zhuangzi’s ideal of free and easy living. The text goes on to suggest that someone who has been tattooed with the Confucian virtues of humaneness (ren) and righteousness (yi) would have a hard time pursuing the genuine ideal: “how do you expect to go wandering in any far-away, carefree, and as-you-like-it paths?”47 If one is truly constrained by Confucian ritual, one cannot pursue the ideal of wandering beyond the bounds of social convention and human emotion. Zhuangzi thus suggests that Confucian ritual is a function of what he calls “bounded” emotions.48 When we realize that life and death, illness and deformity are simply transformations, we no longer need feel the extended grief that makes three years of mourning rituals appropriate.49 When his own wife dies, Zhuangzi feels grief at first, but then realizes her death simply represents natural transformations, Heaven’s way. The text in Chapter 6 moves on from this discussion of wandering in non-action to a celebrated passage in which Confucius learns from his disciple Yan Hui the art of self-forgetting. Wandering in the realm of nonaction leads to transcending the realm of Confucian ritual and to radical self-transcendence.50 Thus as in the first chapter, in the extended passage in Chapter 6 wu-wei is associated with free and easy wandering, meandering aimlessly through the universe an ideal in which one is unaware of life and death and has no particular purpose. Like the Stoics, one accepts the changes and transformations that fate or destiny bring. This lack of fixed preferences also shields one from suffering, which likewise makes it close to Stoic, Epicurean, and Buddhist ideals. We have seen that Epicurus, like certain Stoics and Buddhists, suggests that when we minimize attachments, preferences, and desires we are able to enjoy whatever life brings along. Zhuangzi goes beyond these schools in the playfulness that characterizes his ideal. Wandering in wu-wei not only relieves suffering; it is also characterized by a relaxed and playful spirit. Not only don’t life and death matter, life is actually fun. In our study of Confucius, we saw that there are various avenues to attentive awareness; one involves observation of experience without judgment, another full participation in experience, without the sense of an observer. Likewise, the effortless action depicted by Zhuangzi may come in two forms: a non-purposive life of free and easy wandering and challenging experiences in which we [ 98 ]

dAoIsm can fully immerse ourselves. The Zhuangzian texts include both forms of wuwei activity, perhaps in creative tension. In light of these considerations, let us turn to Zhuangzi’s accounts of skillful activity and explore the ways they dovetail and intersect with the theme of free and easy wandering, as well as the ways the two may coexist in dialectical tension. We will see that for Zhuangzi effortless activity is characterized by several features: lack of ego-directed intention, absence of self-consciousness, and an effortless, spontaneous ease. Finally, we will integrate these themes with the playful perspectivalism of Chapter 2.

Effortless Activity in the Inner Chapters: The Secret of Caring for Life The story of Cook Ding is the only one of the stories of skill development that occurs in the Inner Chapters, and it is there we will begin: Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee—zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were joining the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music. “Ah, this is marvelous!” said Lord Wen-hui. “Imagine skill reaching such heights!”51

First of all, we can note Zhuangzi’s playful irony—we are learning the secret of caring for life from one who carves up a dead animal. Zhuangzi likes to poke fun at our ordinary intuitions. His spiritual models are figures on the margins of society, those who shake up conventional standards of beauty and acceptability: Mr. Lame Hunchback No Lips, Crippled Shu, Mr. Gap Tooth, Uncle Lack Limb and Uncle Lame Gait, and Master Lu, who says of himself, “Amazing! The Creator is making me all crookedy like this! My back sticks up like a hunchback and my vital organs are on top of me. My chin is hidden in my navel, my shoulders are up above my head, and my pigtail points at the sky . . . perhaps in time he’ll transform my right arm into a crossbow pellet and I’ll shoot down an owl for roasting. Or perhaps in time he’ll transform my buttocks into cartwheels. Then, with my spirit for a horse, I’ll climb up and go for a ride. What need will I ever have for a carriage again?”52 [ 99 ]

dAoIsm Zhuangzi holds up as models of unselfconscious spiritual beauty people who are conventionally seen as grotesque. These colorful characters have a natural charisma that has a transformative effect on all around them, shaking up our conventional standards of what is beautiful and ugly.53 Likewise, in the story of Cook Ding we learn the secret of caring for life not from a sage or shaman, but from someone engaged in a mundane and even somewhat gruesome activity. We can learn what Philip J. Ivanhoe has called “religious” unselfconsciousness from the everyday unselfconscious activity of a skilled butcher.54 Second, we notice that this image of effortless action is drawn from the sphere of Confucian ritual; Cook Ding performs his action of carving as if he were performing the ancient ritual dance of the Mulberry Grove.55 Zhuangzi does not harbor quite the anti-Confucian and anti-ritual sentiments of Laozi. Laozi laments that the Way was grievously lost with the move toward Confucian values of ritual, righteousness, and benevolence. While at times Zhuangzi portrays Confucius as a somewhat bumbling foil, he does not see Confucian ritual as the main cause of the fallen state of the world. Zhuangzi depicts an aesthetic beauty in ritual, even in the ritual of slicing up an ox; his portrait of the secret of caring for life could be found in a Confucian text. Cook Ding’s every movement exemplifies effortless ease and harmony; he carves up an ox as if we were performing a ritual dance or keeping time to an elaborate ritual symphony. Thus at one level, Zhuangzi hints that the secret of nurturing life is precisely as Confucius suggested: to perform all our actions as if they are taking place in a sacred dance. But we must continue to look deeper into Zhuangzi’s secret for cultivating life.56 Cook Ding insists that what he cares about is a way (dao) that goes beyond skill or technique. Scholars have debated whether Zhuangzi is speaking about one dao or many daos—attunement to the Way of the cosmos, which transcends his own developed skill, or simply a way of carving oxen that enhances skill.57 It is true that a dao can be a way of doing things, a prescribed method or course of action. The Confucian dao was the Way of the ancient Zhou sage kings, the particular ritual actions and course of life they followed. Their dao was a discourse passed down in ritual texts a way of enacting those rituals.58 In contrast, the dao of the Daodejing is a way that cannot be prescribed in particular ritual actions, a Way that cannot be named, pointed to, or taught directly but that is the potent source of all under heaven and earth and makes possible all effective doing.59 Here Zhuangzi points to both levels of dao, which [ 100 ]

dAoIsm fold into one another. Cook Ding has discovered a dao of carving, but his secret is to harmonize with a dao that goes beyond mere skill or technique. Any dao is enhanced by going beyond technique to harmonize with the larger rhythm of the Way, the normative order of the cosmos.60 Natural, unforced action requires that we be attentively aware of the object at hand, that we be attuned to the shifting, fluid way things actually are. Whether or not we conceive of the dao as an absolute metaphysical entity, there is a way things are at this moment; when we are attuned to the Way, our actions flow with effortless ease. Cook Ding is supremely attentive to the actual parameters of the ox—not the way he would prefer the ox to be but the ox as it is. That is why his blade is able to move through the crevices with such frictionless grace. He can follow the interstices smoothly and is not thrown off by shifting patterns and variations: Cook Ding put down his cleaver and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond mere technique. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years, I no longer saw the ox as a whole. And now I meet it with my spirit [shen] and don’t look with my eyes. My sensory knowledge is restrained and my spiritual desires [shen yu] are allowed to move/act. I follow the Heavenly pattern [tianli], thrusting into the big hollows, guiding the knife through the big openings, and adapting my movements to the fixed nature of the ox. In this way, I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.61

Cook Ding learns to go beyond sensory knowledge to let spirit guide his movements. He no longer looks with his eyes or his discriminative understanding; he lets spirit move where it will. However, effortless action for Zhuangzi is not unconstrained; it is action guided by the heavenly patterns in things. It is free from artificial, rational deliberation but also constrained by the Way of Heaven. We are free to follow the Way that it is our nature and our good to follow.62 Commentators have pointed out an interesting parallel between this passage and a passage in Chapter 4.63 In the latter passage, Confucius’ favorite disciple Yan Hui is instructed in what he calls the fasting of the mind: “May I ask what the fasting of the mind is?” Confucius said, “Make your will [zhi: intent, intention] one! Don’t listen with your ears, listen with your mind. No, don’t [ 101 ]

dAoIsm listen with your mind, listen with your vital energy [qi]. Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but qi is empty [tenuous: xu] and waits on all things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.64

We can imagine why Zhuangzi chose Yan Hui as the subject of this discipline; Yan Hui was said to be able to think about humaneness (ren) all day without ceasing. There is, of course, a pungent irony in the image of Confucius—so oriented to virtue and the Way of the Zhou—instructing Yan Hui to move in his political persuasion beyond virtue and the ways of the ancients, letting his vital energy guide him; he is essentially advocating an anti-Confucian stance. The anti-Confucian critique is heightened in the parallel passage in Chapter 6, in which it is the disciple Yan Hui who instructs Master Confucius in the art of fasting the mind and forgetting the ego.65 Yan Hui is instructed to progress from sensory knowledge to knowledge of the heart-mind to knowledge of the spirit. In the Cook Ding passage, too, there is a progression from using ordinary sensory knowledge, which simply sees the ox whole, to using the knowledge of the heart-mind, which discriminates between parts and sees their connection to one another, to being guided by the spirit (shen), in which one follows the heavenly pattern (tianli) of the ox.66 The spirit is able to see the way things actually are; it can intuit the natural order of things, beyond what they seem to be from a limited sensory point of view.67 Effortless action, which seems so mysterious, is really a matter of going beyond ordinary sensory awareness or rational knowledge to allow an intuitive way of knowing to guide us. But we should note that spirit “sees” as well; in fact spirit sees so clearly that the cook never touches the ligaments of the animal. It can see the interstices and find spaciousness where the eyes might not; it follows the natural makeup of the way things are.68 If we think of this as a story of skill mastery, at the beginning the cook is very clumsy; he is trying too hard. He leads with the parts of himself we are trained to trust for guidance: the physical senses and the rational mind, which has its own purposes and intentions. He thus fails to really see what is right before him. When he learns to set aside his preconceptions and intentions, he begins to follow along with things as they are. He learns to encounter what is before him with spirit or intuition.69 It is possible that Zhuangzi links this spirit with the tenuous qi we find in the instruction on fasting of the mind [ 102 ]

dAoIsm in Chapter 4; we may see here qi in motion, which goes out to encounter its object.70 Thus the cook, like Yan Hui in Chapter 4, moves from listening with the physical ear, to listening with the heart-mind, to listening with the qi, the energy of spirit.71 And that listening allows him to “see” more deeply and follow the way things are before him.72 Spirit, which is fluid and tenuous like qi, might be especially attuned and sensitive to the patterns in things.73 In the Daodejing we have seen images of flowing like a river and “following along” like water; these images are natural and tranquil. We have also seen the spontaneous ease that Confucius’ actions have developed over years of ritual practice. Zhuangzi suggests that we can bring the tranquility of the Daodejing’s waters and the grace of Confucian ritual to every activity in life—even what might at first glance seem violent and graceless. We can nurture life by following what is, attending to subtlety and openness where the eyes and mind cannot penetrate: A good cook changes his knife once a year because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month—because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room—more than enough for the blade to play about in. That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.

When one inserts a blade that has no thickness into the minute spaces between the joints, one will find more than enough room for the blade to play about in. A mediocre cook would not even notice such spaces. We are  reminded of a resonant passage in the Daodejing, “no thing enters no space” (43).74 When we act in harmony with the way things are, we discover the subtle power of what appears to be empty, which is in fact the spacious source of all being. We can find an opening where there seemed to be no opening; we find freedom to move where others see only narrow straits.75 However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until—Bop! the whole thing [ 103 ]

dAoIsm comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.” “Excellent!” said Lord Wen-hui. “I have heard the words of Ding and learned how to care for life!”76

We most associate effortless action with action that is swift, spontaneous, and unpremeditated, while we associate cautious, slow action with the deliberating mind. In contrast, what is taking place here might at first reading sound much more like the judgment of the discriminating mind.77 However, it is more likely that what we find here is not rational determination but a keen attentiveness and attunement. Rather than sizing up a situation by engaging in a deliberative process, the cook listens intuitively to a subtler movement of the spirit. Cook Ding listens with his embodied mind; spirit subtly guides his hands where to move, like the healing practitioner who follows the movement of qi energy through an ailing person’s body.78 The passage suggests that the secret of cultivating life has at least two moments. First we must transcend being guided only by the physical senses and rational mind so that a more intuitive spirit or vital energy may guide our action. But when we come to complicated places, we must also know how to pause and allow a more complex determination to take place. The key is to know when to move forward and when to be still and wait; both are moments of effortless harmony. This can be compared to the skill of a jazz musician or a dancer. The masterful jazz player knows when to go into exploratory territory and when to pull back to basic chord patterns; the dancer knows when to let loose and when to assert more concerted effort. Both kinds of actions are guided intuitively by spirit; the pause of Cook Ding is part of the ideal of wandering.79 We may have overall goals or purposes in life, just as the river flows toward the sea. But wandering leaves room for spaciousness and openness rather than following a fixed, prescribed path toward our goal. We allow our spirit to go where it will as the situation unfolds. Commentators have sometimes addressed the two moments of effortless action by asking whether this art is ours by nature or whether it must be cultivated. The Cook Ding passage suggests a process of improvement and self-cultivation; the cook says that his skill has developed, through years of practice, until acting with effortless ease is, as it were, second nature.80 This is similar to Confucius’ experience of practicing ritual forms until they come through him so effortlessly that he follows his heart’s desire without over[ 104 ]

dAoIsm stepping the bounds.81 Other passages suggest the art of effortless action is a natural inheritance.82 One interpretive possibility is that self-cultivation may involve a process of stripping ourselves of the social artifices we have taken on rather than developing a new nature. That is, learning to act in an effortless way may involve returning to a natural flow of attunement. We are all attuned to the Way by nature, but some of us may require a process of development to remember our inheritance and bring this capacity to realization.83

Effortless Action in the Outer Chapters: Mastering Life (Chapter 19) The Zhuangzian texts thus present a spectrum of effortless action. Chapter 19, an Outer Chapter from the School of Zhuangzi, features a narrative of several stories in succession. We can note that the title of the chapter is “Mastering Life”; perhaps it is a conscious extension by the school of Zhuangzi of the Secret of Caring for Life portrayed in Chapter 3 of Zhuangzi’s Inner Chapters. In Chapter 19 the paradox of wu-wei—action through inaction—is expressed on a spectrum between two poles: absolute ease of falling into the Way and focused skill development. The examples of wu-wei, on the face of it, may appear contradictory, but, on further examination, will be seen to bear a family resemblance. LETTING GO INTO THE WAY One pole of spontaneous action is complete letting go, where there is hardly any sense of doing; action is as effortless as that of a drunken man falling out of a cart, and yet since one’s spirit is whole one is not injured. The image suggests tremendous trust and faith in the Way: we can literally fall into the Way; guided by the Way, we will do the right thing and not be harmed.84 Heaven is like a protective force or cocoon that keeps us in balance and harmony.85 If we are in tune with the flow of events, we can move through the river of life unharmed, like the diver in the great waterfall at Lu-Liang who follows along the way of the water.86 Falling out of a carriage or sliding along with a waterfall do not seem like actions at all; falling is not willed by the “doer.” Just so, in effortless action Heaven (tian) or the vital energy of spirit (qi) is the agent and not the [ 105 ]

dAoIsm individual; the person waits as action happens through him or her. The stories of the drunken person and the diver appear to be at the other end of the spectrum from the story of Cook Ding. The cook worked for years to learn how to carve an ox, while the drunken person does nothing at all. However from another perspective, we might say that Cook Ding learned how to get out of the way as action takes place through him. The skilled person lets intuition guide so that skillful action takes place as effortlessly as that of a person falling. Although there seems to be skill and intent in his carving, Cook Ding has learned to put aside his senses and heart-mind and let Heaven work through him.87 SKILL DEVELOPMENT Like the story of Cook Ding, Chapter 19’s tale of the cicada catcher offers an example of skill development that seems very intentional and focused: When Confucius was on his way to Ch’u, he passed through a forest where he saw a hunchback catching cicadas with a sticky pole as easily as though he were grabbing them with his hand. Confucius said, “What skill [ji; skill, plan ingenuity, ability, talent] you have! Is there a special way [dao] to this?” “I have a way [dao],” said the hunchback. “For the first five or six months I practice balancing two balls on top of each other on the end of the pole and, if they don’t fall off, I know I will lose very few cicadas. . . . I hold my body like a stiff tree trunk and use my arm like an old dry limb. No matter how huge heaven and earth, or how numerous the thousand things, I’m aware of nothing but cicada wings. Not wavering, not tipping, not letting any of the other ten thousand things take the place of those cicada wings—how can I help but succeed?” Confucius turned to his disciples and said, “He keeps his will [zhi] undivided and concentrates his spirit—that would serve to describe our hunchback gentleman here, would it not?88

The stories of Cook Ding and the cicada catcher seem quite similar to what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has called the experience of flow, in which one engages with complete focus and undivided concentration in an activity; the hunchback’s “undivided will and concentration of spirit” suggest a focused, intentional awareness.89 We find here an effortless ease of action that is the opposite of mindlessness; forgetting of self is achieved in a different way from [ 106 ]

dAoIsm an archetypical meditative experience.90 For an example of the latter, we can look at the expanded dialogue between Confucius and Yan Hui in Chapter 6, in which Yan Hui seems to arrive at a state of self-forgetting through radical meditative practice: “I smash up my limbs and body, drive out perception and intellect, cast off form, do away with understanding, and make myself identical with the Great Thoroughfare. This is what I mean by sitting down and forgetting everything.”91 In contrast, the cicada catcher loses all thought of self by complete immersion in activity, which requires a fully concentrated awareness and mindful concentration of attention.92 We can thus forget ourselves in one of two ways: by immersing ourselves in activity with focused attention or by radically disengaging ourselves from ordinary sense experience. In both cases, we forego the ordinary guidance of our senses and mind for a different quality of awareness. One kind of attentive awareness attunes itself to the concrete situation at hand; another opens itself to the Great Thoroughfare, a bustling image for the Great Dao.93 Readers are sometimes puzzled with the message of these stories, because it would seem that the cook and the cicada catcher do have a goal; each seeks to achieve an intentional aim. The inclusion of these stories seems designed to show that the art of uncontrived action is subtle and nuanced. On the one hand, it involves a thorough letting go, the way we would fall out of a cart or slide over a waterfall. But we can also enter into a frictionless mode of action when involved in very skillful, directed activity. Thus, as Confucius tells Yan Hui, “It is easy to keep from walking; the hard thing is to walk without touching the ground.”94 Although we might think that the ultimate goal of living for Zhuangzi is the kind of explosive, unitive experience of entering the Great Thoroughfare, he also points to what might ultimately be a form of effortless ease more difficult to achieve. We can fast the body and the breath, but can we fast the mind, learning not to direct ourselves through deliberated, ego-directed action? It may be harder to achieve effortless harmony when engaged in activity rather than in pure meditation. These skilled practitioners have achieved attentive awareness in action.95 The art of effortless action, like the knack of the wheelwright, the cicada catcher, the cook, or anyone who has learned to ride a bicycle, is not communicated in words. It can be learned, but the learning entails mastering embodied action; it is a learning of the embodied mind.96 It is no coincidence that these are stories of skilled craftspeople. While Zhuangzi is not impressed by the theoretical knowledge of the logicians, he believes there are ways of [ 107 ]

dAoIsm knowing that matter—the ordinary practices of craftspeople who have learned the knack of living in embodied ways.97 The art of embodied living thus entails a paradoxical form of self-cultivation: losing rather than gaining, forgetting and unlearning rather than focused concentration.98 A good swimmer forgets the water, just as a bicyclist forgets the pedals and the driver may arrive at work not remembering how he or she got there. When we learn a craft or skill, we first master the particular techniques and moves that make it up, but once we embody the particulars they become so much a part of us that it is as if we are no longer the intentional agent of the action; doing takes place, but it is a kind of nondoing since it is as if the action were ziran, so of itself.99 We see this paradox illustrated in the story of the ferryman: Yan Yuan said to Confucius, “I once crossed the gulf at Goblet Deeps and the ferryman handled the boat with supernatural skill. I asked him, ‘Can a person learn how to handle a boat?’ and he replied, ‘Certainly. A good swimmer has acquired his ability through repeated practice. And, if a man can swim under water, he may never have seen a boat before and still he’ll know how to handle it!’ . . . A good swimmer has acquired his ability through repeated practice. That means he’s forgotten the water. If a man can swim under water, he may never have seen a boat before and still he’ll know how to handle it—that’s because he sees the water as so much dry land, and regards the capsizing of a boat as he would the overturning of a cart. The ten thousand things may all be capsizing and turning over at the same time right in from of him and it can’t get at him and affect what’s inside—so where could he go and not be at ease?

What is the secret to the almost supernatural skill of the ferryman? He has no fear of falling out of the boat; thus he does not get in his own way by worrying about his handling of the craft. It is easy for us to balance on a rope if we are walking in our living room, but put us over the divide in the Grand Canyon and we will lose our balance. It is our fear of mistakes that interferes with the ability to act effectively: When you’re betting for tiles in an archery contest, you shoot with skill. When you’re betting for fancy belt buckles, you worry about your aim. And when you’re betting for real gold, you’re a nervous wreck. Your skill is the same in all three cases—but because one prize means more to you than another, you let outside con[ 108 ]

dAoIsm siderations weigh on your mind. He who looks too hard on the outside gets clumsy on the inside.

Like the archer, we can learn to act with gracefulness and effortless ease when we let go of thought of any external goal—approval or disapproval, reward or punishment, success or failure. As we will see in Chapter 5, Zhuangzian wu-wei is in this regard quite resonant with the Bhagavad Gītā’s ideal of nonattached action.

Cognitive Flexibility and Openness We have noted that Zhuangzi’s teachings on effortless action feature both cognitive and behavioral aspects.100 We have seen that the state of emptiness or waiting gives rise to action that flows as spontaneously as that of nature. We have thus far focused on the state of awareness of a person who is engaged in spontaneous, effortless action. Chapter 2, a beautifully crafted literary unit, stresses the cognitive flexibility that goes along with effortless action. Let us look at some of these key passages. Chapter 2 opens with a depiction of Master Dapple, who looks up to the sky and sighs, as if he has lost his counterpart; when questioned, he declares that he had just now lost his self.101 In the context of the discourse as a whole, the image suggests that human beings need to let go of a constructed, discriminating self to be guided by a more intuitive awareness, one that does not hold a fixed, rigid perspective with which it identifies.102 Master Dapple then depicts a scene of the wind blowing on many different hollows in a forest; each hollow produces a different sound. Heaven, Nature, or Dao is like a wind that blows indiscriminately; a unique sound is produced by each of the ten thousand things with which it resonates.103 The Dao is known through all the responses of nature; no one particular sound—whee or woosh!— represents the Dao more beautifully than another. He goes on to suggest that our feelings or moods—pleasure and anger, sorrow and joy, anxiety and regret—come to us like music from the hollows; we don’t know what causes them. Zhuangzi thus depicts our feelings as arising spontaneously, rather than being produced by a master self. In contrast to the view of the Confucian thinker Mencius—who holds that the heart-mind, the seat of moral conscience, should be regarded as the human center—Zhuangzi questions why [ 109 ]

dAoIsm we should privilege the rational mind. He acknowledges that it seems like there is a true master or self, but also notes that we can’t get a glimpse of it. Perhaps, he adds playfully, the different feelings and preferences take turns serving as master. We don’t know where each of our feelings comes from; perhaps we should just witness a kaleidoscope of possible moods and perspectives fluidly arising and passing.104 Zhuangzi’s approach here parallels that of Buddhism, which sees feelings as arising spontaneously without being governed by a central self. Zhuangzi then takes on a pensive tone: Is everyone’s life really this confused? Or am I the only one who is confused and not other people? We are reminded of a similar plaintive cry in Daodejing 20, where the author compares himself to an infant or a fool: I alone am passive, giving no sign Like an infant who has not yet smiled. Forlorn, as if I had no home . . . I have the mind of a fool, Confused, confused Others are bright and intelligent, I alone am dull, dull.105

So perhaps the heart-mind that seems to lead or govern the human being is really fabricated. But stupid people have heart-minds too, so why take the assertions of any one guide as an authority or expert? Once again, Zhuangzi deconstructs the core Confucian belief that our rational mind or moral conscience is a trustworthy guide to absolute moral truth. Our assertions of right and wrong depend on our initial assumptions. He goes on to elaborate this point. Language, he asserts, is not just blowing wind—like the piping of Heaven on the hollows. Language really says something. But does it really say something, or does it say nothing?106 We hear Zhuangzi’s playful ironic tone, in which he suggests simultaneously that language really does assert and implicitly questions whether the assertions of the Confucians and Mohists—a rival group that measured what is “right” by what is profitable—are not just like the peeping of little birds or the varied, haunting sounds of the wind in the hollows. We take so seriously our distinctions of right and wrong and don’t realize they depend on the way we have defined our terms. The source [ 110 ]

dAoIsm of the conflicting rights and wrongs of the Confucians and the Mohists is simply the arbitrary, stipulated nature of definitions. The result is that each calls right what the other calls wrong. But to see beyond their conflicting rights and wrongs, we need what Zhuangzi calls clarity or illumination (ming), a perspective that realizes the arbitrary nature of all perspectives. A. C. Graham points out that Zhuangzi is here making creative use of technical vocabulary from Mohist logic. Zhuangzi holds that all naming is conventional. Whether “this” thing to which I am pointing is a horse depends on the name I assign to it. The key terms in this discussion are shi and fei. To shi something is to affirm that this thing is the one in question. One side will say X is a horse; they shi that it is a horse. The other side will fei that it is a horse; they say this is not a horse. The affirmation or denial assumes that both sides agree on what they are pointing to. But “this” is a horse assumes my perspective standing here beside the horse. From another perspective, my “this” becomes your “that”; my shi (this one, the one in question) becomes your pi (other).107 Likewise, if we inhabit different circles of belief, our moral terminology will differ.108 Thus Confucians believe that what is right (yi) is what is appropriate (yi) according to one’s role defined duties. In contrast, Mohists believe what is right (yi) is what is beneficial to the people; they are utilitarians. Of course they will deem actions right and wrong in different ways since their basic moral definitions differ. Like Socrates, Zhuangzi recognizes that a key to morality is being clear about the definitions of one’s moral terms. Thus one cannot agree about whether an action is “right” if one does not agree about what the term right refers to: is it what is appropriate to one’s role and status, or what is universally beneficial?109 He goes on to say that this and that, shi and fei, depend on one another; they are born together, since they depend on one’s perspective. As soon as we define something as “this” or “self,” something else is automatically defined as “that” or “other.” If we recognize one thing as “right,” another is automatically “wrong,” just as when we point to something as “this,” something else becomes its counterpart “that.” But the sage has cognitive flexibility, and doesn’t irrevocably designate one thing as “this” and another as “that.” Rather, he illuminates all in the light of heaven. He too recognizes a provisional “this,” but a “this” that he recognizes is also, from another point of view, a “that.” A state in which “this” and “that” no longer find their opposites is called the hinge or pivot of the way. When the hinge is fitted into [ 111 ]

dAoIsm the socket, it can respond endlessly, just as a door that fits snuggly into its hinge can swing freely.110 How do we attain such cognitive openness? We can either find a bird’seye view that sees all positions or we can recognize that our own perspective is just a perspective; this gives us the freedom to respond flexibly to any situation we encounter. The Dao makes all things one, relativizing opposites; as Laozi asserts in Daodejing 2, it is only when we call something beautiful that we recognize something else as ugly. From the point of view of Dao, a little stalk and a giant pillar, a grotesque monster and a striking beauty are simply two sides pivoting equally on the Dao.111 Zhuangzi also offers the image of Heaven as a great potter’s wheel. The heavens (tian) revolve on a polar axis (daoshu) around our world.112 By remaining on the central axis of the Dao, we can slide down the spokes to any point on the wheel and assume that perspective temporarily. The best illustration is the story of a monkey keeper who passes out nuts to his charges, promising they will receive three in the morning and four at night. The monkeys are all furious. He thus retracts, and offers four in the morning and three at night, and the monkeys respond with delight. By flowing along with their joy and anger, he is able to respond with maximum openness. “Thus the sage harmonizes the people with right and wrong and rests them on Heaven the Potter’s wheel. This is called walking two roads.”113 By remaining rooted in the center of the Dao, we can harmonize with the situation at hand, whatever it may be. Brook Ziporyn has compared this to a game in which we have a wild card that enhances any hand we are dealt.114 Centering ourselves on the pivot of the Dao allows us to respond fluidly to any perspective, temporarily assuming that perspective with a non-resistant effortless freedom. Zhuangzi thus differentiates between an “adaptive shi” (yin shi) and a “contrived shi” (wei shi). A. C. Graham has brought to light the importance of this distinction: “Yin is to base one’s actions on the changing situation, to adapt to circumstances without imposing fixed principles; wei is to act on inflexible principles, forcing one’s will against the spontaneous course of things.”115 Graham compares this cognitive stance to wu-wei, which one might translate as “without contrivance.” There are two opposing ways to recognize something as “that’s it!” We can do so in a fluid, provisional, adaptive way; like the monkey trainer, we can make a relative judgment according to changing conditions and approve of something by adapting to the situation at [ 112 ]

dAoIsm hand. That is yin shi—“flowing cognition,” to affirm by following along—and is in accordance with the Daoist ideal of wu-wei. On the other hand, we can approve of something according to contrived principles, judging according to fixed standards and preconceptions; that is wei-shi—“fixed cognition,” to affirm by forcing, and is the mode of the Confucianists and Mohists.116 We have seen that the purpose of fasting of the mind is to facilitate this flexible cognitive approach, letting go of preconceptions and waiting for reality to reveal itself. Graham writes: “when a philosopher clings to his assertions although the situation is changing and insists on their absolute validity against the conflicting assertions of others, he is guilty of the error of weishih [shi]. But if he changes his judgments with the changing situation and understands that rival philosophies are all equally valid or invalid, he is practicing yin shih [shi].”117 Thus the Daoist can practice fluid cognition, reacting with his or her whole being to the situation at hand, based on the present moment of experience. “However,” Graham continues, “we are told twice that ‘even yin-shi comes to an end’ in the state (presumably of withdrawal from action into contemplation) in which any distinction between It and Other is seen to be illusory and all language dissolves in the immediate experience of an undifferentiated world.”118 The Chinese phrase that Graham has rendered “even yin-shi comes to an end” is by no means transparent, as a cursory comparison of several translations will attest, and scholars debate whether we find in Zhuangzi an experience of undifferentiated unity, as Graham asserts.119 Whether or not we find in Zhuangzi an experience of mystical union, it is clear we do find a radical reorientation, a new and flexible mode of awareness and being in the world. Zhuangzi’s perspectivalism expresses itself in the ability to assume multiple points of view and not assume one is superior to another. He points out that a person, a loach, and a monkey have different preferences on where to sleep and what to eat. Of these three, which knows how to fix a universal standard of sleeping or culinary preferences? Each determination depends on one’s perspective.120 And then there is the perspective of what Zhuangzi refers to as the perfect or perfected person. Does the perfect person really know right and wrong? Zhuangzi describes the perfect person using mythic, shamanistic imagery— imagery of those who traverse into the realms of spirit. The perfect person rides the clouds and mists, wanders beyond the four seas. Even life and death have no effect on him, how much less so the rules of profit and loss.121 [ 113 ]

dAoIsm Does Zhuangzi mean such statements to be taken metaphysically? Certainly he wants us to get beyond our conventional boundaries of interpretation, discrimination and judgment. He brings to the fore the arbitrariness and subjectivity of conventional authorities, on which we base our sense of right and wrong and even self-worth:122 Suppose we have an argument. If I have beaten you, am I necessarily right? Or if you have beaten me, am I necessarily right? But waiting for one shifting voice to pass judgment on another is the same as waiting for none of them. Harmonize them all with the Heavenly Equality, leave them to their endless changes, and so live out your years. What does it mean to harmonize them with the Heavenly Equality? Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right, it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!123

Conclusion: Zhuangzian Transformation This is the cognitive dimension of wu-wei: not getting fixed in right/wrong determinations, maintaining cognitive and behavioral flexibility. Zhuangzi’s vision of the continual transformation of things suggests that all things are endlessly shifting perspectives. If we live in the pivot of the Dao, we have the freedom to see everyone’s point of view, to enhance each moment by finding in it beauty, purpose, and value.124 The character Liezi was said to be able to “ride the wind.” Perhaps Zhuangzi points us to a larger, metaphorical riding of the wind through becoming free from our own limitations. It is not necessarily that we become free from the laws of nature or free to do whatever we like; he suggests a disciplined spontaneity. We are free inwardly; we are not at the mercy of our changing emotions, as we have learned how to gracefully ride their waves. We don’t know where our varied feelings and moods come from; they transform like the mythical vast fish named K’un or Big Brother Roe who transforms into the enormous bird named P’eng or Peer Phoenix.125 But when we stand at the pivot of the Dao we have a firm center from which to watch them come and go with attentive awareness and curiosity. We are not buffeted; it does not quite matter whether we are a butterfly dreaming we are Zhuangzi or Zhuangzi dreaming we are a butterfly.126 A strong center allows us to ride the transformations and absurdities of [ 114 ]

dAoIsm the universe; all the ways of being—including joy and anger, sorrow and pleasure—can be appreciated with playful humor and let go in a spirit of non-attachment. The mind becomes a mirror, not retaining or hoarding images from the past, but objectively reflecting the situation at hand: Within himself, no fixed position: Things as they take shape disclose themselves. In his motions, he is like water, In his stillness, like a mirror: He responds like an echo.127

Zhuangzi pokes fun at the Mohists and Confucians, each so sure their perspective is absolute and right. He points out that every perspective implies its opposite; to shi or affirm or occupy “this” perspective automatically gives birth to a rejected perspective, a “that” or other, and implies both “this” and “that.”128 One may find an interesting comparison in the Talmudic love of exploring every possible position in an argument. When an argument does not work out by conventional logic, sometimes the resolution comes by the cry to “reverse the positions!” If Rabbi X shiing a position and Rabbi Y feing a position makes no sense, sometimes it does make sense if we reverse the positions, so that Rabbi X denies and Rabbi Y affirms. Similarly, sometimes an interlocutor will argue, “according to your position, you should argue as follows.” The goal of two study partners is to be like two knives sharpening one another, making each other stronger even as they disagree. One cannot be an effective conversation partner if we hold so tightly to our perspective that we identify with it and believe we are our position. We are ordinarily so accustomed to identifying with our beliefs and perspectives that we think we need these as a way of maintaining identity. Zhuangzi offers a more flexible view of personhood. Whereas his contemporary Mencius holds that the heart-mind is the key to what it is to be a person—a true ruler who has a natural, innate moral instinct—Zhuangzi is more open and agnostic; though it seems there should be a true ruler, we don’t seem to find one when we look for it. In the corpus of Zhuangzian writings, we hear about a possible source of identity, variously called a heavenly mechanism, spirit tower, spirit, or moving qi. And we are told characteristics of the True Person who seems to defy the ordinary norms of nature. While these accounts certainly include a shamanistic dimension, they also point to the [ 115 ]

dAoIsm inward freedom enjoyed by one who illumines all with clarity. Those who take a shamanistic journey to heavenly realms may wonder whether they have ascended to a heavenly realm or whether the heavenly realm is not also within. The most significant thing about the heavenly ascension may be the inward freedom one receives. One can then learn to navigate the human realm so effectively that the “otherworldly” Laozi becomes an instructor of the “thisworldly” Confucius. The School of Zhuangzi thus depicts Confucius as the disciple of Laozi, wanting to learn what Confucius himself does not know. In contrast to Confucius’ reliance on ritual, Zhuangzi depicts his characters beating wildly on drums rather than engaging in decorous rituals of mourning. Instead of heavy-handed persuasion, Confucius’ student Yan Hui learns to affect leaders through a fasting of the mind. In the longer version, Yan Hui gives up all the Confucian practices and virtues—benevolence, the rites, and righteousness— for the shamanistic state, and Confucius becomes his student. Although Xunzi accuses Zhuangzi of leaving the human for the Heavenly, one might argue that the effect of these chapters is not to leave the human world but to navigate the human through the heavenly.129 Like the skillful monkey trainer, one must learn to use effortless action and flowing cognition to navigate our everyday reality. By flowing in an adaptive way to the situation at hand, we can live in this world with the freedom that allows us to wander at ease and ride the wind, to walk without touching the ground. At the same time, this does not mean we live in anarchy: ultimate freedom comes through acceptance of and accord with the order of Heaven.130 It does seem there are two poles of effortless action and attentive awareness. Attentive awareness might be exhausting if it demanded the continuous focused attention of the cicada catcher. The rider of the waterfall has mastered the art of letting go and allowing his body to take over. A deeper part of us guides action. Spirit then can guide us into greater harmony and clarity, Zhuangzi’s vision of happiness.

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FIVE

The Bhagavad Gītā Non-Attached Action and the Universal Spirit

WE HAVE seen that the Daodejing and Zhuangzi offer a model of flourishing that involves non-intentional action and naturalness, going with the flow of nature. The Bhagavad Gītā offers a path of human flourishing, described as non-attached action, which shares certain similarities with the Daoist wuwei. There are certainly significant differences between the theistic world of the Bhagavad Gītā and the purely natural world of Daoism. However, there are also conceptual affinities between these two traditions’ ways of effortless, spontaneous living that are worth exploring.1 To understand the concept of non-attached action, we must first enter the world of the Bhagavad Gītā as a whole by familiarizing ourselves with its sociocultural and philosophical context. The Gītā is a much smaller discourse encompassed within a larger epic, the Mahābhārata. Scholars of the Mahābhārata argue that we cannot understand this discourse outside the context of the larger text and its teachings on such central concepts as sacred duty (dharma), discipline (yoga), and liberation (moksha). This will also be the first theistic tradition that we will engage; we will thus require a new orientation, as there may be elements of this worldview that some readers will find difficult to accept. Nevertheless, the teachings on how to live in an effective and harmonious way may appeal even to readers who do not accept its metaphysical premises.

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The Context of Indian Civilization and Religion A brief introduction to Indian thought will orient us. The Indian religious tradition, called Hinduism by moderns, arose out of a complex interaction of two civilizations: the civilization of the Indus valley in Northwest India and that of the Indo-European Vedic culture. Excavations in the Indus valley have uncovered evidence that an urban civilization thrived in Northwest India from about 2500–1500 bce. While we have not yet deciphered the civilization’s script, we do have artifacts of material culture. For example, many female figurines have been found, suggesting that goddess worship may have been prominent, as it became in later Hindu tradition. There are also seals of a horned male figure surrounded by animals, seated in what might be a yoga pose. Some scholars suggest that the early images of these seals are reflected in later imagery of the Hindu god Shiva, the great yogi and lord of the animals. Phallic-shaped stones have also been found, reminiscent of the liṅga, the phallic representation of Shiva. Thus Hindu civilization appears to have drawn elements from this early indigenous culture, which came to an end around 1900 bce. At around the same time, a group of Indo-Europeans calling themselves ārya (“noble”) seem to have migrated to the Indian subcontinent from Central Asia on horse-drawn chariots. This event is termed by scholars the “Aryan migration” or the “Aryan conquest.”2 Nineteenth-century European scholars hypothesized that a military invasion of these Central Asian tribes destroyed the thriving Indus Valley civilization and brought Vedic Aryan culture. More recently, scholars have come to think that the civilization came to an end on its own at the same time waves of Europeans migrated to the subcontinent. Others believe that Aryan culture developed from within the Indus valley civilization rather than being brought from without. Linguistic evidence suggests that elements of both views are true—that we find in Hindu culture a complex blend of indigenous and Indo-European elements.3 Hinduism finds its earliest source of sacred inspiration in hymns dating from about 1500–1200 bce, collected in a text called the Ṛg Veda. The term Veda means “body of knowledge”, and the Ṛg Veda was the “body of knowledge concerning verses of praise (ṛg).”4 Collectively, the Vedas (Ṛg Veda, Sāma Veda, Yajur Veda, Atharva Veda) are also known as śruti, or “that which is heard”; the language of these hymns was Sanskrit, from the term saṃskṛita (“well[ 118 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā formed”).5 They are considered the most sacred of Hindu Scriptures, an authorless eternal text revealed directly from the cosmos or the Divine.6 The hymns of the Ṛg Veda include speculation on the source of the universe. In one famous hymn, all is said to arise out of That One—an impersonal being, neither existent nor non-existent, from which even the gods arose. This early hymn thus anticipates the notion of an impersonal underlying essence to the universe, which will develop into the central concept of brahman. Another hymn describes the universe arising out of the sacrifice of a cosmic Person (purusha), underscoring the central importance of sacrifice to the Vedic worldview.7 The Vedic hymns were chanted by priests while sacrificing to the gods. The priests officiating at such sacrifices were known as Brahmins; the later exegetical portions of the texts were known as Brāhmaṇas. These texts set forth both the technical rules of the sacrificial ritual and explication of its hidden meaning and purpose; they set up mystical correspondences between the sacrificial ritual and the cosmos and assert that it is the ritual itself that maintains the cosmic order. An important distinction between the earlier Ṛig Veda and the later Brāhmaṇas is that whereas the purpose of the sacrifice in the Ṛig Veda is to connect with and appease the gods, the Brāhmaṇas portray ritual as an end in itself. In the Brāhmaṇas, for example, the gods themselves are believed to have gained their place in the cosmos through the sacrifice. The composers of the Vedic hymns were known as seers (ṛishis), those who had the gift of seeing into the truth. The texts thus had the status of revelation; they were “seen” or heard—that is, perceived—by direct inspiration from the cosmos.8 In the Vedas the creative power by which the seers discovered and expressed this truth was known as brahman, and the hymns themselves were said to hold this power of brahman, the power of the sacred utterance.9 They were more than simple hymns of praise; it was the chanting of the hymns themselves that made the sacrifice efficacious. The hymns thus came to function as mantras, ritual formulas accompanying the sacrifice that made the sacrifice work. The mantras, expressed in Sanskrit, were formulations of the truth in sound. Just as a painting captures the truth of a visual image, mantras were not arbitrary symbols but aural expressions of the essence or reality of things; they thus had sacred, magical power. Mantras expressed both the unique qualities that make beings in the universe distinct and their underlying unity.10 [ 119 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā The role of the Brahmin priests was to protect brahman, the reality underlying the sacred mantras and the sacrifice. Gradually, at the end of the Brāhmaṇa period, in texts known as the Āraṇyakas, there arose in priestly circles the view that the universe had been created by the sacrificial action of the gods and that it was sacrifice itself that sustained the cosmos.11 Since sacrifice preserved the cosmos and brahman was the power of the sacrifice, brahman was the power or essence that sustained the universe. Thus, while in the Brāhmaṇas the term brahman refers to the power of the sacrificial ritual “apart from which there is nothing more ancient or brighter,”12 gradually the concept evolved from the power of sacred word and the sacrifice to the essential underlying reality of the universe.13 We have seen that the Brāhmaṇa texts, priestly commentaries on the sacrificial rituals, provided knowledge of brahman, key to the success of the sacrifice.14 By the end of the Brāhmaṇa period (800 ce), it came to be believed that, since knowledge was the key to the sacrificial ritual, the ritual no longer needed to be performed externally and could be internalized. In the Āraṇyakas, therefore, sacrifice is compared to the alternation of breathing and speaking, and the performance of sacrificial ritual is accomplished simply by chanting the mantra internally. The key to connection with brahman was no longer external performance of the sacrifice but the sacrifice performed within; one becomes united with brahman by internal knowledge alone.15 Priests who internalized the sacrificial ritual in this way came to have cosmic importance, and Brahmin priests thus came to be identified with the cosmic reality, even independent of the external sacrificial ritual. The human individual who embodied the inner reality of the sacrifice was identified with the cosmic Person (purusha), who is described in the Ṛg Veda as bringing forth the cosmos through his own self-sacrifice at the hands of the gods.16 The search thus began for the essential human person who, by knowledge alone, became one with the universal brahman, the reality at the very heart of being. In the Upanishads—the body of secret teachings that came to speculate increasingly on metaphysical matters—this led to speculation on the ultimate human self, or what in Sanskrit is termed ātman. The ātman was perceived to be the inner core of the individual who could come to know and become one with the universal brahman.17 Brahman came to be understood not just as the power of the sacred word or the key to the sacrifice, but as the one Spirit underlying the entire universe. In the Chāndogya Upanishad, the ulti[ 120 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā mate identification is made: ātman, the Self, is described as one with brahman, the universal Spirit.18 With this prehistory of the concepts of ātman and brahman, we can begin to explore Hindu metaphysical speculation as it comes to be expressed in the Upanishads. We should first note, however, that the Upanishads are not monolithic; in the Upanishads we hear many voices and find diverse images of the relationship between the One and the many, brahman and the world.19 Nevertheless, we do find an underlying assumption the Upanishads share with Greek thought, particularly that of Plato: the positing of an eternal Reality that is the truly real. In the Chāndogya Upanishad, for example, the sage Uddālaka asserts that all things come from Being, which is the underlying Reality or truth of all. Just as all things made of clay are in essence clay, so all manifestations of Being are in essence Being alone; individual modifications of the underlying Reality are mere differences of name and form. In the beginning, Being was one alone, without a second; all things evolved from and will return to Being. All rivers eventually return to the sea; in the great ocean they are not aware “I am this one” or “I am that one.” Just so, when all beings return to their source, they merge with the Self of which they are a part.20 Beneath the phenomenal self, the thoughts, feelings, sounds, colors, and sensations we experience, is an underlying Reality that does not change; uniting all things, this Self is an island of peace in a stormy sea. We saw that Chinese thought examined all of reality and saw that things are constantly transforming. Upanishadic thought asserts that underneath the turbulence we experience as the great drama of creation unfolds, there is in fact an eternal unchanging Self. “That which is the finest essence; this whole world has That as its soul. That is Reality. That is ātman. And that art Thou!”21 The Upanishads find peace and ultimate happiness in discovery of the divine reality; if we discover our eternal home and abide there, no sorrow can find us.22 However, the Upanishads assert that we ourselves are not separate from that eternal unchanging Being. That which we seek is not outside ourselves; we are a part of that divinity. Despite the diversity of opinions expressed in the Upanishads, what they share is the notion that knowledge of ultimate Reality is the key to happiness. This is not merely cognitive knowledge, knowledge one can find in a book or even that a teacher can transmit to a student. This is truth as lived—existential, transformative knowledge, the kind of profound understanding that turns our world upside down. We discover we are no longer who we thought we were; we experience the universe [ 121 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā and ourselves in a completely new way. This is the kind of knowledge that makes us into new beings. According to some Upanishadic teachers such as Yājñavalkya, knowledge that we are the non-dual Self causes us to become that Self; we experience ourselves and the world in a unified state of awareness.23 While for Yājñavalkya the closest analog to this state is the state of deep sleep—which might seem to be unconscious—others emphasized that this unified state is beyond the dichotomy of consciousness or unconsciousness; it is a fourth state beyond waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep.24 Building upon the thought of the Upanishadic sages, the later Advaita Vedānta tradition teaches that this is not simply a state of consciousness, but who we essentially are; we never lost identity with our eternal Self. What is needed is not a long process of transformation but a realization of what we have always been; we realize that the non-dual Self has always lived within. It is only ignorance and desire that keep us from realizing who we are; these cause us to mistakenly identify ourselves with the body in which we temporarily reside. Our true self is not our body, not our personality, not our changing thoughts and sensations. Behind what we think we are—the temporary person with an individual history—lies who we really are, the eternal Self within our heart.25 Here are the words of the disciple in a later Vedāntic text who has realized his oneness with the All: The ego has disappeared. I have realized my identity with brahman and so all my desires have melted away. I have risen above my ignorance and my knowledge of this seeming universe. What is this joy that I feel? Who shall measure it? I know nothing but joy, limitless, unbounded! The ocean of brahman is full of nectar—the joy of the ātman. The mind cannot conceive of it. My mind fell like a hailstone into that vast expanse of brahman’s ocean. Touching one drop of it, I melted and became one with brahman. And now that I return to human consciousness, I abide in the joy of the ātman. Where is this universe? Who took it away? Has it merged into something else? A while ago I beheld it—now it exists no longer. This is wonderful indeed! Here is the ocean of brahman, full of endless joy. How can I accept or reject anything? Is there anything apart or distinct from brahman? Now, finally and clearly, I know that I am the ātman, whose nature is eternal joy. I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing that is separate from me.26

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tHe bhagavad gītā The path of knowledge might at first glance appear easy—simply wake up and realize who you are. But, in fact, the path of knowledge is steep, dependent for success upon ascetic renunciation of action and rigorous, disciplined meditation; it is by and large neither practical nor accessible to the average person. In addition, by the time of the early Upanishads, a conceptual development had emerged that complicated the search for liberation: the notion of cycles of death and rebirth (saṃsāra) controlled by one’s own action (karma). In the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad it is expressed as a secret teaching; in later texts, it is taken for granted. Yājñavalkya explains that good actions make us good and ensure a good rebirth; bad actions have the opposite effect.27 In an earlier period the cyclical nature of life was embraced in a joyous and lifeaffirming spirit, and the end that was hoped for was arriving at the world of the ancestors or the world of the gods. The only end to be feared was re-death after one had arrived at the afterlife, and certain ritual actions were prescribed to prevent this prospect. Gradually—it is not clear how—there developed the notion of saṃsāra, a cycle of death and rebirth into this world. Transmigration of the soul was seen not as an opportunity but an entrapment in an endless cycle, an inexorable burden from which the soul desired to be liberated.28 In this way, a tension emerged between two competing ideals: that of sacred duty (dharma) and that of liberation (moksha).29 In its broadest sense dharma is the action that maintains the world order. Codes such as the Laws of Manu set forth in great detail the duties incumbent upon human beings to fulfill their responsibility to society and uphold the cosmic order. By fulfilling the sacred duty appropriate for one’s stage of life (āshrama) and social class (varṇa), a person would achieve two goals: one would uphold the order of the world and achieve for oneself good karma and the prospect of a good rebirth. Nevertheless, a good rebirth is but a finite goal, not a permanent release from the cycle of birth and death; all action, even good action, brings results that keep us tied in the never-ending cycle of saṃsāra. Thus the goal of renunciation is to free us completely from the cycle of action and consequence; when we realize the identity of our individual self (ātman) with the supreme spirit, we are liberated into the eternal realm of brahman. And thus there remained to some extent an uneasy tension between the worldaffirming ideal of fulfilling dharma and the world-renouncing goal of liberation (moksha) from the wheel of birth and rebirth.30 [ 123 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā A popular devotional text, the Bhagavad Gītā offers a doctrine designed to resolve this tension. The Gītā teaches that one can achieve the goals of meditation and liberation even while engaged in action. Action keeps one bound when one identifies oneself as the actor and thus accrues the results of one’s actions. But when we cease to identify ourselves as actors, considering ourselves instead to be spirits who transcend our action, we can act without attachment to the consequences.31 When we act for the sake of sacred duty alone, and with the purpose of liberation, we do not receive the results of our actions. The Gītā thus redefines renunciation. It is not action per se we must renounce, but attachment to its consequences. 32 The Gītā sets forth diverse but complementary paths, perhaps for individuals of different abilities and temperaments, and encompasses a set of philosophical streams including Upanishadic monism, Sāṅkhya dualism, and its practical analog, Yoga, with Sāṅkhya and Yoga predominating.33 Moreover, the Gītā is engaged in a revolutionary redefinition of many old Brahmanic ideals, responding to the challenge of sectarian movements such as Buddhism and Jainism.34 The setting is a battlefield; Arjuna, the great archer of the warrior class, turns to Krishna, his charioteer, seeking wisdom moments before the battle is to begin. Arjuna is engaged in a clan war, torn between his duty (dharma) as a warrior to fight the battle and his duty to his family not to kill his own kin.35 Arjuna knows Krishna simply as his charioteer; as the text progresses, Krishna reveals that he is in fact an incarnation of the God Vishnu. At play are two competing ideals, discussed earlier. The older ideal is one of ascetic renunciation, the steep path of knowledge and realization of identity between ātman and brahman; the new ideal entails a reconceptualization of karma yoga, the discipline (yoga) of work or action (karma). The original context of the term karma was Vedic sacrifice; the path of action (karma-mārga) entailed offering of the prescribed sacrifices.36 The Bhagavad Gītā creates a new path of karma yoga: action without attachment to results, desireless action (niṣkāma karma).37 This is linked with the yoga of devotion, in which we dedicates all our actions to the object of our devotion, Lord Krishna.

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The Second Teaching: The Discipline of Knowledge ( Jñānayoga) and the Discipline of Action (Karma Yoga) In the second teaching Arjuna argues that no good can come from killing his kin. Krishna responds by asking him to look at himself and his situation from a different perspective: not simply from the unity of soul and body, but from his real identity as a soul that does not die (2.11). The first argument Krishna makes thus introduces the first yoga he will teach: the discipline of knowledge (jñāna yoga) or discrimination (sāṅkhya) between the real and the unreal. Who are you really, Krishna asks Arjuna. Are you the same person you were as a child or a teenager? Though we pass through many life stages and lifetimes, there is one identity underlying all the personalities we have been— the soul that in reality is not born and does not die. Once we understand this, we realize that our true self is not the actual agent who kills on the battlefield, nor are actual agents slain. We need not grieve for those whose death is inevitable—those bodies that come into manifest existence. The eternal self does not die. This, of course, is not a carte blanche for indiscriminate killing. Arjuna faces a just war, a war to stop a tyrant on the order of Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot. In such a case we should not grieve that this world calls us to do things that may cause the death of others. We have to play our moral role. Nevertheless, contemporary readers cannot help being troubled by a central tension of the Gītā. As one scholar acknowledges, “the utility of the Gītā derives from its peculiar fundamental defect, namely, dexterity in seeming to reconcile the irreconcilable. The high god repeatedly emphasizes the great virtue of non-killing (ahimsa), yet the entire discourse is an incentive to war.”38 In 2.31, we come to Krishna’s second argument: it is Arjuna’s sacred duty (dharma) as a warrior to fight this battle. His impulse toward renunciation of necessary action is misguided, not noble (ārya). That is, we cannot achieve liberation by avoiding the uncomfortable tasks we sometimes face in this life, nor do we grow spiritually by leaving the field of duty. The battlefield on which Arjuna stands can therefore be understood on a metaphorical level as well. Many have interpreted the field of duty in its broadest sense as our duty to ourselves as citizens of the world and our community and to the tasks we have chosen for this life.39 As a warrior, Arjuna’s obligation is to fight this battle; for a student, life’s challenges and tasks are in school. It is indeed tempting to escape one’s karmic challenges by leaving a situation [ 125 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā altogether—a difficult friendship or troubling family relationship, the challenges of our chosen profession. The text does not necessarily suggest that one must remain in a marriage or job or friendship that is troubling, but it does argue that we achieve liberation by courageous approach rather than avoidance of the dilemmas in which we find ourselves. The only way to resolve karmic challenges is to face them. Arjuna can achieve liberation even while he remains in action; thus Krishna urges him to “fight the battle!” (2.37). Ralph Waldo Emerson, inspired by the Gītā, writes accordingly, “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”40 We note that Krishna argues here on several different levels. For Arjuna to shirk his dharma brings dishonor; to fulfill his dharma gives him reward, either in this life or the next. But the ultimate reason he should fight goes beyond calculations of this-worldly or otherworldly utilitarian concerns.41 One should transcend concern for joy and suffering, gain and loss, victory and defeat. The Gītā teaches that one should fight for the sake of dharma alone—one should do the right simply because it is right.42 Thus far, Krishna has taught the first discipline or yoga, that of knowledge or discrimination (sāṅkhya). In 2.47 he turns to speak in terms of practice, introducing the second discipline, karma yoga. He prefaces this with an argument against the utilitarian ritual worship enjoined by the Vedas. Action for the sake of rewards in heaven will never get us beyond the phenomenal world defined by the three qualities (gunas) of Nature (prakṛiti): purity (sattva), passion (rajas), and dullness (tamas). Krishna thus reminds us that we need to transcend the ancient karma marga, the doing of ritual sacrifice for the sake of a worldly or otherworldly reward; he is in fact going to define a new path of karma yoga. In our own terms, we might think of this as an argument against seeking reward in an afterlife heaven through the doing of religious actions. Deeds can only achieve eternal reward when we do them from the standpoint of our eternal soul as non-attached action. Thus the famous articulation of the principle of karma yoga in 2.47: 47. Be intent on action, Not on the fruits of action; Avoid attraction to the fruits And attachment to inaction! [ 126 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā 48. Perform actions, firm in discipline [yoga] Relinquishing attachment; Be impartial to failure and success— Equanimity (evenness of mind) is called yoga . . . 50. Arm yourself for yoga, Yoga is skill in actions.

Notice that renunciation is no longer of action but of attachment to action’s results. Arjuna is being called to stay focused on the moment, on the task in which he is actually engaged. Note, too, that he is learning a subtle skill: to be fully engaged and yet non-attached. This is not the detachment of a yogin meditating in a forest retreat; rather this is the courage of an agent daring to be fully involved in the world and yet gracefully relinquishing any outcome of his or her efforts.43 The doctrine of karma yoga is often challenging for Western students of the Gītā. Why act if one is not concerned about the results? Does this not amount to indifference, to not caring? In interpreting the Daodejing we have seen that there is a parallel temptation to interpret the ideal of wu-wei as the colloquial “whatever.” The Daodejing does use imagery of “going with the flow,” but this practice is not as simple as it sounds; it involves active attunement to the flow. Likewise, the Gītā is teaching a nuanced discipline. When writing a college essay, we can focus all of our attention on obtaining the grade of A  that we need to get into medical school; this is our culture’s model of “caring” and taking our work seriously. However, such concern for goals can also be paralyzing. The Gītā offers a different model: put aside concern for the results of action and become fully immersed in the activity of excellent craftsmanship. Moreover, there is a further dimension to the teaching of karma yoga that is crucial for our understanding of happiness. Most people think that the greatest happiness lies in times of leisure or in moments when we are consciously aware of joy. In contrast, the research of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests that the most profound contentment lies in those moments in which we are so fully immersed in activity that we are not aware of ourselves; this is what he has termed the experience of “flow.”44 The discipline of karma yoga teaches likewise that we can be fully absorbed in action without concern for any results beyond the action itself. This immersion is the fruit of insight or [ 127 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā understanding; we have fully disciplined our mind to remain focused upon the activity, undistracted by longing for achievement.45 The Gītā terms this “skillfulness in action.” What is the state of someone with such a disciplined understanding? Such a person shows no preference for fortune or misfortune; he or she becomes impartial to both success and failure. We put our all into acting in the best way we can, with the attitude “if I succeed, beautiful; if I fail, beautiful.” We can accomplish this by detachment from sense objects, desire, and aversion. Instead, one should control the senses and concentrate on Krishna (2.61). This is the first hint at the direction this text will take toward a Krishna-centered focus; the originally non-theistic discipline of yoga thus moves in an increasingly theistic direction.46 When attention is focused upon Krishna, the individual is able to remain unmoved even when strong desires are present. The yogin or yogini thus learns to see desires not as stemming from the deepest wellspring of the self but as autonomous processes that we can witness with detachment.47 The same image will later be given of one’s response to suffering; both desire and suffering can be seen as objects of experience—as nature (prakṛiti), distinct from one’s spirit (purusha).48 It is important to note that the terms prakṛiti and purusha are derived from the teachings of Sāṅkhya philosophy and its practical counterpart, Yoga, and that Sāṅkhya dualism analyzes the world differently from the teaching of the Upanishads. We have seen that for many teachers of the Upanishads reality is one seamless whole, and the soul is not really trapped in the phenomenal world. If our soul realizes its essential identity with brahman, we can achieve liberation and not return to a body after this life; we return to brahman itself. For Sāṅkhya philosophy, in contrast, there are two metaphysical principles in the world: Spirit (purusha) and nature (prakṛiti). Nature is the phenomenal world; it is not simply matter, but anything experienced, including our thoughts and ego-mind. Purusha is Spirit; it is the subject rather than the object of experience. When purusha begins to desire the objects of consciousness, it takes on the illusion of being trapped in nature.49 It must thus engage in the arduous process of separating itself from nature and reconnecting itself to spirit. Yoga texts offer meditation techniques to effect that process of yoking or binding together one’s mind and senses and freeing the Spirit from nature.50 The final verse of the second teaching shows the beautiful synthesis effected by the Gītā, which integrates the goals of Sāṅkhya and Yoga, the [ 128 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā Upanishads, and Buddhism. The goal of yoga, says Krishna, is the place of the supreme spirit, the divine state of brahman. Having achieved it, one is freed from delusion; abiding in it at death, one finds the pure calm of infinity (brahma-nirvana). Yoga thus enables one to achieve both brahman—in the Upanishads the impersonal Spirit with which one seeks to merge—and nirvana, the cessation of desire that is the goal of Buddhism.51 However, brahman here seems to be a state one arrives at rather than a spirit with which one merges, a state that in later chapters is described in terms of non-attachment, equilibrium, impartiality, and tranquility or liberation.52 We will see as we move on in the text that these soteriological goals will be absorbed ultimately into knowledge of the Supreme Person, a personality at the heart of the universe, identified as Krishna. Final liberation, even in the afterlife, is coming into the presence of Krishna and attaining his mode of being.53

The Third Teaching: Non-Attached Action for the Preservation of the World The third teaching returns to a question that will continually perplex Arjuna: which is superior, the discipline of understanding, achieved through meditation and contemplation, or the discipline of action? Krishna has just said that understanding is superior; why is he urging Arjuna to fight the battle? Shouldn’t he urge him to renounce action and remain in contemplation? This question shows that Arjuna has not yet absorbed the teaching of nonattached action that Krishna just outlined. It also shows that Krishna needs to add more metaphysical detail to bring Arjuna to understand how one can achieve the subtle art of contemplation while in action.54 Krishna will argue that this is the form of contemplative life human beings can most readily achieve. Krishna thus reiterates that he has taught two ways for people of different temperaments and backgrounds, two paths to the highest good.55 For followers of Sāṅkhya philosophy, the highest good is attained by the discipline of knowledge (jñāna yoga); for yogins, it is attained by the discipline of action (karma yoga) (3.2). His argument is that we cannot go beyond action just by avoiding action; we do not attain spiritual success by renunciation alone. This is because no one can exist without acting; we are all forced to act by the qualities (gunas) of nature (prakṛiti) (3.5). [ 129 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā A person who controls his senses but keeps recalling sense objects with his mind is a self-deluded hypocrite (3.6). If we sit on a yoga mat and meditate, but fantasize about gratifying the pleasures of our senses, we are fooling ourselves that we are really achieving the goals of renunciation. In contrast, if we control the senses with our minds and are engaged in karma yoga with the faculty of action, then we have achieved detachment. Detachment is an attitude of mind and cannot be measured by whether we are acting with our bodies. Thus to perform the actions we are obliged to perform is more powerful than not to act at all. We should uphold our duties in the world; without action, we cannot maintain the health of the body and fulfill our spiritual aims. Krishna then moves his teaching on karma yoga one step further by arguing that all action should be performed as sacrifice (3.8–14). In the previous chapter, Krishna condemned Vedic sacrifice for the purpose of worldly or heavenly reward. Here he upholds the system of sacrifice and enjoins Arjuna to perform his action in its spirit; he thus absorbed an earlier strand of tradition in the new discipline of karma yoga.56 Action can imprison a person, but if performed in the spirit of sacrifice the same action can free a person. Thus karma yoga has three components: we must give up attachment to results, we must perform action in the spirit of sacrifice, and—we will see—we should dedicate it in loving devotion to the Deity. When a person takes pleasure in the self (ātman), is satisfied only by the self, and finds contentment in the self alone, there exists no dharmic duty. And yet, like the ancient wise kings, we should continue to act, setting an example for others. We should engage in non-attached action, for the wellbeing of the world. Krishna himself has nothing to gain, but continues to engage in action. Ordinary people act with attachment; the wise should also act, but for the purpose of the preservation of world order (3.17–25). Thus we can continue to act within the ordinary cosmic drama, but from a different viewpoint. We are no longer engaged in action for the fulfillment of personal motives; rather we quietly play our role to uphold the general world order and ritual cosmos. Action takes on a different character when this new viewpoint is adopted. We come to a new understanding of our essential identity; we realize we are not really the agent of action. Actions are effected by the three qualities (gunas) of nature (prakṛiti). It is only when we are deluded by egoidentification that we think “I am the actor;” rather, we should realize “ the [ 130 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā qualities depend on other qualities” (3:27–28). We can become the witness, rather than the doer, observing the semi-autonomous movements of nature’s qualities, which we experience as human emotions: we can witness hurt, reacting to a loss; the hurt develops into sadness, and someone else’s anger arises in response.57 However, we ourselves identify as the eternal self who is watching the qualities of nature responding to other qualities, recognizing that our true nature is deeper and separate, unaffected by the qualities of nature. We lose our egocentric viewpoint and assume the viewpoint of the eternal Self within. We now act purely for the sake of dharma in both its senses: we fulfill our sacred, social duty and uphold the world order and ritual cosmos. Thus we combine jñāna yoga, the knowledge that we are the eternal self and not the material nature, with karma yoga, acting without attachment to results. Krishna also briefly introduces a discipline that will become more prominent as the text goes on: the discipline of devotion, bhakti yoga. In 3.30 Krishna tells Arjuna, “Surrender all actions to me and fix your mind on your inmost self.” Thus Arjuna should fight, for those who follow this teaching of Krishna’s are freed from their actions, with their karmic effects. One can attain freedom even while acting by surrendering the results of action to Krishna.58 We must realize that even wise people act according to their natural endowment; that is what all beings in nature do. The reality of our material basis means that the qualities of nature will act in their characteristic ways (3.33). Thus our strategy should be to simply witness our natures acting as they do, realizing our identity with a deeper part of who we are and surrendering our actions to the divinity. If it is our nature to act in angry ways, we should identify with our eternal self who simply observes our fiery nature fulfill its necessary place in the cosmic drama, at the same time surrendering our action as an offering to the divine. For example, Rosa Parks might see her anger as fulfilling an important function; she can offer up to God her action of civil disobedience springing from righteous anger. Krishna adds that we should do our own duty (svadharma), for our own duty done poorly is better than another’s done well. We have a role in this world, and our best approach to the art of living is simply to perform this action as a sacrifice to divinity, knowing we are playing our designated place in the universe (3.35).59 In the context of Hindu society, this is an argument for fulfilling the role we are born into according to our social class and life [ 131 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā stage (varnashrama-dharma). Commentators today extend this notion to finding one’s individual calling in life.60 Thus Krishna is moving Arjuna to see that he should fulfill his vital duty as a warrior in this just battle against an evil enemy who must be destroyed, rather than seek to withdraw as a renunciate. He goes on to point out that our true enemy is not the external foe but the desire within that impels us to commit evil, as if against our will. The practice of yoga teaches us first to restrain our senses and then subdue the enemy within that impels us, the fire of desire. Krishna may be suggesting to Arjuna that he can fight the external battle as a warrior, fulfilling his own duty, while practicing the yoga of self-restraint within by controlling his senses and the desire that causes us to commit evil.61 He thus suggests that the true calling of a great warrior is to kill the enemy menacing him in the form of desire (3.43). This is a reminder that the tale of Arjuna on the battlefield is also an allegory for all of us on our field of duty. The outward drama in which we participate is a setting for the more vital inner drama, in which we conquer the inner demons that keep us from finding peace.

The Fourth Teaching: Non-Attached Action as Imitation of Krishna In the Fourth Teaching Krishna reveals his divine nature and the notion that the Divine descends into our world era after era whenever the world has devolved into chaos and the decline of sacred duty (adharma).62 God thus appears in each successive age to re-establish sacred duty (dharma) (4.1–8). One who knows in truth God’s divine birth and action escapes rebirth when abandoning the body and returns instead to Krishna: “he does not go to rebirth, he goes to Me” (4.10). Thus the yoga of knowledge is increasingly redefined as knowledge of Krishna.63 In the Upanishads the sacred knowledge that allowed us to achieve liberation was knowledge of the identity of our individual Self (ātman) with the supreme Spirit (brahman). The opening of the Gītā presents the freeing knowledge as knowledge that the Self is eternal and separate from nature. In 4.5–9, however, knowledge is that of a personal story, the story of Lord Krishna, who descends in age after age to re-establish sacred duty and rescue humanity from chaos. Liberation, too, is being redefined here. When we abandon the body at death, our goal is no longer merging of our individual self with a universal spirit but coming into the presence of Krishna, a [ 132 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā personal deity (4.10).64 Liberated souls belong to Krishna, take refuge in Krishna, and in the end all come to Krishna.65 Those who come to God, no matter how they do so, will be granted this gracious reward (4.10–11). We are therefore no longer alone in our sacred quest for liberation and peace. There is a loving God who graciously helps those who seek him with devotion. And we no longer seek to merge and become one with God, but rather to come into his loving presence.66 Krishna is not only a God who grants grace, but a model of the practice of karma yoga. He asserts that he has created the four castes or classes of society, and though he has effected this act of creation, in reality he has not carried out an action, for he is the eternal non-actor—a model for the karma yogin to act without acting. A person who understands this about Krishna is himself not imprisoned by his or her own actions (4.13–14). Krishna thus helps the yogin in two ways. Krishna is a model for a kind of imitatio Dei; as Krishna acts without acting, so we humans are enjoined to imitate him and act without acting.67 But it seems, further, that part of Krishna’s ability to grant grace is effected by an understanding that develops in the devotee. Through deep existential comprehension of the way God acts, we come to transcend the law of karma; knowledge of Krishna as the eternal non-actor frees us from karma. We too become the actor who never acts (4.13–14). R. C. Zaehner expresses this notion well: “To ‘know’ God as He really is, that is as both changeless and perpetually active yet not bound by and therefore not committed to what He does, is to identify oneself with Him, and thereby to accede to his ‘mode of being,’68 In 4.15 Krishna thus makes an impassioned call for us to perform our obligatory duties, even while eagerly striving for liberation, just as the ancient ones did. He thus evokes the prestige of origins, implying that the model of ascetic renunciation is not ancient and venerable but a more recent distortion of ancient ideals. In ancient times the tension between dharma and moksha was resolved by performing necessary actions while recognizing that we are not the actual agent. We can engage in our duties and not be imprisoned by karma; the law of karma applies only to a person who believes him or herself to be the actual source of action.69 Krishna helps us understand this teaching by distinguishing three categories of action: action (karma), improper action (vikarma), and nonaction (akarma). The wise person is able to discern non-action in action and action in non-action; such a person engages in all necessary actions, but is [ 133 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā disciplined and steadfast in yoga. Thus the wise person excludes desire and purpose from all his undertakings: “a person is called wise when his plans lack desirous intentions; his actions are thus burned in the fire of knowledge” (4.17–19). When we act without desire and ego-driven intentions, although we act, we are actually engaging in non-action. What defines action is motivation. If we act with desire for the reward of action, we engage in action; when we act without desire for reward, our action is, as it were, burned up in the fire of knowledge. It is as if we have not acted at all; we accrue no karma.70 The action is consumed like a burned offering; its karmic consequences are burned away like an offering in fire. Thus Arjuna can participate in the just battle, regarding his engagement in war as an act of sacrifice.71 When we have abandoned attachment to the results of our action, we do nothing at all, even when engaged in action; this is truly non-action in the midst of action. (4.20, 4.18).72 The body alone acts; we are content with whatever comes, impartial to failure and success. Thus we are not bound even when we act. The modern commentator Ekthnath Easwaran looks to Gandhi as a model of karma yoga, as one who engaged in the world and yet practiced nonattachment. He cites the following anecdote about Gandhi: For me, Gandhi is the perfect example of the statement that a person filled with the love of God, practicing the presence of God, never acts at all. Once when I went to Gandhiji’s ashram, as I walked about in the neighborhood of his little cottage, I saw the unending stream of political leaders from Britain and India who came to him throughout the day. I was wondering how he was able to bear the pressure of these significant interviews which would change the relations of two great countries, and in the evening, I expected to see a tired, irascible, very impatient man coming out. Instead I saw a smiling figure who looked as if he had been playing bingo with children all day. I could not believe my eyes, because I was used to the idea that if we work eight hours we should be tense and ready to be irritated by anybody who tries to be nice to us. But he was completely untouched by his action. Every day in our work, as long as it is not at the expense of others, we can learn to avoid tension and pressure when attending to the most challenging tasks that life may bring us. For most of us, tension has become a badge of action. In fact, we usually expect someone who has engaged in intense action during the day to complain about his ulcer. Tension need not accompany action; we can act free [ 134 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā from any tension, any movement in the mind, any ripple of consciousness. Once Gandhi was asked by Western friends, “Mr. Gandhi, you have been working fifteen hours a day for fifty years for these helpless millions of India. Why don’t you take a long holiday?” Gandhi replied, “I am always on holiday.”73

The Gītā thus suggests that when we let go of attachment to the results of action, and especially when we surrender them to the divine, we are freed from the karmic bonds of our actions and can even achieve liberation through our actions (3.31).74 Similarly, we are used to identifying with our joys and sorrows. The Gītā asks us to step back and discover a joy that is deeper than elation. It suggests that elation and depression are mutually entailing pairs of opposites, whereas the goal of the practitioner of yoga is to find a joy that transcends these distinctions. When asked whether he was excited about the prospect of his upcoming presidency, John F. Kennedy was reputed to say, “Excited? No. Interested? Yes.”75 The mature, reflective way of living suggested by the Gītā is to take intense interest in our lives, while at the same time taking the stance of Krishna: I am the actor who never acts.76 We can be fully engaged, interested, and joyful, while not suffering from the intense dramas of pleasure and pain. The Gītā is thus engaged in a redefinition of yoga. Whereas contemporary traditions associated yogic discipline with the renunciation of action, sitting in certain postures, and meditation, the Gītā introduces the revolutionary discipline of karma yoga, defining yoga as evenness of mind and skill in actions.77 The Gītā thus argues that evenness of mind toward success and failure is actually the most effective way of acting.78 When we are involved in the action itself rather than the results, we begin to act with the effortless ease described by the Gītā as karma yoga, which has parallels to the Daodejing’s wu-wei. Drawing upon the themes of its own culture, the Gītā describes such action as sacrifice. If we act only as a sacrifice, the action is totally dissolved, just as a material sacrifice was once burned on an altar (4.23).79

The Fifth Teaching: True Renunciation Is Discipline in Action Chapter 5 finds Arjuna still confused and wanting more clarification about the relationship between renunciation and action. Which is better of the two? Krishna here definitively praises discipline in action—the yoga of action [ 135 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā (karma yoga) over renunciation of action (karma sannyāsa). And yet, he is also quick to clarify that the person who does not desire is the true renunciate (sannyāsin) (5.1–3). In other words, the physical path of ascetic renunciation does not achieve the true goal of renunciation. We have seen in the Fourth Teaching that simply not acting at all is not the way to achieve renunciation. By disciplining oneself through yoga, we can achieve the true renunciation, which is renunciation of desire and attachment.80 There ensue in Chapters 5 and 6 some of the oldest texts with explicit directions for the practice of meditation. We are told that the sage shuns external objects, fixes his gaze between the eyebrows, balances inhaled and exhaled breath as they pass through the nostrils (5.27). Thus we are given explicit techniques of yogic breath control so that our senses, thoughts, and understanding are all restrained. The person who achieves this is committed to his or her liberation. Desire, fear, and anger have vanished. This person is free (5.28). Now Krishna begins to reveal himself as the Supreme Person, identifying himself as the great lord of all worlds and the heart’s friend of all beings. Knowing this, one finds peace (5.29). The atheistic language of Sāṅkhya Yoga and the Upanishads’ language of a detached, impersonal brahman slowly recede as Krishna’s identity as the Supreme Person comes to the fore.81

The Sixth Teaching: The Path of Classical Yoga The Sixth Teaching continues instruction in classical yoga meditation that we saw in 5.27. 6.14 again introduces the Supreme Person Krishna into yoga practice: “let him sit with discipline, his thought fixed on Me, intent on Me.” Moreover, the Gītā parallels and perhaps even transcends Buddhist claims; 6.15 speaks of brahmanirvana, translated variously as “peace, supreme nirvana,” “peace that culminates in nirvana,” “the peace that is beyond nirvana.”82 In 6.22 we hear that when the yogin is steadfast in this truth no sorrow disturbs him, no matter how heavy it is to endure. For this is what yoga is: to undo the bonds that bind us to sorrow (6.23). Brahmanic Hinduism can therefore match what is promised in heterodox traditions such as Buddhism: supreme peace and release from suffering. In 6.27 and following, we return to language of brahman: the yogin has merged with brahman; he easily attains the endless joy that comes from contact with brahman. Hav[ 136 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā ing yoked himself by means of yoga, he sees the Self that dwells in all beings and all beings within the Self. Indeed he sees the same in all things (6.29).83 But notice how this language of merging with the unity of brahman moves to the personal language of Krishna: “Whoever sees Me everywhere and sees everything in Me will never be separated from Me, nor will I be separated from him. The yogin who is aware of the oneness of life is devoted to Me, the one who dwells in all beings. Wherever he happens to find himself, he remains within Me” (6:30–31).84 Thus the Gītā has absorbed the unitive vision of brahman in the Upanishads and merged it with language of the Supreme Person Krishna. Arjuna not only finds within himself the presence of divinity, but of a loving, personal God who enjoins Arjuna to become a devotee: “But among all yogins the one who devotes himself to Me, who has gone to Me with his inmost self—I judge him to be the most disciplined of all!” (6.46–47). Hence Krishna begins to exalt bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion to a personal God—here identified as Krishna—as the highest path.85 We therefore find in these passages a personally flavored mysticism of love and devotion. One does find the ātman that dwells at the heart of all being, which allows us to see all beings in the unity of the ātman; there are echoes here of the Chandogya Upanishad’s epiphany “That art thou!” But one also finds a supreme personal Lord who is never separated from oneself. In a beautiful parallelism, the Supreme Person identifies himself with the ātman. “He states: [The Yogin] sees the Self that dwells in all beings and all beings in the Self ” (6.29) and “whoever sees Me everywhere . . . sees everything in Me.” (6.30). He thus tells us that “I dwell deep in the heart of everyone” (15.15). While the notion of a Self that dwells at the heart of all might be abstract and difficult for many people to grasp, finding a Personal Lord who is always within one’s heart and never separate makes this teaching accessible and universal.

The Seventh Teaching: Krishna as the Supreme The Seventh through Twelfth Teachings see the emergence of a truly Krishnacentered focus. This is the main theological section of the Gītā, in which Krishna reveals to Arjuna the nature of his divinity. Here we move away from Upanishadic monism to metaphysical dualism; however, unlike pure Sāṅkhya dualism, there is also a Lord who sustains the world. Thus we are told that Krishna’s lower nature is composed of the five elements—earth, water, fire, [ 137 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā air, and ether—plus mind, intellect, and ego. But beyond that is a higher nature, consisting of souls (jivan-bhutam) by which this universe is sustained.86 All the world is strung upon Krishna like pearls on a thread. (7.1–7).87 The chapter indeed opens with a change in tone: “Focus your mind on me, rely on me” (7.1). As Zaehner points out, up to now, Arjuna has been taught to aim for supreme detachment. Now he is being told to attach himself to Krishna!88 J. A. B. Van Buitenen likewise notes this shift in tone: “Now he supplants the stoicism with the enthusiasm of the believer acting in God’s name and for his glorification, and replaces the salvation-seeking knowledge with that knowledge of God that only bhakti can bring.”89 The relationship to the world shifts as well. Ithamar Theodor points out that whereas Chapter 6 highlighted the struggle with sense objects, in Chapter 7 the world is not seen as a threat but as a manifestation of divine abundance, as Krishna’s lower nature.90 The whole material world is suffused with God. In the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad we read that brahman is the Real of the real.91 Likewise, here Krishna declares that he is the quintessence of all things: the taste in water, the light in the moon and sun, the pure fragrance in earth, the brilliance in fire, the life in all living creatures, the penance in ascetics (7.8–9). Like brahman in the Upanishads—likened to the saltiness at the heart of the ocean or the seed of the banyan tree that supports the whole tree— Krishna is the invisible thread that holds together the entire universe.92 Nature’s qualities—lucidity, passion, and dark inertia—all come from Krishna. Krishna qualifies: I am not in them; they are in me (7.12). Thus he distinguishes his view from pure pantheism. This is, rather, what scholars term a theistic panentheism; all the world is God, but God is also beyond the world. For those who have eyes to see, even the very material qualities of nature reveal the divine.93 In a phenomenologically astute explication, Krishna explains that four types of people seek him: those who are in distress, those who seek wisdom, those who pray for wealth and success, and the person of knowledge. The person of knowledge is the one who seeks Krishna for no ulterior motive; this is the person who is distinguished by devotion to Krishna alone. Thus Krishna declares, “I am especially dear to the man of knowledge, and he is dear to me” (7.17).94 As in the Sixth Teaching, Krishna’s tone has changed noticeably. We have moved from the impersonal language of an impartial, all-pervasive brahman to the intimate language of personal relationship, one of mutual affection and affiliation. [ 138 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā We thus find a new dimension of relationality in the flourishing life. In Confucianism, human relationships are the most important dimension of affiliation; the Daodejing emphasizes relationship to the Way of nature. In the Gītā we discover relationship to a supreme loving Person at the heart of reality. As Theodor notes, whereas the experience of brahman is one of internal joy, we find here a new affective dimension of devotion and loyalty. Now there is an additional motive for Arjuna to fight. Not only is he fighting simply to fulfill his duty as a warrior or for the sake of self-purification. Now, he is also fighting as an act of surrender and devotion to a personal Lord.95 The Gītā assures us that all people who are devoted to Krishna are noble, but Krishna regards the person of knowledge to be his very Self, for this person abides in Krishna as the highest Way and goal. At the end of many births, such a person takes refuge in Krishna, saying, “Krishna is all that is” (7.18–19). Krishna has thereby absorbed the characteristics of the allpervasive brahman; no longer one of the many gods, Krishna is the supreme all-encompassing deity. While asserting that the most genuine worship is that of Krishna, Krishna declares that he will give unshakable faith to any devotee who wishes to worship god in any form as long as he or she worships sincerely (7.21–22). The view expressed here by the Gītā is similar to what modern scholars have called inclusivism: our god includes (but subsumes) other gods.96 Thus Catholic theologian Karl Rahner speaks of “the anonymous Christian,” a person who thinks he or she is worshipping another god with devotion, but in reality, worships Christ.97 In the Gītā, Krishna likewise suggests that devotees of other gods are anonymous Krishna-ites; those who obtain their desires from other gods have actually obtained them from Krishna. He also adds a caveat: those who worship the gods go to the gods, whereas those who are devoted to Krishna come to Krishna (7.23).98 Krishna is the supreme goal of worship; others will receive transient rewards. Krishna accepts a big tent of worshippers; others are free to seek their own gods, but they will not receive the ultimate reward that stems from worship of the Supreme Person. Krishna goes on to offer a fascinating metaphysical explication. Those without understanding think that Krishna is unmanifest nature become manifest in some particular form. They do not know the higher state of Krishna that is perfect and unchanging. Krishna thus reverses the logic of Upanishadic thought. For the Upanishadic school, the ultimate reality is unchanging, unmanifest brahman, which can assume particular forms as [ 139 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā various deities. Krishna takes for himself the place of the unmanifest brahman (7.24–27).

The Eighth Teaching: Manifest and Unmanifest Being and Cosmic Cycles The theme of manifest and unmanifest Krishna is developed more fully in Chapter 8.99 In a key passage, Krishna explains that in addition to the individual’s karmic cycle in saṃsāra there are great cosmic cycles of a thousand eons in which all beings sink back into the creator god Brahma’s night and then re-emerge into Brahma’s day.100 However, beyond all this is another state, an eternal unmanifest state that is beyond that unmanifest world. Whereas all beings perish, “this one” does not die (8.17–20).101 It is said that this unmanifest being is imperishable and that he is the supreme path. Once they have reached him they do not return; Krishna affirms that “this is my highest dwelling” (8.21).102 What Krishna seems to suggest is that beyond the impersonal, unmanifest realm of brahman is a personal unmanifest realm of Krishna, the Supreme Person. Moreover, his language is not that of identification between the yogin and the unmanifest one, but of devotion (8.22). We no longer have the Upanishadic model of a drop merging with the ocean, but a purified soul dwelling eternally in loving devotion to the Supreme Spirit.103

The Ninth Teaching: The Yoga of Devotion (Bhakti) Chapter 9 expands on this vision, using paradoxical language characteristic of mysticism: 9.4 tells us that the whole universe is pervaded by Krishna’s unmanifest form; all creatures exist in him, but he does not exist in them. 9.5 goes on to say that these creatures are not really in him; his self brings all beings to life and supports all beings, but it does not dwell in them. While Krishna is simultaneously immanent and transcendent, he wants to make clear that his immanence is not physical but something more mysterious. He identifies himself both as the cause of nature (prakṛiti) and as that which animates the entire world order.104 Krishna continues to pursue a series of “I am” statements.105 He identifies himself with all the components of the ritual sacrifice, while he critiques the [ 140 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā practitioners of Vedic sacrifice who aim only at worldly rewards. At the same time, he brings out his own granting of grace: “those who devote themselves to me, thinking of nothing else whatsoever, once they have become constant in their discipline—I bring them success and peace” (9.22).106 Spiritual reward is not only the result of hard-won effort; there is an element of grace granted by Krishna, who is close to his devotees.107 Indeed, 9.26 and the following represent a democratic, egalitarian revolution. Krishna has been extolling the efforts of yogis in concentrated acts of meditation and devotion. The yoga of knowledge is also complex—the metaphysics Krishna offers is more intricate than the simple unity of ātman and brahman. But devotees of Krishna can bypass such a steep road of rigorous meditation and sophisticated understanding. The simple offering of a leaf or flower or fruit is accepted by Krishna as a gift of devotion offered from the self.108 Whatever one does, whatever one eats or offers or whatever austerity one performs, one should do it as an offering to Krishna. This is the way to be freed from the bonds of saṃsāra and from the fruits of one’s actions, good or bad (9.27–28). This is the true yoga of renunciation. One can be freed from karma not only by renouncing the results of one’s actions but by taking the further step of dedicating them as an offering to Krishna.109 Krishna thus articulates the paradoxical stance of a God who is both God of all and the object of specific devotional worship. Krishna is the same to all beings; no one is hateful or especially dear to Krishna. But for those who worship Krishna with utter devotion, they will be in Krishna, and he will be in them (9.29).110 No matter how badly we have lived our lives, if we worship Krishna alone, we will quickly commit ourselves to duty and righteousness and will never be lost (9.30–31).111 Krishna is even more explicit about this democratic, egalitarian revolution: no matter the conditions of one’s birth, whether as women, Vaishyas (merchant or peasant class), or low-caste servants (Shudras), those who take refuge in Krishna all attain the final goal. Thus, he enjoins Arjuna, devote yourself to Krishna! “Discipline yourself to me, you will come to me, and I will be your final refuge” (9.32–34). The ultimate discipline is the discipline of devotion. It is the easiest, the most accessible, and the most powerful. Against the background of a Brahmanic culture that valorizes austerities, meditation, study of Scripture, and the attainment of sophisticated knowledge, the Gītā suggests that the highest wisdom is the wisdom of the pure, open heart.112 Theodor offers an intriguing reflection on the Gītā’s evaluation of the path of [ 141 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā devotion. Achievements in knowledge, meditation, and austerities may mask the fact that we have not overcome negative traits such as anger, religious utilitarianism, or spiritual pride. The discipline of devotion is in this sense purer—it forces us to confront who we are more directly. We cannot hide behind spiritual achievement. It cuts to the quick and puts us in existential confrontation with ourselves.113 The path of the heart may also engage our whole self, a more complex and deeper dimension of our being. The simpler path may actually be more rigorous.

The Tenth and Eleventh Teachings: The Revelation of Krishna as Cosmic Source In Book 10 Arjuna accepts the divinity of Krishna. In 10.12 he affirms Krishna as the supreme brahman, the human spirit, eternal and divine. Thus he affirms of Krishna all that is said about the Upanishadic brahman. Krishna is the highest reality proclaimed by other seers (10.13); note that it is Krishna who is proclaimed as this highest reality, not an Absolute beyond Krishna.114 Krishna goes on to make another series of “I am” statements, a prelude to Krishna’s great revelation to Arjuna in Chapter 11. Krishna’s self praise in “I am” assertions in 10:20–39 is followed by a series of “I see you” assertions by Arjuna in 11.15–31. This parallel may support the notion suggested by several scholars that the great epiphany of Chapter 11 is an interpolation, a short Arjuna Gītā, a song developed from Arjuna’s perspective as devotee looking upon Krishna.115 It also underscores that the text has been edited to create a beautiful literary unity. Chapter 10’s “I am” verses, paralleled by Arjuna’s response of “I see you,” create an antiphonal song of love and devotion, much as we find in the Biblical Song of Songs. Between these antiphonal verses, in 11.1–4, Arjuna asks for a vision of the Lord, reminiscent of Moses’ request in Exodus, “Let me see your Presence! (33.18).” The blind narrator Saṃjaya describes the great theophany Arjuna sees, including the light of a thousand suns and the array of the entire cosmos.116 Arjuna responds with his chorus of “I see you” statements: “I now see that you are without beginning or middle or end, that your power is infinite, that your arms are beyond number, that the sun and moon are your eyes. I now see that your mouth is a blazing sacrificial fire and that your radiance burns up all this world” (11.19). [ 142 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā Most startlingly, Krishna declares “I am time, the agent of the world’s destruction, now grown old and set in motion to destroy the worlds. Even without you, all of these warriors arrayed in opposing battle formation will cease to exist” (11.32). Krishna bids Arjuna look at the armies assembled to fight and assures Arjuna that he has already slain them long ago.117 Thus Arjuna can rise up and perform his duty as a warrior to fight this battle of sacred duty, knowing he is only acting as an agent for Krishna, who, as time, will slay them all. Krishna assures Arjuna that it is only through devotion (bhakti) that Krishna can be known in this way (11.54). And he makes an impassioned plea for the blending of karma and bhakti yoga: “Whoever performs his actions for my sake, whoever makes me his highest goal, whoever devotes himself to me, without attachment and without hostility toward anyone—Arjuna, such a person comes to me” (11.55). Arjuna is overawed by the spectacle and wishes to return to his normal seeing of Krishna and to the normal friendly relations the two have shared.118 Krishna is reassuring. He promises Arjuna that this mode of seeing Krishna is not usual; he has given Arjuna a special eye to see him, but recommends the ordinary method of combined karma/bhakti yoga. And so they proceed to a discussion of yoga in Chapter 12. The great theophany of Chapter 11 returns to normal quotidian reality.119

The Twelfth Teaching: The Supreme Person and the Unmanifest Brahman In Chapter 12 Arjuna asks a question that was of great debate in Hindu culture and that may continue to perplex many readers. He wants to know definitively which is higher, the path toward the revelation of the Supreme Person or that to the impersonal brahman. This debate will be represented later by the school of Rāmānuja, which taught qualified non-dualism, and that of Śankara, which taught absolute non-dualism. For the school of Rāmānuja, while one can achieve liberation through experience of the impersonal brahman, one has not achieved the supreme revelation of the Supreme Person, the fullest revelation of the divine. The personal relationship between a devotee and the Supreme Person thus represents the most complete devotional experience known to humankind. For the school of Śankara, matters are the other way around. For a person who needs an anthropomorphic image of God, the [ 143 ]

tHe bhagavad gītā Supreme assumes a personal face. But the ultimate goal is to move beyond this personal dualism to absolute non-dualism and identity with the allpervasive brahman. In the Gītā the answer is clear. Krishna states that he deems those most disciplined who worship Krishna in personal form with enduring faith. Those who worship the imperishable, the unmanifest, which is beyond words, also attain to Krishna. This is a more arduous path, involving more distress, because it is difficult for those who are embodied to reach a goal that is itself unmanifest (12.3–5).120 The school of Śankara would point to this verse and suggest that this more difficult path is for those advanced spiritual seekers who can progress beyond embodied images of a personal god. Krishna then goes on to offer an easier path, a path of grace: those who surrender all their actions to Krishna and are focused on Krishna alone, who meditate on Krishna with yoga and worship him, he lifts up out of the ocean of the cycle of death and rebirth (12.7).121 Thus the choice is ours: do we aspire to be the fearless spiritual seeker, who can boast of rising up on his or her own spiritual bootstraps, or the one who surrenders oneself to Krishna and humbly accepts the easier and more effective path of devotion to the deity? Śankara suggests that the path of devotion is a concession to those who are not able to do without embodied images of the divine. However, the plain sense of this passage in the Gītā seems to insist that the path of devotion is not just easier, but more effective and indeed preferable. The highest path for the Gītā is clearly devotion to Krishna.122 The Gītā thus teaches that we can find happiness through focused awareness, culminating in a relationship of love and devotion. One can develop attentive awareness through practices of meditation, breath restraint, and surrender of concern with the results of actions. We have seen this motif in Zhuangzi as well; an archer who is concerned with hitting the mark loses his or her ability to act spontaneously and freely. The Gītā, however, culminates its path of awareness in focus with loving attention on a Supreme Divine Person.123 Happiness for the Gītā is thus a life in which one engages in the world through non-attached action, identifying with an eternal spirit, and finding a supreme being in one’s heart to whom one can dedicate one’s life with love and devotion.

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SIX

St. Augustine The Happy Life of the Soul

IT MIGHT SEEM a far stretch from the fifth- to second-century bce Hindu world of the Bhagavad Gītā to the fourth-century ce Christian world of St. Augustine’s North Africa, from the many gods of Hindu tradition to the one Triune God of the Christian Bible. However, on closer inspection, we may be able to discern certain conceptual and phenomenological bridges between these disparate religious worlds. These are two theistic traditions, each of which stresses devotion to a personal God. Most strikingly, there is a shared emphasis between the Bhagavad Gītā and Augustine on divine grace as the ultimate source of human happiness. Augustine articulates a view of the happy life in his first, most youthful work, the dialogue The Happy Life (De Beata Vita); the question of happiness continues to occupy a central place in his thinking throughout his corpus. I will here examine one key articulation, in his early treatise On the Free Choice of the Will. I will walk through some of the key arguments of the treatise and show the way this treatment expresses central concepts in his early doctrine of human flourishing. I will also address the turn from the first book of the Free Choice, in which Augustine seems to suggest we can achieve happiness through the exercise of our own will, to his increasing emphasis on the need for divine grace, expressed in the second and third books of Free Choice and most poignantly in the Confessions. Through the course of the chapter, I will indicate overarching themes in his view of the human capacity for happiness and flourishing. [ 145 ]

st. AugustIne First, we must note that even in his late work, the City of God, Augustine’s viewpoint is genuinely eudaimonistic. That is, he views the purpose of life as achieving the highest good, which is happiness or blessedness. Moreover Augustine explicitly identifies this good with God throughout his work. In an early statement in the Happy Life we hear that “God is the happy life of the soul.” In his most mature work, the Reconsiderations, he asserts that “in order to be able to attain happiness [one] should live as God lives. To attain this, our mind should not be self-contented but should be subjected to God.” 1 Although he does not believe that we can fully attain happiness in this life, happiness is indeed the goal and hope of the afterlife, and we can be called happy now when we live with genuine hope of this eternal blessedness.2 While in his later work Augustine emphasizes that the ability to be happy is contingent on divine grace rather than attainable by our own willing, this does not negate the fact that happiness is the goal of human endeavor. Let us first sketch a historical overview of the trajectory of his views, which will frame our discussion. In Book 1 of Free Will, which he began as early as 388 ce, Augustine insists that humans sin because they choose to, and thus God is just in punishing those who sin. Humans do evil because they turn away from learning (1.1). We can attain the happy life by living in accordance with divine law; we can achieve this simply by willing to. (1.13). Books 2 and 3 were written many years later, perhaps as late as 396, and Augustine’s optimism about our ability to create our own happiness through sheer force of will seems to be muted somewhat. In Book 2 he pictures humans becoming darkened because of weakness (2.16). In Book 3, we hear that humans do evil because of disordered love. Original sin has brought humans into a condition of ignorance and difficulty. Humans choose to remain in this condition, rather than accept the help of the Savior (3.7, 3.18).3 Thus many scholars see in Augustine’s thought at this time a new move toward thinking about the necessity of grace. The turning point is his treatise To Simplician—on Various Questions (De Quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, 396 ce), in which he rethinks Paul’s view of grace in Romans 7:19. In this work, Augustine articulates the position that Adam, as the pristine first human being, was created with a pure, good will; he was thus fully free to do the good on his own volition. In contrast, human beings now can only do good with God’s assistance; moreover, there is a mysterious election by God of some who [ 146 ]

st. AugustIne will be able to accept God’s grace, while others will not; thus does he interpret Matthew 22:14, “Many are called but few are chosen.” All human beings now inherit a tainted will and require God’s grace to be able to love rightly and pursue the good.4 It is not our own will but divine grace that can empower us to change our orientation from the temporal to the eternal.5 Augustine reacts vehemently against the reformer Palagius, who argues that humans are morally perfectible by their own efforts. From De Quaestionibus ad Simplicianum on, Augustine stresses that even our own efforts are made possible by the grace of God. This rethinking will affect Augustine’s interpretation of Paul’s words in Romans 7, to which he returns time and again: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want [or will], but the evil that I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. . . . For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.”6 Early in his thinking, Augustine thought of these words as coming from Paul before his conversion to Christianity. Gradually, he rethought his position and decided that Paul was speaking as a Christian who already had the gift of God’s grace. Thus, when he speaks of doing the evil he hates, St. Paul is not speaking of doing in action but of inner acts—continuing to desire what he does not want to desire. However, it is no longer the real “I” who does this. The old will of Paul continues to have desires, but the new will does not act on these desires.7 Augustine’s conception of a divided human will comes to the fore most vividly in the mature autobiographical Confessions, written around 396, ten years after his conversion to Christianity. Confessions Chapter 8 depicts a struggle in Augustine himself between what he describes as two wills—one that desires to continue in his old ways, one that wants to love God: I was held back—not by someone else’s iron sword, but by my own iron will. . . . Yet a new will began to be for me, so that I could worship you freely and want to enjoy you, God. You alone are certain pleasure. But this new will was not yet fit for overcoming the old hardness that was already there. And so my two wills— one old, the other new; one fleshly, the other spiritual—were fighting against each other.

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st. AugustIne Augustine describes the vying forces of his personality as a multiplicity of wills. On one level he longs to transform and yet on another he does not; he does not know quite how to find genuine inner willingness: So there I was, doing so many things, even though wanting to do them was not always enough to be able to do them. And I was not doing what would have pleased me much more—the feeling would be incomparable. If I could just want to do that, I would be able to do it as soon as I wanted it, since, as soon as I wanted it, I would want it unconditionally. There, that is where this capacity was. There was the will. There, to want to do that was to have already done it. Still, it was not happening.8

Augustine’s profound inner struggle thus gives birth to a complex meditation on the nature of desire and will. A human being can earnestly long to want to change, and yet not find within ourselves the willingness to do so.9 He describes this not simply as a conflict of two wills, good and bad—a feature of the Manichaean dualism he had once embraced and now rejects. Rather, one can be torn between many conflicting desires, all of them positive: one can desire to “delight in the reading of the Apostle, or to delight in a sober psalm, or to talk about the gospel.”10 The conflict of desire or will is a function of our being creatures in time. Before we have decided upon a particular course we are torn, distended between various choices and possibilities. Human choice represents the unification, alignment, or conversion (con versio; literally: turning together) of multiple wills into a single unified course of inner resolution.11 Augustine thus develops a new conception of the nature of human willingness. The will is for Augustine a part of the rational soul; human beings are responsible for their acts of will. Within the concept of will, he includes many aspects of our inner life: directing attention, imagination, faith, belief, and emotions.12 Augustine refashions Platonic and Stoic themes to create the will as a new center of human identity. Many scholars see in this early work, On the Free Choice of the Will, the birth of our modern conception of the will as a substantial faculty or center of agency.13 In the words of John M. Connolly, this new modern conception of the will is “the idea of a mental capacity connected to, but separate from the intellect and the emotions, by use of which we are responsible for the voluntariness of our deeds.”14 Human happiness is grounded in the condition [ 148 ]

st. AugustIne of our willingness and love. At the same time, it is only with God’s help that we can reorient our will to seek the happy life we desire. Augustine believes our goal is happiness and that we must strive developmentally to achieve that goal.15 At the same time, he holds the paradoxical view that it is the grace of God that enables us to strive to achieve happiness. It is God who gives us the willingness to accept God’s gift; it is grace that enables us to achieve our true end of a happy and blessed life.

The Theodicy Problem: Is God the Source of Evil? We have noted that Augustine’s refashioning of the concept of will begins in his early treatise On the Free Choice of the Will, which is not formulated as a treatise on happiness per se, but one considering an issue that troubled him throughout his life: is God the cause of evil? This is known as the problem of theodicy; if God is the source of all worth and value, why would God create a world in which there is evil? How could a good God allow misfortune into the world? Augustine explains that there are two kinds of evil: one is the suffering that is a just punishment, the other is evil committed by a person’s own will. In the Confessions Augustine notes that he is comforted when he realizes that suffering is either a just punishment or an act he has committed of his own free will, so that he does not need to blame God for it.16 We need to situate this concern of Augustine’s against the backdrop of his ten-year sojourn with the Manichaeans, an intellectual and spiritual journey he describes in the Confessions. Augustine is troubled by his own sensual impulses, and the Manichaeans provide the security of a response. They posit two divine principles: a principle of light, Rod or Ormudz, and a principle of evil or darkness, Ahriman. The human soul, which is composed of light, descends from the good principle, while the body is composed of gross matter, and is the work of an evil principle. Augustine attributes his evil impulses to the work of the evil divine principle; he can thus attribute his own sensual passions, which so troubled him, to an evil force outside of himself. In Platonic works Augustine found a resolution to the problem of evil that avoided Manichaean dualism. They taught him that there could be a reality that is immaterial and separate from the senses, and that he could find the source of his wrongdoing not in an evil material principle or in God but in his own free will. Thus on the one hand, against the Manichaeans, he asserts [ 149 ]

st. AugustIne that he himself, and not an evil divine principle, is responsible for his own choices. On the other hand, toward the end of Free Choice, in the Questions Addressed to Simplicism, and in the Confessions, we see a new emphasis on grace; he moves increasingly toward the view that his own will is only able to make correct choices because it is enabled to by the grace of God. We can understand that Augustine would take comfort in realizing that he does not have to blame a good God for the evils he himself commits. Why would he be comforted in receiving evil as a punishment? Perhaps we can understand this conception if we reframe it in contemporary terms: we suffer for the mistakes we make. Reality is so constructed that when we hurt ourselves and others we suffer; when we act in ways that are wholesome and constructive we experience well-being. Augustine sees this as a kind of natural law; it represents a Stoic theme in Augustine’s ethic. The Stoic philosophers conceived of the world as thoroughly patterned by rational order (logos). The Stoic God is identified with logos, which structures the world immanently with a rational plan, rendering the world a thoroughly coherent, organic whole.17 Augustine’s view of the consequences of our actions is likewise similar to the views of karma we see in Hinduism and Buddhism; for Augustine, however, the natural moral law is conceived of as God’s law. In Book 1 of Free Choice, where he is still rather optimistic about the effectiveness of human will, he explains that evil is simply turning away from learning.18 The world is so designed that we can learn to find wisdom and well-being from a God who is good, kind, and just. Hence the source of evil is our own excessive misplaced desire, which he identifies with the love of things that we can lose against our will.19 We can thus see the direction of freedom: to desire only things that we cannot lose unwillingly. Augustine’s approach reflects the Stoic conviction that we can find happiness if we limit our desires to that which is under our control; we cannot control the events in our lives, but we can indeed control our attitude to what happens.20 For Augustine, that which is under our control is our own good will and our love for God and the eternal truths. Why would taking refuge in God and eternal truths be so comforting for Augustine? We can think back to Plato’s argument for the existence of Forms in the Phaedo and the Republic. In this changing world there is nothing that is wholly beautiful without a trace of the ugly, nothing wholly good without a trace of evil. A beautiful flower will wither and fade; the beloved companion of our youth may grow sour and unpleasant. Thus happiness would seem [ 150 ]

st. AugustIne to lie in holding fast to those things we cannot lose—love for the eternal verities of justice, truth, and beauty that will never change or fade. These can never be taken from us; if we hold fast to them, we will never lose our happiness. In the next section we will explore the comfort Augustine finds in his conception of the freedom of the will.

The Good Will and Happiness Augustine argues that the other thing that can never be taken from us, besides our love for eternal things, is our own good will. We may not be able to fully actualize what we intend, but our willing is ours alone. Likewise in Plato’s Apology, Socrates argues that one cannot hurt a good person; the citizens of Athens can kill him, but they cannot take away his good intentions.21 Augustine’s purely voluntaristic viewpoint—the view that our will is undivided and fully under our control—will be problematized in the second and third books of Free Will and fully challenged in his later works, where he reads Paul to suggest that our will is fragmented, that there are many wills within us. We have seen him develop this view graphically in Confessions 8, in which he describes the tearing apart (distentio) of his multiple wills (voluntates), many competing urges pulling him in different directions. In the early part of Free Will, in contrast, Augustine’s will seems simple and undivided. There is an interesting parallel move in Platonic thought. In Plato’s early dialogues, Socrates seems to conceive of the soul as pure reason. He suggests that if we know the good we will automatically do it; Socrates seems to discount passions that might compete with pure rational calculation.22 In the later dialogue the Republic, Plato presents the view that the matter is not so simple; he describes the soul as a complex of divided forces—reason, spirit or will (thumos) and appetite—pulling in different directions.23 Augustine appears to have developed his notion of the divided will from both Platonic and Stoic models. The multiple wills he depicts graphically in the Confessions are like multiple personalities or sources of desire, each striving for a certain end. In the early Free Choice, however, the will is still relatively simple.24 This will is optimally guided by reason. In another adaptation of themes from Platonic and Stoic thought, he asserts that the eternal, unchangeable law is imprinted on our minds.25 When reason, mind, or spirit control the irrational impulses of the soul, a human being is ruled by the thing that ought [ 151 ]

st. AugustIne to rule him or her according to the eternal law.26 This theme reflects the psychology depicted by Plato in the Republic. The just soul is one in which reason rules over appetite or desire with the aid of the spirit or will; in the just soul, each of the parts of the psyche sings its part like voices in a choir, creating balance and harmony.27 Thus Augustine echoes Plato in concluding that the wise are those who have achieved peace by placing all inordinate desire under control of the mind; such a will possesses virtue and cannot in any way be made a slave to inordinate desires.28 We hear in this assertion striking Stoic themes; in the early Augustine it seems as if virtue is almost fully in our power and sufficient for happiness. In contrast to Aristotle, the Stoics completely downplay the extent to which our well-being depends on external conditions such having supportive friends, family, and the means to take care of ourselves— economic, political, and social conditions that will enable us to flourish as human beings.29 There is a ringing optimism to the Stoic notion that happiness is in our own hands; Augustine here speaks in a resoundingly Stoic voice, although later he will criticize the Stoics for believing that virtue and happiness are fully under our control, rather than enabled by God.30 Why the autonomy of the will is so important to Augustine becomes clear if we reflect upon his spiritual biography. Augustine was tortured by his own irrational impulses; even after conversion to Christianity, he was troubled by the fact that he could continue to have sexual desires that would even invade his dreams, against all conscious attempts to control them. It thus stands to reason that he would be attracted he would be attracted to the notion that our impulses are completely under control of our conscious willing. On the other hand, in moments of despair, he attributes these impulses to an inherited original sin requiring an outside force—the grace of God—to control. We have noted that he moves toward this view through meditation on St. Paul’s lament in Romans 7:19: “For I do not do the good that I want to do, but the evil that I don’t want to do I do.” Augustine is comforted by the thought that even the great moral exemplar St. Paul continued to struggle with his own conflicting drives or wills, which can only be unified by God’s gracious salvation. What then is a good will for Augustine? A good will is one by which we desire to live an upright and honorable life and attain the highest wisdom.31 All who possess this good embrace it and rejoice in the fact that it cannot be taken from them against their will.32 In this assertion we hear the poignant voice of someone who struggles with his impulses and finds no greater de[ 152 ]

st. AugustIne light than a unified will, a speaker who is certain in his moments of victory that this is something that cannot be taken away. Indeed, having one’s will stolen by an alien force describes in vivid terms what seems to happen in our moments of falling and despair. Earlier, Augustine had been attracted to the Manichaean depiction of this experience as actually being overcome by an alien force of evil. Here he asserts with Stoic determination that the will has the power to overcome any force and rejoices in the gift of being able to live in alignment with the truth he so longs to embody. Thus Augustine encourages us to take pleasure in the ability to live according to our own good will. This is not a matter of spiritual pride; it can stem from deep humility if, like Augustine, we struggle with conflicting habits and desires. Augustine bids us to engage in what historian of philosopher Pierre Hadot has called a spiritual exercise, one of developing conscious gratitude for the ability to implement our own good will, the center of our personhood.33 This is a monumental shift in our conception of both who we are as human beings and wherein lies our happiness; in fact, as we have noted, scholars maintain that Augustine so much as invented the modern concept of will.34 For Plato and Aristotle, who we are is nous—rational, theoretical intellect. This is an essentially impersonal notion of human identity.35 In contrast, Augustine has introduced an essentially theological notion of identity, modeled on that of a personal God who wills the world into existence. Just as the Biblical God is a willing agent, for Augustine, the essence of who we are is a willing person.36 Thus our virtue and our happiness depend not on what we know, or even what we habituate ourselves toward, but on what we will.37 Happiness for Augustine thus consists in two things: possessing and enjoying our own good will—which ensures a virtuous life—and finding joy in contemplating the eternal.38 The first is a prerequisite for the second: our good will gives us the willingness to find our deepest source of genuine joy. When Augustine speaks in the Confessions about finding within himself different “wills,” he seems to mean different life orientations, which he describes from his earliest works to the City of God as two loves: love for the temporal and love for the eternal.39 The conversion moment is one in which our entire life orientation is changed; we find the willingness to entirely restructure our life. The living out of that willingness or decision may take a lifetime and, as Augustine discovered, may involve a long process of reorientation, including steps backward as well as forward. [ 153 ]

st. AugustIne

Truth and the Eternal Law Within Although Book 2 of Free Choice, written years afterward, moves toward recognition of the importance of divine grace, it opens by describing in Platonic terms the way the highest joy is discovered. Once the mind has contemplated many true and unchangeable things with the eye of reason, it turns to Truth itself, by which all true things are made known.40 We hear echoes of Socrates in Plato’s Republic, who describes viewing the Forms with the eye of the rational soul and beholding the Form of the Good, which gives truth to all things known.41 Thus Augustine’s God becomes a personal embodiment of Plato’s Form of the Good, and Plato’s vision of the Forms has become a vision of the Truth who is God.42 The vision of the Truth is so powerful that the eye of reason abandons all other true things and cleaves to Truth, where it enjoys them all at once. Whatever is delightful in other true things is especially delightful in truth itself.43 We recognize here the theme of Plato’s well-known ladder of love in the Symposium. The philosopher begins by contemplating instances of beauty— individual beautiful boys—gradually ascending in degrees of abstraction until he or she appreciates not just individual instances of beauty but Beauty itself. In the Republic Plato’s Socrates speaks of ascending from beholding justice, moderation, and beauty to the vision of Being itself, which represents truth.44 In Free Choice Augustine brings together the theme of truth from the Republic with the aesthetic, affective dimension we find in the Symposium. He speaks of delight in beholding the truth itself, which is greater than the delight of even contemplating all true things.

Primal Sin The first humans enjoyed full contemplation of this divine Truth; why did we choose to leave the realm of absolute Truth and Beauty for that which does not give us fulfillment? This is the mystery of the Fall, which Augustine explains at the end of Book 3 of Free Choice. In short: the Devil begins as an angel contemplating God, who originally forgets itself in God, as is fitting. When it becomes conscious of itself as something separate from God and good in itself, it becomes enveloped in pride and thus leaves union with God. Thus does the fallen angel become the Devil, Satan, who then brings [ 154 ]

st. AugustIne Adam and Eve along with him to turn away from God and toward pride in  themselves.45 Augustine describes this tragedy in strikingly eudaimonistic terms: God is the happy life of the soul; leaving God brings unhappiness.46 The Truth is not merely one good, but the highest good, which makes us happy.47 The eudaimonism of Plato and Aristotle is here given a Christian ring; the human telos is happiness, which is found not only in virtue but in relationship with a God who is a personal, loving agent. Likewise, we are personal agents with wills granted to us by God. We are in the divine image as beings who can choose to love God, just as God chose in love to create the world. As Augustine will eventually express it, we can choose the temporal city of the fleeting world or the eternal city of God. Why then did God give us the free will that enabled us to turn away from God? All good things come from God, and, likewise, from a good God only good can come.48 Is free will a good thing? Augustine’s answer is that free will is indeed good; it is what enables humans to fulfill our purpose of choosing God, the good, and the happy life. A body without hands is certainly missing a great good, even though people use hands to commit violent and shameful acts.49 Moreover, we should condemn those who misuse the gift of free will, not free will itself or the one who gave us this great gift.50 Book 3 was written much later and seems to be more pessimistic about human nature. Nevertheless, here too Augustine reiterates the full sovereignty we have over the will; nothing can make the mind a slave to inordinate desire except our own will. He argues that the will cannot be forced into iniquity by anything superior or equal to it—that would be unjust—nor can it be forced to sin by anything inferior to it, which would be impossible.51 The turn from enjoying the Creator to enjoying creatures is in the will itself. It deserves blame, for it is not natural but voluntary.52 He compares the movement of the will to the downward movement of a stone; however, while the stone has no power to check its downward movement, the soul doesn’t abandon the higher for the inferior unless it wills to do so. The movement of a stone is natural, whereas the movement of the will is voluntary. The will is given to us by a good God that we may do good; there would be no praise or blame if it was not voluntary and under our control. There is no point in God’s admonishing us to strive for the eternal if there is no free will.53 Augustine has thus added to Greek philosophical conceptions of human agency a new Christian turn to emphasize its voluntary nature and the centrality of human accountability, reward, and punishment. We have seen that [ 155 ]

st. AugustIne Augustine is consoled by the fact that he is the source of his own actions, so that he does not have to attribute evil to God (Confessions 7.3).54 We see the same impulse here; Augustine is relieved to discover that the source of our unhappiness lies within ourselves, and likewise the ability to turn our lives around, with the grace of God. Our will is voluntary and under our control, but that does not mean we cannot and do not need help. Augustine asserts that we are blamed not because we can lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps, but because there is a Victor upon whom we can call and who can lift us up.55 Thus it is within our power to entrust ourselves to the grace of a savior who alone can set us free and enable our turn from unhappiness to happiness. This is the Christian stamp on Augustine’s eudaimonistic assertion of the centrality of happiness to the good life. Happiness is the goal of all philosophy and of the Christian life, but happiness is ultimately finding one’s joy in the Eternal, with God’s help. We have seen this theme at the end of the Bhagavad Gītā: the notion that willingness to surrender our will to a savior is the ultimate letting go of the ego—the conceit that we can do it all by ourselves.56

Free Will and Divine Foreknowledge: The Affirmation of Life There are nevertheless philosophical problems to be resolved with respect to the notion of free will. If we have free will, how can we reconcile this with divine foreknowledge? Augustine responds that while God foreknows what we are going to will in the future, nevertheless our actions occur by our own will.57 Since God foreknows our will, the very will that he foreknows will be what comes about; God’s foreknowledge does not take away our power (3.3, 77). Just because we know someone will sin, we do not force them to sin, since otherwise we would not have genuine foreknowledge; we would be forcing him or her to do a certain action, and it would not be the action he or she freely wills (3.4, 78). Thus God does not force anyone to sin, even though he foresees those who will sin by their own will (3.4, 78). A just God can only punish things that foreknowledge does not force to happen. Just as memory does not force the past to have happened, God’s foreknowledge does not force the future to happen. It is as if God witnesses the movie of our lives all at once, outside time; God can see the way the movie will turn out, but the actors in the movie had freedom to make the moves they did. [ 156 ]

st. AugustIne Augustine laments that rather than using sorrow over sin to prevent others from sinning, people bemoan the fact that human beings were created in the first place (3.5, 80). It is true that for Augustine a higher rank belongs to those who do not sin at all, the angels (3.5, 81). Nevertheless, there is a crucial and significant place for all of us on what Arthur O. Lovejoy has called the “great chain of being.”58 We who have free will and yet go astray are nevertheless better than rocks who cannot sin at all but also can achieve no acts of genuine moral significance (3.5, 81). Thus we should appreciate the fact that we have the free will that allows us both to sin and to live well. We are between rocks and angels; freedom to do good and evil is a great gift we can enjoy. The struggle and the victory can bring us genuine happiness. Although we are not as elevated as the angels, there is a unique place on the great chain of being for those who have free will and must face such an amazing paradox, contradiction, and challenge. What about those who think they are not able to meet this challenge and believe they would prefer not to exist? Augustine has a striking and poignant answer to the person who contemplates suicide. Augustine answers that if we were happy we would certainly prefer existence to non-existence. The happy and the unhappy alike will themselves to exist. We are unhappy to the extent that we are far from the One who exists in the highest degree (3:7, 84). Thus it is not that we actually desire not to exist; in reality, we want more existence, not less. Augustine has defined God as the greatest being. Happiness is life in that Being; God is the happy life of the soul. When we are cut off from the deepest source of our Being, we are unhappy. When we want to die, we actually want more life, not less. His prescription for the person who is suicidal is that the more we think it is better for us not to exist than to be unhappy, the less we will see the One who exists in the highest degree (3.7, 84). Dwelling on thoughts of nonbeing keeps us from realizing Being, which alone brings true happiness; we can turn from thoughts of unhappiness to that Being who brings us true joy. Augustine is thus a voice calling out to the person in suicidal despair: all beings have a drive to exist. We desire to exist because our Source is the one who exists in the highest degree. If we genuinely want to escape from unhappiness, we should cherish our will to exist. The desire for peace is not the desire for non-existence but for a greater, more peaceful existence. If we direct our desire more and more to exist, we will approach the one who exists in the highest degree (3.7, 85). [ 157 ]

st. AugustIne Thus Augustine offers another spiritual exercise: a meditation on what we actually love in life. When we are most in despair, it is important to remember the simple things we love. Even the desire for peace shows a desire for life and being. We can thus give thanks that we have the capacity to be happy; even though we are not at the level of the supremely happy, we are beyond those things that do not even have the desire to be happy—non-living beings who lack consciousness. It is a great gift to be living beings who have the capacity for awareness and joy. All that exist deserve praise simply by virtue of the fact that they exist (3.7, 85). This argument hinges on the Platonic notion that being is good and beautiful in itself.59 Augustine argues that the more we love existence the more we will desire eternal life. Thus we can long to be refashioned; we can direct our passion to long that our will change so that our desires are no longer temporal. This returns us to a theme we have seen in Epicurus and we will see in Buddhism— that what causes frustration is desire for and clinging to ephemeral, temporal things that are nothing before they exist and then, once they do exist, flee from existence until they exist no more (3.7, 85).60 Thus happiness lies in learning to love the eternal and non-changing rather than the temporal and changing (3.7, 85). We should realize that the will to exist is like a first step. If we set our sights more and more on existence; we will rise to the one who exists in the highest degree (3.7, 85). The will’s desire for death is not a desire for non-existence but a desire for peace—for more life, not less life (3.8, 87).

Free Will and Original Sin Augustine does not deny that we were originally given a pure and good will; the just penalty of our inherited sin is a consequence of what happened in the Garden of Eden (3.18, 106). Augustine is indeed one of the fashioners of the notion of inherited original sin.61 It is a just penalty that we lose what we were unwilling to use well—the pure and good will given to us by God (3.15, 101).62 Augustine insists that humanity could have used it well without the slightest difficult if only we had willed to do so. Thus Augustine insists that inherited original sin is a just punishment—in fact, two intertwined punishments of ignorance and difficulty. Because of ignorance, error warps our actions; because of difficulty our lives are a torment and an affliction (3.18, 106). [ 158 ]

st. AugustIne The free will to act rightly was the will with which human beings were created (3.18, 107). Why then are we punished for what the first people did? Augustine offers several answers. First, it is fitting because we are all descendants of the first person; how can we then say we were not there when the first two human beings chose to turn from the higher to the lower? Second, it is fitting because there is in fact a helping hand reaching out to assist us. There is a Victor over error and inordinate desire, a divine voice calling out to those who have turned their backs on him and instructing those who believe in him. If we turn our backs on this divine guidance and help, it is our own responsibility (3.19, 107–8).

Augustine and Eudaimonia In the early books of Free Will we see a strong emphasis on the power of the mind to ensure virtue. Is it then the life of the mind that provides the highest possibility for human happiness? In the Reconsiderations Augustine makes an argument similar to that we find in Book 10 of Aristotle’s Ethics: “Insofar as human nature is concerned, there is nothing better than mind and reason, but the person who wants to live happily should not live according to this. This would be to live as a human being lives, but to attain happiness, one should live as God lives. To attain this, the mind should not be self-contented but should be subjected to God” (Reconsiderations 1.1.2).63 For Aristotle, to live as God lives is precisely to live the life of the mind, for God is Thought thinking on thinking. However, while Augustine does not identify the life of the mind with living as God lives, the structure of Augustine and Aristotle’s argument is the same: there is a human happiness and a divine happiness, and we should seek divine happiness.64 Augustine criticizes Epicureans for holding up pleasure as the goal of life— he mistakes Epicureans for sensualists—but he also criticizes the Stoics for taking pride in virtue, as if happiness is solely in human control.65 Augustine challenges the Epicureans: if we have a happy life, shouldn’t we want it to go on indefinitely? (On the Trinity 13.18.11).66 He believes eternal happiness is the only true happiness, and thus we must have the promise of an afterlife. Does Augustine then believe we can be happy in this life? He suggests that, strictly speaking, we cannot, although we can be called happy if we have the firm hope of eternal happiness. Despite his catalog of the ills of our mortal [ 159 ]

st. AugustIne life, Augustine also recognizes the wonders of this life, including our capacity for virtue, our achievements in the arts and sciences, and the aesthetic beauties of the world (City of God 22.24).67 Augustine clearly has a eudaimonistic bent to this ethics; he suggests we have a telos of happiness, although this is an eternal happiness with God. Augustine’s ethics are teleological in the sense that happiness is a goal we must strive for. This raises several potential problems. Is virtue intrinsically good, or is it only pursued as an instrumental means to happiness? Shouldn’t virtue be loved for its own sake? And does even our love of God become selfserving if we see God as providing our eternal happiness?68 Augustine is consistent in his view of enjoyment of others and ourselves. We should love our neighbors as ourselves; this means, just as Aristotle argued, that we must love ourselves.69 The authentic way to love ourselves is to love ourselves as creatures of God. In this way there is no contradiction between love of self and love of God; we love ourselves as beings in God. Likewise we should love our neighbors as belonging to God, not to us. We should love both ourselves and others as related to God (On the Trinity 9.8.13).70 Although human beings are valuable in themselves, all value is ultimately derived from God.71 Augustine also does a balancing act in his doctrine of virtue; virtue is not purely instrumental, a means to an end, but neither is it to be desired and exercised purely for its own sake. Virtue is rightly ordered love; all virtues are forms of love rooted in the key Christian virtue of charity, thus virtues are by their very nature other regarding. If we are virtuous because we fear punishment, we have put ourselves above the other and have lost  our genuine virtue. However for Augustine, virtue should not supplant love of God as the supreme good, loved purely for its own sake without reference to any higher good.72 Thus theism supersedes eudaimonism. For Aristotle, the supreme human good is happiness, although supreme happiness in the end is study, which is participation in the divine activity of contemplation. But eudaimonia is an end in itself in a way it cannot be for the Christian Augustine. Augustine attacks the Stoics for making a human being’s own state of character the highest good. Virtue itself, however, is God given. Either the Stoics are really looking for honor or they really do believe that their own good is the highest good in the universe, which is just a form of narcissism [ 160 ]

st. AugustIne (City of God 5.19.20, Sermon 150).73 Again, a theocentric ethics must make human virtue, like human happiness, a secondary good to the supreme good of God.

Finale: The Confessions Thus for Augustine, supreme happiness is discovering the source of our being in God. However, to really discover the flavor of Augustine’s doctrine of happiness, we must look to his Confessions, where Augustine speaks in a personal way to a personal God. Here he addresses a God who is Sweetness itself: Eternal Truth, true Love, beloved Eternity—all this my God you are and it is to you that I sigh by night and day. When first I knew you, you raised me up so that I could se that there was something to be seen, but also that I was not yet able to see it. I gazed on you with eyes too weak to resist the dazzle of your splendor. Your light shone upon me in its brilliance, and I thrilled with love and dread alike. I realized that I was far away from you. It was as though I were in a land where all is different from your own and I heard your voice calling from on high saying I am the food of full grown men. Grow and you shall feed on me. But you shall not change me into your own substance as you do with the food of your body. Instead you shall be changed into me. I realized too that you have chastened man for his sins you made my life melt away like gossamer and I asked myself “Is truth then nothing at all, simply because it has no extension in space, with or without limits?” And far off I heard your voice saying I am the God who IS. I heard your voice as we hear voices that speak to our hearts and at once I had no cause to doubt. I might more easily have doubted that I was alive than that Truth had being. For we catch sight of the Truth as he is known through his creation. (7.10.141)

In Free Choice of the Will Augustine delivers his doctrine of happiness in dialectical arguments; here we hear his voice in a cry from the soul. Certainly, Confessions is a literary creation, and we cannot be certain of its autobiographical details. But whereas he asserts in Free Choice of the Will that God is the happy life of the soul, here we see Augustine speaking not to an abstract Platonic form of the Good but to a beloved friend who can speak to [ 161 ]

st. AugustIne him in his own heart. He sees God as a brilliant light and thrills with love and dread at his presence.74 And God speaks to him in language that recalls the eucharist, suggesting that one can experience God in intimate personal communion, taking God into one’s own being. We need not distinguish the paths of knowledge and love, since they are interwined for St. Augustine. His experience is one of love and awe; he delights in the fact that their resolution brings that he can know God in both his mind and the deepest fibers of his being. God answers the questions of his mind and heart: how can God be infinite, if not as an extended substance in space? God answers, “I am the God who is”—an ontological ground of being, infinite in being, not in space and time. And Augustine finds answers to his problem of creation by realizing that God is Creator and the eternal witness of the changing parade of time. These questions haunted him, and the resolutions bring him peace of mind. But he finds greatest peace in relationship with a personal God who can speak to him in his mind and heart. This is the source of his deepest happiness, which he longs to find completely fulfilled in the next life. *  *  * Like the Bhagavad Gītā, Augustine suggests that we find the deepest source of happiness through connection to a personal God, whom he describes as Supreme Truth, Goodness, and Sweetness itself. Augustine’s God is thus an embodiment of absolute value, like Plato’s Form of the Good. However, Augustine’s God is not simply a model of the Good, but a personal Being with whom he connects in intimate relationship. Augustine discovers his God through intense struggle with his own impulses. Like the Gītā, Augustine suggests that the quest for self-mastery can bring integration of the human personality, either by discovering a centering will in oneself or by opening to divine grace. The model of his life and work suggests that human beings find happiness by aligning with the deepest source of our existence, which allows us to live the truth that we love.

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SEVEN

Maimonides The Joy of Learning, Prayer, and Devotion

LIKE AUGUSTINE, the Judeo-Arabic thinker Maimonides (1138–1204) finds ultimate fulfillment in the life of religious devotion. He approaches Judaism in the language of medieval philosophy, a synthesis of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic elements, and describes the end of life in the language of human “perfection.”1 He inherits a complex, abstract metaphysical view of nature and the world. For the purpose of this study, I am going to focus on aspects of the devotional life that invite parallels with those we see in other traditions. My goal is to remain faithful to Maimonides within the framework of his own religious and metaphysical assumptions. At the same time, by drawing parallels with other traditions, I will highlight features that may be obscured by a focus on abstract metaphysics alone. Maimonides is a superb technical philosopher and also a brilliant textual exegete. He interprets Biblical texts and oral Rabbinic traditions in light of Aristotelian thought in a way that is highly original and creative. He created a brilliant synthesis of Aristotelian rationalism, Neoplatonic cosmology, and rabbinic tradition. There is also a strong devotional strain in Maimonides that is difficult to synthesize with his nonanthropomorphic God. I am going to focus here on aspects of the devotional life in Maimonides’ thought that make it attractive and revealing as a teaching for today and show parallels with the emotionally expressive works of other traditions we have examined. [ 163 ]

mAImonIdes As in the chapters on the other theistic traditions, I will present Maimonides in a way that highlights his relevance as a universal thinker. The language of God can be confusing for some. My goal is to offer a bridge between those for whom this language contributes to understanding and those for whom this language has been a stumbling block. There are aspects of Maimonides’ thought that can speak to all kinds of readers, from diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and relationships to theism. I should set the stage by noting that medieval Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinkers each inherited two sets of traditions: a tradition held to be received by divine revelation, through written Scripture and oral revealed tradition, and a tradition received by reason, comprised now in the texts of Plato, Aristotle, and the medieval Neoplatonists. Believing that truth is one, their task is often to find ways to harmonize what appear to be conflicts between the teachings of the two streams. Thus Maimonides will strive to reconcile Judaism with Aristotelian thought; as Shlomo Pines noted, the end of the Guide of the Perplexed also reveals language from Sufi devotionalism. He merges these strands in a highly original blend. From his own perspective, however, Maimonides does not believe he is reconciling different strands of tradition. He believes that Judaism had an ancient tradition of philosophy and that he is bringing to light the genuine philosophical interpretation of Jewish Scripture (Guide I:71).2 Maimonides wrote works in both Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic. He wrote a youthful commentary to the Mishnah in Judeo-Arabic, a code of Jewish law (Mishneh Torah) in Mishnaic Hebrew, and his mature Guide of the Perplexed in Judeo-Arabic. While an earlier generation of scholarship on Maimonides thought that Maimonides’ esoteric philosophical teachings were reserved for the Guide of the Perplexed, certain recent scholarship has argued that the full measure of Maimonides’ rationalism and perhaps even the most radical doctrines of the Guide are in full view in the Code of Jewish Law, intended for the multitude and not only for scholars of philosophy.3 I will here follow the trajectory of the Guide of the Perplexed, while drawing also upon other works as a complement and supplement. Among other themes, I will highlight the way Maimonides sees attentive awareness, intentionality, and contemplative devotion as key features of human flourishing and the purpose of human existence.

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mAImonIdes

The Garden of Eden Maimonides opens the Guide of the Perplexed with an interpretation of the Garden of Eden story as a philosophical parable. It is not simply a story about the origin of humanity, but about a movement that all human beings make. The first human being was endowed with full rationality and was absorbed in contemplation. Although also given a body, senses, and imagination, the human being did not pay attention to them, but was immersed in contemplation of the truth and saw all in the category of the false and the true. Human beings originally saw things just as they are. What Genesis 2–3 describes is a turn from pure contemplation of objective reality to seeing things through the clouded lenses of imaginative desire and distortion. Humans now project our hopes and fears onto reality. The goal of the Guide of the Perplexed is to bring us back to pure contemplation, to seeing things as they are. Maimonides’ Guide offers a naturalistic, de-anthropomorphized view of divinity, nature, and the Torah, one he believes describes reality as it truly is. This is meant to inspire a return to the state in which we were immersed in pure contemplation and perception of reality with no subjective filters.4

Maimonides’ God How does Maimonides see reality? For Maimonides, God is the ground of all existence, and the Torah is the revelation of truth as it is. Maimonides created an original code of the entire body of Jewish law and is deeply committed to traditional Judaism as a normative description of the best way to live. However, his theological views are in some ways radical. Readers new to Maimonides may be startled to discover how naturalistic and non-personal is his view of God in comparison with traditional Jewish perspectives. Jewish predecessors among philosophical rationalists—Saʿadya Gaon, Baḥya Ibn Paqūda, Judah Halevi—depicted God as a personal being with a will, personality, intention for history and for the Jewish people, one to whom human beings can pray, who hears our prayers, and with whom one can be in intimate relationship. By contrast, for Maimonides, God is above all the Necessary Existent, the First Cause, the ground of all that is. God’s will is God’s wisdom.5 It is not clear whether Maimonides believes God created the world in time. While he argues [ 165 ]

mAImonIdes exoterically for creation in time, some scholars believe that esoterically he believes in a doctrine known as eternal creation. This would mean that, as for Aristotle, God is the first cause logically but not temporally.6 In the opening of his Code of Jewish Law (the Mishneh Torah), Maimonides presents a version of Avicenna’s ontological proof of God’s existence. If God did not exist, the world could not exist; however if the world did not exist, God could still exist. Thus the world is ontologically dependent on God. There is a principle of existence that maintains the world in reality. All is not simply contingent and interdependent.7 He offers two proofs, one physical and one metaphysical. His proofs, in highly simplified form, are as follows. If the world is created, there must be a creator. Let us thus grant for the purposes of proof that the world is eternal. The physical proof thus reasons from the eternal motion of the heavenly sphere. Eternal motion requires a Prime Mover to maintain that sphere’s infinite rotation. Although the Prime Mover is not strictly speaking God but the Mover of the first sphere, it points to the Necessary Existent as its first agent.8 The metaphysical proof is a variant on one offered by the tenth-century Islamic philosopher Avicenna. We see that everything in this world comes to be and passes away. In an eternal universe, every possibility would at some point be realized. One of those possibilities is that everything would fall out of existence, and thus there would be nothing to bring things back into existence. But lo and behold, we are here, despite the fact that an infinite amount of time must have already elapsed, given an eternal universe. Thus there must be something non-contingent that holds in existence all contingent beings. This is what Avicenna and Maimonides call the Necessary Existent. God’s existence is necessary and not contingent, i.e., not subject to cause and effect. God simply is, and thus we are; our existence is dependent on one whose existence is uncaused. According to Maimonides, since God’s existence is so radically different from ours, we cannot be said to have a “relation” to this God, for relation implies mutuality. There cannot in truth be a relation between the necessary and the contingent. Nor can we know or describe that which is radically simple and unconditioned. Our language reflects the complexity of our thought, which always brings together subject and predicate.9 But Maimonides conceives of God as absolutely one and simple, with no complexity—the absolutely simple source of our complex and variegated world. [ 166 ]

mAImonIdes Maimonides is thus in some sense a Neoplatonic metaphysical purist, and his conception of God can be compared with ontological first principles  in other traditions.10 For example, like the Dao of the Daodejing, Maimonides’ God is unknowable and ineffable, standing alone and silent. For the Daodejing, this principle has no real name, but the text calls it Dao, the Way.11 Likewise, Maimonides insists that all names of God are metaphorical, except the Necessary Existent, which designates something radically different from anything we know in our world. Of course, there are significant differences between the two concepts; Maimonides’ God seems to create the world with will and intention, while the Laozi’s Dao is neither a conscious nor a willing being. Nevertheless, both Maimonides and the Daodejing conceive of ultimate reality as utterly simple, ineffable, and unknowable, and at the same time a repository of all the patterns in the natural world.12 If Maimonides’ God, like the Dao, is absolutely ineffable, is there no possibility of relationship with God? Even if he has presented a radically de-anthropomorphic God, it would be odd for Maimonides as a Jewish thinker to depict a God with which human beings can have no personal connection. The foundation of Judaism appears to be a God who is involved in human history, making covenants with human beings, caring for their welfare, and revealing the best way of life. For Maimonides, the first emanation from the Necessary Existent is Intellect, and indeed Maimonides, like his seventeenth-century heir Spinoza, asserts that God knows all—in one eternal act of knowing, God knows everything that follows from his actions.13 Thus God is a conscious being, in contrast to the non-conscious Dao.14 And God “does things’ in the sense that beings emanate from God with purpose, intention, and order. Maimonides insists that these are metaphors, since there is a world of difference between God’s eternal knowledge of all beings and our finite modes of awareness. Yet he does say that God is not unaware like dead matter. Maimonides at times depicts God in wholly natural terms. Describing the wonders of the human body, he writes, “when we speak of divine actions—I mean the natural actions.”15 This may be the source of Spinoza’s concept of Deus sive Natura, “God or Nature.”16 While not a pantheist—as is Spinoza— Maimonides depicts God’s attributes as God’s actions in nature. He insists that we cannot know the essence of God; what we can know is the ways divine activity is manifest in the natural order.17 We call God gracious because God [ 167 ]

mAImonIdes has brought the all into being; God is merciful because God has provided all natural beings with those things they need to flourish.18 Maimonides also depicts God as the recipient of human love, a source to whom human beings long to return and a Creator that is enjoyed by the eternal beings that guide the heavenly spheres, depicted by medieval Aristotelians as the separate intellects and by religious traditions as angels. Aristotle himself writes that the spheres rotate out of desire to be like the First Cause, seeking through circular motion to imitate the eternal perfection of the Unmoved Mover. The Unmoved Mover thus “causes motion as something that is loved (al-maḥbūb; Gr.: erómenon).19 For Aristotle, then, there seems to be room for love or desire—at least on the part of the heavenly spheres—to emulate a being who is not a personal agent of love. Thus we must continue to ask: is there room in Maimonides’ thought for a relationship between humanity and a divine being depicted in such natural terms? And in what sense does a relationship with this God give us insight into human flourishing or happiness?

The Devotional Maimonides: Guide 3.51 In a series of articles written late in his life, the contemporary scholar Shlomo Pines suggested that in his later thinking, Maimonides took a critical, skeptical turn and discounted the possibility of personal intellectual union with the Divine and hence immortality, probably influenced by such a move taken by the Islamic philosopher Al-Farābi in his lost Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics. At the same time, he notes that this critical turn is only one of the strands in the Guide as a whole, which Maimonides apparently edited in its final form. Indeed, Pines suggests the Guide includes at least four strands or discourses: 1. First, a traditional religious strand, including allegorical interpretation of anthropomorphic terms for God in the Bible. 2. Second, an Aristotelian strand, teaching that God is an Intellect, and perhaps the Prime Mover. 3. Third, a critical strand, which shows the impossibility of metaphysics, extraterrestrial physics, and astronomical theories, and which denies the claims of certainty. 4. And fourth, a Sufi discourse, with certain elements of philosophical mysticism.20 [ 168 ]

mAImonIdes We find this fourth discourse in Guide 3.51. In a rare burst of poetic rapture, Maimonides expresses his view of the ultimate human end in the Sufi language of love, which he draws from Avicenna. Here Maimonides gives his instruction for the devotional life, which features attentive awareness. Unlike Buddhist paths of mindfulness meditation, Maimonides’ instruction begins with the study of mathematics and the biological and natural sciences. His path of awareness is in this respect like that of Aristotle; he is a keen observer of the natural world, finding evidence of God in nature. This led Pines to suggest that Maimonides’ God comes close to the scientific system of the universe, like the God of Spinoza.21 How, then, can we characterize such a vision of spirituality? How can one pray to the scientific system of the universe? Maimonides is thoroughly Jewish in his presentation of the spiritual life. He argues that we should practice meditation on two central prayers of Judaism: the Shema prayer (opening with “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone”) and the silent Amidah prayer of eighteen blessings. Most people are content to keep their minds focused for the first line of the Shema prayer and the opening blessing of the Amidah prayer; Maimonides suggests one try to remain focused without other thoughts throughout the entire Shema and Amidah. He imagines that one will need to practice this for several years. When we have been successful, we should try to concentrate uninterruptedly, with our whole being and all our thoughts, upon the meaning of what we hear or read when the Torah is being read aloud. When we have mastered this for some time, we should move on to apply the mind wholeheartedly to whatever we read of other passages from the Prophets. In all other blessings, too, we should aim at pondering what they utter and realize its significance. Maimonides thus views the entire service of Jewish liturgical prayer as an opportunity for focused meditation. His view of training in attentive awareness is to learn to keep the mind focused on the meaning of prayers and Biblical readings throughout the service. The practice is to free the mind from all stray thoughts, rather than dwelling upon worldly matters such as one’s weekly schedule. The sole purpose of all acts of spiritual service, he maintains, is to keep one’s mind focused upon God’s ordinances rather than worldly affairs, to be too much taken up with God to pay attention to anything else. As Steven Harvey writes, “the training is in emptying our mind of all worldly things, of everything, and then concentrating completely on what [ 169 ]

mAImonIdes we are saying, hearing, or doing. This training when ‘practiced consistently for years’ enables the mind to think and reflect free of distraction.”22 If we simply perform a prayer or commandment pro forma while we are thinking about other things, we are acting with our limbs alone. Instead, we should be thinking of the meaning of the action, from whom it emanates, and what is its purpose. Maimonides’ instructions in prayer call to mind what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi characterizes as the flow experience, a phenomenon in which a person is so completely engaged in an activity that there is no room for anything else. A mountain climber loses all thought of herself, her strengths and weaknesses, her business plans—there is no room for anything but complete immersion in the present moment of experience. Maimonides suggests this is the goal of Jewish prayer and the practice of the commandments: to bring the mind to complete engagement in thought of God and the present moment of practice. The goal for Maimonides’ worshipper is to be fully absorbed in the moment and in thought of the divine. We are reminded of the eleventhcentury al-Ghazali’s Sufi-influenced words on prayer: In general, then, how is the mystic “way” [tarīqah] described? The purity which is the first condition of it (as bodily purity is the prior condition of formal worship for Muslims) is the purification of the heart completely from what is other than God most high; the key to it, which corresponds to the opening act of adoration in prayer, is the sinking of the heart completely in the recollection [dhikr] of God, and the end of it is complete absorption [fanā’] in God.23

Elsewhere in the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides offers speculation on rational purposes for most of the commandments. The historical purpose of many of these was to efface idolatrous practices and teach people to worship one God alone. These goals have a communal intention. Here he suggests a purpose for the spiritual development of the individual—specifically, for one who has attained genuine knowledge about the divine through scientific study of the universe.24 The goal is focused concentration—to be so taken up with the thought of God that the mind has no room for anything else. We recall the focused concentration of Zhuangzi’s Butcher Ding and the cicada catcher, where all disappeared except the one task at hand. Here, all should disappear except the thought of God and God’s purposes in giving the Torah and commandments. [ 170 ]

mAImonIdes

The Special Worship What is the path of study that leads to his highest goal of contemplative meditation? We begin with mathematics and logic, moving on to the natural sciences and then metaphysics. But after metaphysics there is an additional stage. Maimonides indeed describes an obligation to engage in the intense level of intellectual prayer he ascribed to Moses and the prophets: “the obligation of exercising one’s independent power of thinking on the subject of God alone after having obtained knowledge of him. This is the form of service to God reserved for those who have apprehended truths. The more they think about God and let their minds dwell upon God, the more intensive their service to him.”25 Let us investigate what kind of mental practice Maimonides is enjoining. The study of metaphysics presumably gives us a theoretical understanding of the beings in the world and their relationship to the Necessary Existent. The rank of the prophets takes this mental practice one step further: after having reached full perfection in metaphysics, one is enjoined to exercise one’s mind independently and incline with one’s whole being to God, leaving aside everything else, and devote all activities of the intellect to contemplation of the universe in order to find guidance toward God and to learn how God governs it. It seems that this is a practice of mental concentration and focus, but it is also a practice of devotion.26 And Moses, the greatest of the prophets who masters this practice, is said to be “there with God,” speaking and being spoken to. Now scholars who emphasize the radically non-anthropomorphic nature of Maimonides’ God read this passage metaphorically; since God is not a personal being, God cannot “speak,” and thus this is a metaphorical description of Moses’ discovery of truth.27 Maimonides tells us explicitly that “speaking” is an equivocal term—a term used in different senses for God and humans; the words that Moses heard were created just as God produced all his other works and creations.28 How then does Maimonides understand the dialogues he records between God and Moses? In Guide 1.54 Maimonides recounts the Torah telling us that Moses had two requests of God, and both were answered. Moses asked to see God’s ways and asked to know God’s essence. God showed Moses his ways, which are his attributes of action, saying, “I will pass all my goodness before you” (Ex 33:19). The first time we read of goodness in the Bible is Genesis 1, the account of [ 171 ]

mAImonIdes creation, which culminates when God looks at all of creation and says, “Indeed, it is very good” (Gen 1:31). Thus “I will pass all my goodness before you” means that God showed Moses the natural order of the world, i.e., its divine governance, in general and in detail. Now if this account is metaphorical and is not depicting a dialogue between two beings, what might the passage suggest? In his chapters on prophecy, Maimonides explains the purely naturalistic process by which prophets receive information from the Active Intellect.29 We have seen that in Maimonides’ cosmology the first emanation from the Necessary Existent is the First Intellect. From this ensues a series of emanations culminating in the Active Intellect, the principle that brings our intellects from potentiality to actuality. Maimonides asserts that intellect is the bond between God and us; we are also told that the light by which God sees us is the very light by which we see God—that is, the intellect.30 Moreover, Maimonides tells us that God has given humans a great perfection, the intellect, on account of which we are said to be in the image of God.31 Thus when Moses is with God, asking questions and receiving answers, this is both a purely natural process and a prophetic state of receptivity to intellectual guidance. This philosophical explanation is in consonance with the way thinkers in many traditions describe contemplative prayer. The seeker enters into a quiet state of focused awareness, brings a thought or question, and receives some kind of guidance, whether at that moment or another time. This is also the way great scientists describe the process of intuitive scientific discovery.32 Maimonides is speaking of the power of a quiet, focused mind to receive understanding from the most refined dimension of mind or intelligence. He has described the practices of religious observance as training in focused concentration. By eliminating distractions, a receptive mind becomes capable of illuminative understanding.33 The process might seem miraculous, because the prophet’s mind functions by intuition (hads); it is quicker, more nimble, making creative leaps not possible for discursive reasoning.34 Each element of the intuition has been there all along; in a flash of insight the elements come together in a gestalt.35 To receive intuitive understanding is a “divine” action—that is, a natural action, on a continuum with the ordinary process of receiving logical insights.36 There is a continuum between the human and the “divine.” The Active Intellect is that which fosters human intellectual growth and development. There is no need to draw a strict separation between a scientific, [ 172 ]

mAImonIdes logical process of learning and a spiritual or religious one. There is not even any real “supernatural” realm for Maimonides. While we may not have access to knowledge of the separate intelligences or the Necessary Existent, the scientific knowledge we do have flows from the Active Intellect. In a beautiful exegesis of the verse “In your light, we see light” (Psalm 36:10), Maimonides explains that “through the overflow of the intellect that overflowed from you, we intellectually cognize, and consequently we receive correct guidance, we draw inferences, and we apprehend the intellect.”37 This process applies to both ordinary knowing and prophetic knowing. Reason and intuition are not radically separate; they are two functions of intellect.38

Contemplation, Prayer, and Service Moreover for Maimonides, to develop our intellects and dedicate all our thoughts to God is a form of service to God. Intellectual activity is itself a form of prayer: “This is the form of service to God reserved for those who have apprehended Truth. The more they think about God and let their minds dwell upon God, the more intensive their service to him.”39 Although Maimonides was not sympathetic to the endeavors of medieval philosophical poets, he shares with them a Neoplatonic tradition; the great Hebrew poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol likewise depicts thinking as a form of prayer and service to God.40 Likewise, Avicenna’s treatise on prayer, which influenced this chapter of Maimonides, blurs the line between intellectual contemplation and worship.41 Surprisingly, even Aristotle speaks of contemplation as service to the divine.42 Why should thinking be a form of service? In Greek the verb “to serve” is therapeuein, which connotes what a servant renders to his master or what someone in a religious cult performs for the deity. For Aristotle, God does not create the world, but does set the pattern for every species, so that each biological organism has a telos in a rationally ordered world; mind (nous) functions both like the general who issues commands to the army and the order in the army.43 Thus to serve God might either be to participate in Its divine activity of thinking or to fulfill one’s telos of both thinking and practical activity, actualizing all our capacities. Insofar as we realize our divine potential, we are serving the divine. And, for Aristotle, the fullest realization of our divine potential is the activity of thought. [ 173 ]

mAImonIdes Likewise, for Maimonides, the most divine part of us is our intellect; to develop our intellect and contemplate God is a form of service. Although Maimonides insists that “intention” and “purpose” are purely equivocal terms, meaning something completely different for humans and God, it is telling that in 3.51 he writes that God’s providence watched over the Biblical patriarchs because their intention was to create a religious community that would know and serve God. Thus they received divine “attention” insofar as their attention and intention were aligned with the divine.44 And this is precisely how he explains divine providence as a function of intellect; when one’s intellect is open to receiving guidance and understanding, the information is present and available in accordance with our intellectual ability and preparation.45 Maimonides posits a telos for the Jewish nation and for humanity: to create a community and world in which loving-kindness, justice, and righteousness flourish and all can pursue the quest for truth.46 Thus the human purpose is to know and serve God, who expresses these qualities in creating and governing the world, and knowledge is itself a form of service of the divine.47 Knowledge of God also overflows to others. God’s wisdom overflowed or emanated a world and governs it through patterned intelligence and order; likewise, one who achieves understanding is necessarily moved to teach, govern, and lead.48 Those who develop an understanding of the universe and embody these qualities in their actions become, as it were, limbs or agents of the divine Active Intellect.49 This is what seems to be the case in the final paragraphs of the Guide, in which Maimonides describes the person who has assimilated God’s attributes of action. When one has achieved knowledge of God through reflecting upon God’s presence in nature and the wisdom of the commandments, all one’s actions come to reflect the divine attributes; the way of life of such an individual will always reflect God’s loving-kindness, justice, and righteousness. One thus becomes like a mirror reflecting God’s qualities in all one does.50 We may then ask, what is the real end of the Guide? Is it 3.51, which holds up the contemplative ideal of trying to find as many moments as possible for silent contemplation, or is it the end of Guide 3.54, in which one returns to the world to teach and engage in political governance and legislation?51 Perhaps, as in the Platonic image of the cave, Guide 3.51 suggests the ascent out of the cave toward the sun and Guide 3.54 represents a return to the cave to guide and teach.52 Recall the model suggested by the life of al-Ghazālī, an [ 174 ]

mAImonIdes Islamic theologian, whose work has been shown to have influenced Maimonides. Al-Ghazālī left his position of official service to the Seljuq state to study with Sufis for ten years. He felt called by God to retreat somewhat from the public eye and engage in contemplation, away from the constraints of public office, although he continued to teach in private madrasas. But just as surely, he was called to return to a life of public service.53 And yet, returning with knowledge of God, he writes: Although I have gone back, I have not gone back. Previously, I had been teaching knowledge by which worldly success is attained; I had called others to it by word and deed, and that was my aim and intention. But now I am calling others to the knowledge whereby worldly success is given up and its low place on the scale of real worth is recognized. This is now my intention, my aim, my desire; God knows that this is so. It is my earnest longing that I may make myself and others better. I do not know whether I shall reach my goal or whether I shall be taken away while short of my object. I believe, however, both by certain faith and by direct witness [mushāhada] that there is no power and no might save with God, the high, the mighty, and that I do not move of myself but am moved by Him; I do not work of myself but am used by Him. I ask Him first of all to reform me and then to reform through me, to guide me and then to guide through me, to show me the truth of what is true and to grant of His bounty that I may follow it, and to show me the falsity of what is false and to grant of His bounty that I may turn away from it.54

Returning from contemplation, one might find oneself moved to act “with one’s limbs alone,” used by the divine to create or guide a nation that would know and serve God.55 If what we learn in contemplation is the way God governs the universe, the content of this knowledge is necessarily dynamic and impels us to action.56 For God did not remain in solitary contemplation, but chose to create a universe which is kept in order through wise governance. Thus what we learn in meditation will move us to imitate God’s wise governance through action, creating and governing a just society just as God created a wisely guided world. Thus contemplation may be service in another sense. The prophet is open to receiving guidance from the Active Intellect; the patriarchs who guided the world to worship one God were performing “pure service of great import.”57 Recall the Bhagavad Gītā’s ideal of karma yoga; one’s daily work of living is performed as an act of service. Likewise, in his introduction to the [ 175 ]

mAImonIdes Mishnaic tractate Ethics of the Fathers (Avot), Maimonides quotes the rabbinic statement “let all one’s deeds be for the sake of heaven.”58 Receiving guidance is also an act of service. We need not conceive this in a supernatural way; Maimonides is describing the process of receiving guidance from the clearest, most discerning intellect, one’s connection to the divine.

Maimonides on Joy and the Ultimate Purpose of Life: Does the Human Ideal of Guide 3.51–54 Include Happiness (Saʿāda)? Maimonides advocates a life of religious devotion—contemplation of God through the study of nature and return to the community to embody God’s loving-kindness, justice, and righteousness in our lives. Does the model we find in the final chapters of the Guide (3.51–54) also bring about a state of human happiness? In a recent study, Steven Harvey has shown that Maimonides rarely uses the standard Arabic term for happiness or supreme felicity (saʿāda) in the Guide.59 This is especially surprising since it is central to medieval Arabic philosophy, including that of al-Fārābī, whose works were a key influence on Maimonides. In many of his works, al-Fārābī makes happiness the goal of human life. For example, in the Political Regime he writes, “What is intended by man’s existence is that he attain happiness, which is the ultimate perfection that remains to be given to the possible beings capable of receiving it. . . . Man needs to know the things he ought to do in order to attain happiness, and then do these actions.”60 Thus the medieval world was dismayed when, in his commentary to the Nicomachean Ethics, al-Fārābī recanted his earlier view that one could attain conjunction with the Active Intellect, suggesting that afterlife immortality was just “old wives’ tales” and that the only happiness was political happiness.61 From a religious point of view, the Islamic thinker Ibn Tufayl was disturbed because this would remove hope from the hearts of religious believers; from a philosophical perspective, Ibn Bājja was disturbed because it denied the possibility of conjunction with the Active Intellect and hence immortality. Recent scholars are divided in their interpretation of this issue. Shlomo Pines concluded that Maimonides followed al-Fārābī on this trajectory and did not in the end believe conjunction with the Active Intellect or immortality were possible, because the intellect was severely restricted in what it could know. He asserted that like al-Fārābī, Maimonides concluded that the only [ 176 ]

mAImonIdes happiness available was political happiness and thus that the active, political life, rather than the contemplative life, was the final goal for human beings. Warren Zev Harvey agrees with Pines on Maimonides’ view of the limitations of human intellectual attainment, but has drawn different conclusions. Realizing one’s intellectual limitations can bring one to awe before God and also love and desire to explore the vastness of God’s universe, where we can see God’s actions manifest. Harvey suggests that Maimonides is skeptical not only about Aristotle’s celestial physics and metaphysics but about terrestrial physics as well; this skepticism is built right into his proofs for the existence of God. Nevertheless, doubt is seen as an integral part of belief; rather than bringing despair, our inability to attain complete and comprehensive knowledge can foster a state of intellectual humility and religious reverence.62 Josef Stern has argued in the same vein that Maimonides’ proofs of the existence of God are spiritual exercises designed to put one into a state of worship and dazzlement. Stern emphasizes that this does not imply any kind of suprarational knowledge, but awe at one’s relationship to a being one can never know. In order to evaluate these views, let us take up the evidence regarding the Arabic term for happiness, saʿāda. It does seem surprising at first glance that Maimonides rarely uses the term saʿāda in the Guide, especially given its prominence in the works of al-Fārābī, whom he followed with great respect. Likewise, Maimonides has followed the Islamic philosopher Ibn Bājja in his outlining of the ends of life in the last chapter of the Guide, 3.54, and Ibn Bājja devoted his efforts to mapping out the path to true happiness (saʿāda).63 Moreover the entire closing unit of the Guide is a discourse on the ultimate end of life; Maimonides takes us in the Guide from the Garden of Eden (Guide 1.2), in which humans fall into perplexity, through the true human end (Guide 3.51–54).64 What is stated then about the human end or purpose (Arabic ghāya; Greek telos) in Guide 3.51?65 Maimonides tells us that this chapter is a kind of conclusion or summary, offering explication of the worship proper to someone who has apprehended the truths relating to God after apprehending what God is.66 The chapter guides such a person to achieve this worship, which is the ultimate human purpose (ghāya); it also makes known how providence watches over him in this habitation until he is transported to the “bundle of life” (zeror ha-hayyim, I Samuel 25:29).67 Thus, if Maimonides declines to use the term saʿāda in the Guide, he nevertheless does not hesitate to tell us about [ 177 ]

mAImonIdes the ultimate purpose (ghāya), the end of life, which was spoken of in medieval Arabic philosophy–for example, by Al-Fārābī—as happiness (saʿāda), the final perfection, the final human end, the ultimate object of desire for all humans, or the afterlife. Al-Fārābī also uses terms for joy and delight in his descriptions of the afterlife.68 Now it is possible that, in his old age, Maimonides may not have been as confident that human beings could achieve the ultimate happiness (saʿāda) of conjunction with God as he was in his youthful commentary to the Mishnah. And yet one does not sense that doubt, if we compare his words in the key chapter from his Mishnah commentary with his rapturous language in Guide 3.51. In the youthful Mishnah commentary, in the introduction to Pereq Heleq, Maimonides does write about the ultimate end using the term saʿāda. He writes that in this physical world we cannot experience eternal spiritual delight, which is of a completely different genus than physical delight (ladhdha). However: We are not sanctioned by either the Torah or the divine philosophers to assert that the angels, stars, and spheres have no delight. In fact they have exceedingly great delight in what they comprehend [‘aqalū] of the Creator (great is his praise!). With this [cognition], they are in delight that is perpetual and uninterrupted. They have no bodily delight, nor could they grasp it, since they have no physical senses, as we do, through which they could perceive what we do. Likewise will it be with us, too. After death, those who have purified themselves will reach this level and no longer perceive physical delights or desire them. . . . Like children, we now praise and glorify the delights of the body and do not understand the delights of the soul. . . . The statement [of the rabbinic text] “they delight in the radiance of the divine Presence” means that these souls delight in what they apprehend [taʿaqul] of the Creator, just as the holy angels [ḥayyot ha-qodesh] and the other ranks of angels delight in what they comprehend of his existence [‘aqalū min-wujūdihi] . . . Happiness, [saʿāda], the final end [ghāyat al-quswa] is to arrive at this exalted fellowship69 and to achieve this level. The permanence of the soul [baqat al-nafs] as we have explained, is endless, like the permanence of the Creator (praise be he), who is the cause of its permanence, because of its apprehension of Him, as is explained in First Philosophy. This is the greatest good [al-khayr al-’azīm], with which no good can be compared and no delight [ladhdha] likened,70 for how could that which is enduring and infinite be compared with anything transient and [ 178 ]

mAImonIdes terminable? This is the meaning of the Biblical statement “In order that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days,” for which we possess the traditional interpretation, “In order that it may be well with you” in the world which is completely good, “and that you may prolong your days,” in a world which is of unending length.”71

In Pereq Heleq Maimonides is exploring competing views of the end of life. He offers various descriptions of what ultimate happiness is: some say it is an afterlife physical Paradise, some say it is a purely spiritual reward. Thus, his methodology follows Aristotle, who at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics suggests that all seek happiness (eudaimonia), but that there is a dispute about what true happiness is. Both are giving various accounts of a disputed term, offering the common opinions (endoxa) and then saving the term by taking from these opinions what is best in each and discarding the rest.72 In the Guide his approach is different, and this may account for the absence of the central term saʿāda in the concluding chapters, where he is concerned with degrees of human perfection. Nevertheless, there is a clear continuity between the youthful description in Heleq and the mature work of the Guide, where Maimonides likewise asserts that intellects who have prepared themselves achieve a taste of ultimate joy in this world as they prepare to leave the body; the hope and promise of such intellectual joy fuels and brings fulfillment to the spiritual quest. Here are the words of the mature Maimonides in Guide 3.51: When a perfect man is stricken with years and approaches death, this apprehension increases very powerfully, joy over this apprehension and a great love for the object of apprehension become stronger, until the soul is separated from the body at that moment in this state of pleasure. Because of this the sages have indicated with reference to the deaths of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam that the three of them died by a kiss. . . . Their purpose was to indicate that the three of them died in the pleasure of this apprehension due to the intensity of passionate love. . . . After having reached this condition of enduring permanence, that intellect remains in one and the same state, the impediment that sometimes screened him off having been removed. And he will remain permanently in that state of intense pleasure, which does not belong to the genus of bodily pleasures, as we have explained in our compilations and as others have explained before us. [ 179 ]

mAImonIdes While in Guide 3.51 Maimonides declines to call the most exalted state one reaches before death happiness (saʿāda), he speaks with the same exuberance as in his youthful work about the state of passionate love, delight, and devotion with which a person engages in intellectual love and seeks to remain in that state when leaving the body. We have seen that earlier in the same chapter (Guide 3.51) Maimonides suggests that ultimate joy is experienced by a quiet mind, which through focused awareness receives intellectual insight and illuminated understanding of the divine and one’s relation to the cosmos. This is a purely natural process and is related to the discipline of unknowing and stripping away of anthropomorphism we see in the section of the Guide devoted to the divine attributes (1:50–64). Thus at the end of the chapter, he suggests that this happens especially at the time of death, when we are less distracted by our bodies and their needs. Moreover the experience transcends death, bringing one into the joy of the afterlife.73 If he has not used the term happiness at the end of the Guide, he has nevertheless described the ultimate end in a way quite consistent with the description in the Mishnah commentary, where he does use the term saʿāda to depict ultimate felicity.

Happiness and Suffering Now as Steven Harvey has noted, one of the few places Maimonides speaks explicitly about happiness in the Guide is in his exposition of the Book of Job; this is also one of the few passages in the Guide in which he uses the term saʿāda. He offers a subtle explication of what Job learns about happiness. What Job realizes is that the highest happiness is being with God and that being in God’s presence can console him even for his loss of bodily integrity and loved ones. While the practical intellect can achieve practical providence—guidance in the affairs of daily life—the theoretical intellect realizes that pure understanding is the highest release from suffering. What Job needs to see is the place of his suffering in the overall metaphysical structure of the universe. Job comes to a profound realization of what providence means in this world. He realizes what Maimonides taught in the non-exegetical chapters 3.10–12, that what we think of as evils are a natural consequence of the nature of matter, which is finite and subject to decay and destruction.74 [ 180 ]

mAImonIdes These are the price of existence in this material world. Death, illness, natural disasters, and all discomfiting occurrences are natural events in a finite world; they sometimes take place for no reason other than the nature of matter. What we think of as evils stem from privation. In an objective sense they are a result of matter; in a subjective sense our suffering over them stems from the privation of wisdom. God’s providence or protection comes through divine forces, angels; these are natural forces that may help us—such as good weather, medicine and healing practitioners, or the intellect, which brings one an understanding of the events of one’s life.75 Wisdom can give us the practical intelligence to take proper precautions in travel; it can also give us the fortitude to survive the loss of someone on a sea voyage—such as Maimonides’ loss of his own brother.76 Job learned that true happiness is knowledge of God, while false happiness is found in things such as wealth, children, and family. Here Maimonides uses the term saʿāda, the term we saw in his depiction of afterlife intellectual communion in the youthful Mishnah commentary. In fact, he is following al-Fārābī, who also distinguished true happiness from these kinds of presumed happiness.77 Of course one’s true and ultimate aim cannot be limited to any one finite good, whether health, wealth, or children. As Aristotle taught, these are external goods, which are important, but do not define eudaimonia. True happiness cannot be confined to any finite set of circumstances, because these can be taken away from us by a terrible stroke of fortune. When Job comes to truly understand providence, he realizes that he is not being punished by God. He comes to the insight that we cannot fully understand God’s mode of knowledge, nor can we fully understand the providential order of the universe. We can use our scientific understanding to live in practically wise ways, healthy pathways that bring us genuine flourishing. And we can discover sources of wisdom that bring us deep fulfillment. When we experience the deepest satisfaction of the soul, we are able to bear strokes of fortune.78 When we have found flourishing ways to live, we have cognitive resources to protect us from the devastation of loss. Augustine spoke of anchoring ourselves in love for those things that cannot be taken from us against our will—our own good will and contemplation of the eternal. Aristotle argues that it is our self-actualization that guides our happiness. Thus while Steven Hawking lost use of most of his body, he nevertheless found ways to continue to grow and develop as a human being. It is not that friends, family, and health do not count. But the most important [ 181 ]

mAImonIdes measure of our ability to be happy is our own realization of our capacity for being fully human. And when we have that—when we find ways to continue to be growing, vital human beings even after loss—we have what it takes to not be devastated by suffering. This is what Job discovered. Steven Harvey points out that Job is a figure who never lived, suggesting that this form of happiness is not available to living human beings, or at least that no living human being has attained it; the state of saʿāda is not attributed to the patriarchs, Moses, or Miriam. He points to Maimonides’ assertion that Job realized the limitations of his knowledge and that even knowledge of natural beings is not fully attainable. Though true happiness is guaranteed to all who know God, the implication is that human beings can never attain this knowledge. However, we can look at the evidence in a different way. The fact that Job never lived could simply mean that this is a parable about the universal human condition, just as the stories about Adam function as parables.79

Is Happiness Attainable? We are thus left with a paradox. On the one hand Maimonides believes that humans achieve fulfillment through knowledge of God. On the other hand, he places severe limitations on our ability to achieve such knowledge. Does Maimonides then believe that happiness is attainable? Josef Stern suggests that Maimonides held this view of happiness to be a kind of regulative ideal— an ideal that, while unattainable, is nevertheless worth striving for. In Stern’s view the limitations of our knowledge push us toward skeptical epoche, the ideal of classical Greek skepticism—to suspend our intellectual judgments and find tranquility (ataraxia) in not trying to understand that which we cannot fathom.80 In his recent biography of Maimonides, Joel Kraemer, too, has suggested that this is Maimonides’ therapeutic advice as a healer. Learning can bring us great fulfillment, but trying to understand what is beyond our grasp can also lead to melancholy and existential anxiety.81 However, Kraemer emphasizes that despite Maimonides’ strictures on the limitations of knowledge, there is nevertheless a great deal human beings can know; realization of our limitations can enable us to fully appreciate and expand awareness of that which is available to our minds.82 Historian of philosophy Alexander Altmann likewise emphasized that while Maimonides may not believe complete conjunction with the Active Intellect is possible, this does not mean that [ 182 ]

mAImonIdes no degree of conjunction is available. For Maimonides, there are degrees of realization in the afterlife, just as there are degrees of understanding and achievement in this life.83 Maimonides’ Laws of Repentance (Hilkhot Teshuvah) 8.2–3 support Altmann’s assertion that there are degrees of happiness in the afterlife: “In the world to come, there is no body or physical form, only the souls of the righteous alone, without a body, like the ministering angels. . . . The term ‘soul’ when used in this context does not refer to the soul that needs the body, but rather to ‘the form of the soul,’ the knowledge that it comprehends according to its ability (li-fi koho).” Maimonides here clearly indicates that souls in the world to come have different degrees of understanding. Likewise, we read in Teshuvah 9.1: “The Holy One blessed be he gave us this Torah which is a tree of life. Whoever fulfills what is written within it and comprehends it with complete and proper knowledge will merit the life of the world to come. A person merits [a portion of the world to come] according to the magnitude of his deeds and the extent of his knowledge.” Attainment is in accord with the extent of our deeds and knowledge; this suggests that there are various levels of afterlife bliss.84 Thus we need not despair that we cannot achieve complete knowledge or complete conjunction with the Active Intellect; each of us will reach the degree of wisdom for which we are prepared and likewise will reach an appropriate measure of happiness.

Love and Knowledge Maimonides repeatedly affirms that the process of achieving knowledge is also one of attaining joy and love for the divine. Indeed, Maimonides does not seem to recognize a categorical distinction between love and knowledge. Knowledge for him brings love, while love is in accordance with the degree of knowledge; one gets the impression that for Maimonides the two are phenomenologically the same.85 Note the way he connects knowledge, love, and joy in his formulation of the commandment to love God, the third in his categorization of the 613 commandments (after knowledge of God’s existence, divinity, and unity): By this injunction we are commanded to love God (exalted be He); that is to say, to dwell upon and contemplate his commandments, His injunctions, and His [ 183 ]

mAImonIdes works, so that we may apprehend him, and in apprehending Him attain the ultimate joy (ghāyat al-ladhdha). This is the ultimate love that is commanded. As the Sifre says: “Since it is said, ‘And you shall love the Lord your God’ (Deut. 6:5), [the question arises] how is one to love the Lord? Scripture therefore says ‘And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart’ (ibid. 6:6); for through this [i.e., the contemplation of God’s words] you will know him whose word called the universe into existence.” We have thus made it clear to you that through this act of contemplation (iʻtibār) you will attain apprehension (idrak) [of God] and reach joy (ladhdha), from which love of Him will follow of necessity.86

Why does knowledge arouse joy and love? Josef Stern has argued that the intellectual and spiritual exercises of the Guide make us realize that we will never attain apodictic knowledge of the divine, leaving us dazzled by the realization of our inability to know—a radical amazement about the limitations of our knowledge. We realize our smallness and are humbled by this realization, as Maimonides affirms in Guide 1.59: All people, past and present, affirm clearly that God can not be apprehended by the intellects, that none can apprehend what He is but He alone, that apprehension of Him consists in the inability to attain the ultimate in apprehending Him. Thus all philosophers say, “We are dazzled by his beauty, and he is hidden from us because of the intensity with which he becomes manifest, just as the sun is hidden to eyes too weak to apprehend it.”

While realization of the limitations of our intellect may explain the dimension of awe, as described in the Mishneh Torah, it does not explain what brings about love or passionate love, as Stern himself acknowledges.87 Thus I believe Stern’s conclusions about dazzlement are too restrictive. It is true that the Arabic term abharnā, “we are dazzled,” suggests being blinded or perplexed, rather than being taken by something positive one observes. But this is precisely the imagery used by Sufi thinkers in their depiction of coming close to the divine. Maimonides closely reflects Sufi expressions such as that of the Sufi Dhū al-Nūn: “the more one knows God, the more one is perplexed about Him, just as the closer one gets to the sun, the more dazzled he is by the sun.88 In his Introduction Maimonides writes to his student that his intention is “to guide him in his perplexity until he becomes perfect and he finds rest”; [ 184 ]

mAImonIdes this suggests that his goal is to guide the reader to an apprehension of God that resolves perplexity, rather than encourages it.89 But Maimonides is certainly evoking Sufi and Neoplatonic themes in his imagery of being dazzled and perplexed by light. Perhaps the Sufi subtext should not be ignored; perhaps greater knowledge brings love, awe, and perplexing dazzlement, a state of intense and transcendent joy. *  *  * Maimonides’ views on happiness are complex. He suggests that humans find fulfillment through learning, prayer, and devotion. Study of the natural world evokes awe at its beauty and dazzlement when we realize how little our finite intellects can fathom of its mystery. While ultimate happiness derives from knowledge of God, the pursuit of this knowledge itself brings joy and fulfillment. Just as the creation of this magnificent world order is an act of divine graciousness, so we are moved to embody graciousness and lovingkindness in our own lives.90 Humans find happiness in a life of deep purpose, love, and humbling awe as we pursue our intellectual and spiritual quest for understanding and union.

[ 185 ]

EIGHT

The Sufi Path of Love in ʿAṭṭār’s Conference of the Birds

THE MOVEMENT OF Islamic mysticism known as Sufism developed early in the history of Islam out of trends of asceticism and pietism, which arose in response to growing worldliness as Islam expanded during the early Umayyad period (661–749). The term Sufi grew from the ascetic practice of wearing a simple garment of wool (ṣūf); Islamic “wool-people” or “woolwearers” (ṣūfiyya) thus resembled Christian monks and ascetics, who likewise wore coarse woolen garments as a symbol of penitence and rejection of worldly luxuries such as the wearing of fine silk or cotton.1 While early ascetics focused on fear of the Day of Judgment, weeping over the world as a place of sorrow, and practice of austerities and night prayers, the Sufi mystics who grew from their midst directed their yearning toward direct communion with God through love.2 This shift in focus can be traced to Rābiʿah al-ʿAdawīyah (died 801), a woman from Basra who taught pure love for God, with no desire for reward or fear of punishment. Her biographer Farīd al-dīn ʿAṭṭār (Nishapur, 1119–1230), author of the poem we will study in this chapter, reports among her private prayers: “O Lord, if I worship you out of fear of hell, burn me in hell; if I worship you in hope of Paradise, forbid it to me. And if I worship you for your own sake, do not deprive me of your eternal beauty!”3 She also expresses her yearning for experience of direct, intimate connection with the Divine: “The groaning and the yearning of the lover of God will not be satisfied until it is satisfied in the Beloved.”4 And another personal prayer, beloved by later Sufi mystics: [ 186 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds O Lord, the stars are shining, the eyes of men are closed Kings have shut their doors and every lover is alone with his beloved; and here am I alone with You!5

ʿAṭṭār himself is often considered the greatest Persian Sufi poet after Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, who in fact learned much from him.6 Conference of the Birds (Manṭiq al-ṭayr) is an allegorical tale of the soul’s journey toward God; thirty birds set out to search for their king, the Simorgh, a magical bird well known in Persian poetry. ʿAṭṭār’s work is an elaboration of the Epistle on the Birds (Risālat al-ṭayr) attributed to either Muhammad al-Ghazālī or his younger brother Aḥmad al-Ghazālī; ʿAṭṭār has greatly expanded the work, in particular its culmination in the Sufi goals of annihilation or extinction (fanāʾ) and eternal abiding in God (baqā’) and the brilliant play on words that expresses the motif of finding God within oneself, which we will save for the poem’s denouement. Each of the birds offers an excuse as to why he or she cannot undertake the journey to find their true leader. The text details stages of the journey and the obstacles encountered—symbols for the stations and obstacles on the inner path to find one’s true divine essence.7 The tale reflects a larger Islamic theme of pilgrimage; the outer pilgrimage to Mecca undertaken by devout Muslims each year mirrors an inner pilgrimage to reach the Divine within the soul. We cannot in a short study investigate all the riches found in this enchanting tale, which unfolds as a series of stories within stories, like the well-known Thousand and One Nights. We will explore here some key stories that express mystical themes in the journey toward human fulfillment. The poem opens with a welcome to all the birds who will participate in the journey, with allusions to traditional Qur’ānic stories. The hoopoe bird is the guide; he is the legendary messenger between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. King Solomon is a key figure in the poem’s background; the title Manṭiq al-ṭayr—which should more properly be translated as Conversation (or Language) of the Birds—hearkens to Qur’ān 27:17, in which Solomon declares, “O people, we have been taught the language of birds (manṭiq alṭayr),” which interpreters understand as the secret, intimate knowledge of God held within the soul.8 In this poem the hoopoe bird represents the sheikh, the spiritual teacher and guide in Sufism. Seekers need a guide, lest they get lost in distractions and obstacles along the way. In the Sufi tradition the spiritual guide knows what is needed by each individual soul and offers varying [ 187 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds instructions to each soul on their journey, as we see in the welcome extended to each bird. The guide knows what is inside each individual’s heart. Let us examine certain themes that emerge in the opening welcomes of the hoopoe bird to the birds who would undertake the journey. The hoopoe offers the following greeting to the finch: Like Moses you have seen the flames burn high On Sinai’s slopes and there you long to fly . . . There you will understand unspoken words Too subtle for the ears of mortal birds.9

The poet here alludes to Mount Sinai as a sacred place, what is called an axis mundi, a center of the world that serves as a pillar of access between this world and the other world.10 Here the place becomes metaphorical; Mount Sinai represents the spiritual goal of finding a gateway through which one can return to God, like the image of the secret channel or passageway through the ocean that connects our individual soul to the universal spirit.11 We note, too, the motif of the mystical language of the birds, too subtle to be heard by mortals. To the falcon, he says: Submit, and be for ever satisfied. Give up the intellect for love and see In one brief moment all eternity; Break nature’s frame, be resolute and brave, Then rest at peace in Unity’s black cave. Rejoice in that close, undisturbed dark air— The Prophet will be your companion there.12

We see at once the preference in Sufi mysticism for love over intellect. Religious jurists and theologians seek to reach God through the mind, but true satisfaction is awakened by submitting to the divine through opening the heart—a suggestion we find in the term Islam itself; the Arabic verb submit (islām) suggests that true peace (salām) and satisfaction of the soul are the fruit of surrender to the Divine. We recall this theme from the Bhagavad Gītā; the path of the intellect (jñāna yoga) is eventually transcended for the path of loving [ 188 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds devotion (bhakti), which the text argues brings deepest satisfaction to the soul; surrender to the Divine brings one a genuine experience of unity. Here the poet ties this motif to Muhammad’s experience of mystical inspiration when he received the Qur’ān from the angel Gabriel in the black cave on Mount Ḥirā’. The poet also alludes to an incident known as the Companion of the Cave. During a period of danger, the Prophet Muhammad and his close companion Abū Bakr hid for a while in a cave on Mount Thawr; in mystical poetry this episode becomes a symbol of withdrawal from the world. Thus Sufi poetry appropriates foundational experiences of the tradition as templates or models for later seekers. The poet argues here that one must break nature’s frame to find peace and unity; opening to God goes against our ordinary nature. The path is difficult, challenging, and dangerous for our ordinary sense of self. The translation by Dick Davis capitalizes the word Self, but the term Self is ambivalent in Sufi texts. It can represent the nafs, which has the connotation of ego, the lower dimension of the self that must be overcome; the higher dimension of soul (rūḥ) is that which will find unity in God. We hear the former, pejorative connotation of self in the hoopoe’s address to the francolin: Since love has spoken in your soul, reject The Self, that whirlpool where our lives are wrecked; As Jesus rode his donkey, ride on it; Your stubborn Self must bear you and submit— Then burn this Self and purify your soul; Let Jesus’ spotless spirit be your goal.13

Scriptural allusions abound in this opening invitation, as throughout the tale. Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem; the scriptural incident here becomes a symbol for taming the nafs, making the errant ways of the ego submit to the Spirit. Many outer events of the Qur’ān and tradition become allegories of the self ’s journey toward God: David the sweet singer is a sheikh guiding man home; the snake in Eden is the nafs we must kill to return to paradise; Jonah, who was swallowed to the belly of the whale, shows the way humans are swallowed by the lower self.14 Each of the birds offers a justification for avoiding the pilgrimage. Why do they seek to avoid the journey? As humans, we say we want peace and freedom and we are promised through mystical traditions that true happiness [ 189 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds lies in losing the ego in union and unity; nevertheless, we are terrified at the prospect of losing the boundaries we know. However, glimpses of the promised joy emerge when we lose ourselves in the experience of merging—for example, at an uplifting musical, dance, or athletic event or laughing with a group of friends. Human beings love to be part of something bigger than ourselves; while the experience of losing the self is frightening, it is also attractive and compelling. Even at the outset of the path, we see the promised loss of self into something larger: At last, made perfect in Reality, You will be gone, and only God will be.15

We see here the Sufi notion of fanā’—originally the annihilation of one’s individual qualities, which developed into the notion of complete annihilation of the personality or self. Some also taught that following this, one can achieve baqāʾ, eternal abiding of the self in God. The transformed person can return to the world to serve as a living witness and continue the journey in God.16 This model has parallels to the Buddhist ideal of the Boddhisattva, the compassionate teacher who returns to the world to practice the perfections, deepen the experience of enlightenment, and act as a light and guide for others. In this passage we see an adumbration of the burning of the self in God, a theme that will be taken up at the end of the poem. After welcoming each of the birds, the hoopoe, their sheikh, tells them about the Simorgh. The birds are longing for a king, and the hoopoe informs them of the sovereign they seek: I know our king—but how can I alone Endure the journey to his distant throne?17

Islam recognizes the need for a community (ummah) of seekers. One might think that the mystical path is a solitary endeavor of the soul seeking individual communion with the divine. The poet tells us here that the spiritual seeker needs both a guide and a community with whom to share the journey. The hoopoe describes the divine king they seek, articulating the paradox of transcendence and immanence: [ 190 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds We have a king; beyond Kaf ’s mountain peak The Simorgh lives, the sovereign whom you seek, And He is always near to us, though we Live far from His transcendent majesty. A hundred thousand veils of dark and light Withdraw His presence from our moral sight, And in both worlds no being shares the throne That marks the Simorgh’s power and His alone.18

We read in the Qur’ān that God is closer to human beings than their jugular vein, the source of human life; while the Qur’ān insists on God’s utter transcendence, God is also immanent within the human heart.19 Likewise here, while the Simorgh is always near the birds, they must journey to find his transcendent majesty, hidden behind a hundred thousand veils of dark and light. They thus must undertake the perilous journey to seek outside that which is as close as their very heart. The famed Simorgh is indeed known through an external sign, a revelation of his mysterious being: It was in China, late one moonless night, The Simorgh first appeared to mortal sight— He let a feather float down through the air, And rumors of its fame spread everywhere; Throughout the world men separately conceived An image of its shape, and all believed Their private fantasies uniquely true! . . . It is a sign of Him, and in each heart There lies this feather’s hidden counterpart.20

We find here an allegory of the way the Divine reveals itself to humankind. The Divine, as it were, leaves a trace of itself; the hidden divinity reveals itself in the world. In a saying beloved by Sufis, which they cite as a ḥadīth qudsī, a prophetic tradition in which God speaks in the first person, the Divine declares, “I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known, so I created the creation in order that I be known.”21 The revelation of the infinite is far from clear, so that different cultures and traditions conceive the divine differently, and each believes its image of God uniquely true. Each [ 191 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds culture constructs a picture or image of this feather and from it conceives its own system of ideas; thus the world is in turmoil debating over the truth.22 However, if it weren’t for this manifestation, there would not be so much fruitful discussion in the world concerning this mysterious Being. All souls carry an impression of the image of this feather—the revelation of the divine, the secret hidden within each of our souls—but no words can suffice to convey this sign. This is the paradox of the “language of the birds,” the language of our souls. It is an unspoken language, a revelation of mysteries that cannot be fully described. What remains is to set out on the Way oneself. The birds gather together in an act of genuine spiritual communion; they pledge to renounce the separating self and be the friend of their companions. But when they ponder the journey’s length, each hesitates—flattered to be invited, but reluctant to undertake the daunting path. Each bird, one by one, makes an excuse as to why he or she is not suitable to undertake the journey. The last of the excuses is that of the finch, and it is the most deceptive of all. The finch pleads inadequacy: How could a sickly creature stand alone Before the glory of the Simorgh’s throne? The world is full of those who seek his grace, But I do not deserve to see his face And cannot join in this delusive race— Exhaustion would cut short my foolish days, Or I should turn to ashes in his gaze. Joseph was hidden in a well and I Shall seek my loved one in the wells nearby.23

Joseph becomes a symbol for the divine dimension of the soul; thrown by his brothers into a pit and forsaken as dead, he had to be sought out, rescued, and restored to life. Here the finch shows her lack of resolution on the path; she will search in the wells nearby, but not undertake the long journey to seek the divine wherever it will be found. The hoopoe answers that the most deceptive excuse of all is the arrogance of false humility. To say that we are incapable or undeserving of seeking the Divine is to shirk our true calling and destiny. His “humble ostentation is absurd!”24 In the words of Rabbi Tarfon from the Rabbinic tradition, “It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but neither are you free to desist from it.”25 [ 192 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds Thus it is not enough to long for Truth: “our quest is Truth itself, not just its scent.” One cannot simply fall in love with longing; one must undertake the journey to find, and not just to seek, the object of one’s desire. The hoopoe thus explains the relationship of the birds themselves to the goal of their quest, the Simorgh: When long ago the Simorgh first appeared— His face like sunlight when the clouds have cleared— He cast unnumbered shadows on the earth, On each one fixed his eyes, and each gave birth. Thus we were born; the birds of every land Are still his shadows—think, and understand. If you had known this secret you would see The link between yourselves and Majesty.26

The metaphor has shifted now. Earlier, the Divine revealed itself by letting one of its feathers reach humanity; here we have the image of a sun casting shadows to earth. We find a precedent for such images in Plotinus, the fourth-century founder of Neoplatonism: the relation between the One and the many is that of a flame emitting light or a source of perfume emitting fragrance. However, for Plotinus, the process is purely natural; as long as there is a source of perfume, it will emit a beautiful waft.27 In this poem, by contrast, we find the Islamic image of a personal God who reveals himself through a deliberate act of will. This image suggests a personal relationship between the Simorgh and each one of the shadows; it is his casting his eyes on every individual shadow that gives birth to each bird. We thus find a personal link between each of the birds and the Simorgh; each is a shadow of the one great Source of light, their king. Nevertheless, the guide warns them not to mistake themselves—God’s friends—for God himself: Do not reveal this truth, and God forfend That you mistake for God himself God’s friend. If you become that substance I propound, You are not God, though in God you are drowned; Those lost in him are not the deity— This problem can be argued endlessly. [ 193 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds You are His shadow, and cannot be moved By thoughts of life or death once this is proved.28

God’s friend, the waly, has a loving, close companionship with God. Even though each of us is a shadow of a great Being, we are not the Infinite in its totality; though immersed in the divine, we are not the totality of God’s Self. Nevertheless, once we realize we are God’s shadow, we need not fear life or death; death is simply the shadow being absorbed in the sun. This is the mystery of revelation: God did not choose to remain unknown, but chose to reveal the divine being through creation; “I was a hidden treasure and desired that I be known. So I created the creation, in order that I be known.” Human beings are mirrors of the divine; it would be too intense to look upon the beauty of God directly. Thus God has made a mirror for God in our hearts, as in the poem’s allegory of a king who was so beautiful the throng could not bear to look at him directly. Hence the king set up mirrors in his palace so that all could look at his reflection:29 Your heart is not a mirror bright and clear If there the Simorgh’s form does not appear; No one can bear His beauty face to face, And for this reason, of His perfect grace, He makes a mirror in our hearts—look there To see Him, search your hearts with anxious care.30

A key Sufi theme is polishing the mirror of the soul so that God shall appear clearly; the soul that is fit to reflect the Simorgh’s beauty will be a mirror for the divine. We are able to see the divine in our own hearts: If you would glimpse the beauty we revere Look in your heart—its image will appear. Make of your heart a looking glass and see Reflected there the Friend’s nobility . . . The Simorgh’s shadow and Himself are one; Seek them together, twinned in unison.31

[ 194 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds The way to find the divine is therefore to look within one’s own heart, which is a palace for the divine. The king reveals itself in every atom of the Whole; each fragment of the macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm. However, we should note that these traces are but shadows. True, the shadows and the Simorgh are one; and yet we also must pass beyond the shadows to the Reality of the sun that they reveal. On the one hand, God can only be seen through God’s shadows or reflections; on the other, our goal is not to mistake the reflections for the Light itself.32 The Conference is a multilayered text, featuring stories illustrating points made by the guide. At this juncture in the tale we find a story featuring the motif of a slave who is raised to highest honors by the king, a metaphor for the mystic’s relationship to God. Ayaz was afflicted by the evil eye; the king loved Ayaz and sent a servant to tell him that the king shed tears of sympathy for him, enduring with Ayaz in his suffering. The servant went quickly and was astonished and afraid when he saw that the king was already there by the bedside of Ayaz. The king reassures him: You could not know The hidden ways by which we lovers go; . . . The passing world outside is unaware Of mysteries Ayaz and Mahmoud share.33

We notice how intimate is the connection between the soul and the divinity; they share a bond of love and exchange precious secrets. It is not just the Sufi who loves the Lord; the king himself loves the Sufi, shares confidences, and intimately feels the seeker’s pain. The king cannot bear to live without the servant. Sufi mysticism is thus a mysticism of love not just from the individual to God, but from God to the individual. God passionately loves and needs God’s servants, just as humans need the divine. The story also graphically illustrates ʿAṭṭār’s theme of a secret channel or passageway between the individual soul and the universal soul, the Beloved within. The path to God is found within the soul, as illustrated in a saying cited in the hadith literature: “Whoever knows himself (his soul) knows his Lord (man ʿarafa nafsahu faqad ʿarafa rabbahu).34 Thus traveling through the cosmos is really traveling within to the interior of the soul, which joins with the ocean of the [ 195 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds universal spirit through a secret channel. Moreover, one realizes that one’s own actions are really the actions of the universal soul or spirit.35 However, love also includes a dimension of suffering. Much Sufi poetry focuses on the painful ecstasy of love, the longing felt between lover and beloved, the agony of separation and the struggle for reunion. How far this is from the Stoic or Epicurean model of self-sufficiency and autonomy! Love and passion make us vulnerable:36 Love thrives on inextinguishable pain, Which tears the soul, then knits the threads again . . . But where love thrives, there pain is always found; When neither Blasphemy nor Faith remain, The body and the Self have both been slain.37

These verses serve as introduction to the story of Sheikh Sanʿan, perhaps the most shocking story of the poem. Even the introduction to the story seems to advocate antinomianism—the notion that the mystic who seeks ultimate unity can transcend the obligation of religious law. James Morris warns us against this surface reading of the poem, reminding us that the lesson of the poem is more subtle.38 The spiritual seeker must be willing to sacrifice whatever is demanded—even his or her piety. We find a similar dialectic in early and later Buddhism. In the earliest teachings of Buddhism, we encounter the notion that once one has crossed the shore one no longer needs a raft. The Zen tradition takes this teaching to its ultimate conclusion: we should not get attached to the teachings themselves; the true Buddhist must be willing to let go of Buddhism. If we see the Patriarch in our meditation, we must kill the Patriarch; if we meet the Buddha, we must kill the Buddha.39 We must be willing to let go of attachment even to central symbols of the tradition—to let go of the finger pointing at the moon, lest we forget that our goal is to see the moon itself. Thus love demands the ultimate sacrifice. This is the message of the story of Sheikh Sanʿan, a great teacher in the mosque at Mecca who is attached to his own devotion. The sheikh’s challenge in overcoming ego is to abandon the outward symbols of Islamic piety; he must be willing to blaspheme by renouncing Muslim practice. The poem suggests that while outward observance at its best is a genuine expression of devoted love, it may become [ 196 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds idolatrous if one is attached to the image of oneself as a pious person. The poem challenges the reader to ponder whether one can love God even without being able to adhere to external observance. If one forsakes the rewards of heaven, can one devote oneself to God purely out of love, without hope of reward or approval, even from oneself?40 If we think back to the Bhagavad Gītā, we can recall Ithamar Theodor’s suggestion that the path of love calls for a critically honest reckoning with ourselves; one cannot hide behind intellectual or ascetic achievement.41 To worship God without the symbols of worship is to sacrifice the reassuring visible tokens of our devotion. Sheikh Sanʿan sacrifices faith and piety—that which is most dear to him—out of love for the Supreme. The arc of the story is as follows. Sheikh Sanʿan is responsible for care of the mosque at Mecca and renowned for symbols of external observance; a master of religious austerities, he had made the pilgrimage fifty times, fasted, prayed and observed all sacred laws. He is a great theologian, a healer, counselor, and model of piety. However, he is troubled by a dream that he lived in Rome and bowed to an idol. To investigate the dream, he sets forth for Rome, where he meets a pious Christian girl, falls in love, and renounces his faith for Christianity. He thus discovers that love is more powerful than theology, intellectual achievement, or asceticism; love burns through all layers of personality, awakening intense desire for growth, a longing to see and unite with the divine. The desire for the beloved is a more powerful motivator than any other—a theme expressed graphically in Plato’s Symposium and echoed by Plotinus.42 And with this love arises an intense longing when one is separated from the beloved: Those nights I passed in faith’s austerities Cannot compare with this night’s agonies.43 Where is the loved one to relieve my pain? Where is the guide to help me turn again? . . .  The loved one, reason, patience—all are gone And I remain to suffer love alone.44

Separation from the divine Beloved is a dark night of the soul, a frequent theme in Sufi poetry. Medieval mystical poetry draws upon pre-Islamic [ 197 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds secular love poetry; the motif of the lover longing for the Beloved becomes a template for the lovesick individual willing to give up one’s very soul and life for the Beloved, so intense is the pain of separation.45 The Christian woman drives a hard bargain: “Burn the Qur’an, drink wine, seal up Faith’s eye, Bow down to images.”46 Ultimately, Sheikh Sanʿan is even willing to become her swineherd. And the poet turns to us to tell us the moral of this tale: Do not imagine only he could fall; This hidden danger lurks within us all, Rearing its bestial head when we begin To tread salvation’s path—if you think sin Has no place in your nature, you can stay Content at home; you are excused the Way. But if you start our journey you will find That countless swine and idols tease the mind— Destroy these hindrances to love or you Must suffer that disgrace the sad sheikh knew.47

Thus the lesson of the parable extends beyond bowing down to idols or other overt sins. The moral is that the most pious of us must never rest on our laurels and believe we are incapable of falling; temptation will always be a part of our experience. To actually make progress along the Way, we must embrace this knowledge and realize that the potential for both fall and renewal exists within us all; it is by experiencing sin and degradation that the great sheikh discovers God and true faith anew. Sheikh Sanʿan admonishes his friends that they simply cannot understand love’s pain and frustration; the rational mind cannot understand the passion of love, the most genuine avenue to the divine. In Zen Buddhism we find, too, that the road to awakening is not linear; the mind must struggle to the point of utter defeat and despair, which creates a unique opening that allows a different mode of perception to break through. Only one of his friends refuses to abandon the sheikh or give up hope for his redemption; he prays fervently that the sheikh may return to the path. Finally the Prophet Muhammad himself appears to the friend in a dream; the friend prays that the Prophet, their Guide, guide him to Truth again, which the Prophet does. The sheikh is restored to his former faith, and the friends [ 198 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds assure him that he need not mourn or be ashamed, for God has the power to guide any person to repentance.48 However, the story does not end there. The Christian woman, too, is led to repent and to embrace Islam. The sheikh’s friends at first fear that the sheikh will fall under her spell again, but he urges them to find her. The woman asks the sheikh to reveal the secrets of Islam, which he does. But she is not satisfied; she realizes that she is still absent from the divine Friend. Thus she seeks ultimate annihilation of the soul in God (fanā’), symbolized in this story by her choice of death.49 Yes, this is a mysterious tale. But the poet assures us that these mysteries are deliberate, a function of the paradox of the Way. We are all torn between desire, despair, and mercy, illusion and security. The Way is complex and not simple, entailing acute meanderings of the spirit and desire.

The Seven Stages on the Sufi Way These meanderings are illustrated by insightful tales of the journey along the Way. We will now turn to the seven valleys, representing the seven stages on the Sufi path. Sufi theorists outlined stages and states variously, but there is a consistency to the principles of terminology. That is, a state (ḥāl) is passing and is a gift from God; a stage (maqām) is abiding and can be earned by one’s own spiritual effort.50 The first stage is the Valley of the Quest. Here we read the story of Adam, the first human being. The Qur’ān recounts that God breaths the pure soul of God into Adam and instructs all the angels to bow down to the first human being, to acknowledge the divine secret he holds within. All consented, except the devil (Iblīs), and because the devil refuses he receives God’s curse.51 In a surprising echo of this story, the Sufi Shebli, accused of apostasy, claims he is happy to have God’s curse. Everything that radiates from the divine is precious and to be treasured; jewels and stones are equal from God’s hand.52 Thus even God’s curse, even illness and tragedy, can be welcomed, since they stem from God: Bright jewels and stones are equal from His hand, And if His gems are all that you demand, Ours is a Way you cannot understand— [ 199 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds Think of the stone and jewels he gives as one; They are not yours to hope for or to shun. The stone your angry lover flings may hurt, But others’ jewels compared with it are dirt.53

This shocking theme can be found in medieval Islamic and Jewish mystical love poetry. Whatever the beloved gives is to be welcomed, even degradation and revile.54 Thus the lesson of the first stage, the Valley of the Quest, is to welcome all that comes to one from the divine Beloved, even pain and reviling, as one. God transcends conventional morality. The poet includes three stories that symbolize the passionate quester for the divine Beloved. The first shows Majnoun searching for his beloved Leili, sifting the dusty highway grain by grain, leaving no stone unturned in his search for the object of his quest. The poet poignantly declares that every atom of the universe is searching for the lost beloved: Each atom is a Jacob fervently Searching for Joseph through eternity.55

Likewise, a bird may peck a mound of millet seed one grain at a time for a thousand years. We need to exercise divine patience, like someone searching through millet seed, grain by grain. Nevertheless, one must also beware of the dangers of spiritual pride, which is another form of idolatry: If you discover in your quest a jewel, Do not, like some delighted doting fool, Gloat over it—search on, you’re not its slave; It is not treasures by the way you crave (185/171).

If we make an idol of what we find, we will not press on in our search for the Truth. Even the ecstasies of spiritual revelation should not become idols. We must beware falling in love with our initial discovery; we must continue the quest and not remain content with anything less than the Infinite. The second valley is the Valley of Love. The overall message of this valley is that true love is willing to sacrifice all: [ 200 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds The lover is a man who flares and burns Whose face is fevered, who in frenzy yearns . . . True lovers give up everything they own To steal one moment with the Friend alone . . .

(186/172)

There is nothing lukewarm about the lover. The lover does not procrastinate, does not fear. Love overcomes the doubts of the intellect; the intellect cannot speak to passionate love: When love has come the intellect has fled; It cannot tutor love, and all its care Supplies no remedy for love’s despair. If you could seek the unseen you would find Love’s home, which is not reason or the mind . . . The lover chafes, impatient to depart, And longs to sacrifice his life and heart.

(187/172–73)

Like the Bhagavad Gītā, ʿAṭṭār holds up the Path of Love as supreme, superior to the path of the mind. While intellect may hold back, love is willing to surrender all. In fact, the author admonishes the reader directly to give up attachment to intellect for the path of love: If you would scour yourself of each defect, Let passion wean you from the intellect.

(192/174)

One tale in the Valley of Love tells of an Arab who, becoming intoxicated, is robbed and stripped naked by Persian Sufis. On an allegorical level, the wine that allows the Persian Sufis to take away his outward wealth represents Sufi teaching, whose antinomian potential strips the pious Arab of the practices of Islamic law (the sharīʿa). But the resulting poverty and nakedness are ennobling. We have seen this theme in the story of Sheikh Sanʿan, and it is a common motif in Persian Sufi poetry.56 About these shocking motifs, Carl Ernst writes, “Sufi poetry was not about wine drinking, but here it used the shock of reference to wine, and to idolatry, to convey an ultimate goal for [ 201 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds which respectability and righteousness were to be sacrificed.”57 To risk all as a beggar is to make oneself fit to enter the true Home humans seek: Enter the Way or seek some other goal, But do so to the utmost of your soul; Risk all and as a naked beggar roam If you would hear that “Enter” call you home.58

The final story in the Valley of Love tells of Abraham being called by ʿAzra’el, the angel of death. But Abraham refuses to go; he will only accept the call of God: When Gabriel himself appeared in fire And asked me to describe my heart’s desire, I did not glance at him; the path I trod Had then as now no other goal but God . . . I shall not give this soul until I hear The word of God command me to draw near.59

Love is audacious and, in the end, will accept no less than God himself. The third valley is the Valley of Insight into Mystery. The broad theme of this valley is that mysteries are explained in diverse ways. Each of us is given distinct signs and lessons in our lives; there is no single path prescribed for all. The text’s universalism includes room for diversity; the poet proclaims that while there exists one truth, varied traditions offer a dazzling mosaic of religious expression. Thus multiple religious streams each express a dimension of truth that transcends the teachings of any one tradition. At the same time, the poet asserts that Islam is the most useful of religions for reaching the Truth:60 Our pathways differ—no bird ever knows The secret route by which another goes. Our insight comes to us by different signs; One prays in mosques and one in idols’ shrines— But when Truth’s sunlight clears the upper air, Each pilgrim sees that he is welcomed there.61 [ 202 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds The knowledge of hidden mysteries is experiential, transformative gnosis—not the species of abstract, intellectual knowledge we are bidden to transcend, but a wisdom that is revealed through passionate love: “Now let the sea of gnosis drown your mind.”62 Knowledge must neither be undervalued or overvalued: The world is dark, and Knowledge is a light, A sparkling jewel to lead you through the night . . . But if you trust its light too much, despair Will be the sequel of pedantic care, And if you underestimate this jewel Despair will mark you as a righteous fool Ignore or overvalue this bright stone, And wretchedness will claim you for her own.63

Scholars get lost in sophistic arguments; exclusive reliance on discursive knowledge leads to pedantry. However, if we fail to value the jewel of  knowledge, we can also lose hope. If we step outside the ordinary bounds of reality, we will discover wonderful wisdom not imagined by the world.64 The fourth valley is the Valley of Detachment. This is the valley in which we see the dreamlike quality of life. All is insubstantial, like a reverie; everything is relative to the one Absolute Reality: If you should see the world consumed in flame, It is a dream compared to this, a game . . . 65 Sift through the universe, and it will seem An airy maze, an insubstantial dream.66

The poet thus expresses a non-dualism as thoroughgoing as the tradition of the Upanishads.67 And he likewise derives a conclusion akin to that of the Bhagavad Gītā: But whether you lament or idly sing, Act with detachment now in everything, Detachment is a flame, a livid flash, [ 203 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds That will reduce a hundred worlds to ash; Its valley makes creation disappear, And if the world has gone, then where is fear?68

Realizing the nature of this reality as less than real can rid us of fear, bringing detachment and equanimity. The fifth valley is the Valley of Unity. The poet here expresses the paradoxical nature of mystical unification: This is the oneness of diversity, Not oneness locked in singularity.69

Here the monism of ʿAṭṭār differs from the most extreme non-dualism of the Vedāntic tradition. Although there is nothing that ultimately exists other than God, the divine being is not uniform; rather, it includes diversity within unity. And yet the lover declares: I know not whether you are I, I You; I lose myself in You; there is no two . . . When you are me and I am wholly you, What use is it to talk of us as two?70

We hear echoes of other Sufi statements of unity with the divine Beloved, for example, the unitive verses of Ḥallāj: I am whom I love, and whom I love is I When you see me, you see us both, We are two spirits together in one body With which God has clad us as a corporeal dwelling.71

The poem thus expresses the mystery of union with another with whom one also shares identity. We also see adumbrated here another mystery of Sufism—the dual movements of annihilation (fanā’) and eternal abiding (baqā’): The pilgrim has no being, yet will be A part of Being for eternity.72 [ 204 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds What the seekers give up is the sense of separateness; what they discover is unity in love, uniting with the divine Beloved.73 The sixth valley is the Valley of Bewilderment. The significance of this stage is that the rational mind must give up its sense of absolute certainty. As in Plato’s dialogue the Meno, we discover that only by entering a state of perplexity can we realize that we do not know.74 In a poignant metaphor the poet declares that we need to lose not only the key but the door. To discover a truth completely different from anything we thought we knew, we must let go of all we know. Only bewilderment can open one to a truth that is genuinely new and heretofore unimagined.75 The seventh and final valley is the Valley of Poverty and Nothingness: First put aside the Self, and then prepare To mount Boraq and journey through the air; Drink down the cup of Nothingness; put on The cloak that signifies oblivion— . . . First lose yourself, then lose this loss and then Withdraw from all that you have lost again— Go peacefully and stage by stage progress Until you gain the realms of Nothingness76

Muhammad’s ascent to heaven on the mysterious steed Boraq becomes a paradigm for the ascent of the soul into Nothingness.77 This is a state in which the self is annihilated, so that the poet can say that one both is and is not. Here we find the famous story of the moths and the flame.78 Some timid moths hovered about the aura of the fire and headed back to say how far they had been. But a very brave moth went all the way, to be consumed by the flame: And when the mentor saw that sudden blaze, The moth’s form lost within the glowing rays, He said, “He knows, he knows the truth we seek, That hidden truth of which we cannot speak.”79

Anyone who comes back to declare the truth has not really seen it, for the truth cannot be expressed in words. Moreover, to truly know, one must be [ 205 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds utterly consumed by the flame of the divine. No part of the individual self can remain; the plunge into Nothingness must be complete: Then leap into the flames, and as you burn Your pride will falter, you’ll begin to learn. But keep one needle back and you will meet A hundred thieves who force you to retreat . . . Withdraw into yourself, and one by one Give up the things you own—when this is done, Be still in selflessness and pass beyond All thoughts of good and evil; break this bond And as it shatters you are worthy of Oblivion, the Nothingness of love.

(223/207)

In this valley the poet tells the story of a beggar who loves a prince; the prince cannot but listen to the cry of the beggar. The message of the tale is that if we cry out for love, God will not be able to refuse. The poet thus turns to encourage the reader: Endure in love, be steadfast and sincere— At last the one you long for will appear; Act as this beggar did, lament and sigh Until the glorious prince gives his reply.

(227/211)

Nevertheless, many of the pilgrims hesitate. The poet tells us how few are those who have the courage to see the journey through: Not one in every thousand souls arrived— In every hundred thousand one survived . . . A world of birds set out, and there remained But thirty when the promised goal was gained, Thirty exhausted, wretched, broken things, With hopeless hearts and tattered, trailing wings.

(230/214)

(230/214–15)

Thus thirty birds arrive. What meets the birds when they do arrive at the object of their quest? After the initial shock of being in a state of limbo, with [ 206 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds the threat of annihilation, the birds are greeted by a herald who urges them to turn back. They are defiant, determined to see the face of their king. Finally, the herald gently unlocks the guarded door and reveals the innermost Light of Lights: He led them to a noble throne, a place Of intimacy, dignity and grace, Then gave them all a written page and said That when its contents had been duly read The meaning that their journey had concealed, And of the stage they’d reached, would be revealed.

(232–33/217)

Herein the poet tells the story of Joseph, who holds up a scroll written in Hebrew—a receipt of the sale wherein his brothers sold Joseph into slavery. The scroll, of course, condemns the brothers, confronting them with their evil deed. The brothers readily acknowledge their ability to read the Hebrew scroll, not realizing that they thereby acknowledge awareness of their grave misdeed. The allegory tells us of the moment at which each soul must face its past, confronting and acknowledging its deeds. Each must realize that we have sold our own soul—our Joseph—into slavery. Joseph represents the divinity who secretly rests within the seeker’s heart—the spark of the divine we have lost or cast into the well and sold. Thus we must search for and rediscover the lost divinity within.80 The birds realize that this is an indictment of themselves; every deed they have done is written on this document for all to see: Their lives, their actions, set out one by one— All that their souls had ever been or done;— And this was bad enough, but as they read They understood that it was they who’d led The lovely Joseph into slavery— Who had deprived him of his liberty . . .

(234/218)

Each of us has sold our own soul into slavery, and it is to our divine soul that we are ultimately beholden. We have enslaved ourselves to things other than our true longing and purpose; “they had forgotten God and turned to others, given Him away for something else.”81 Confronted with recognition [ 207 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds of what we have done, our first inclination is to feel chastened and ashamed. But full acknowledgment brings insight and renewal: The chastened spirits of these birds became Like crumbled powder, and they shrank with shame. Then as by shame their spirits were refined Of all the world’s weight, they began to find A new life flow towards them from that bright Celestial and ever living Light Their souls rose free of all they’d been before; The past and all its actions were no more. Their life came from that close, insistent sun And in its vivid rays they shone as one.

(234/218–19)

By accepting the shame of their deeds, the birds are freed. They accept responsibility for all that they have done and suddenly they are liberated from their past misdeeds. And, through a delightful play on words that is original with ʿAṭṭār, they discover that they, collectively, are the Simorgh. The name of a mythical bird well-known in Persian poetry—Simorgh—can be read in Persia as si-mirgh, which means thirty birds. They themselves, these thirty birds, are the king they seek: There in the Simorgh’s radiant face they saw Themselves, the Simorgh of the world with awe They gazed, and dared at last to comprehend They were the Simorgh and the journey’s end They see the Simorgh at themselves they stare And see a second Simorgh standing there.

(234/219)

The pilgrims discover that the Simorgh is a mirror. Earlier we saw a reverse image; the Simorgh was said to be a sun that cast innumerable shadows to the earth. He cast his eyes upon each, and the birds of the world were born. Each being has a mirror of God in our heart; to look upon the sun directly would be too intense, but we can look in our heart as a mirror that reflects the beauty of the divine light. Here the image appears to be the reverse. The Simorgh is a giant mirror in which the thirty birds see themselves; if one hundred princes met the [ 208 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds Simorgh, they would see one hundred princes. All beings seem to collectively form the Simorgh. However, it may be more precise to say, as ʿAṭṭār’s contemporary Ibn al-ʿArabī’ holds, that the transcendent Divine cannot be seen in itself; all that can be seen are its shadows or manifestations. Hellmut Ritter explains this profound mystery beautifully: “divinity still remains transcendent. It remains transcendent because it is Being devoid of qualities which only manifests insofar as, like a mirror, it reflects back his image to the beholder.”82 H. S. Nyberg writes similarly of this motif in Ibn al-ʿArabī’: “If man thinks he sees God, he only sees himself. Being which is devoid of qualities cannot be seen. It is like a mirror-glass which is only visible in as much as it reflects an image. Therefore if a human being steps before this mirror, only his own image is beamed back at him”:83 They ask (but inwardly; they make no sound) The meaning of these mysteries that confound Their puzzled ignorance—how is it true That “we” is not distinguished here from “you”? And silently their shining Lord replies: “I am a mirror set before your eyes And all who come before my splendor see Themselves, their own unique reality; You came as thirty birds and therefore saw These selfsame thirty birds, not less nor more . . . And since you came as thirty birds, you see These thirty birds when you discover Me, The Simorgh, Truth’s last flawless jewel, the light In which you will be lost to mortal sight.”

(234–35/219–20)

The tenth-century Sufi-influenced thinker Ibn Sīna (Avicenna) already expressed this Sufi theme of the soul as mirror to the divine. He writes that at the end of the spiritual journey, the soul of the knower of God (al-’ārif ) becomes “a polished mirror facing the Truth . . . At this level, he sees both himself and the Truth. He still hesitates between them; but then, becoming oblivious to himself, he is aware only of the Sacred Presence, or if he is at all aware of himself, it is only as one who gazes on the Truth. It is then that true union (wuṣūl) is achieved.”84 [ 209 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds ʿAṭṭār likewise reflects the motif of looking back and forth between the Truth and creation until they merge. In the prose translation of Ritter: “When they looked at the Simurgh, that Simurgh was actually the thirty birds who’d travelled the path. If they looked at themselves, then the thirty birds were that other Simurgh. And if they looked at both at the same time, then both were one Simurgh. They’re given this answer: ‘This kingly presence is like a sun-bright mirror. Whoever comes here sees himself in it. . . . You’ve come here as si murgh (thirty birds) and appeared as thirty birds in the mirror.’”85 We find in ʿAṭṭār’s poem reflection of two culminating moments of the Sufi path: fanā’ (annihilation) and baqā’ (eternal abiding). ʿAṭṭār avoids the controversial terms union (ittiḥād) or worse still incarnation (ḥulūl). He is more comfortable with the term istighrāq, being immersed or engrossed in God:86 Dispersed to nothingness until once more You find in Me the selves you were before.87

The ego dissolves, but we discover that the same beings we were remain— present now from God’s point of view. The self is reinstated, but as a mirror of the divine; beings are in one sense exactly what they were before, but experience themselves from the divine rather than the limited human point of view. Having taken on the divine qualities, the self returns to the world as a living witness to the Beloved. This motif is expressed in the story of the death of al-Ḥallāj, the famed “martyr of love,” who was killed for some of his statements made in ecstasy, such as “I am the Truth! (anā al-ḥaqq), the Truth being a name for God:88 Ḥallāj’s corpse was burnt and when the flame Subsided, to the pyre a sufi came Who stirred the ashes with his staff and said: Where has the cry “I am the Truth” now fled?89

Even the Sufi al-Ḥallāj, who declares he is the Truth, dissolves, only to be rediscovered as a divine essence—a shadow merged in the divine sun. Where has the cry “I am the Truth” now fled? Where is the Ḥallāj we once knew? However, the dissolution in the silence of the Simorgh is not the end of the story; annihilation or extinction (fanā’) is followed by permanence after extinction (al-baqā’ ba’d al-fanā’; Ritter, 652): [ 210 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds A hundred thousand centuries went by, And then those birds, who were content to die, To vanish in annihilation, saw Their Selves had been restored to them once more That after Nothingness they had attained Eternal Life, and self-hood was regained.

(220–21)

This is a state the poet cannot express—how the self, dissolved in nothingness, may be restored to eternal life: Be nothing first! And then you will exist, You cannot live whilst life and Self persist— Till you reach Nothingness you cannot see The Life you long for in eternity.

(221–22)

We have noted the twofold Sufi mystery of fanā’ and baqā’; Ritter points out that there are actually three moments described by ʿAṭṭār. After extinction of the self, the soul must realize that there is no self and no God; all the soul’s previous actions were in fact actions of the divine. The journey to God is now replaced by the journey in God: Though you traversed the Valleys’ depths and fought With all the dangers that the journey brought The journey was in Me, the deeds were Mine— You slept secure in Being’s inmost shrine.

(220)

In Ritter’s prose translation: “Their journey to the Simurgh was a journeying in the action of the Simurgh Himself. Then the Simurgh goes on to say: “We’re much more worthy of Simurgh-ship than you are because We’re the real, essential Simurgh. Merge within Us so you find yourselves in Us once more!” They then merged within Him forever. The shadow disappeared in the sun, and that’s the end!” (Ritter, 651–52). In another work of ʿAṭṭār’s the guide instructs the traveler: “Now travel within yourself forever!  .  .  . Now you must become the confidant of the Beloved! . . . The traveller who had journeyed so long to God, now has before him the journey in God.”90 In Conference of the Birds ʿAṭṭār uses the term permanence after extinction (baqā’ ba’d al-fanā’) rather than journeying in God; [ 211 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds this takes place after the extinction of extinction itself. In Ritter’s prose translation: If someone disappears, this is extinction (fanā’). If he becomes extinct unto extinction (fanā’ gasht az fanā’ =al- fanā’ ‘an al-fanā’), then it’s permanence (baqā’). . . . If you seek to reach this high station, first become extinct unto yourself, but then travel further onword from nothingness! . . . Close your eyes and open them again, disappear and then also disappear from there, then disappear as well from this second stage! Go on like this in peace until you reach the world of the state of disappearance! (Ritter, 650)

But the tale does not end there. It ends with a very mysterious story. A king falls in love with a boy whom he loves to always have at his side. However, the boy falls in love with a girl; enraged, the king plans to have the boy hung from the gallows, although the boy’s father arranges to hide away his son and have a murderer hung in his place. The king then has a dream in which the boy chides him, “is this the way lovers act?” Grief overwhelms the king and he wants to destroy himself, but the minister dresses up his son and sends him to the king. The two reunite in joyous intimacy: There are no words that could express his joy. They knew the state of which no man can speak . . . No stranger followed them, or could unfold The secrets they to one another told— Alone at last, together they conferred; Blindly they saw themselves and deaf they heard— But who can speak of this? I know if I Betrayed my knowledge I would surely die.

(229)

ʿAṭṭār here reflects a well-known motif from the Sufi poetry of sacred love. Drawing upon images from pre-Islamic Arabic love poetry, Sufi poetry portrays the pain of lovers who are separated, only to find the delight of rediscovery and reconciliation. The intimate secrets the lovers share represent mysteries between God and the soul. The soul united with the divine becomes God’s confidant, sharing the secret language of the soul—the “language of birds” alluded to in the title of the poem, another stage in the journey within God. [ 212 ]

tHe sufI pAtH of love In ʿAṭṭār's conference of the birds So who is the king in this story? One plausible reading is that the king is each of us, who have sold our souls into slavery. The soul has fallen in love with the temptations of the material world; we have degraded rather than respected ourselves, forsaking our true divine spirit. However, at some point we have a longing for the divinity within that we deeply miss; when we are restored, we rejoice in the discovery of mysteries that cannot be expressed in words. The Sufi tale thus portrays an image of happiness much like what we have seen in the Bhagavad Gītā. Divinity lies within as a personal Friend. The true life of fulfillment is the journey to rediscover the beloved Truth, which reveals to us mysteries of meaning within the deepest reaches of our being.91

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NINE

Mindfulness, East and West

WE HAVE SEEN that ancient Greek philosophers agreed that there was an overall purpose or telos to human life: eudaimonia, often translated as wellbeing or human flourishing. They inquired about the relationship between well-being and pleasure (hedonē), as well as the place of pleasure in the flourishing life. Today theorists of well-being and happiness distinguish eudaimonistic well-being, the overall satisfaction and meaning one finds in life, from hedonic well-being, states of pleasure.1 As we have seen, for ancient theorists such as Aristotle and Epicurus, these two were not as distinct as we might think. We now live in a global culture, one in which we can bring together insights from many philosophical and religious traditions. Western, scientifically trained psychologists are beginning to take interest in a state or cognitive style called mindfulness, learned from the Buddhist tradition. This may be a distinctively Buddhist approach to well-being and happiness. Owen Flanagan has described Buddhist happiness or flourishing—what he terms eudaimonia Buddha—a way of life entailing virtue, compassion, and mindfulness.2 In this chapter we will explore the component of mindfulness in creating a happy life from the lens of both traditional Buddhist psychology and contemporary Western neuroscience.

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mIndfulness, eAst And West

Buddhist Definitions of Mindfulness The term mindfulness derives from the Pāli term sati; Pāli was the language of the earliest canon of Buddhist texts. The English term mindfulness was coined by a British scholar, Thomas W. Rhys Davids, the founder of the Pāli Texts Society. We have some clues as to what influenced Rhys Davids to choose this word to translate sati, based on some of his remarks in the introductions to his translations. The dictionaries before him would have suggested such words as “remembrance, memory, reminiscence, recollection,” and, for the verb smarati, “to remember, recollect, call to mind, bear in mind, think of, be mindful of.” In the context of commenting on right mindfulness (sammā-sati), one of the elements of the noble Eightfold Path, Rhys Davids remarks: “sati is literally ‘memory,’ but is used with reference to the constantly repeated phrase ‘mindful and thoughtful’ (sato sampajāno); and means that activity of mind and constant presence of mind which is one of the duties most frequently inculcated on the good Buddhist.”3 We might note that the word remember in English can likewise refer to the present as well as to the past. We can remember, recall, or call to mind something from the past. But we can equally re-mind ourselves, remember to keep something in our minds. For example, we can remember—that is, remind ourselves—to maintain focus on our breath. In early Buddhist texts the Buddha used the term to point to the ability both to remember and to be “ardent, alert, and mindful”: And what is the faculty of sati? There is the case where a monk, a disciple of the noble ones, is mindful, highly meticulous, remembering and able to call to mind even things that were done and said long ago. (And here begins the satipaṭṭhāna formula:) He remains focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, and mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. He remains focused on feelings in and of themselves . . . the mind in and of itself . . . mental qualities in and of themselves—ardent, alert, and mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world.4

The term also occurs in a well-known early text called The Questions of King Milinda. This passage outlines the five mental or spiritual faculties: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.5 The text is structured as a dialogue between the King Milinda and his teacher Nagasena: [ 215 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West The king asked: “And what is the mark of mindfulness?” “Calling to mind and taking up.” “How is calling to mind a mark of mindfulness?” “When mindfulness arises, one calls to mind the dharmas [elements of existence] which participate in what is wholesome and unwholesome, blamable and blameless, inferior and sublime, dark and light.”6

Thus in the early Buddhist context, the practice of mindfulness seems to include an aspect of memory (calling to mind, remembering, recollecting) as well as a cognitive, evaluative aspect (calling to mind that which is wholesome, discriminating the wholesome from the unwholesome). We will see that this is somewhat different from the mindfulness taught in contemporary Western practices, which emphasize awareness of the present moment, with no judgment or evaluation. We have seen that while the root sati derives from the term meaning “to remember,” as a mental faculty it also signifies presence of mind, attentiveness to the present, awareness, wakefulness, and heedfulness.7 Nevertheless, memory is an important aspect of this practice, as one must continually call to mind the object of meditation—one’s body, feelings, mind, or mental phenomena—not allowing it to leave one’s focus of awareness.8 As John D. Dunne writes, “the metaphor here appears to be that losing focus on an object is akin to ‘forgetting’ the object, and thus the mental facet that prevents one from losing that focus can be metaphorically referred to as ‘remembering’ (smṛti), since ‘to remember’ is ‘not to forget.’ Thus, during Mindfulness of Breathing, for example to maintain the mental facet smṛti does not mean that one ‘remembers’ the sensations of breathing; instead, it means that one sustains attention on those sensations without becoming distracted away from them.”9 Moreover, attentiveness includes both memory and evaluation; one must remember the focus of one’s attention, the practice one is engaged in, and the value of letting go of unhealthy states of mind and cultivating wholesome ones.10 However, neuropsychologists studying meditation practices in Western laboratory settings note a confusion in English terminology based on differences between traditions of meditation practice. The term mindfulness has been used to refer to two distinct goals of meditation. One is the ability to focus on an object uninterruptedly. This is termed quiescence or tranquility (samādhi/samatha); the goal here is stability and one-pointed focus. Samatha [ 216 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West meditation aims to develop the specific faculty known as smṛti/sati, literally “remembering,” but translated either as mindfulness or awareness. This meditation practice also seeks to develop a meta-awareness of whether the mind has maintained focus on the object; this meta-awareness is often embodied in a faculty or capacity known as samprajñāna/sampajañña, often translated as clear comprehension.11 Thus in its most precise meaning in the Abhidharma technical literature, the term smṛti/sati is the feature of awareness that focuses stably on an object and prevents the focus from deviating to any other object through forgetting, distraction, wobbling, or floating away from the object.12 This ability to retain the object is what allows us to bring the object into focus so that we are able to recollect it later.13 It also leads to clear comprehension, which allows one to evaluate various aspects of experience and to distinguish between wholesome and unwholesome features. According to this technical use of terminology, mindfulness proper (sati) enables us to retain our awareness of an object, while clear comprehension or wise mindfulness (samprajñāna/sampajañña) allows us to evaluate our experience as wholesome or unwholesome.14 The other style of meditation that has become very popular in the West is vipasyanā/vipassana (“to see things as they are,” “insight”), which aims to develop insight into our emotions; in particular, vipasyanā seeks to challenge our assumption that a fixed, permanent identity or self underlies our changing experiences. By gradually developing a realization of the selfless nature of all things, we can let go of emotional habits that arise from the misguided notion of an underlying permanent self.15 We realize that all of reality is characterized by what Buddhists call the “three marks of existence”; all of reality is characterized as impermanent (anitya/anicca), selfless (anātman/ anatta), and conducive to suffering (duḥkha).16 Historically, there was debate about whether calm (samādhi/samatha) was required for insight (vipasyanā/vipassana), and this remains a live debate today, both for historians of Buddhism and for contemporary practitioners. As we will see, certain contemporary Southeast Asian masters who influenced the Western Vipassana movement taught that one can begin the practice of insight meditation without prior focus upon the development of calm. There is also debate about which kind of meditative practice—calm or insight— might have been the historical innovation of Buddhist meditation. One view is that the attainment of calm was taught in the Buddha’s milieu, that the [ 217 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West stages of meditative absorption (dhyāna/jhāna) were adapted from Brahamanic yogic practices and that insight meditation was the Buddhist innovation.17 The contrary view has also been put forth that it was the Buddha who introduced the levels of calm absorption, whereas non-Buddhist Indian writings conceived of meditation as painful austerity.18 In either case, it seems that later manuals all agree that the meditator needs both and that the culmination of the path requires the coming together of calm and insight.19 Indeed, Tibetan theorists integrate samatha (mindfulness) and vipassana (insight) into a single practice. Samatha aims at the stability of one’s focus; vipassana aims at intensity or clarity. An image given is that of a lamp attempting to illuminate murals on a cave wall. If the flame is not steady it will flicker, and one will not be able to see, but if it is not sufficiently intense the light will be too dim to illuminate the objects. Clarity thus refers to the vividness of the image one visualizes in meditation; stability refers to the ability to maintain focus on the object, without the interruption of wandering thoughts and passing emotions. One central goal is to guard against two dangers: falling into dullness or sleep or getting overly ecstatic and losing emotional quiescence and stability.20 The contemporary Vipassana meditation movement that is popular in the West developed from early Buddhist meditation practices. Most often, practitioners are encouraged to focus on the breath and when they find the mind wandering, to notice where it has wandered and return to the breath, without getting distracted by this meta-awareness—for example, by judging oneself for losing focus.21 The focus on the breath has roots in the classical Sattipaṭṭhāna Sutta, the foundational text in the Pāli canon on the practice of mindfulness.22 The text gives clear directions for mindful breathing: “Ever mindful he breathes in, mindful he breathes out. Breathing in a long breath, he knows, ‘I am breathing in a long breath’; breathing out a long breath, he knows, ‘I am breathing out a long breath.’”23 Among contemporary Western presentations of mindfulness training, one of the most well known is Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), which emphasizes primarily two features—focus on the present moment of awareness and a non-judgmental stance. As we have seen, these two features were not necessarily the focus of the most ancient Buddhist texts on mindfulness practice, which emphasize taking an ethical stance that encourages appropriate attention, as well as cultivating certain beneficial character traits such as compassion and wisdom and discouraging [ 218 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West harmful ones such as greed, jealousy, and desire. Classical texts also encourage the use of memory to recall whether one has maintained awareness; thus the focus is not solely on the present moment of experience. Some scholars have argued that MBSR’s characterization of mindfulness as simple awareness— a non-judgmental witnessing of the present moment of experience—does not quite align with classical texts of the Pāli Buddhist canon.24 Jon KabatZinn, however, insists that MBSR does not teach bare awareness. We will return to Kabat-Zinn’s response at greater length; here, let us trace the history of the notion of bare awareness.25

Mindfulness as Non-judgmental Present Awareness How then did this characterization of mindfulness as non-judgmental present awareness enter the Western mindfulness (Vipassana) movement? In the 1950s and 1960s several Western practitioners of Buddhism joined Theravada monastic orders. Among them one highly influential writer, Nyanaponika, identified “mindfulness” as the “heart of Buddhist meditation,” (the title of his widely read treatise, first published in 1954). Nyanaponika studied mindfulness meditation with two Celonese monks, Kheminda Thera and Soma Thera, and practiced meditation in Burma with Mahāsī Sayādaw. The Western understanding of mindfulness seems to trace back to this line: Burmese meditation teachers such as Mahāsī Sayādaw and U Ba Khin.26 It seems that the contemporary understanding of mindfulness as “bare attention” may be traced in part to Nyanaponika’s influential discussion of mindfulness in The Heart of Buddhist Meditation. He writes of mindfulness that “in its elementary manifestation, known under the term ‘attention,’ it is one of the cardinal functions of consciousness without which there cannot be perception of any object at all.”27 He does not tell us what technical Pāli terms he means by “attention.”28 While he does distinguish this initial aspect of attention from the more richly developed “right mindfulness” (sammāsati), he places his focus on “mindfulness in its specific aspect of ‘bare attention.’”29 He contrasts this bare attention from our usual mode of attention, in which we judge ourselves according to preconceived notions of our identity. Thus bare attention is a way of overcoming our tendency to see everything from the point of view of ego and personality, rather than seeing things as they are.30 Perhaps Nyanaponika’s view is that although [ 219 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West bare attention is not fully within our conscious control, it can help orient our minds in a new way, determining whether we respond with more fully developed mindfulness.31 It is important to note that contrary to some contemporary teachers of vipassana, Nyanaponika did not define bare attention as non-conceptual and non-verbal. He had practiced the Mahāsī Sayādaw system of insight meditation, which emphasizes naming the elements of one’s experience with discrimination and precision (an approach taken up by some Western Vipassana practitioners). Nyanoponika himself built upon this method. While he does affirm an “open, receptive, and non-judgmental attitude” in bare attention, he also stresses the importance of verbal labeling of our mental states for purification of the mind. This is a method to examine and tidy up the dark untidy corners of greed, hatred, and delusion from our minds. By labeling that which is unwholesome as such, we can also cultivate more wholesome and liberating qualities of mind.32 Bikkhu Bodhi, a close disciple of Nyanaponika, offers a postmodern critique of the term bare in the phrase “bare attention.” The term bare ignores the fact that attention is always embodied in an individual person with a unique biography and personality who is embedded in a particular context. When embedded in the right mindfulness of the noble Eightfold Path, awareness is intertwined with a nexus of values that give it a broad and rich purpose. Even awareness of the breath can be affected by our underlying presuppositions and expectations. There is thus a spectrum of mindfulness, with some practices including a great deal of conceptualization, and others less conceptualization and evaluation.33 In summary, it seems that mindfulness in classical texts refers to a spectrum of abilities, from bare, present-focused awareness without evaluation, discrimination, or cognition to a practice of focused, sustained attention that has rich cognitive and evaluative dimensions. Mindfulness is “a versatile mental quality that can be developed in a variety of ways.”34 In the full spectrum of Buddhist meditation, bare attention is just one way to cultivate mindfulness, while there are many ways that are explicitly conceptual and evaluative. One can attend to the Buddha, the phenomenon of death, the repulsiveness of the body, or sending loving-kindness to all beings. The common feature of all these classical approaches to mindfulness is not just bare attention but “a quality of lucid awareness that allows the object to stand forth with a vivid and distinct presence.”35 [ 220 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West In discussing mindfulness as bare attention, Nyanaponika made clear that this was only a beginning aspect of the practice of mindfulness.36 However, some critics suggest that teachers who have taught mindfulness meditation in the West have tended to emphasize only “bare attention” and not the more fully developed aspects of sati. The Western emphasis on simple attention thus seems to trace to a certain understanding of meditation gleaned from a line of Southeast Asian teachers. Among those who studied with these Burmese masters are such prominent teachers of the Western Vipassana movement as Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Saltzberg, and Ruth Denison.37 At the same time, Dunne has shown that there is another stream of Buddhist practice, developed particularly in the Tibetan Mahāmudrā tradition, which does encourage focus on the present and a non-judgmental acceptance of all feelings that arise. Mahāmudrā meditation emphasizes an open, nondual awareness. It sees the origin of suffering as lying in the subject-object duality, from which arises all conceptual thought. Thus the goal of Mahāmudrā meditation is to create a non-dual awareness, which is centered on the present and lacks all evaluation and any specific object.38. Mahāmudrā meditation can therefore be seen as another traditional source for current mindfulness practices, whether or not it was their historical conduit. Ch’an and Zen traditions, too, focus on non-dual awareness, and Jon Kabat-Zinn has acknowledged the influence of these traditions on his development of current mindfulness techniques.

The Ethical Dimension of Mindfulness Practice In a recent study Dunne has pointed out two differences we have noted between classical and contemporary approaches to mindfulness: the differing roles of memory and the distinct roles of judgment and ethical discernment, both during formal practice and between formal practice sessions. We have discussed the role of memory; let us focus here on the role of ethical discernment. Classical theorists taught that becoming aware of objects and mental events as impermanent, selfless, and conducive to suffering can help detach us from their attraction and restrain us from unethical behavior. Likewise as we have seen, during formal practice, one might not just notice distractions but evaluate a state or thought as unwholesome and to be abandoned.39 [ 221 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West Thus one must remain aware not only of the object to be focused on but of one’s overall spiritual goals, the purpose of practice, and the elaborate Abhidharma scheme of classification,40 It is true that practitioners of contemporary mindfulness must also remain aware of the overall goal of remaining undistracted and mindful; however, the conceptual and evaluative schema are much less elaborate during practice than in classical teaching. Moreover, even in Mahāmudrā teaching, while one is supposed to suspend judgment during formal practice, the training also involves “preliminary practices” that cultivate concern for the suffering of others and commitment to relieve others of that suffering. Thus while formal Mahāmudrā practice is aligned with the non-judgmental, present-centered approach of contemporary mindfulness practices, classical Mahāmudrā practice is embedded within a larger context that emphasizes cultivation of Buddhist values of compassion and relief of suffering, which are often not emphasized in secular, clinical settings.41 Swiss psychiatrist Paul Grossman has likewise stressed the ethical dimension of classical mindfulness training in a Buddhist context. In a recent study he defines mindfulness as awareness informed by an embodied ethic. Most contemporary Western definitions of mindfulness emphasize the dimension of attention, as if mindfulness is simply a way to be attentive to the experience of the moment. Grossman would shift the emphasis to the ethical stance one takes to one’s present experience—a stance of kindness, curiosity, generosity, and patience. Following Andrew Olendski, he emphasizes the equanimity with which one approaches each object of experience— neither favoring nor opposing it.42 Thus he translates the three unwholesome states of mind usually cited as greed, hatred, and delusion as greed, aversion, and delusion. It is aversion to experience that creates suffering. The mindful approach to happiness is to welcome and willingly embrace all dimensions of experience, uncomfortable as well as comfortable, painful as well as pleasant. Buddhist mindfulness therefore seeks to cultivates states that are wholesome—not in the sense of adhering to an authoritative, prescribed code of ethics, but in the sense of promoting life and well-being, both for oneself and others. While contemporary research has shown that mindfulness training brings only modest improvement in focus of attention, there are some indications that the attitude of compassion cultivated in mindfulness produces profound benefit in well-being. Mindfulness training offers a [ 222 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West concrete, embodied experience of calm and equanimity that practitioners are encouraged to bring to daily life, so that one can learn to approach the most challenging moments with courage, tolerance, and acceptance. Thus mindfulness practice embodies what Buddhist teaching calls a system of ethics or virtue (sila); it includes both cognitive dimensions of attentive awareness and ethical qualities such as compassion, courage, and equanimity.43 We have seen that Western mindfulness practices base themselves upon a selective reading of the Buddhist tradition. Contemporary teachers of mindfulness choose aspects of the historical tradition that resonate for practitioners in twentieth- and twenty-first-century America, and tailor them to achieve clinically documented improvements in levels of well-being and the overcoming of stress. A focus on non-judgmental awareness makes sense in a psychotherapeutic setting, where one wants to create an atmosphere of openness, acceptance, and lack of judgment, while ethical evaluation is appropriate in a traditional religious context.44 Moreover, there are bridges between canonical understandings of mindfulness and those in contemporary therapeutic practice. While it is true that non-judgmental awareness of the present is stressed in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, practitioners are also taught to continually return to the breath; thus there is an aspect of alertness, calling to mind, and remembering. In addition, in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, there is clearly a cognitive, evaluative dimension in that clients are encouraged to emphasize more accurate evaluations of reality and refrain from non-beneficial states of mind.45 Dunne and historian of medicine Anne Harrington note that traditions always develop by choice and selectivity in constructing a narrative of development. Since selectivity is perforce a part of historical development, the goal of modern Westerners should be to be aware and honest about the fact that we are selecting aspects of a tradition.46 We can note, too, that while building upon aspects of a venerable tradition, we are at the same time developing mindfulness in new ways in a novel context and setting. Just as American Buddhism has become a unique historical tradition, so Western teachings are developing mindfulness in new ways. Bikkhu Boddhi, a practitioner as well as a scholar, is careful to clarify with precision classical Buddhist approaches to mindfulness, as well as differences in nuance and emphasis from some contemporary approaches. Nevertheless, he affirms the value of mindfulness as taught in Western clinical [ 223 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West and therapeutic settings. He quotes a statement made by the Buddha before his death, “The Tathāgata has no closed fist of a teacher with respect to teachings.” Traditionally, this has been interpreted to mean that the Buddha had not withheld any esoteric doctrines from his students. Bikkhu Boddhi extends it to mean that “we can let anyone take from the Dhamma [Dharma/ Buddhist teachings] whatever they find useful even if it is for secular purposes.”47 Thus if health practitioners draw from Buddhist teachings on mindfulness to help people relieve anxiety and distress or cope with chronic pain, this is all to be welcomed. It is important to respect the sacred dignity of traditional sources; at the same time, one can appreciate the great value Buddhist dharma can share even with those who do not accept its full framework.48

The Mindful Brain Neuropsychologist Daniel Siegel seeks to bridge discussions of Eastern and Western mindfulness through his research. Siegel defines mindfulness as being fully aware of the present moment of experience. He notes that world religious traditions have employed various methods to enable individuals to focus attention in the present, among them meditation, prayer, yoga, and tai chi. The goal of each is to intentionally focus our awareness in a way that transforms us. As we develop our capacity to be attentive to our experience of the moment, we may find that we develop a healthier relationship with both ourselves and others.49 Siegel describes this process as one of gradual attunement. For example, parents and teachers become attuned to the experience of a child by directing attention to the child’s internal world; we thus ensure that the child “feels felt” by another. He conjectures that this experience may have a basis in the brain. When we focus on the mind of another person, we may set into motion neural circuitry that enables us to sense another person’s awareness of us. He extends this model of interpersonal relationships to our relationship to ourselves; mindful awareness is a way of being neurally attuned to oneself.50 A child feels “held” when she feels a parent is fully present with her in her experience, even in an experience of distress. Likewise, in mindful awareness we feel known and comforted by the presence of a conscious, experiencing self who is fully present with us and aware of our experience. We have [ 224 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West seen a similar move in Aristotle, who affirms that the most basic experience of the goodness of life lies in self-reflexive awareness. When we are engaged in exercising our faculties, we are aware that we are doing so; we are aware that we are feeling, seeing, thinking. And friendship brings a doubly enhanced perception; a friend mirrors our own awareness and increases our joy in life, as we share the pleasures of living with others. Thus in Aristotelian terms, mindful awareness is a way of being a friend to oneself. This is the opposite of the experience of depression or apathy, when one feels an absence rather than a presence and aliveness to experience.51 Siegel was not trained in one particular tradition of mindfulness; his own work on mindfulness began through exploring the way information about the brain can be useful for parenting skills. He and preschool director Mary Hartzell wrote a book in which they made mindfulness the core principle; as educators, they believed that being considerate and aware is essential to promoting well-being in children. In this context they defined mindfulness as being aware and conscientious with kindness and care; their aim was to teach parents, educators, and clinicians to be reflective and aware of children and themselves.52 Siegel points out that being aware of the full texture of our experience both awakens us to the inner world of the mind and immerses us more completely in the external world. His suggestion is that attunement within our own brain—like attunement to the minds of others—can enrich the quality of experience. How does his conception of mindfulness work in practice? We can begin with the process of simple observation of the mind. Observing enables us to distance ourselves enough so that we can accept any mental process that comes to the door of the mind willingly. As thoughts, feelings, and perceptions arise, a person’s task is simply to welcome their presence with non-judgmental awareness and acceptance. The essence of mindful awareness is acceptance of any mental processes that emerge. To facilitate this process, he suggests we become aware of several streams of awareness. The first stream is direct sensory experience: for example, when we walk, we can notice the raw pressure of the heel of our foot transitioning to the ball; we can become aware of the shift of the distribution of weight to the toes. The second stream is the conceptual stream, the thought “walking.” The third stream is that of the observer watching the experience. Siegel suggests that these three streams can merge into a stream of non-conceptual knowing.53 When we can feel “I know I am walking,” this is not so much [ 225 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West “knowing that,” or propositional knowledge, but knowing through direct experiential awareness.54 Human beings are all, to a greater or lesser degree, aware of what goes on in our minds and bodies. However, our experience is often overshadowed by preconceived ideas—for example, judgment that things at this moment are not as they should be. Being mindfully aware, in contrast, means accepting our present experience with openness. We have seen a cognate distinction in Zhuangzi between yin shi—flowing cognition, without preconceptions— and wei shi, cognition based upon preconceptions. Cultivating mindful awareness means being aware of “top-down” preconceptions—the way the mind’s memories, beliefs, and emotions shape the “bottom-up” direct sensation of experience. Judgments and conceptions based on the past most often shape our experience of the present, including the way we process physical sensations.55 A form of kindness to oneself can provide the strength and resolve to approach life’s ongoing events with curiosity and acceptance rather than evaluation and judgment. Mindfulness is thus a form of relationship with oneself. With mindful awareness, the mind enters a state in which present experiences are sensed directly, accepted for what they are, and respectfully acknowledged. People do this intuitively when we comfort young children in their grief, fear, and loneliness. No matter how small the slight might seem to us, we acknowledge its significance for the child. Just as we can do this interpersonally with others, mindful awareness can promote this kind of respectful, non-judgmental relationship with oneself and one’s experience.56

The Wheel of Awareness: Thriving with Uncertainty A visual image for the brain’s processing can help us understand the mindful brain. Let us recall Zhuangzi’s image of the pivot of the Dao: Zhuangzi would have us locate ourselves at the center of a circle so that we can respond flexibly to any point along the rim. Siegel, too, asks us to envision the mind as a wheel and to locate the center of our awareness at the center or hub of the wheel. He pictures the information we receive through the four streams of awareness as elements that come to us from the rim of the wheel. The goal is to allow the mind to be open and spacious enough so that any element of the rim of the wheel can enter conscious experience but not take it over.57 [ 226 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West More recently Daniel Siegel, together with Madeleine W. Siegel, has extended this theory of mindfulness. They suggest that by situating one’s attention in the center of the mind, rather than at the outer rim, we engage a dimension of mind that can stay open to many different possibilities instead of fixating on what is well defined and certain. Mindfulness might therefore strengthen the practitioner’s ability to live within the sphere of possibility with greater ease and comfort, allowing one to be present with whatever takes place and thrive in the face of uncertainty.58 Rather than simply anticipating the future based upon the past, one might cultivate the ability to see what is actually at hand and be open to possibilities as they unfold. In this way, mindfulness may facilitate the capacity to live life directly rather than through the lens of observation and narration.59 At a further level of mindfulness training, one might also recognize the gifts that both narrative and full participation provide and choose when to fully engage in action and when to step back to create an observing, narrative arc. This would allow for a more flexible and adaptive mode of living.60

Ellen Langer: Mindful Learning Another area of Western research into mindfulness is the work of social psychologist Ellen Langer. Although she herself wants to carefully differentiate between the kind of mindfulness she describes in a Western context and the mindfulness cultivated by Eastern traditions of meditation, she notes that others have pointed to parallels between various forms of mindfulness.61 In fact, she has assisted Daniel Siegel in his nuanced investigation of bridges between the two approaches, and has recently co-edited a volume considering both Eastern and Western mindfulness.62 Siegel suggests three connotations of the term mindfulness. The first is the ordinary way we use the term, which suggests conscientiousness, being caring and intentional and taking heed or keeping in mind. The second refers to the meditative practice of observing present experience without judgment. The third refers to skills of creative learning and living taught by Ellen Langer. This approach encourages learners not to come to premature closure on assumptions and categories, but rather to remain open and flexible in the way one views the world. Langer’s research has opened a new way to approach learning. She holds that mindfulness entails viewing a situation from several perspectives, seeing [ 227 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West information presented in the situation as novel, attending to the context in which we are perceiving the information, and creating new categories through which this information may be understood.63 This mindful approach brings cognitive flexibility, which facilitates both more effective and more enjoyable learning. One strategy Langer has shown that encourages mindful learning is presenting students material using conditional rather than absolute statements. For example, in place of the statement “municipal bonds are issued . . . ” a textbook suggests, “in most cases, municipal bonds are issued.” An account of the way city neighborhoods evolve is presented as “one possible model” of the evolution of neighborhoods.64 Formulating material in conditional terms encourages the learner to process information more actively, with greater flexibility and enjoyment of the learning process.65 In one experiment, introducing an object with the words “this could be a dog’s chew toy” allowed a group to think to use the object in creative ways, for example as an eraser.66 Introducing something with the words “I don’t know what it is, but it could be a . . . ” allows students to think about the object in original ways.67 Creative uncertainty invites cognitive flexibility. When something in presented in an absolute, unconditional way, our minds approach it as fixed, and it enters our memory stores as such. When we are tentative about the contexts in which the information might be applied, the information enters our minds in a fluid way. Thus, rather than making premature cognitive commitments, we remain open to new ways the information can be applied; we are able to critique and revise the way information had initially been presented.68 For example, as children we learn about positive whole numbers; later we must expand our understanding to include negative, prime, irrational, and imaginary numbers such as the square root of negative one. Flexible learning allows us to revise our information and use it in more creative, contextual ways.69 Another experiment vividly illustrates this process. Subjects were taught a game called “smack it ball.” One group was taught the rules of the game in an absolute unconditional way; another group was taught that this was a way the game might be played. After they had practiced and mastered the game, the researchers surreptitiously changed the ball to a much heavier one. Those who had learned the rules of the game in a mindful, conditional style were able to adapt to the change, while those taught in an absolute way adhered mindlessly to the way they had been taught.70 Langer deduces from this that emphasis on rote learning of the basics and teaching with absolutes hinders creative, critical thinking [ 228 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West that can adapt flexibly and use information in new ways, as the situation demands.71 In some of her most well-known studies, Langer showed that the effects of aging can be dramatically reversed. Nursing home residents given plants to care for and offered control over certain decisions showed strong improvements in health and longevity. In another pioneering study, two groups of elderly men were recruited to spend a week in a monastery. One group was told they would return to their selves of twenty years ago, re-experiencing what it was like to live back in 1959. The second group reminisced about 1959. Both groups were surrounded by mementos of the 1950s; one group spoke about the 1950’s in the present tense, the second in the past tense. Both were given vintage radios and heard music from the 1950s, read newspapers from that era, watched dated television shows such as the Honeymooners and I Love Lucy, and spoke about events and figures of the day: the launch of the first U.S. satellite, the challenges faced by President Eisenhower, sports greats such as Mickey Mantle and Wilt Chamberlain. These men, in one week, saw impressive positive changes in physical dimensions such as gait, posture, hearing and vision. The most dramatic improvement came from the group that acted as if they were actually living in the 1950s. These men re-experienced what it was to be twenty years younger; their bodies responded as if they were indeed their younger selves. Langer concludes that it is our mindset that limits our abilities, perceptions, and capabilities. The experiment vividly illustrates the scope of possibilities available when human beings do not limit themselves by what Langer terms mindless preconceptions. A mindful approach opens possibilities we ordinarily ignore or cut off.72 In her work for educators on mindful learning, Langer urges educators to ensure that students become aware that facts are only true in their particular context and from a certain perspective; “facts” taken out of context are inherently uncertain. She asks us to consider what are the reasons for the Civil War. How might the “facts” look different from the perspective of a thirty-year-old black woman in Georgia in 1865, a sixty-year-old black male in Europe in 1953, and a white politician in 1968? Similarly, we have more recently seen dramatically different readings of the same set of “facts” in the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings, the O. J. Simpson trial, and the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Another learning myth Langer debunks is that learners can improve attention by holding still and focusing. She points out that when we try to pay [ 229 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West attention by holding still and focusing, it becomes harder to see the object of attention; when we attend to visual information mindfully, by noticing differences, we are actually able to see better. This is true not only on a physical level but in broader ways as well. The more differences and distinctions we look for, the more we see and understand, and the more we like the object of our attention. Her experiments have shown that becoming more rather than less attentive to differences actually decreases prejudice and discrimination. Through more attention to difference, we notice that a person using a wheelchair is also a singer wearing a colorful outfit; a person with AIDS is also a football fan who speaks several foreign languages.73 Her research has shown that people enjoy an activity more when asked to notice new things about it. A task one might ordinarily find boring, even onerous, becomes interesting and fun when we are asked to notice new aspects of it—whether it is copying lists or listening to rap music. Mindful learning encourages engagement, and we generally find engagement in learning enjoyable.74 She thus urges that student not be taught to delay gratification—to get through “serious” tasks so that they can have fun, to do homework so they can play online games—but to have fun throughout the process of learning. In one experiment, when an activity is introduced as a game, subjects enjoy it more than when it is presented as “work.” When material is presented in ways that encourage mindful learning, rather than being frozen into one absolute perspective, students are more able to make material relevant to their own interests and concerns. This brings learning alive and can appeal to students from diverse backgrounds and cultures.75 When we are trapped by old categories, we tend to engage in automatic behavior and act from a single perspective. Children are taught to focus on outcomes rather than to enjoy the process of learning. This creates anxiety, the fear of making mistakes, and the anxious question, “can I do it?” rather than an exploration of “how can I do it?” which allows for brainstorming and the discovery of creative solutions.76 Children are terrified to appear stupid, to make mistakes from which they can learn and grow. When we simply follow rules, we do not allow room for genuine creativity to emerge; we simply paint by the numbers.77 Langer’s research demonstrates that audiences at musical performances appreciate more mindful performances; instrumentalists taught to vary their approaches while learning a piece of music enjoy the music more, and their work is preferred by others when they have learned it mindfully.78 Her research has shown that [ 230 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West even animals prefer being with people who are behaving in more mindful ways.79 Mindlessness leads to diminished self-perception and faulty comparison. We become intimidated by the accomplishments of others, not realizing that their achievements and assets may be the result of a long process of development and effort that we may be capable of as well. If a person uses a word we don’t know, we may feel ashamed of ourselves; if we see their dictionary opened to the page of the word, we realize we are just as capable of learning new words and don’t have to feel bad about ourselves.80 We look at a finished product, such as a dissertation, and do not realize that it came to be through a series of steps that we ourselves could take.81 When we engage in unhelpful faulty comparison, we shrink our potential and learn helplessness and self-induced dependence. In contrast, growth and change become possible when we approach the world mindfully. For example, Langer discovered in clinical work that people trying to change their behavior may be attempting to change a trait they actually value under another name. Being impulsive can be seen as being spontaneous; rigidity can be reimagined as steadfast dedication. By recognizing that they actually value a trait, people can own its positive qualities and minimize its more challenging edge. Mindfulness means not being trapped in rigid, singular categories; flexibility in thinking creates richer, more textured ways of seeing ourselves and the world, giving us a sense of agency and the ability to change. We can see that things are not wholly good or bad; we are able to see nuances, which gives us more options.82 Langer notes that many of the characteristics she has defined as belonging to a mindful approach are qualities exhibited by creative people such as scientists, artists, and writers. Creativity in any domain requires the cognitive flexibility to let go of old presuppositions, to be open to new perspectives and contexts, and to focus on process rather than outcome.83 Science and art thus both encourage an intuitive approach that sidesteps the strictly linear process of the rational mind. Scientists value intuition as a way of breaking free from limiting categories; composers such as Bach testify that musical ideas can arise in an intuitive, effortless flow. Thus Langer notes that “in an intuitive or mindful state, new information, like new melodies, is allowed into awareness. This new information can be full of surprise and does not always make sense. If we resist, and evaluate it on rational grounds, we can silence a vital message.”84 She mentions an anecdote about Winston [ 231 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West Churchill, whose life was saved by a flash of intuition: “something said to me ‘Stop’ before I reached the car door held open for me.” By listening to his intuition and reaching for the far door, he avoided a bomb that exploded and nearly turned the car over. Langer acknowledges that we don’t know whether events like this represent intuition or coincidence, but that “respect for intuition and for the information that may come to us in unexplainable ways is an important part of any creative activity.”85 Intuitive awareness and creative uncertainty are thus keys to mindful learning. Langer’s notion of mindfulness has resonance with the embrace of intuition, uncertainty, and flexible cognition we see in the playful approach of Zhuangzi. Although Langer is somewhat modest about tying her work to meditative approaches to mindfulness, she explicitly connects her work to intuition, which is often encouraged by disciplines of meditation. Richard Davidson’s neuropsychological research also offers a link between Langer’s work and that of traditional meditative disciplines. In her early work, Langer suggested that traditional meditative disciplines would cultivate a blank and open state of mind, rather than one that would make fine discernment. However, Davidson shows that meditative disciplines have varying goals. For people who are overly focused, he recommends meditation that cultivates open non-attached awareness, in which one allows whatever enters one’s mind to come and go, without focusing on any one thought, feeling, or sensation. Such open monitoring or open presence meditation can broaden overly focused attention so that it can take in more of the world.86 One can thus develop a panoramic awareness in which one is cognizant of thoughts and feelings as well as external surroundings; in Buddhist terminology, this corresponds to the development of clear comprehension (samprajana). In contrast, those who are easily distracted can practice focusing on an object of attention such as the flame of a candle or a mantra, which creates one-pointedness of mind (samādhi). Meditative disciplines can thus increase sharpness of mental focus, facilitating the creation of new categories and distinctions that Langer sees as the heart of mindfulness.

Mindfulness, East and West: Conclusions Eastern and Western approaches share the notion that our experience of the world is shaped by the way we perceive it. Both approaches encourage one [ 232 ]

mIndfulness, eAst And West to decrease suffering and increase happiness by seeing the world in fresh ways, untainted by old, inappropriate categories and prejudices. Langer uses intellectual exercises to challenge people to develop fresh perspectives on topics and situations; her approach resembles both modern cognitive therapy and its classical antecedents.87 For example, the Socratic practice of elenchus is a cross-examination in which Socrates guides the interlocutor to examine his or her beliefs, revealing contradictions and discovering a way to live that brings more authentic fulfillment; Epicurians, Stoics, and Spinoza likewise use therapeutic arguments to achieve states of well-being.88 Eastern approaches have cognitive dimensions as well; for example, Zen koans and Buddhist exercises to generate compassion can teach one to look at reality in new ways. Zhuangzi’s playful stories are intended to shift the reader to more open and flexible ways of thinking about the world. Cognitive and meditative approaches may appeal to different individuals. For example, some people might find an exercise such as the body scan—in which one progressively brings attention from the breath to the entire body— quite uncomfortable and boring and delight instead in cognitive novelty. Others find conceptual activity boring, delighting rather in direct experience of the senses.89 Mindfulness techniques offer a variety of approaches to teach one to appreciate the world in new ways. Aristotle and Epicurus taught that the awareness of one’s own being is the most basic source of contentment and joy. Mindfulness practices suggest that basic awareness of the breath, senses, and environment, even in moments of distress, can give us an anchor in a changing inner world. This quieter dimension of happiness—the basic joyful awareness of one’s being—constitutes the mindfulness component of a flourishing life, a Buddhist contribution to our conception of happiness.

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TEN

Dōgen’s Sōtō Zen and Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

IN CHAPTER 9 we explored the mindfulness component of happiness, as it was developed from early Buddhist teachings and reshaped in the contemporary Western context. In this chapter we will explore the vision of happiness articulated by Zen Buddhism, a stream of the Buddhist tradition that has had equal impact on contemporary Western culture. We will focus on the view of Dōgen (1200–1253), the founder of Sōtō Zen, who was not known outside an elite group of Sōtō Zen monks until the nineteenth century, when his works were discovered by the general populace, leading to a Dōgen revival in Japan as well as great appreciation in the West.1 We will also look briefly at Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, written by a Japanese Zen master for an American audience, which sought to capture the original spirit and flavor of Dōgen’s Sōtō Zen in terms appropriate for American students. Early Buddhism expressed the idea of eudaimonia in the language of release from suffering. The goal of Buddhist practice is to escape the realm of impermanence (saṃsāra) for the realm of non-change or cessation (nirvāṇa), defined as the extinguishing of the flame of greed, hatred, and delusion. The Indian thinker Nāgārjuna, whose teachings were taken up by the Mahāyāna school of Buddhism that moved from India to East Asia, shifted the eudaimonistic goal to the realization that saṃsāra is nirvāṇa. One does not need to leave the realm of impermanence in order to be released from suffering. To be in nirvāṇa is to see things as they are, “not to be somewhere else, seeing something else.”2 Enlightenment is a way of seeing the changing world [ 234 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind as an interdependent web of relationships and living in the impermanent world in a way characterized by clear vision, wisdom, and compassion. This is the eudaimonistic goal we will see in Dōgen and Suzuki’s radically non-dualistic vision of happiness.

Dōgen’s Sōtō Zen Dōgen is well known for principally three doctrines. One is his translation of the key phrase “Everything has Buddha nature” as “everything is Buddha nature.” A second is the identity of enlightenment and practice. A third is the doctrine of original, primordial enlightenment. These three are interconnected. Mahāyāna doctrine developed the notion of an original Buddha nature or Buddha mind, the primal nature of enlightenment that is at the heart of reality.3 A Chinese Buddhist text, the Mahaparinirvāṇa Sutra, expresses this notion of an original cosmic Buddha nature. Its four Chinese ideographs can be read in two ways. As Francis Cook affirms, “probably anyone reasonably proficient in reading Buddhist Chinese would interpret the Chinese text as saying that ‘all sentient beings entirely possess Buddha nature.’ ”4 This is in itself an expansive interpretation, because classical Buddhist teachings included the notion that there are some beings that have no potential for enlightenment. But Dōgen goes further. He is unhappy with the traditional interpretation, because it seems to limit enlightenment to sentient beings alone and suggest that beings possess Buddha nature, as if Buddha nature is something other than what beings are. Dōgen thus introduces a creative interpretation of the four ideographs. He inserts an unwritten “are” between “all” and “sentient beings”—reading “all are sentient beings.” Next, he translates “entirely possess” (his yu) as “entire being,” because yu has a wide semantic range, including “possess,” “exist,” “is,” “are,” and “being” (in contrast to non-being, wu). The passage is thus rendered “All are sentient beings and are Buddha nature.” (or: whole being is the Buddha-nature).5 As Cook emphasizes, “he thus makes the passage say what he sincerely believes to be the truth: everything is really a sentient being and this entire-being, which we symbolically refer to as ‘sentient beings,’ is Buddha nature, or Buddha. That includes not only humans and animals but also stones, bronze lanterns, the pillars of the temple, and, as he is fond of saying, even rubble filled walls.”6 [ 235 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind Most thinkers take the first interpretation, holding that all beings possess Buddha nature; Buddha nature is the true essence or reality of each being. Dōgen follows his own creative reading, and takes the radical position that all reality as we see it in this moment is Buddha. What you see right now before you is the Buddha. This is the basis for his doctrine of the unity of enlightenment and practice. Original enlightenment is the basis of practice, which is simply the moment-to-moment expression or unfolding of enlightenment. Dōgen writes that “since practice has its basis in enlightenment, the practice even of the beginner contains the whole of original enlightenment.”7 Thus non-dualism is expressed in varied ways throughout Dōgen’s thought. The sitting position is a physical expression of the unity of body and mind.8 The ordinary world with its flowers and weeds is no different than Buddha; saṃsāra is no different from nirvāṇa.9 Being is no different from time; to exist is to become in time. Thus there is no Buddha realm outside this ordinary world in time. This ordinary world in time is the Buddha;10 impermanence is the Buddha nature.11 At the same time, Dōgen teaches a pure occasionalism. Every moment is self-contained and complete, including the whole of Buddha and the universe.12 That is why this moment of practice is also this moment of original enlightenment. Dōgen in fact distinguishes two views of time. He uses three key terms: being-time (uji), right now (nikon), and ranging or flowing (keireki or kyōraku). The term being-time shows that we experience neither a fixed, static being like the Hindu atmān nor pure time. Rather, we experience living in time, temporal existence.13 When we sit in Zen meditation (zazen) and we do not consider the past or the future, we experience the state he calls no-thinking or without-thinking. That is, we are aware of passing thoughts in our minds but neither affirm nor deny their content; we attach no value or evaluation to the products of our thought. Thinking is taking place, but it is not an intentional act. Thomas Kasulis gives the example of when we are in an ordinary pre-reflective state, gazing at the sky, taking a momentary break from hard work. There is no particular thought in our mind. Later, upon reflection, we can realize that there was in fact a blue sky with passing clouds as an object of our consciousness. But at the time we were not really focusing on it, so it was not the deliberate object of our thought. This is the state of without-thinking. It is not the negation of thought, such as when we are trying not to think at night so that we can fall asleep. This is a common miscon[ 236 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind ception of Zen and meditation in general: that the goal is to be in a state of pure calm (samadhi), with no thoughts at all. Dōgen’s view of zazen is more nuanced. Thoughts can pass through one’s mind just like clouds passing in the sky, and yet one is not actively thinking those thoughts.14 This pre-reflective mode is the way we can experience the present moment in zazen as full, self-contained, and without limits. It is only when we reflect and analyze experience that it becomes limited, circumscribed, and containing analyzable components. In the without-thinking experience, there is no past, present, or future, since there is no analysis at all.15 The experience of zazen is thus not an eternal now or even just the present moment; it is a temporal experience without a concept of past, present, or future. “Because of this,” writes Dōgen, “when even just one person, at one time, sits in zazen, he becomes, imperceptibly, one with each and all of the myriad things, and permeates completely all time, so that within the limitless universe, throughout past, future, and present, he is performing the eternal and ceaseless work of guiding beings to enlightenment.”16 Dōgen avoids using the ordinary term for enlightenment or realization (satori); he prefers the terms sho (authentication) or kaku (awakening). We are already Buddha nature; we have an innate nature of enlightenment. Sitting meditation simply authenticates the enlightenment that is already present; it makes us authentically what we naturally are.17 The activity of sitting meditation is not a means to the end of attaining enlightenment; rather, it is the expression of an enlightened way of being.18 In this activity we experience Buddha nature as a flowing, moment-to-moment awareness of being without thinking, of being-time without the concept of past, present, or future. Thus in his fascinating essay “Just for the Time Being, Just for Awhile (Uji),” Dōgen articulates two modes of time. A person can experience just this moment, the right-now, without conditioning from the past, expectations of the future, or any analysis of the passing of time. We do not need to conceive of this as an isolated metaphysical moment, but rather as a phenomenological experience of complete engagement in each temporal event. However, Dōgen also acknowledges another mode of temporal experience; he calls this ranging or flowing time. He acknowledges that “being time has the virtue of continuity; it continuously flows from the today that we are talking about to a tomorrow, from a today to a yesterday, from a yesterday to a today. Because continual, continuous flow is a function of time, past and present times do not pile atop each other nor do they form an accumulative line.”19 [ 237 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind Dōgen thus resolves a problem presented by the doctrine of Buddha nature. One might think that Buddha nature is a fixed metaphysical absolute outside time, like the eternal Hindu notion of atmān-brahman, the Self or Supreme Spirit.20 Dōgen makes clear, in contrast, that Buddha nature is temporal experience; it is ever present and moving like a flowing river.21 Temporal experience can be experienced as the present, fully engaged moment, but one can also be aware of its moment-to-moment flow. Dōgen makes use in “Just for the Time Being, Just for Awhile (Uji)” of the imagery of climbing to the top of a mountain. From the mountaintop, one might see a series of peaks or take in the entire range, like the ever present flow of being-time throughout past, present, and future,22 just as he has described the experience of zazen: “when even just one person, at one time, sits in zazen, he becomes, imperceptibly, one with each and all of the myriad things, and permeates completely all time, so that within the limitless universe, throughout past, future, and present, he is performing the eternal and ceaseless work of guiding beings to enlightenment.”23 Dōgen thus insists that the person sitting in zazen experiences temporal existence just as it is, as a flowing of moment to moment. The startling conclusion is that pre-reflective consciousness itself involves change.24 The assumption of a static eternal Self is not our actual phenomenological experience of the world. When we travel in a boat, we look back to the shore and it looks like the shore is moving and we are fixed.25 Likewise, Hindus and certain Buddhists have looked at the changing nature of reality and mistakenly thought that we have a fixed, pure mind that surveys the changing world and survives the death of the body.26 Dōgen instead is adamant that Buddha nature is not an unchanging essence beyond time and space. All beings as they are comprise the Buddha nature. Shudo Brian Schroeder, drawing upon the work of Masao Abe, offers a beautiful illustration of the relationship between original and acquired awakening, which helps us understand Dōgen’s view of Buddha nature as both eternal and changing. The present moment is an intersection of space and time, what the medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart describes as “the eternal now.” Imagine original awakening as a vertical plane, a breaking through of eternity into time. Acquired awakening is the horizontal plane, in which we move in time and space in our practice. Since we exist in space and time, we continually practice, and any one moment of practice authenticates the original awakening. In genuine realization we simply experience [ 238 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind the intersection of original and acquired realization. Awakening is a continual process because reality is moving, “a process of interrelated events,” rather than a static and fixed being.27 Dōgen quotes the sixth patriarch’s teaching to his disciple Gyosho that “impermanence is, of course, Buddha nature.”28 Moreover, “this great earth with all its mountains and rivers is the Buddha nature . . . since this is the way things are, to look at the mountains and rivers is to look at Buddha Nature, and to see Buddha Nature is to see the jaw of a donkey and the muzzle of a horse,” a traditional Zen phrase for discerning concrete particulars without any judgment or evaluation.29 In the practice of zazen we experience the flow of temporality moment by moment just as it is; we authenticate the innate presence within us of Buddha nature. Hence practice and authentication, cultivation and realization are one. To practice is to authenticate for ourselves the nature of being-time without adding reflective judgment and evaluation.30 Like mindfulness training, Zen practice teaches us to embrace the changing nature of reality as it is.

Genjokoan: The Presencing of Truth A key concept that underscores Dōgen’s understanding of the person, the practice of zazen, and enlightenment is Genjokoan, the title of the first fascicle of Dōgen’s great treatise Shōbōgenzō (“The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye”). The Chinese pictographs that form the compound word genjo have been translated as gen, present, revealed, appearing, showing; and jo, becoming, forming, accomplishing.31 Another scholar translates gen as “to appear,” “to show up,” or “to be in the present moment”; and jo as “to become,” “to complete,” or “to accomplish.” The compound genjo as a verb thus suggests “to manifest,” “to actualize,” or “to appear and become.”32 However, there is consensus that the noun that appears in Dōgen’s title, genjo, refers to something already completely present in fully realized form, rather than the actualization of something previously potential, the manifestation of something hidden, or the fact that something transcendent has become immanent. Genjokoan refers to reality as it is actually happening in the present moment.33 At times, however, Dōgen uses the verb genjokoan su, which translators convey with the neologism “presencing.”34 The goal is to realize through our own spiritual practice the immediate presence or “presencing” of things as they [ 239 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind truly are.35 The term genjo expresses the fact that all things are already what they truly are, “vibrant, transparent, and bright in their as-they-are-ness.”36 There are three possible interpretations of the second part of the phrase, koan. The literal meaning of koan is “public notice.” This would render the phrase genjokoan as something like “the presence of public (or objective) reality.”37 A second approach follows the earliest commentary on the text by Kyogo and interprets ko as sameness or equality and an as individuality, difference, or “keeping to one’s sphere.” The term koan thus points to the paradoxical presence of sameness and difference in all things.38 All things are the same—pure emptiness, Buddha nature—and yet each is individual and unique. Every individual is both Buddha nature and itself. Reality is Buddha nature in the form of individuals.39 Flourishing lies in seeing Buddha nature in the world as it is, moment to moment. A third approach is to take koan in the term genjokoan as signifying what it usually does in Zen spiritual practice—a paradoxical riddle given to a student as an object of meditation or instruction. Dōgen studied koans in China and collected and edited a volume of koans. He may have seen presence or reality itself as a koan or paradox to be penetrated. One element of paradox might be that this present impermanent reality is Buddha nature itself. This reality is something that can be experienced directly, without concepts, through a realization that cannot be attained by an act of will—another element of paradox.40 Buddha nature is the reality right before us, hidden only because it is right before our eyes. An expansion of the third approach takes koan not in the specific sense of paradox, but in the broader sense of instruction. Thus genjokoan may suggest that “actuality is instruction” and that the goal of genjokoan is “to actualize instruction.” Dōgen asserts that we can find teaching in every aspect of the world, whether natural or material—fences, walls, tiles, and stone, the sounds and colors of valley streams and mountains. When a person attains realization through the natural or human-made world, he or she has actualized instruction. Genjo koan means that everything that presents itself to us in the world is a koan; actuality itself is instruction or teaching.41 Human happiness is to awaken to the learning that is before us in each moment. According to any of these interpretations of the term, genjokoan seems to signify the presence of things as they are, without the overlay of concepts. It is what is right before us in our experience before reflection. Authentication or enlightenment is simply being in the state of without thinking; every [ 240 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind moment that we experience in that pure state of awareness before reflection is a moment of enlightenment, an authentication of Buddha nature. And what we experience is this world of impermanent, moment-to-moment experience, which is the presence of things as they are (genjokoan).42 That is why enlightenment is not transcendent or extraordinary; it is simply the authentic experience of what is right before us.43 When we authenticate what is in this moment, we are in a state of realization.44 As in mindfulness training, we discover that well-being lies in the full realization of whatever unfolds before us in our present experience. Dōgen, like Zhuangzi, is a perspectivalist. Zhuangzi’s Chapter 2, “On Seeing Things as Equal,” adduces evidence of the perspectival nature of reality: eels, fish, and birds see and value different things, such as different sources of food and varying standards of beauty. Dōgen brings similar evidence; he notes how differently the ocean is experienced by a fish swimming in its waters and a bird perceiving it from the sky.45 Yet while the ocean is experienced differently upon reflection by each being, without reflection it is simply the presence of the thing as it is, genjokoan, with no words or description. Dōgen also at times uses the adverb immo, “being such as it is,” to describe the way reality is. This should not be reified as a substantive suchness; immo is the way things are experienced: how they are rather than what they are.46 Both Indian and Chinese Buddhism had suggested that while all sentient beings have the potential for enlightenment, they are not yet enlightened. In fact, that is why humans are in a unique position to achieve enlightenment; they can follow teachings and carry out practices that actualize the seed potential of full realization. But for Dōgen, this entire being is already Buddha and is already enlightened. We thus cannot use the traditional Japanese terminology for enlightenment as “seeing one’s nature” (kensho), for this language suggests an implicit dualism of subject and object.47 There is no seer separate from a Buddha nature to be seen. All is Buddha nature, “one bright pearl,” a jewel of radiant beauty.48 Not only is this world of interdependent beings identical with the one absolute reality that is Buddha, but it is all beautiful, good, and perfect as it is. This is a highly developed extension of the Mahāyāna doctrine that there is no distinction between saṃsāra (the world of birth and death) and nirvāṇa. Dōgen goes beyond devaluing the world to radically affirm its essential perfection and beauty.49 He likewise radically extends the notion of enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a matter of transcending, evading, or denying the condition of [ 241 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind impermanence, but of fully comprehending, affirming, and accepting it and thus penetrating its true nature.50 This is expressed vividly in his commentary on the koan “Tung-shan’s Place Where There Is No Heat or Cold”: “a monk asks the master, ‘When the heat of summer and cold of winter arrive, what can we do about it?’ . . . The master tells him, ‘Why not find some place where there is no heat or cold?’ ‘Oh, replies the monk, where is this place where there is no heat or cold?’ Tung-shan’s answer is, ‘When it’s hot, be thoroughly hot, when it’s cold, be thoroughly cold.’”51 This view of the impermanent world as something to be penetrated rather than transcended is also relevant for his interpretation of emptiness. Emptiness is not a reified reality outside the world of interdependent beings.52 Moreover the emptiness of beings does not mean that they don’t exist, but that “they are boundless in containing infinite meanings, qualities, and values.”53 This point is expressed lucidly in a story from the Genjokoan. The story reads: A Zen master Pao-ch’ê of Ma-ku shan was fanning himself; a monk came up and said: “The nature of the wind is constancy. There is no place it does not reach. Why do you still use a fan?” Pao-ch’ê answered: “You only know the nature of the wind is constancy. You do not know yet the meaning of it reaching every place.” The monk said: “What is the meaning of ‘there is no place it does not reach’?” The master only fanned himself. The monk bowed deeply.

The question pertains to Buddha nature. If all beings are Buddha nature, which is pervasive like the wind, what is the need for practice, for a fan to set it in motion? The constant nature of the wind allows it to be moved by the fan. But without the actual motion of the fan, the wind’s movement is only latent. The fan manifests or actualizes the movement of the wind. Just so, the practice of zazen is simply the manifestation of original, primal enlightenment.54 Frances Cook, in his commentary to the story, adds an additional layer to make a point about Dōgen’s view of emptiness: “A Zen master pointed to a fan and asked two monks what it was. The first monk picked it up and fanned himself silently, which was a good response. The other monk took the fan, placed a tea cake on it, and offered it to the master. The ‘fan’ was now a serving tray. This is the emptiness of the fan. ‘Not knowing’ limits it to being a fan.”55 We recall Dōgen’s suggestion that when fish and heavenly beings experience the ocean, they experience it in different ways. Without reflection, [ 242 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind however, they experience just the presence right before them (genjokoan).56 Thus the “fan” can become a “serving tray” by reflective consciousness. In the without-thinking mode of knowing, it is simply a presence right before us.57 Dōgen’s Zen training teaches one to see the world without concepts, evaluation, or judgment as simply the presence of the moment.

Dōgen on the Self Among the most challenging teachings of Buddhism for Westerners is the notion that all beings—including human beings—are empty of “self,” that is, empty of a substantial, permanent, abiding identity. Buddhism teaches us to experience ourselves as processing events rather than permanent underlying substances. One contemporary teacher writes, “No-self describes the flow of consciousness—the ongoing nature of relational experience. If one tries to fix one’s self as an identifiable noun-ness, one misses the essence of one’s being, which is process-in relationship. In the depths of meditation practice, the sense of “self ” as separate dissolves in the experience of the transcendent.”58 What is Dōgen’s perspective on the self? A key section in Dōgen’s essay Genjokoan gives us a succinct perspective. Let us study this short masterpiece. To study the Buddha Way is to study the self (or: to model yourself after the way of the Buddhas is to model yourself after yourself). To study the self is to forget the self (or: to model yourself after yourself is to forget yourself). This is usually translated as “to study the self.” The verb narau means to study or learn something, especially by repeatedly imitating a model or paradigm. The Chinese character (kanji) for narau includes two parts. The upper part is a symbol for the wings of a bird, while the lower part means “self.” Thus the kind of learning signified is intimate, experiential learning, the way a baby bird learns to fly with its parents. We are born with the innate potential to be a fully realized human being, just as the bird is born with the potential for its characteristic activity of flying. To become fully human, we have to actualize this capacity. To “study the self” is to learn to be human by our process of attentive living so that our true self can take flight.59 To study the Buddha way is to model ourselves on both the practice and the enlightened mind of the realized sage.60 To model yourself after yourself is to forget yourself. One might think that to forget oneself is to totally negate all aspects of the self. However, we have [ 243 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind seen that the way of without-thinking is not the negation of thinking. Likewise, the authentication of Buddhist enlightenment does not entail rejecting all aspects of the self but penetrating the self to discover our original enlightenment.61 We have glimpses of the state of being without a sense of independent self in ordinary experiences of merging with another in dance, gazing at the sky, drinking tea, or feeling immediate sharp pain. We can be jolted out of our ordinary experience of separateness or selfhood.62 To forget yourself is to be authenticated by all things. When we lose the separation between self and other— the overlay we place upon experience—all things simply present themselves as they are. Thus realization is a condition in which all things present themselves directly, and we experience events without the intrusion of an idea of self. At those moments we are the experience itself.63 To be authenticated by all things is to effect the dropping off/molting/shedding of body-mind, both yours and others. When we experience events directly, without the dualism of body and mind, there is also no distinction between self and other; thus the body-mind of “others” is also shed. This is not a oncefor-all-time event, which is why the terms molting or shedding might be more appropriate than dropping off. Every moment in which we experience unity with an event or object is an experience of enlightenment; therefore, by definition, enlightenment must be awakened anew in each moment.64 In each moment we can shed the overlay of separation that our mind creates; this may be what Dōgen means by the shedding of body-mind (shinjin) to simply be the experience.65 There is a famous story that Dōgen experienced a dramatic moment of enlightenment when his teacher Rujing, scolding a monk sitting next to Dōgen, said, “Zazen is dropping off body and mind. Why are you just sleeping?” Some contemporary Japanese scholars hold that this story is apocryphal, invented by Dōgen’s biographer Kaizen. On the other hand, we do have three discussions of Dōgen with his teacher Rujing on shedding of body-mind, in which Rujing said that “dropping off of body and mind is zazen.”66 When we are practicing “just sitting” (shintaza), we let go of all the cultural clothing we wear—our identification as male or female, rich or poor, Buddhist, Muslim, or Christian. When we sit in zazen, we drop all the identifications the mind creates; we become our naked self, just what we are. That is why practice itself is enlightenment.67 [ 244 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind Separation from others is something our mind does. The Confucian teacher Mencius notes that when we see a child about to fall in a well we experience alarm and distress—not to win the favor of parents or the esteem of neighbor or friends; the feeling of commiseration is natural and innate.68 Likewise, when we hear the cry of an infant, we jump to respond as if the pain were our own. When we pick someone up who is about to slip, or dance with a partner, or respond to a cry of pain, we experience our original, prereflective nature of unity with experience.69 But each moment is a new one; the enlightenment of one moment must dissolve and give way to the enlightenment of the next moment.70 Each drop of experience is a unity giving rise to the next drop of experience.71 Thus enlightenment is not a static condition but a process of continually returning to what is present right before us. Then we become the original, primordial person that we naturally are.72

Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind Dōgen is a beautiful literary writer; at the same time, his images are intricate and his writing challenging to penetrate. Shunryu Suzuki makes the complex vision of Buddhist happiness articulated by Dōgen comprehensible to a modern Western audience. Suzuki is faithful to the teachings of Dōgen, creating a beautiful literary expression of Dōgen’s ideas that is also keenly accessible.73 Without specifically focusing on the language of happiness, Suzuki shaped a vision of a flourishing life that illustrates a further facet in the jewel of Buddhist eudaimonia. We know that Buddhism teaches non-attachment; in “Attachment, Nonattachment” Suzuki notes, “that we are attached to some beauty is also the Buddha’s activity.”74 It is at first reading startling to hear a Buddhist teacher embracing attachment as part of the Buddha’s activity. Indeed he goes on to explain that since everything is changing, the way to find freedom is to not attach to any one changing existence or state. However, the non-dualistic teachings of Dōgen and Suzuki go so far as to accept the fact that we attach ourselves to things. Suzuki cites the saying of Dōgen, “although everything has Buddha nature, we love flowers and do not care for weeds.”75 In light of this statement, Suzuki assures us that it is also the Buddha’s activity that we attach ourselves to beauty. We can love with non-attachment and even accept the fact that we sometimes hate; we need not attach to love alone. We [ 245 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind can accept weeds, even though we don’t always love them. Genuine nondualism includes accepting the preferences we have in this moment. At the same time, Suzuki asserts that it is essential to not become attached to the form of what one believes in, whether god, doctrine, or idea. The way to do this is to believe in nothing or, as he qualifies, something that exists before all forms and colors appear.76 Suzuki’s stance here calls to mind the statement of an early Ch’an (Zen) master, “if you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha; if you meet the Patriarch, kill the Patriarch.”77 In its original setting, the statement suggested that if we meet the Buddha in meditation we are in danger of clinging to the image or concept of what we have encountered. Thus Dōgen writes of “going beyond Buddha,” just as the thirteenth-century German Christian mystic Meister Eckhart points to the God beyond God.78 Human beings are ever in danger of becoming attached to one idea of the Truth and clinging to the present moment of experience, rather than allowing it to pass on to the next moment, which is equally real. We need not become attached to any one instantiation of Truth, for, in Dōgen’s words, every moment is one bright pearl, a hologram that contains the entire fabric of reality.79 A key to happiness is to enjoy each unique moment in the passing parade of events. Suzuki thus highlights aspects of Dōgen’s teachings that would speak to the contemporary West: the beauty and goodness of this world, the value of individual creativity and personal authenticity, creative engagement with the world and spreading Buddhist teachings as paradigms of non-attached giving.80 Suzuki brings out the positive resonance Dōgen gives to all dimensions of human experience, including those moments we don’t prefer. He emphasizes that the goal of meditation is not complete stillness; we can see arising thoughts as waves upon the water of the mind and embrace every mental event as an unfolding of the one mind that is Buddha nature. Waves are simply the practice of water; a mind that has waves is not a disturbed mind, but an amplified one. The activity of Buddha mind is to amplify itself through diverse human experiences.81 Suzuki likewise offers an experiential twist to Dōgen’s abstract concept of being-time, vividly bringing out a paradox: every moment is independent and yet all are intertwined.82 The constituents of reality are not as Aristotle analyzed them, unchanging substances modified by changing attributes. Every event is a unique flashing into phenomenal existence; at the same time, all events are interdependent and affect the quality of all else.83 In pre-reflective [ 246 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind awareness we do not find a division of our experience into “self ” sitting in meditation and “other” going about the business of daily living. The whole universe is a part of our experience of zazen. That is why Dōgen writes that in sitting we authenticate both ourselves and others.84 Suzuki’s goal is to teach practical spiritual philosophy, not abstract metaphysics; his suggestive language is meant to awaken a state of awareness. While deeply informed by the Mahāyāna language of Nāgārjuna and Dōgen, his goal is to bring this metaphysical vision into concrete experience. He wants his hearers to realize that we can experience every spacetime event in its uniqueness and not assume that because we were trapped in certain patterns yesterday we are trapped in them today; “each day is its own past and future and has its own absolute value.”85 Charcoal does not actually become ashes; strictly speaking, the I who sits here today is not the I who will sit here tomorrow. Each moment we are free to experience ourselves anew.86 We are independent and whole in each moment; at the same time, we are part of an interdependent totality. Suzuki emphasizes that this world of suffering or losing our balance is the way we discover Buddha nature; we can discern order behind the disorder.87 Following Dōgen’s instructions on “thinking non-thinking,” we can likewise watch the disparate thoughts that arise in meditation and allow events to be in control, rather than trying to control them. He points out that the mind is not invaded by foreign thoughts; rather, sitting meditation opens us to the big mind of which we are a part, the mind that is everything. Suzuki suggests that zazen meditation provides a discipline that makes possible genuine freedom; he honors the traditionalism of Dōgen—who affirmed the importance of ritual practices—even while transmitting these traditional teachings to his contemporary American audience. Suzuki also emphasizes the importance of learning through mistakes, teaching that the life of the Zen master can be punctuated by “mistake after mistake.” He draws this teaching from Dōgen, who uses the traditional Chinese phrase “mistake after mistake” or “adding error to error” (shoshaku jujaku) in many varied contexts to show that in trying to overcome mistakes we often deepen them; nevertheless, it is only through the process of continual self-correction that we attain genuine learning.88 Suzuki highlights the art of learning gracefully through mistakes as a corrective to contemporary Americans who aim for continual unflawed achievement. Thus he notes pointedly that it is through finding perfection in and through the imperfect [ 247 ]

dōgen’s sōtō Zen And sHunryu suZukI’s Zen Mind that we awaken to nirvāṇa, which is a state of awareness rather than a realm separate from this one. Dōgen had suggested that enlightenment is found in any experience of the unity of subject and object; enlightenment must therefore be renewed every moment, and even the Buddha continues to practice. Suzuki thus brings out the complex, dialectical nature of Dōgen’s non-dualism, which includes moments of attachment and preference. Practice begins with and returns to original enlightenment, a moment-to-moment unfolding of Buddha nature. To flourish and find happiness as a human being is to manifest in each moment the enlightened beings we naturally are.

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ELEVEN

Creative Engagement and the Art of Living

Tal Ben-Shahar: The Integration of Pleasure and Meaning In its time, one of the most popular courses at Harvard College was Positive Psychology, popularly known as the Happiness Course. Unique to this course was a practical component—that is, students not only read about positive psychology, but were responsible for doing active interventions to increase their own happiness. Drawing upon insights from Aristotle as well as positive psychology, the instructor of the course, Tal Ben-Shahar, described happiness as the ultimate source of value in our lives, the “ultimate currency.” In the view of Ben-Shahar, it includes four dimensions of experience: happiness depends upon the presence of both meaning and pleasure and includes present satisfaction and a sense of future purpose. He illustrates these concepts with a story from Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig was climbing the Himalayas with a group of elderly Zen monks. He became exhausted and overwhelmed and had to drop out; concentrating on how steep the mountain was and how far they had to go, he was daunted and gave up. So focused on a goal that seemed out of his reach, he lost his will and stamina to continue. The monks, in contrast, also kept their eye on the peak, but only to steady themselves upon their course, not because reaching the peak itself was their chief goal: “knowing that they were headed in the right direction allowed them to focus their attention and enjoy each step, rather than being overwhelmed by what still [ 249 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng lay ahead.”1 Goals give meaning, purpose, and structure to our lives; they free us so that we have a sense of focus and don’t get lost. There is nothing that brings more despair than lack of direction, not having a compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning. But goals should not overwhelm the beauty and purpose of the present moment. Goals give us an orientation, a compass that can enable us to fully appreciate the present. The overall orientation and purpose of one’s life gives meaning and value to the present moment of experience. What is central is thus not attaining goals but having them.2 Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert has shown that we consistently fail to predict the effect of attaining goals on our future happiness. After a momentary boost, we usually return to our base level of contentment. What we need to do is to re-orient the way we think about goals; goals give a vector, a sense of direction to our lives: “happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain, nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.”3 Ben-Shahar maintains that the dimension of pleasure is the present benefit of an activity or pursuit, while meaning is its value in the future: “pleasure is about the experience of positive emotions in the here and now . . . meaning comes from having a sense of purpose, from the future benefit of our actions.”4 We might refine this and add that meaning need not be deferred to the future. Take the example of the medical student. It is true that medical training can be grueling, particularly the hours of internship and residency. Here, Ben-Shahar’s model is apt. One can tolerate the present challenging hours with the thought that this is all leading to a purposeful life of helping others as a physician. But as his example of the monks climbing the mountain illustrates, one can find both pleasure and meaning in each moment of experience. Is the purpose of climbing the Himalayas really reaching the peak? True, the peak may also be the “peak” moment of experience, but the landscape along the way can be breathtakingly beautiful. Even the pain in our legs brings a certain kind of exhilaration, as we feel our bodies being challenged and stretched. So, too, for the medical student. The stresses of residency are painful, but also bring the present satisfaction of growing as a medical practitioner and caregiver, learning from mistakes and celebrating one’s successes. Each interaction with a patient, each aspect of being a vibrant part of someone’s healing process, can bring a rich sense of both pleasure and meaning. [ 250 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng Emotions motivate and drive us, and thus an important component of happiness is positive emotions. However, a happy life does not require unceasing positive emotion, but a deeper satisfaction—the sense that on the whole, through our moments of sorrow and longing as well as pleasure, we can enjoy the basic experience of being alive, a theme we have seen in both Aristotle and Epicurus.5 A happy life cannot thrive only on pleasure, but also needs a sense of meaning and purpose. To illustrate this, Ben-Shahar brings the well-known thought experiment of Robert Nozick describing what he termed an experience machine. Ben-Shahar holds that most people would not choose to connect to a virtual reality machine that would provide us with unceasing positive experiences—the sense that we are creating a great work of art, relieving poverty, engaging in satisfying relationships—without the actual achievements.6 Contemporary philosopher Julia Annas agrees that our ordinary intuitions about happiness include the sense of objective achievement.7 She notes the testimony of a teacher of a class in business ethics who posed to his students the following question. If they were to wake up with a gift from a benefactor endowing them with all the material signs of success they could wish for, would they be happy? While many students associated happiness with material goods and concrete success, they nevertheless overwhelmingly agreed that they would not want to receive these outward signs of accomplishment without working for them.8 We want to know our actions have an actual effect in the world, not just that we feel (mistakenly) that they do; we want to earn our sense of fulfillment through a life well lived.9 Viktor Frankl, who developed his logotherapy while working with concentration camp inmates, found that those who survived had some sense of purpose. Ben-Shahar adds that meaning alone cannot bring happiness or fulfillment; we would not call a concentration camp inmate happy. Aristotle criticized the Stoic approach on the same grounds; it is absurd to say that one can be happy while being tortured on the rack. Thus in order to create a fulfilling life, we need to gratify both the drive for meaning and the drive for pleasure. The drive for meaning brings a cognitive, evaluative dimension to happiness—the significance we attribute to an experience upon reflection— while the immediate experience of pleasure brings an emotional or affective component. The struggle for growth can also be a component of the meaningful life. This can give us an understanding of what we have achieved as well as enhance our appreciation for the brightest moments of our lives.10 [ 251 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng It is unrealistic to expect every moment of our lives to be completely pleasant and meaningful; what we can do is to introduce what Ben-Shahar calls “happiness boosters” into every day, moments that bring us both pleasure and meaning.11 As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has shown, happiness is greatest when we are experiencing challenges. We should bring more of these into our life so that we can maintain composure during the most difficult moments of our day; they can inspire us as something to look forward to, and energize us to return to our workaday activities. In the words of the educator Maria Montessori, “to devote oneself to an agreeable task is restful.”12

Viktor Frankl: The Will to Meaning Viktor Frankl posits that the primary motivation of human life is a will to meaning; each person has a purpose unique to his or her life that can be fulfilled by that person alone. Our life achieves significance only when we fulfill our own, individual will to meaning.13 This will can also be impeded; when we do not achieve this significance, we experience existential frustration (100). The question of the meaning of life cannot be answered in general terms. What matters is the significance that an individual assigns to his or her life at every particular moment (108). The existentialist underpinnings of Frankl’s perspective are clear: each of us is thrown into a unique existence, and we have an individual responsibility to create the meaning of our own lives. In Frankl’s terms, we each have a vocation or mission, “a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment” (109). Thus we cannot be replaced by another person; our existence is not fungible. Nor can our life be repeated or made better by a hypothetical future lifetime. Each person’s task is unique to the person and to a particular historical moment. Each person’s life offers a concrete challenge, a problem to solve—like a Zen koan. Therefore, we cannot ask about an abstract, universal meaning of life; we must realize that we as particular individuals are asking the question. Frankl would indeed have us reverse the direction of the question: each person is questioned by life, and we can answer to life only by answering responsibly for our own life. We respond to life by being responsible to our unique task (109). Frankl’s existentialist logotherapy—the healing modality of seeking meaning—is not value neutral; it insists that each human being is given the [ 252 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng responsibility to actualize the purpose of his or her own life. Further, the meaning of life is to be discovered in the objective world rather than purely within one’s own psyche. Our actions as humans beings always indicate the desire to fulfill something outside us. It is by giving ourselves over to something larger than ourselves that we become fully human; “self-actualization is only possible as a side effect of self-transcendence” (110–11).14 Note that Frankl is not taking the position of an objective social scientist; he is making a normative statement about becoming fully human. Whereas one might read the human potential movement or positive psychology as encouraging self-actualization only for the purpose of a subjective experience of pleasure, Frankl is explicit and unapologetic about the fact that he is positing a moral task. He speaks the language of moral philosophy; he does not merely describe what will bring humans fulfillment, but prescribes what it is to fulfill a moral imperative. He can thus avoid critiques of positive psychology; critics argue that while claiming to be objective social scientists, psychologists are in fact inserting normative views of the good life. Frankl openly asserts that psychology cannot escape the objective moral question of what it is to be authentically human.15 Thus Frankl asserts that there are three ways to discover the meaning of life: by creating a work of significance or carrying out an action; by experiencing something of value or encountering someone; and by one’s attitude toward unavoidable suffering. The first he describes as creating significance through a concrete achievement. The second is experiencing connection to something of enduring value in nature or culture, or by encountering the uniqueness of another human being, i.e., through the experience of love. Love is the way we understand a person in their essential core. Through love, we see the potential in someone and help him or her bring this potential into realization; our love can encourage others to become fully who they are (111–12). We note once again that Frankl is comfortable in the normative language of moral philosophy; his notion of love is akin to Aristotle’s understanding of the friendship of virtue. Frankl suggests that the third way of finding meaning in life is by responding to a daunting challenge; it is in such experiences of triumph over suffering that we rise to our full dignity as human beings. Even if we cannot change our diagnosis of cancer or bring back a loved one who has died, we can change our attitude toward our situation and find ourselves able to endure the pain. Nevertheless, while the ability to transform a tragic situation into a triumph [ 253 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng can show us our full potential as human beings, Frankl insists he does not believe that suffering is necessary to find meaning in life. It is rather that meaning is possible in spite of tragedy. If suffering is avoidable, our moral requirement is not to endure but to ameliorate the suffering (112–13). Thus on the one hand, he is moved by the inspiring accounts of those who have managed to find significance in life’s most formidable challenges. On the other hand, he does not want to go so far as to hold that we cannot imagine a world without suffering or that evil can somehow be excused as necessary for the discovery of meaning.

Engagement and the Flow Experience Thus far we have explored the importance of both pleasure and meaning for a fulfilling life. Drawing upon the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ben-Shahar noted that the integration of pleasure and meaning demands that we regularly engage in experiences that challenge us. In the 1990s Csikszentmihalyi made popular what he calls the flow experience, the product of decades of research. We have noted parallels between Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, Zhuangzi’s accounts of skill mastery and wu-wei, and Aristotelian energeia. It will thus be worthwhile to examine in detail the fruits of Csikszentmihalyi’s research, which has expanded to develop a concept of a life of vital engagement. Csikszentmihalyi opens his narrative with remarks about a subject we have investigated in various contexts throughout this study: attention or attentive awareness. He notes that attention is mental energy that we can use efficiently or allow to scatter and dissipate. A key to enjoying life is the ability to focus our consciousness without distraction, which allows us to concentrate effectively on our goals.16 One potent force that interferes with enjoyment of life is when we receive information from our environment that conflicts with our values, goals, and sense of ourselves; we then often experience uncomfortable emotions that cause us to doubt ourselves and lose focus. In contrast, in what Csikszentmihalyi terms optimal experience, information that comes to us is in harmony with our goals. Our psychic energy then flows with effortless ease, and we don’t stop to worry or question whether we are adequate to the task at hand. If we do stop to think about ourselves, we receive positive feedback that we are doing well, which [ 254 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng gives us more energy and attention to participate in the activities we enjoy.17 Csikszentmihalyi’s ideal is that we should orchestrate our lives as a series of flow experiences; he envisions the finest life as one in which we avoid disruptions to our flow, so that we can maximize what he calls optimum experience. Like Frankl, he thus subtly moves from empirical description to moral or psychological prescription. By optimal experience, Csikszentmihalyi means situations in which attention can be freely directed to our activities because there is no threat for the self to defend against.18 He calls this state the flow experience, because this term came up in many of the interviews he conducted; interviewees reported, “I was carried on by the flow.” Moreover, he contends that when we learn to arrange our lives to experience flow as often as possible, the quality of our life improves.19 What are the results of the flow experience? Experiences of flow develop a more complex, dynamic self. What Csikszentmihalyi calls complexity signals two interlocking psychological processes: differentiation and integration. Differentiation refers to the movement toward uniqueness, the process of distinguishing ourselves from others. Integration signifies the opposite movement: uniting with other people, with ideas and experiences beyond ourselves. Complexity is achieved when we develop a unique, differentiated self, while at the same time integrating with people, communities, and experiences in the larger world.20 Perhaps that is why flow experiences require challenge. We do not become more differentiated or complex if we are not challenged to grow; the flow experience requires genuine engagement, and engagement is a result of challenge.21 Development of a more complex self buffers us against setbacks. If our identity is completely involved in being a writer, dancer, or business person, a setback in our profession can bring a global loss of self-esteem. If we know ourselves as friend, volunteer tutor, soccer coach, and neighbor, we can maintain a sense of self-worth even if we suffer a defeat in one relationship or arena of our lives.22 Flow experiences contribute to our self ’s differentiation because overcoming a challenge enables us to feel we are more capable and skilled and thus personally efficacious. Each episode of flow enables a person to become more of a unique individual, capable of greater openness and flexibility. Flow also helps to integrate various parts of the self; the state of concentration enables us to focus thoughts, intentions, feelings, and the senses on one goal. The experience itself brings a harmonious integration of all the [ 255 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng parts of ourselves, and this enables us to feel more integrated with others and the world.23 One might think that a person who has integrated the parts of him or herself would be self-contained, not necessarily more integrated with others. But the notion that we can integrate human microcosm and macrocosm is one that has a long history. For example, Plato suggests an analogy between the integration of various parts of the soul and the classes of citizens in the republic. Justice in the state is analogous to justice in the soul, wherein each part of the soul fulfills its appropriate function, without encroaching on others; then they together can each sing their appropriate part in the choir, creating harmony throughout the soul.24 In Plato the implication is that when we have achieved a just, harmonious balance in our own soul, we are more capable of acting justly with respect to others. Likewise in the model of flow: when we have experience of integrating parts of ourselves, we can realize our place as one contributing member of a larger social body.

Pleasure and Enjoyment Csikszentmihalyi asserts that in order to develop more fulfilling lives we must enhance the quality of our experiences; his language of fulfillment and enhancement again slides from purely empirical description to evaluative and normative prescription.25 Like contemporary philosophers Gilbert Ryle and Anthony Kenny, he distinguishes pleasure from enjoyment; the focus of his analysis of flow is on the enjoyment of experience. He defines pleasure as a feeling of contentment we experience when our biological or socially conditioned expectations have been met. Following Plato—in contrast to Aristotle and Epicurus—he asserts that we find the taste of food pleasant when we are hungry because it reduces a physiological imbalance; pleasure is thus associated with the satisfaction of need or desire. He therefore suggests that pleasurable experiences are important to life because they restore psychological homeostasis; nevertheless, he insists that they do not bring the kind of psychological growth and complexity engendered by flow experiences. Thus he offers a kind of Aristotelian critique of Epicureanism. Epicurus aimed at katastematic pleasure: enjoyment of the basic experience of living, enriched by the variety of kinetic pleasures, including those of virtuous living and friendship. The goal of life is a state of tranquility or lack of being [ 256 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng disturbed (ataraxia). It is true that, like Epicurus, Aristotle holds that living itself is good, sweet, and pleasant. But the key concept in Aristotle’s thought is not tranquility but energeia, the actualization of our capacities. And although Aristotle suggests that the highest human good may be a form of pleasure, its goodness lies not in its aspect as pleasure per se, but in the fact that eudaimonia represents the actualization of our potential and thus the realization of our human purpose. What is most significant for Aristotle is not that we are able to achieve a tranquil state of peace, but that we are able to reason, develop, and grow. Like wise archers, we should choose a worthy target and use our rational capacities to plan a life of value. Aristotle’s notion of pleasure is thus focused not on sensory pleasure, but on the enjoyment of excellent activity through which we exercise and realize our capabilities. As noted in the Introduction, contemporary political philosopher Martha Nussbaum has developed this notion into the capabilities approach, arguing that all human beings have a fundamental right to develop our capacities for learning, growing, and expressing ourselves as human beings.26 Like Aristotle, Csikszentmihalyi focuses not on sensory pleasure but on the pleasure of engagement in activity. He asserts that when people examine what makes their lives worth living, they tend to focus not on pleasurable sensations but on the enjoyment of experience. Enjoyable experiences go beyond the satisfaction of desire; they develop a sense of our own accomplishment, meeting new challenges and goals.27 We can frame this, too, as a contrast between the approach of Epicurus and that of Aristotle. Like Stoics and Buddhists, Epicurus was primarily focused on achieving a tranquil, non-attached state. The focus of Aristotle’s ethics, in contrast, is excellent activity, based on goals and planning. His excellent life thus implies forward motion, the development of a more complex, capable self, a sense of personal efficacy. Aristotle’s account of pleasure in the Ethics is really an account of the enjoyment of activity, which Csikszentmihalyi echoes in his description of the life of creative engagement.

The Phenomenology of Enjoyment Csikszentmihalyi was surprised by the results of his research. While his respondents varied widely in age, gender, culture, social class, level of [ 257 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng modernization, and the activities they enjoyed, they described the experience of enjoyment in remarkably similar language. Csikszentmihalyi was thus able to identify eight major components of the phenomenology of enjoyment: First, the experience usually occurs when we confront a task we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. (49)

Moreover, although many people report joyful experiences that happen spontaneously, Csikszentmihalyi found that most optimal experiences occur within the parameters of these eight components. Flow experiences most often occur when we are engaged in goal-directed activities that are challenging to us and require some skill—whether physical, mental, emotional, or social. A person who is shy finds going to a party a genuine challenge and experiences the same thrill of victory, growth, and discovery that a paleontologist finds at an archeological dig or a rock climber experiences in scaling a formidable mountain (49–50). When a certain activity is challenging yet we are able to meet its demands, our attention is completely absorbed, with no energy for any stray information that would distract us from our task. There is no room for anxiety, self-doubt, worry, or self-consciousness. We experience a complete focus of attention; thus our action becomes almost spontaneous, and we stop being aware of ourselves as separate from our actions. We experience a merging of our activity and our awareness (53, 58).28 However, the flow experience is not as effortless as it appears to be. It can require supreme physical, mental, and emotional discipline and may entail skilled performance. It affords no lapse in concentration; at the same time, while we are engaged in flow, action seems to follow with spontaneous ease (54). We can also experience a paradox of control: within the small world of [ 258 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng this pursuit, we find ourselves letting go, relaxing into the activity, not worrying about who or what is in control. We lose a sense of self-consciousness; we are so immersed in the activity that our attention cannot wander to focus on ourselves. The loss of self-consciousness is often experienced as pleasurable, and we can feel a sense of merging with others or with our environment (59–64). Csikszentmihalyi’s language evokes a wonderful sense of freedom. Ordinarily, our self-image is always vulnerable to threat from the judgments of others; we are acutely aware of their perceptions of us and are continually moved to think about ourselves to restore stability and psychological equilibrium. Flow experiences give us a respite from this continual selfmonitoring because they offer us clear goals, rules, challenges matched to our skills, and ongoing feedback that we are doing well.29 Our consciousness is so engaged that there is simply no room left in our psyche for self-doubt; the acrobat on a tightrope must invest every bit of psychic resource to the task at hand. It is not that there is a loss of active awareness; the musician must be highly attentive to her fingering, the mountain climber to the placement of every limb. What is lost is consciousness of a self separate from the activity in which we are engaged; this is the loss of a concept of self, what George Herbert Mead calls the “me” as an object of the “I”’s awareness. This loss of self can actually expand our concept of self, since we have stretched beyond our ordinary boundaries and limitations (64–66). The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself; even if we originally got involved in the activity with an eye toward extrinsic rewards such as money, social recognition, or professional advancement, we come to enjoy the activity purely for its own sake. Csikszentmihalyi uses the term autotelic to signal that the goal (telos) is contained within the activity itself, not for any expected benefit (67). We have noted that while flow experiences sometimes occur spontaneously, they most often take place in the context of a structured activity or because we have become attuned to how we can make flow occur (71).30 Many activities such as sports, the arts, religious rituals, and hobbies are designed to separate activities from everyday life and to facilitate the intense engagement of flow. Some of the examples of activities designed to facilitate the flow experience are games, including games of competition, games of chance, games of vertigo, and games of mimicry; among the latter, he includes those in which we create alternative realities, such as dance, theater, the arts, and [ 259 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng virtual reality games (72).31 Games stretch our skills, give us the illusion of control, alter our consciousness, and provide a window into other ways of being. These conduce to flow by challenging us, stretching our consciousness and our sense of limitations and boundaries. Children whirling around experience altered consciousness; virtual reality games allow people to experience other identities, stretching the boundaries of their self-perception (73–74). Disciplines of yoga and the martial arts involve the integration of body and consciousness. The playing and enjoyment of music also provide optimum conditions for the flow experience. Live performances of music contain elements of ritual, creating a collective participation that allows us to unite with something larger than the self. The rhythms and harmony of music facilitate the integration of the self, as both Plato and Confucius observed (111).32 Also crucial is the sphere of mental activities, including the study of literature, philosophy, languages, and mathematics (118). Memorizing and reciting poetry can bring a sense of mastery and joy in having the fruits of centuries of creativity within the storehouse of one’s own heart and mind (123). This is confirmed within our classical sources: Aristotle argued that a happy person always has a share of pleasant memories to recall, worthwhile things to look forward to, and interesting ideas to ponder.33 Epicurus mused that the memory of pleasant philosophical conversation relieved him from the severe suffering of kidney stones on his deathbed.34 Thus far we have discussed flow activities. Csikszentmihalyi also notes the importance of human relationships. Studies on flow have confirmed the intuitions of Tolstoy and Freud that enjoyment of life depends on the integration of two factors: how we experience work and how we experience relationships with others. I recently discovered a fascinating new twist on an often-cited statement of Freud’s that the most important things in life are love and work. In fact, Freud’s view was more nuanced. Harvard physicist Gerald Holton was told the following anecdote by psychologist Erik Erikson, a close associate of Freud’s. Freud was asked what makes a good life and replied that it is important to find work that you love and to work at your love.35 In other words, relationships take work; we must apply the same engagement and effort in our relationships as we do in our work. Relationships are also a sphere of creative engagement. One of the things that frightens human beings most, Csikszentmihalyi notes, is “fear of being left out of the flow of human interaction.” Thus a key [ 260 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng to the quality of life is learning to flow harmoniously with others while also maintaining the ability to enjoy oneself in solitary pursuits (165, 171). Resilience is also key to long-term fulfillment. Csikszentmihalyi notes the detailed study of George Vaillant, who investigated a cohort of Harvard graduates over the course of many decades. One key to their enjoyment of life was found to lie in their transformational coping strategies in responding to  life’s stresses. Likewise Roger Logan, who studied individuals who had survived physical ordeals such as wandering in the Arctic or being interred in concentration camps, found that those who fared best possessed a strong sense of assurance that they had the resources to cope with whatever situations presented themselves. Csikszentmihalyi notes that this self-assurance was not tied to an ego that sought to control the environment, but to a self that sought ways to integrate with the world harmoniously. This stance involved a deep trust in the world and one’s place in it and a focus of attention away from the self and toward the world (203–4). Philip J. Ivanhoe has spoken about the “metaphysical comfort” that those in classical Chinese culture experience in being part of a larger family, community, and cosmos.36 Csikszentmihalyi’s study culminates in the observation that flow experiences alone do not necessarily add up to a fulfilling life without the vital component of meaning. Csikszentmihalyi’s research showed that a unified purpose gives an overall significance to life, facilitating a life of vital engagement, by which one can “turn all of life into a unified flow experience” (214–17, 230). He posits that the most fulfilled people are those whose life features interlocking themes, a set of goals linked to a unifying purpose that gives significance to a person’s life as a whole. This description certainly echoes Aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia; Aristotle noted that, in structuring our lives, we should focus on a life purpose as archers aim at a target. Like Viktor Frankl, Csikszentmihalyi notes that with such a unified life vision we can even find a purpose in suffering; we can interpret life stresses as challenges that can help us grow and can thus add to the meaning and significance of our lives (233).

Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi: The Life of Vital Engagement In more recent work with Jeanne Nakamura, Csikszentmihalyi has further developed the theme of constructing meaning through a life of vital engagement. Here again we see a blending of purely descriptive psychological [ 261 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng analysis and prescription for what makes for a significant life. As in the classic 1984 study on flow, their analysis begins with the theme of attention. Since we are continually confronted with new information, our subjective experience will be determined by what we choose to pay attention to.37 The quality of our attention thus makes possible what they call vital engagement. This is a certain way of being related to the world through a felt connection to an object, experience, or other person that is experienced as vital in two ways. Experiences are delightful when our interaction with that object or sphere is going well, and their felt significance or meaningfulness adds an overall texture of vitality to our lives.38 Their conception of vital engagement owes much to the work of pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. Dewey’s model for optimum functioning was artistic-aesthetic experiences that are fully absorbing. The person’s interest is related to some pursuit; the self is “engaged, engrossed, or entirely taken up by some activity because of its recognized worth.”39 Likewise, Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi describe a life of vital engagement in which a person develops a relationship to the world that is characterized by intense absorption, participation, and subjective meaning. The object of one’s focus may be a person, group, institution, religious tradition, or political cause, or it may be a cultural domain that is more abstract, such as metaphysical poetry, ancient philosophy, or neuroscience. In all these cases the relationship is experienced as meaningful and worthy of our attention. The person also values those aspects of him or herself that are engaged in the pursuit; we feel good about our love for learning, passion for justice, or sense of compassion for the suffering of the unfortunate. A person has enjoyable moment-tomoment experiences of absorption, interest, and participation; these also endure over a period of time and give an overarching significance to one’s life. They thus define vital engagement as a relationship to the world that includes both experiences of flow (enjoyable absorption) and meaning (subjective significance).40 Reflecting back upon Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow, they note that it is characterized not so much by pleasure or contentment as by full involvement. Summarizing aspects of the flow state, they note the following characteristics: “intense and focused concentration on the here and now; a loss of self-consciousness as action and awareness merge; a sense that one will be able to handle the situation because one knows how to respond to whatever will happen next; a sense that time has passed more quickly or slowly [ 262 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng than normal; and an experience of the activity as rewarding in and of itself, regardless of the outcome.”41 What fosters the flow state is clarity about our immediate goals in the moment, ongoing feedback as the activity unfolds, and the opportunity to expand the limits of our capabilities. What allows us to enter the flow state is establishing a healthy balance between a sense of our own capability and the challenge of the experience. We can sustain the flow state by maintaining this balance. If we feel the challenge is beyond our capacity, we become worried and anxious; if we are not sufficiently challenged, we can become distracted and bored. Thus we can enhance our lives by choosing domains of activity we find absorbing and challenging, but within our capacity to engage with enjoyment.42 For example, creative researchers in the arts and sciences have found a preferred flow activity, one they find continually engaging and with which they identify in a deep, ongoing commitment. The process of creativity is an intense one of allowing meaning to unfold moment by moment so that one may experience the joy of discovery and insight.43 This points to another dimension of flow activity. A fulfilling life will include not just periodic moments of enjoyment, but a sense that one’s engagement adds up to a life of meaning. When we engage in a sustained way over time with a certain object or sphere of experience, we develop a relationship of vital engagement. Recent empirical studies have confirmed the intuitions of existential and humanistic psychology that the pursuit of meaning is a significant human motivation. Some of us are born into a sense of meaning given by our family, culture, religion, social class, and history. Others are motivated to pursue new significance in response to life crises. Finally, there are ways in which creative engagement in a pursuit gradually deepens into an ongoing relationship of meaning and significance, an overall sense of purpose and orientation in one’s life.44 This research is new and significant in that it shows how a relationship can develop even to a sphere of life that is symbolic: a religious tradition, poetry, archeology, chemistry, or art. A field of endeavor itself becomes a symbolic entity with which we have an ongoing relationship, and that gives us an overall sense significance in our lives. We begin by engaging with the practice of the sphere according to its customs and rules. We then become acculturated into the mores of the sphere; we identify with its overall purpose, history, and traditions. We identify with the field and its practitioners, [ 263 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng and our self-image gradually comes to be shaped by the sphere. We become tied into a network of endeavors that gives us a place within an ongoing project of human culture. We may become part of a religious tradition, a sphere of art, music, or science. This identification gives our lives a sense of deep and ongoing meaning.45 We can think of many examples from varied spheres of endeavor and experience. For example, religious conversion experiences are vivid examples of a shifting of identity, in which one takes on identification with a new complex of values and re-orients the priorities in one’s life.46 Mid-life loss of employment can require a person to re-tool in a changing economy and sometimes gives rise to a dramatically new sense of identity. Athletes or dancers have short careers and often need to redefine themselves at life’s midpoint. With longer life spans, many of us are also finding new identities in retirement. In each of these cases we identify with a community larger than ourselves and find a sense of meaning and purpose by our actual and symbolic encounters with this world order. One clear source of our sense of significance is thus our membership in a community of practice, a notion made popular by the communitarian philosophy of Alasdaire MacIntyre.47 We may interact with other members as students, teachers, or fellow practitioners. We can come to see ourselves as part of a global fellowship, one that also extends across historical generations. These ongoing connections, even brief ones, can develop our sense of a textured and significant place in the world.48 Online communities are now giving many a sense of connection to a broader world of meaning and purpose outside themselves. Flow experiences may thus begin as simple, enjoyable episodes but gradually develop in their sense of importance and significance. One can experience vital engagement in diverse areas of human endeavor—raising a family, elder care, engaging in an art or craft, doing the physical labor that makes offices and institutions run well, political or civic activism. Our relationship to the world is vitalized by the quality of our engagement, which can be a deep source of both enjoyment and meaning.49

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Ellen Langer: Creative Engagement and Mindful Living In her most personal work, On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity, Langer shows how this works in practice through her own experience of what she has termed mindful creativity. An award-winning Harvard psychologist, Langer describes her path of becoming an artist, engaging the world through painting. Langer presents mindful creativity as a global way of approaching the world. What prevents a creative approach to living is our evaluative stance: we evaluate everything we see in categories of good and bad, right and wrong. With startling honesty and humor, Langer points out the flaws of looking at the world this way. Langer has won many professional accolades as a psychologist. In a spirit reminiscent of Zhuangzi, she asks whether, if she wins a particular professional award, this means that her work was necessarily better than that of all the others who submitted research. More pointedly, does this mean that the next time she does not win an award, her work is then inferior?50 The danger of basing our good feeling on praise is that we lose the sense of well-being if we don’t receive it. We forget that evaluations are context dependent; they are a function of the individual standards and preferences of the persons evaluating. One specific panel might evaluate her work as praiseworthy; another panel might use a different complex of standards.51 To show how lacking and non-objective such evaluations are, Langer points to studies demonstrating that a work submitted under the name John McKay receives more extended and serious engagement and higher evaluation than the same work evaluated under the name Joan McKay.52 Similarly, a work taken to be by Matisse is given a higher evaluation than the same work attributed to the fictional artist Regnan. When paintings by Langer herself were attributed to Matisse, subjects preferred Langer’s paintings to Matisse’s own work.53 Langer points out how much enjoyment of the world we miss because we take so seriously evaluations held to be objective, blinding us to the valuable attributes of what is before us. We are unable to see the world with what Suzuki has termed “beginners’ mind,” the child’s innate wisdom that sees each moment fresh.54 Langer points out that the evaluative self cuts us off from our authentic experiencing self. When we are genuinely engaged with the world, we don’t evaluate or compare ourselves to others, nor do we compare this moment to any other. The experiencing self is self-actualizing; [ 265 ]

creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng the  evaluating, self-protective self has lost authentic experience.55 In the activity of creative engagement, comparison and evaluation fall away. We often hold to value judgments we have attached to the world as if they were rigid and fixed, whereas the world is actually fluid and evolving. For example, once she left the windows to her house open and a rainstorm drenched the floors. Rather than berate herself for having made a stupid mistake, she thought of it as a way to wet-mop the floor (76). Thus, we need not fear mistakes; her research points to the advantage of pushing beyond the notion that “everyone makes mistakes,” or “it is human to make mistakes,” a view that assumes it would have been better not to make the mistake. Langer views mistakes as genuine opportunities for creativity, one of the best aspects of being human. We can be perfect and mindless or imperfect and mindfully open to novelty (75–84, 98).56 She has conducted experiments in which participants are forced to make a mistake and then use the mistake creatively. Participants enjoyed the creative exercise more than those who did not make creative use of mistakes (82–83).57 Mistakes offer us choices we might not have otherwise noticed. They bring us into the present; we learn to respond to the situation as it presents itself, rather than adhering rigidly to a predetermined plan. We can thus create something genuinely new, something we had not foreseen. How can we encounter the new if we think we already know exactly where we are going? If we allow for spaciousness and openness in our lives, we leave room for creating something novel, an endeavor that is more enjoyable and rewarding. She thus cites the words of André Gide: “One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time” (78). Both Eastern and Western forms of mindfulness encourage one to see the world in new ways and allow for creative uncertainty. Ellen Langer describes a path of mindful creativity—not just in art or science but in life as a whole. She describes creative engagement as our natural response to the world; it is the experience of play. If we approach each opportunity at hand creatively, we will experience engagement and can, like Langer herself, be open to a personal renaissance, an ever-renewing source of happiness (16–18).58

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Conclusion

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED from each of these thinkers and texts about happiness and human flourishing? We noted in our introduction that while thick descriptions of the flourishing life differ widely in texture and detail, certain themes resonate across texts and traditions. Among the themes that have emerged from our texts, we have found five building blocks of a flourishing life: 1. The first building block of a life of happiness is attentive awareness. Each of these thinkers builds a flourishing life on attentive awareness to one’s own mental and physical activities, the world around us, and the larger whole in which we participate. 2. The second building block is effortless ease of action, guided by intuitive wisdom. This brings vitality and efficacy to our activities. 3. The third building block is relationship and connection. We need to feel we are part of a larger, interconnected whole. 4. The fourth is love or devotion; human beings connect to the whole not only with the mind but affectively, with heart and spirit. 5. The fifth is creative engagement. Humans flourish when we draw upon the full range of our resources and fully participate in the projects of our lives. 6. The sixth is meaning, significance, and value. Flourishing lives have objective import, worth, and purpose. [ 267 ]

conclusIon We began our investigation with Aristotle, who affirms that living itself is fundamentally good and pleasant, and especially so for those who take joy in excellent activity. All sentient beings take pleasure in being alive, from the tiniest insect to the fullest actualization of being that Aristotle calls God or the Unmoved Mover. Living in its fullest expression is consciousness, thinking, and perception; God is most alive because God’s activities of awareness are always fully actualized. To the extent that human beings are thinking, we participate in the life of God. We can also enjoy sharing the pleasures of awareness with good friends— these can range from the mundane activities of everyday life to the pleasures of participation in the arts and philosophical conversation. Shared consciousness enhances the basic pleasure one takes in being alive, perceptive, and aware. Aristotle is well known for emphasizing the value of study; study of the world is simply an extension of other activities of awareness and perception. Aristotle thus seems to conceive of pleasure as the enjoyment of one’s cognitive, perceptual, and emotional or ethical activities. Pleasure enhances and reinforces our activities of excellent living. Pleasure is therefore central to the life of human flourishing; it is the appreciation of the value and goodness of the activities in which we are engaged. Chapter 2 turned to Epicurus, who boldly identifies the supreme good or happiness with pleasure. Epicurus teaches that the foundation of human fulfillment is the basic pleasure of one’s own being. We can be aware of the healthy functioning of our own constitution, our natural rhythm. When we realize that the foundation of all pleasures lies in our very being, we can also appreciate the additional pleasures that enhance our lives—music, conversation, the joy of exercising our healthy bodies. The greatest of these enhancing pleasures is friendship. Happiness begins with attentive awareness to our own states and expands to include sharing the goodness of living with others. In Chapter 3 we saw that like Aristotle, Confucius emphasizes that human flourishing is grounded in ethical self-cultivation. Confucius’ instrument of moral development is the practice of ritual (li). Ritual develops one’s character and enables us to cultivate the key Confucian virtues, which are rooted in humaneness (ren). The value of ritual is not only moral but aesthetic; the Ruist community of which Confucius was a part were not only literati but practiced the arts of dance and music. Most important, ritual always involves [ 268 ]

conclusIon an interpersonal dimension. Ritual develops self-mastery and enables us to live graciously with others, softening our rough edges. Happiness, as expressed in the Analects, is to enjoy the harmony that arises from practice of ancient cultural forms and connection through a web of human relationships. This harmony gives us a sense of significance, knowing we are part of a Way larger than ourselves that is balanced, good, and right. In Chapter 4 we turned to Daoism, and found that the Daodejing and Zhuangzi are in many ways a response to the Confucian tradition. The Daodejing finds flourishing in uncontrived action (wu-wei), following a Way (Dao) of nature, rather than ritually prescribed patterns of behavior. For the Daodejing, flourishing lies in attunement to the rhythms of nature and discovering within oneself tranquility, harmony, and contentment. The text teaches us the value of yielding and receptivity, flowing with a way that is nurturing and quietly supportive. We saw that Zhuangzi, another early philosophical Daoist, develops many of the themes of Laozi with a playful, celebratory style. Like the Daodejing, he finds the secret of caring for life in effortless action, which he describes along a continuum, from the focused awareness of skilled activities, to playful meandering, to complete letting go and abandonment into the Way. He illustrates these modes of effortless action with vivid stories of eccentric characters who defy ordinary conventions: hunchbacks, criminals, people with physical deformities who make light of their tumors—all of whom attract those around them with radiant inner beauty and charisma. These vibrant characters teach us about the usefulness of what we ordinarily regard as useless, just as the Daodejing emphasizes the value of what is absent over what is present. On a cognitive level, Zhuangzi suggests one can find the pivot of the Way, the center of a wheel from which one can see equally all shifting moods and perspectives. Thus one can develop cognitive flexibility, humor, and playfulness, flowing along with the cycles of change rather than remaining attached to a fixed perspective. One can allow a deeper part of oneself—spirit or Dao— to guide action with harmony and clarity. Chapter 5 turned to the Indian tradition of the Bhagavad Gītā, which likewise teaches flourishing through effortless action, but within a new theistic context. The Gītā seeks to resolve a tension between two ideals in ancient Indian culture: the ideal of maintaining the world order by performing [ 269 ]

conclusIon one’s sacred duty (dharma) and the goal of achieving liberation from the world of death and rebirth. The ingenious solution of the Gītā is that we can act without being attached to the results of our actions; hence we do not accrue the results, either good or bad, and can achieve freedom even while acting in the world. Human beings thus learn to resolve karmic problems by facing them, remaining within the field of dharma in which we struggle with the issues of our lives. We can thus fulfill our sacred, social duty to maintain and uphold the world, finding peace within the context of life’s challenges. The texture of non-attached, engaged action is deepened by the Gītā’s addition of a theistic element: we can dedicate our actions in loving service to the Deity. The Gītā teaches that there is a Supreme Person, a personal divinity one can discover at the heart of reality and even within one’s own self. We can find supreme fulfillment or flourishing by surrendering to the Divine and pursuing a life of loving service and devotion. The Gītā offered a bridge between the meditative traditions of the East and the theistic traditions of the West. In Chapter 6 we began our discussion of Western theological thought with the fourth-century Church Father Augustine. Like Plato and Aristotle, Augustine believes that being itself is good and beautiful and that even in moments of despair, when we might think we want to abandon life completely, we actually want more of life rather than less. Thus like the Bhagavad Gītā, Augustine suggests supreme happiness lies in discovering the source of one’s being in the divine. We find in Augustine’s own life a model of discovering fulfillment in personal relationship to a loving divinity. Chapter 7 investigated the twelfth-century Judeo-Arabic thinker Maimonides (1138–1205). Like Augustine, Maimonides finds ultimate fulfillment in a life of religious devotion. However, Maimonides’ God is not a personal companion like the God of Augustine. Maimonides’ God is the Necessary Existent, an absolute simple source of our complex world. Human beings are awed by the magnificent structure of the heavens and human biology; a life of loving devotion is appropriate for its creator. Devotional life begins with attentive concentration on acts of religious service and contemplation of God through the study of both nature and revelation. In times of silence at night, philosophers can attune their minds to the source of divine Intelligence, from which we can receive intellectual insight and intuitive understanding. Like the ancient Stoics and Epicureans, Maimonides suggests humans find peace in understanding and accepting the way things function in the natural or[ 270 ]

conclusIon der, at the same time recognizing that there are mysteries one will never fully understand. Thus Maimonides integrates a spiritual practice of devotion— rooting the seeker firmly within a historical community—with a philosophical and scientific quest that fulfills the deep human drive for understanding. In Chapter 8, we turned to Farīd al-dīn ʿAṭṭar’s thirteenth-century poem Conference of the Birds, in which the reader finds oneself immersed in a Sufi journey through seven stages of the path to re-discovering one’s source in the divine. The birds represent different parts of the human self who each express fears and misgivings about letting go of the closed parts of oneself and opening to a more expansive sense of identity. ʿAṭṭar employs many delightful tales to suggest that God is a friend with whom one can exchange confidences, that the Beloved needs companions with whom to share divine secrets. The most genuine way to experience the Truth is through a love that transcends intellect. It is thus appropriate to experience the passion of romantic fervor, which defies conventions of both common morality and religious tradition. Relationship brings vulnerability, which can open one to deeper understanding. Each person has a mirror of God within his or her own heart, so that the search for God is actually a journey into the deepest resources of one’s being. The seven stages on the Way represent the spiritual and psychological obstacles we encounter in seeking the soul with which we have lost contact. When human beings reach the divine, we discover our own divine qualities reflected back; we discover God not as someone else, but as ourselves. We can only reach intimacy with the Beloved through our own journey. When we discover the divine, we continue an ongoing journey in God, discovering new depths of divine mystery. In Chapter 9 we investigated the way contemporary thinkers bring practices of mindfulness into a present-day Western context as keys to a fulfilling life. In classical Buddhist texts the practice of mindfulness is found on a spectrum from present focused, non-judgmental awareness to sustained attention on an object of meditation, including evaluation of wholesome and unwholesome states. Current research has confirmed the sense of well-being that meditation can engender. Richard Davidson, a neuropsychologist, has investigated a spectrum of meditation practices; for those who are overly focused, an Open Presence meditation invites panoramic awareness; for those who tend toward distraction, focus on an object of meditation can bring greater clarity and concentration. [ 271 ]

conclusIon Another neuropsychologist, Daniel Siegel, suggests that mindfulness practices can awaken a deeper sense of ourselves, a pure subjectivity that watches with curiosity and willing attention as objects come into our field of awareness. He suggests that the practice of mindfulness is a way one becomes attuned to one’s own mind, just as we can attune ourselves to a child who is attentive to whether we are completely present in our time together. Likewise we develop a relationship with ourselves by bringing full awareness to our experience. Zhuangzi suggested that a person can position oneself at the axis of the Dao, from which we can respond to any point with flexibility. Siegel likewise suggests that we can situate ourselves at the center of a wheel of awareness, experiencing the spaciousness of our own mind. We can then send out receptors to points on the rim of awareness or simply be open and receptive to experiences that come our way. He thus affirms the nonjudgmental stance toward experience taught in mindfulness meditation. Social psychologist Ellen Langer’s teachings on mindful learning also emphasize the importance of a non-evaluative stance, which can open one to the authentic experiencing self. Her research shows that, rather than judge and berate oneself for mistakes and imperfections, we can learn to view mistakes as opportunities to look at things in new ways, offering choices we might not have otherwise noticed. Thus both Eastern and Western forms of mindfulness encourage us to make room in our lives for creative uncertainty so that we can be open to see the world in original ways. A playful, open stance can rekindle childlike curiosity and allow genuine creativity to emerge, both in work and in one’s life. Chapter 10 turned to the tradition of Sōtō Zen Buddhism, which describes reality in non-theistic terms. The Zen teachers Dōgen and Shunryu Suzuki speak not of the divine but of what they term Buddha nature. At the heart of reality is a quality of enlightenment or awakening, a wisdom and compassion that is the very nature of who we are. All sentient beings are this Buddha nature. We can thus relieve the suffering of ourselves and others by discovering our original being. We do not need to escape ordinary reality to find it; we do not have to abandon the flow of time or the realm of birth and death. The very flowing of time is itself Buddha nature. The practice of Zen is to approach every moment with a child’s mind, ready to learn from experience. Enlightenment is not a static condition, but a dynamic process of returning to what is present moment by moment. [ 272 ]

conclusIon Since Buddha nature is this whole reality, we can find teaching in every aspect of the world, natural or material; fences, stones, and valley streams are all aspects of Buddha nature. Thus enlightenment is not transcendent or extraordinary. The state of awakening is to witness the beauty of the ordinary, the perfection of the world as it is. When it is hot, we can be thoroughly hot; when cold, thoroughly cold. The world is not something we need to transcend, but to penetrate and integrate. Dōgen and Suzuki thus embrace the beauty of imperfection and mistakes. Since we actually learn most from the experiences in which we make mistakes, our ordinary evaluations of “good” and “bad” are not in fact accurate. When we acknowledge mistakes, we are continually corrected until we come to genuine understanding. The life of a Zen master can be one mistake after another, always open to new learning. We thus learn from Dōgen and Suzuki that one can experience happiness even in the depths of winter, even through embarrassment and errors, even in this seemingly off-balance world. Dōgen calls this imperfect world “one bright pearl”; we can see the beauty and radiance of reality shining through the very flaws and imperfections. We have thus far focused on increasing enjoyment of life through attentive, non-judgmental awareness and full engagement in the present moment of experience. Aristotle emphasized that human beings are also driven by a sense of purpose; we have an urge to fully develop our capacities and create significance in our lives. Chapter 11 examined the way we create lives of significance through creative engagement. Psychologist Viktor Frankl maintains that the key to human fulfillment is to discover one’s unique task in life, what the Bhagavad Gītā calls svadharma, one’s own duty or calling. Tal Ben-Shahar adds that fulfillment requires moments of present enjoyment as well as a sense of overall purpose. He thus encourages one to include in one’s life activities of pleasure enjoyable absorption, drawing upon Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow experiences. Indeed, Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow provides an important key to a flourishing life that reverberates through the book. Our study has discovered that we can achieve attentive awareness in contrasting ways: either by finding an observing witness that does not judge or evaluate or by being so immersed in activity that there is no sense of witnessing self. The latter is what Csikszentmihalyi calls the flow experience. In these kinds of [ 273 ]

conclusIon experiences one is so engaged in activity that we do not have time to question ourselves or our abilities. Further, we receive immediate feedback so that we discover the gift of encouragement that self-correction and selfmastery bring. In more recent work Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura have emphasized the dimension of constructing meaning through vital engagement. A person has enjoyable moment-to-moment experiences of ethical contribution, absorption, interest, and participation; these also endure over a period of time and give an overarching significance to one’s life. When we engage in a sustained way over time with a certain object or sphere of experience, we develop a relationship of vital engagement to a community of practice. We come to see ourselves as part of a global fellowship that extends across historical generations. These ongoing connections develop our sense of a significant place in the world. Our investigation has shown that the life of human flourishing includes dimensions of connection, love, engagement, and meaning. Happiness also embraces mistakes, imperfection, and discomfort, bringing full presence and participation to every dimension of living. The practice of attentive awareness offers ways to find beauty in flaws and imperfections; Dōgen’s Zen teaching suggests that one can love the gnarled tree as well as the magnificent glade, the weeds as well as the flowers. This mindful stance brings openness, forgiveness, and compassion to those aspects of our inner and outer worlds that seem less than ideal. Thus every moment of living can bring guidance toward a flourishing life.

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Notes

Introduction 1. Nettle, “Introduction,” ix–xi. 2. For a critique of the subjective well-being view of happiness, see Nussbaum, “Who Is the Happy Warrior?” S86–S88. 3. Daniel Haybron in The Pursuit of Unhappiness distinguishes theories of happiness from theories of well-being. He identifies three approaches to happiness, as factual assessments of an individual’s state of mind, the psychological condition of “being happy.” One view is the hedonistic view, in which happiness is identified with pleasure. A second view is the life satisfaction view, in which happiness is being satisfied with one’s life as a whole. A third view, which Haybron defends, is an emotional state view, in which happiness refers to a global emotional condition, including the propensity for certain emotions and moods. Thus, unlike the hedonistic view of happiness, which identifies happiness with a positive balance of pleasant experiential states, Haybron’s view sees happiness as more like the contrary of depression or anxiety. Therefore happiness is not simply a good mood, but a state of psychic affirmation and psychic flourishing. Haybron, The Pursuit of Unhappiness, 182. Haybron wants to distinguish sharply between happiness as a psychological state and Aristotelian eudaimonia, well-being or flourishing. While he notes that the Stoics and Epicureans promote psychic states such as tranquility and joy, he denies that this is a central feature of Aristotle’s account. However, by defining happiness as psychic flourishing, Haybron himself implicitly acknowledges the intertwined nature of Aristotelian flourishing and the psychological experience of happiness. Haybron emphasizes that the goal of Aristotelian eudaimonia is to promote excellent activity rather than a state of “flow.” However, he also acknowledges that Aristotle’s account of pleasure—so closely tied to engaged activity, done with absorption and interest— clearly resonates with Csikszentmihalyi’s description of flow activities, which we will [ 275 ]

IntroductIon investigate in Chapters 4 and 11 (ibid., 115). Thus, even on Haybron’s account, Aristotelian eudaimonia would indeed seem to entail psychological dimensions of happiness. 4. For comparable approaches, see, e.g., Ziporyn, “Teaching Philosophy of Religions,” at forty-one minutes and following; Ivanhoe, “Happiness in Early Chinese Thought,” 263–64. Scholars have used the terms thick and thin description to note that although traditions may describe a concept such as “virtue,” “truth,” or “happiness” in different ways—as delineated in a rich, “thick” description—they may nevertheless hold a broad conception that is comparable in a “thin” description. For example, a thin description of the virtue of humility will give a general outline of the virtue—perhaps as having an appropriate attitude toward one’s worth as a person—while a thick account will offer diverse descriptions of what it is to actually hold this attitude. See Van Norden, “Virtue Ethics and Confucianism,” 100; Virtue Ethics and Confucianism, 16–21. Van Norden also notes what he calls the lexical fallacy, the notion that a thinker cannot hold a concept for which there is no specific word in his or her vocabulary. Van Norden responds that we do not need a one-to-one correspondence of terms to assert that thinkers hold comparable conceptions. For example, he argues that the pre-Socratics clearly had some conception of philosophy even though they lived before the Greek term for philosophy was coined by the Pythagoreans; likewise, classical Chinese thinkers hold some notions of “truth” and “rights,” even if they lack specific words or thick descriptions for these concepts. Van Norden, “Virtue Ethics and Confucianism,” 101–2; Virtue Ethics and Confucianism, 21–23. On “thick” and “thin” descriptions, see also Nussbaum, “Non-Relative Virtues”; Ryle, “Thinking and Reflecting,” 474–79; Geertz, “Thick Description”; Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. 5. The aim of the new discipline of positive psychology is not simply to decrease suffering, but to enhance well-being, to realize human beings’ capacity for creative, enjoyable lives. Martin Seligman, one of the founders of the discipline, has also recently added a third pathway to happiness, the life of achievement or accomplishment. Jayawickreme, Pawelski, and Seligman, “Happiness,” 4–10. Positive psychology acknowledges a debt to humanistic psychology; the two disciplines have also engaged in debates on questions such as whether one should emphasize subjective hedonic well-being or objective self-actualization; whether the therapist should take a value neutral stance or encourage ethical commitment to realization of virtues; and whether the discipline has sufficient empirical verification of claims to improve wellbeing. See Robbins, “What Is the Good Life?” 6. Milner, “Aristotle vs. Aristippus.” Nevertheless, we will find that pleasure holds an important place in Aristotle’s conception of the good life. Pleasure is the appreciation of valuable activity; it reinforces or enhances our worthwhile engagement. 7. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.4 1095a 20. The term eudaimonia is comprised of the particles eu, “well,” and daimon, “divinity” or “spirit.” Richard Kraut notes that “to be eudaimon is to therefore be living in a way that is well-favored by a god. But Aristotle never calls attention to this etymology in his ethical writings, and it seems to have little influence on his thinking. He regards eudaimon as a mere substitute for eu zên (“living well”).” Kraut, “Aristotle’s Ethics.” [ 276 ]

IntroductIon 8. Is human excellence thereby identical with happiness? The term eudaimonism is used to describe a view that links happiness with virtue; ancient ethical theories connected these two concepts in varying ways. Some thinkers argue that virtue and the exercise of virtue are identical with happiness. Other views are that virtue and its exercise are the dominant component of happiness or that virtue is the only means to happiness. Parry, “Ancient Ethical Theory.” 9. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 9.8 1168b 20. 10. Note the comments on this theme in the context of the ethic of care by Mann, “Ancient Virtues, Contemporary Practices.” 11. On Bentham and Mill, see Nussbaum, “Who Is the Happy Warrior?; “Mill Between Aristotle & Bentham.” 12. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 74. 13. See, for example, Nussbaum, “Who Is the Happy Warrior?” Her current list of capabilities (along with the rights necessary for them, listed in parenthesis) is on S 110–11, and include the following: 1. Living a normal life span; 2. Bodily health, including (rights to) adequate nourishment and shelter; 3. Bodily integrity (including freedom of movement and security against assault, as well as freedom of choice in reproduction and in matters of sexual satisfaction); 4. Being able to use the senses, the imagination, and thought (including freedom of expression and religious exercise, and adequate education), and being able to have pleasurable experiences; 5. Experiencing normal human emotions, including longing, grief, anger, etc., and having emotional attachments to others (i.e., love, friendships, and the normal range of affective emotions); 6. Development of one’s capacities for practical reason, including the capacity of critical reflection upon one’s good or plan of life (protected by liberty of conscience and religious freedom, among other rights); 7. Capabilities for affiliation (including both having the capacities to care for and commiserate with others, and having social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation, with rights to nondiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, caste, religion, and national origin); 8. Living with other species; 9. Play, including the ability to enjoy recreational activities; 10. Control over one’s environment (including rights to political participation, freedom of association, and having property rights on an equal basis with others and equal opportunities). See also Freeman, “Contractarianism vs. the Capabilities Approach,” 388; developed from Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 76–78. Cited by Jayawickreme, Pawelski, and Seligman, “Happiness.” See also Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 70. 14. See Nussbaum, “Who Is the Happy Warrior?” at S92–S95, S106–8, S110–11.

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1. ArIstotle

1. Aristotle All supplementary notes and appendixes are available at https.bu.academia.edu /Diana Lobel. Notes to each chapter will begin with a list of relevant appendixes. 1. Pleasure: Attitude or Object?; 2. Aristotle: The Neutral State; 3. Aristotle: Pleasure as Perception of Value; 4. Aristotle: Pleasure Without Sensation. 1. Haybron himself brackets the notion of human excellence. He focuses rather upon happiness, which he defines as a persistent emotional state, in which we have a favorable emotional response to our life as a whole. Happiness includes psychological dimensions of endorsement, engagement, and attunement. However, he tellingly suggests that emotional endorsement of our life can be described as “psychic flourishing,” although he insists that this is a purely descriptive term. See Haybron, The Pursuit of Unhappiness, 29–33, 109–12, 111n10. 2. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.1 1094a. 3. In the words of Sarah Broadie, it is the “primary and central good of the best life”; it is the human good and not just the object of human desire. Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle. 4. Thus, like Aquinas, he is sometimes called a moral perfectionist. See Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism; Dorsey, “Three Arguments for Perfectionism”; Wall, “Perfectionism in Moral and Political Philosophy.” 5. For the meaning of completeness, see Supplementary Note 5. 6. Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1.5. 7. As Sarah Broadie explains, “Strictly, what makes me want nothing more out of life is what counts for me as happiness by my being thus contented by it. Whether it is happiness depends on whether it is right to be contented by it, which for Aristotle depends on whether it is good to be the sort of person who is thus contented.” Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle, 32–33. 8. Plato, Symposium, 204e2–205a4. 9. For the criterion of self sufficiency, see Supplementary Note 9. We must thus distinguish between the activity of happiness and the happy life of which it is a part. Sarah Broadie points out that Aristotle seems to move back and forth between talking about happiness, the supreme human good, as a certain kind of life (the life of pleasure, the political life, or the philosophical life) or as the central element or good within a life that makes it a “happy life” and makes the person a happy individual. The happy life will of course need other elements: health, wealth, good friends and family. But one central activity, target, or aim makes the life as a whole worth living. Broadie concludes that happiness proper for Aristotle is that element in a person’s life that makes the life a happy one and makes a person fulfilled; therefore, he can conclude in Book 10 that genuine happiness is the activity of study. And the supreme human good or highest end sometimes refers to the best sort of life—the philosophical life or the political life—or that target (contemplation of the divine or civic virtue) which is the focus of that life. Likewise, in our contemporary intuitions, sometimes we think of happiness as an overall quality of our lives, sometimes as the focus that makes us especially fulfilled. See Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle, 27. [ 278 ]

1. ArIstotle 10. Urmson, Aristotle’s Ethics, 97–98; Pakaluk, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 314. 11. Urmson, Aristotle’s Ethics, 97. 12. Ibid. Both accounts address the objections of Speussipus, the antihedonist, although only Book 7 mentions him by name. Only Book 10 addresses the claim of Eudoxus that pleasure is the highest good. 13. Scholars thus term it Account A; the discussion in Book 10 they term Account B. There are also additional key passages in the Nicomachean Ethics that shed light on Aristotle’s understanding of pleasure: 1.8, 2.3, 3.4, 3.10, and 9.9. 14. NE 7.11, 1152 b 10. 15. NE 1152 b 25–1153a 15. This is akin to the view Epicurus will articulate: the highest pleasure is the pleasure of the natural state of an organism. All moving pleasure is based on the stable pleasure of contentment. 16. NE 7.12, 1152 b 25–1153a 15. 17. As Michael Pakaluk expresses it, pleasure always has an aspect of appearance to some being. Pakaluk, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 293. 18. NE 7.12, 1152 b26–33. 19. NE 7.12, 1153a1–8. 20. Gosling, “More Aristotelian Pleasures,” 15–34, at 30–32. 21. Aristotle’s account of pleasure is normative, as is his account of the good. He believes pleasure is what is pleasant to the good person in an ideal, healthy condition. 22. For the argument that we do study because of a lack, which is ignorance, and an additional argument against restoration as the model for pleasure, see Supplementary Note 22. In his account in Book 10, he gives an even more striking example: that of smell (10.3, 1173b18). Aristotle suggests that there is really no deficit our body is experiencing that must be replenished by smelling. We might object that smell can remedy olfactory discomforts. 23. NE 7.12, 1152b 35. 24. This analysis is suggested by David Wolfsdorf in Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 126–27, and more recently in an unpublished paper, “Aristotle on Pleasure and Energeia in Nicomachean Ethics 7.11–14 and 10.1–5.” It is true also that we would not want to eat when we are full; that would create an imbalance and would be an excess. 25. See Metaphysics 1048a, Nicomachean Ethics 7.12–14 and 10.1–4. See also his discussion of kinesis in Physics 201a10–11, 201a27–29, 201b4–5. 26. Of course Aristotle needs to address the fact that the end is partially being realized in one’s present activity toward that end. 27. See Kraut, “Aristotle’s Ethics.” 28. See Roochnik, “What Is Theoria?” 80; see also Broadie, “Philosophical Introduction,” 69. 29. Although pleasure in general is not a process toward a goal, some pleasures do have an end (telos) distinct from themselves; those involved in the completion (teleoisis) of our nature (NE 7.12, 1153a13). 30. Aristotle does not need to add that pleasure is perceived, because he thinks of pleasure most of all in terms of cognitive and perceptual activities, so it goes without saying that they are perceived. See Supplementary Note 30. [ 279 ]

1. ArIstotle 31. Anthony Kenny mentions a cognate view. When pleasure is used as identical with action, it is being used descriptively, as when we say that Puritans denounced activities such as dancing and drinking as pleasures. Here we are using the term pleasure to describe activities without suggesting a liking for them. Where pleasure seems to be not identical with action, it is being used evaluatively; when we say that music brings me pleasure, this suggests that I evaluate it positively, that I enjoy it. Thus, in Book 7, Aristotle is using pleasure as a descriptive term to signal unimpeded activity; in Book 10 he is using pleasure as an evaluative term, to analyze the enjoyment or valuing of an activity, which brings it to full realization. See Kenny, Action, Emotion, and Will, 140, citing Nowell-Smith, Ethics. 32. In the language of contemporary philosophy, while Book 7 focuses upon the intentional object of pleasure, that in which one takes pleasure, Book 10 focuses on the mental attitude of taking pleasure in something, the psychological stance or orientation toward the source of pleasure. Thus Christopher Shields describes the distinction as that between source pleasures (the source of pleasure, as in music) and subjective pleasures (taking pleasure in music). See Owen, “Aristotelian Pleasures”; Shields, “Perfecting Pleasures,” 194. For Aristotle’s argument against the neutral, painless state, see the Appendix 2, Aristotle: The Neutral State. 33. In the Republic and the Philebus, Plato even assimilates the pure pleasures of learning and seeing to the model of lack and restoration, although in these cases the lack is imperceptible. 34. For a detailed examination of the theory of Epicurus, see Chapter 2, this volume. 35. Broadie, Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, 400. 36. He nevertheless stops short of identifying the good and pleasure. See Kraut, “Aristotle’s Ethics.” 37. NE 1.7, 1098a 16–18, 1.13, 1102a 5 tell us that the good for a human being is activity of the soul expressing virtue or excellence (arete), and, if there is more than one form of excellence, the best or the most complete. 38. To flourish as a human being is to express the excellence of all one’s capacities of a human or—as he leaves open in Book 1—especially of the highest capacity. See, for example 1.8, 1099b 30: “Happiness, then, is best, finest and most pleasant . . . for all three features are found in the best activities, and happiness we say is these activities, or [rather] one of them, the best one.” 39. Note also Politics 4.11 1295a 36–37: “For if it has been rightly said in the Ethics (1101a 14) that the happy life is the life that is lived without impediment in accordance with virtue, and that virtue is a middle course, it necessarily follows that the middle course of life is the best—such a middle course as it is possible for each class of men to attain.” 40. NE 1153b 13–17. 41. Christof Rapp points out that the criterion of completeness brings the account of Book 7 close to that of Book 10; it is a small step from saying that unimpededness of activity is rewarded with pleasure, as in NE 10, to saying that this unimpeded activity qua unimpeded is pleasure. Thus whenever we speak of complete activity the idea that the same activity must be unimpeded is not far away. See Rapp, “Nicomachean Ethics,” 221–22. Aristotle also suggests that since the happy person’s activity [ 280 ]

1. ArIstotle must not be impeded, the happy person needs bodily goods, external goods and good fortune, so that he or she will not be impeded in these respects. Thus Aristotle dismisses as nonsense the claim that someone who is being tortured or who has fallen on bad times is happy if only he or she is good (7.13, 1153b18–22). See Supplementary Note 41. 42. Sarah Broadie notes that activity unhindered by obstacles or weariness accords with traditional notions of the immortal gods. Broadie, Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, 404. 43. It is true, as Deborah Achtenberg pointed out to me, that creatures do not always aim at what ensures their survival; they can go wrong. Aristotle as biologist is certainly aware of this. As Jessica Moss expresses it, Aristotle sees this as “a kind of malfunctioning of the pleasure-taking apparatus, akin to ordinary perceptual error.” Moss, Aristotle on the Apparent Good, 39. We should not take as a measure of what is bitter or sweet the tastes of an ill person (NE 10.3 1173b20–25). We should take as the standard of what is genuinely pleasant what appears pleasant to the moral exemplar, the genuinely serious or decent person (spoudaios) (1113a 25–35). 44. NE 7.13, 1153b25–32. 45. This is true even if beings when they are in an ill or deficient state sometimes go astray and desire things that are not good for them. 46. Broadie, Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, 404, see also 70. Aristotle, De Anima 2.4, 415a26–b7. Dorothea Frede writes likewise, “Not only does [Aristotle] seem to presuppose that the best element in human nature is simple rather than complex, he also presupposes that living as such is a pleasurable activity for all creatures—and living the life in accordance with the best in human nature is therefore by itself the most pleasurable state, if it is a life lived in a natural and unimpeded way.” Frede, “Nicomachean Ethics vii. 11–12,” 207. Roochnik likewise notes this striking passage in the Politics: “Perhaps there is present in living itself, just by itself, some portion of beauty (to kalon) at least if a life is not overwhelmed by an excess of hardship. It is clear, at any rather, that most human beings will endure much bad suffering in order to cling to life because there is a kind of joy and natural sweetness to it.” Politics 3.6, 1278b 25–30, in Roochnik, Retrieving Aristotle in an Age of Crisis, 111, cf. ibid., 105. 47. NE 7.14 1154b26–28. 48. It is possible that Epicurus may in some measure have been inspired in his distinction between pleasure in rest as well as in motion—what he terms katastematic and kinetic pleasure—by Aristotle. However, while, for Epicurus, resting pleasure is simply the normal functioning of the healthy constitution, for Aristotle, resting pleasure is the continual activity of contemplation. Thus, unlike Epicurus’ highest good of katastematic pleasure, Aristotle’s pleasure in rest contains a dynamic drive toward actualization. We have seen Aristotle’s startling assertion that the highest good might be a kind of pleasure. Does this put Aristotle close to Epicurus as a hedonist? See Supplementary Note 48 and Chapter 2, this volume. 49. It is true that human beings do not always heed the drive to the full realization of our nature, toward the most excellent activity. We desire life, but do not always strive to realize the most excellent life; we need excellent upbringing to habituate ourselves to take pleasure in the highest good. See Supplementary Note 49. [ 281 ]

1. ArIstotle 50. Cf. Broadie, Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, 68–69. 51. I draw the analysis of the text as describing two types of perfection, quantitative and qualitative, from the astute analysis of Peter Hadreas, “The Functions of Pleasure in Nicomachean Ethics X 4–5,” 160–61. 52. Compare the innovative notion of time developed by the Zen Buddhist teacher Dōgen (1200–1253). Dōgen argues that every moment is a complete whole, containing the entire universe of experience within itself. See Chapter 9, this volume. 53. This first sense of teleiosis used by Aristotle in 10.4 to describe pleasure corresponds to the first sense of completion noted by Aristotle in Metaphysics Delta 16: that which does not lack any parts. Something is whole and complete if it has all its parts and lacks in nothing. 54. Epicurus argues, in this vein, that a longer life is not necessarily a better life; when we are enjoying a moment, we do not need it to go on longer to make it better. 55. This is what philosophers term a qualitative or evaluative perfection, and it corresponds to the second sense of perfection in Metaphysics Delta 16: that whose value cannot be exceeded. 56. Cf. Kenny, Action, Emotion, and Will, 148. 57. See Strohl, “Pleasure as Perfection,” especially 261n8, 267n17, 282; Gonzalez, “Aristotle on Pleasure and Perfection,” especially 151–52. 58. In the Book 10 account, Aristotle suggests that this might include pleasure, but pleasure is not necessary for formal completion. Book 7 suggests that pleasure simply is perfect activity; if the activity is formally complete and unimpeded, this is a pleasure. 59. Thus we can add a useful interpretation to the notion that pleasure introduces a further end to activity—a refinement of the phrase usually translated as “an added (or supervenient) kind of end” (epiginomenon ti telos). Rather than seeing the telos only as an additional end of pleasure that is added to activity, we can think of it as an additional perfection, echoing the many uses of teleios and teleoi in this passage. Pleasure makes our activities of living more perfect. This is the suggestion of Matthew Strohl, 279. 60. For more on pleasure in contemporary discussions of philosophy of mind, see Appendix 1: Pleasure: Attitude or Object? 61. See Feldman, “Hedonism,” 662; and his “The Good Life,” 605; Bramble, “The Distinctive Feeling Theory of Pleasure”; Wolfsdorf, Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 264–65. 62. See Feldman, “Hedonism,” 662; Smuts, “The Feels Good Theory of Pleasure”; Wolfsdorf, Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 264–65. 63. The terms pro-attitude and con-attitude were popularized by Nowell-Smith, Ethics, and Perry, The Concept of Pleasure. See Wolfsdorf, Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 231; cf. Feldman, “The Good Life,” 607; Katz, “Pleasure.” For the notion of consciousness as “intentional,” that is, as directed toward objects—see Crane, “The Intentional Structure of Consciousness.” 64. Aristotle, De Anima 431a 8–10, 133 (trans. Wolfsdorf). The support of this passage for a pro-attitudinal view of pleasure was suggested to me by this discussion in Wolfsdorf. See also the discussions of Deborah Achtenberg and Jessica Moss in Appendix 3, Aristotle: Pleasure as Perception of Value. [ 282 ]

1. ArIstotle 65. Sarah Broadie writes that Aristotle might believe in a single fundamental life energy that takes multiple forms. Broadie, “Philosophical Introduction,” 70. At the most basic biological level, we are engaged in activities of nutrition, growth, and maintenance, which we share with plants and animals. Our highest activities are those of perceiving—which we share with animals—and thinking, which we share with the Unmoved Mover. 66. For the language of attitude and object and for viewing pleasure as an attitude toward an object in contrast to a pure sensation, see above, note 32, and Appendix 1: Pleasure: Attitude or Object? For pleasure as a mode of engagement in activity, see Wolfsdorf, Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 218; Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 107–10; and his “Symposium: Pleasure,” 135–146 at 136; also his “Pleasure.” 67. As noted previously, the phrase “mode of engagement in activity,” is that of David Wolfsdorf, characterizing Gilbert Ryle. For sources in Ryle, see note 66. See also Rudebusch, Socrates, Pleasure, and Value, 5; and “Pleasure,” 405. 68. NE 9.9, 1170a 8–11. See Moss, Aristotle on the Apparent Good, 211. This theme appears in Plato and Confucius as well. Indeed, Aristotle suggests that music is important to one’s ethical self-cultivation. 69. Jessica Moss brings an example from the emotion of great-souledness (megalopsuchia). See Supplementary Note 69. 70. Cf. Confucius, Analects 9.29: “One who is really ren (human-hearted) can never really be unhappy/beset by cares/troubled.” 71. NE 9.4, 1166a 23–27. 72. See NE 9.9, 1070a 16–1170b8. The parallel passage in Eudemian Ethics 7.12 is also fascinating. Aristotle asserts that living, as activity and end, is perception and knowledge: Consequently, sharing life is sharing perception and sharing knowledge. For every individual self-perception and self-knowledge is the most desirable of all things, and that is why an appetite for life is inborn in each of us, for living must be regarded as a kind of knowing. . . . It follows that wanting to perceive oneself is wanting oneself to have certain attributes. We possess them, however, not in ourselves but by sharing in them by means of knowledge and perception. To do full justice to this rich passage would require a separate investigation. Among recent studies, see Kosman, “Aristotle on the Desirability of Friends”; McCabe, “With Mirrors or Without”; Whiting, “The Pleasure of Thinking Together”; Osborne, “Selves and Other Selves in Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics vii 12.” 73. Aristotle, Politics 3.6, 1278b 25–30. David Roochnik translates the passage thus. 74. Broadie, “Philosophical Introduction,” 70–71. One of Aristotle’s fundamental convictions is that being and life are good and beautiful in themselves. See Lobel, “Being and the Good,” 23–24. See also Roochnik, Retrieving Aristotle in an Age of Crisis, 81–113. 75. NE 9.4, 1166a 1–1166b2. 76. Ibid., 9.4, 1166a 30–33; 9.9, 1169b34–1170a4. 77. Michael Pakaluk speaks of a principle of “amplification.” Pakaluk, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 284–85. [ 283 ]

1. ArIstotle 78. NE 9.4, 1170a 5–13; cf. 1169b 13–22. 79. Eudemian Ethics 7.12, 1245ba 34–1245b 3. 80. Strohl offers several helpful analogies: the fit of an intricate lock and key, the satisfaction we get in reading a mystery story if we are attuned to its nuances, sipping a cool drink on a hot day. Strohl, “Pleasure as Perfection,” 282, 261n3. 81. For the view of Strohl, see Supplementary Note 81. 82. In the words of Michael Pakaluk, it is another aspect of the relationship or the relationship itself. Pakaluk, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 292. 83. NE 10.4, 1174b25. 84. The phrase was translated by many as “bloom of youth.” Peter Hadreas has argued convincingly that the akme is rather the prime of life; David Wolfsdorf investigated the corpus of Aristotelian texts and found confirming evidence. For example, in Rhetoric 2.14, 1390b 9–10, Aristotle states that bodily akme occurs at ages thirty to thirty-five, while the psychological akme occurs at age forty-nine. See Hadreas, “Aristotle’s Simile of Pleasure”; Wolfsdorf, “Aristotle on Pleasure and Energeia in Nicomachean Ethics.” For a discussion of varied interpretations of the phrase, see Bostock, Aristotle’s Ethics, 155–58. See Supplementary Note 84. 85. NE 2.3, 1104 b 3. Note also that at 1175b 21–2, we find that the proper (oiekein) pleasures and pains are those that arise (genomenai) from the activity itself. 86. NE 1.8, 1099a 8–12: “a lover of justice finds [pleasure] in the sphere of justice and in general a person with virtue finds pleasure in what accords with virtue . . . for no one would call a person just if he did not enjoy acting justly, or generous if he did not enjoy generous actions, and the same goes for the other virtues.” 87. NE 2.3, 1104 b 11–13. 88. Jamie Dow notes that in the ethical works, Aristotle’s model of pleasure is that of pleasure taken in activities, a subset of the things in which pleasure and loathing can be taken. He suggests this is because the purpose of these passages is to show that happiness does involve pleasure, to make clear how virtue and vice are connected to pleasure and pain, and to shed light on the role of pleasure and pain in educating the young. Dow, “Aristotle’s Theory of the Emotions,” 15. 89. See van Riel, who speaks of “the effects of the culminating point of life: success, strength, prestige, etc.” Gerd van Riel, “Does a Perfect Activity Necessarily Yield Pleasure?” 216. 90. Shields, “Perfecting Pleasures,” 208–9. 91. See NE 1075a 32; Kraut, “Aristotle’s Ethics”; Supplementary Note 91. 92. I thank David Wolfsdorf for this example, in personal communication. 93. He thus translates oikeian as “congenial.” Wolfsdorf, Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 137. 94. See Supplementary Note 94. 95. See Ryle, “Symposium: Pleasure,” 135–38. 96. The opposite of a hedon, as a unit of pleasure, is described as a dolor, a unit of pain. Weijers, “Hedonism.” 97. See Broadie, Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, 437. 98. Richard Kraut observes astutely: [ 284 ]

1. ArIstotle The conception of pleasure that Aristotle develops in Book X is obviously closely related to the analysis he gives in Book VII. But the theory proposed in the later Book brings out a point that had received too little attention earlier: pleasure is by its nature something that accompanies something else. It is not enough to say that it is what happens when we are in good condition and are active in unimpeded circumstances; one must add to that point the further idea that pleasure plays a certain role in complementing something other than itself. Drawing well and the pleasure of drawing well always occur together, and so they are easy to confuse, but Aristotle’s analysis in Book X emphasizes the importance of making this distinction. (Kraut, “Aristotle’s Ethics”)

We are reminded of the contemporary philosopher William Robinson’s theory of pleasure. Robinson emphasized that pleasure is always pleasure of something. It is like the quality of intensity or volume; it cannot stand alone. Volume must be volume of an auditory sensation; intensity may be a quality of any of the five senses. Likewise, pleasure is dependent on or accompanies something else. Aristotle’s Book 10 account brings out this element of accompanying and complementarity. See Robinson, “What Is It Like to Like?” and Appendix 1: Pleasure: Attitude or Object? 99. See NE 10.7, 1177a 25. See Supplementary Note 99. 100. Ingemar During, “Der Protreptios des Aristoteles” (fragment B 87), 74, trans. Wolfsdorf, Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 135; Gonzalez translates thus: “But the complete and unimpeded activity contains pleasure within itself, so that the activity of contemplation would be of all activities the most pleasurable.” Gonzalez, “Aristotle on Pleasure and Perfection,” 158. Gonzalez cites this as support for his thesis that completeness has to do with the ability to attain full union with the object and hence that God’s pleasure is most complete, because God’s intellect is one with the objects of intellection. 101. Among many current studies, see for example, Barker et al., “Joint Development of Bullying and Victimization in Adolescence.” 102. NE 7.14, 1154a 27–31, 1154b 3–7. John Stuart Mill maintains that someone who is capable of enjoying what he terms “higher” pleasures would not settle for lower ones. Those who choose the lower pleasures have already become incapable of appreciating higher pleasures. See Mill, Utilitarianism, 10–11. See also Nussbaum, “Mill Between Bentham and Aristotle”; and her “Who Is the Happy Warrior?” 103. NE 1.8, 1099a 15–17. 104. See Supplementary Note 104. 105. See Supplementary Note 105. 106. NE 1.8, 1099a 8–12. 107. NE 1.8, 1099a 12–15. See Pakaluk, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 295. 108. In a classic study, Richard Kraut affirms this psychological dimension to Aristotle’s account of flourishing. Kraut suggests that according to Aristotle, people are living happily when they realize they are attaining important things they value and find rewarding. Individuals find such things rewarding by being genuinely engaged in such activities and taking pleasure in them. Thus Kraut acknowledges that Aristotelian eudaimonia is objective in that to be eudaimon is to fulfill the function [ 285 ]

1. ArIstotle of a human being. However, he emphasizes that it also includes an important psychological component of affirming and appreciating the value of the activities in which one is engaged. Kraut, “Two Conceptions of Happiness.” 109. Roochnik, Retrieving Aristotle in an Age of Crisis, 122. Roochnik gives the example of a healthy snail who is reinforced in performing snail activities even if it doesn’t consciously experience pleasure. 110. One example of this way of thinking about pleasure is found in 9.9, where Aristotle writes that to be aware that one is living is among the things pleasant in itself. (To d’aisthanesthai hoti sdoei ton hedeon kath hauto; NE 9.9, 1170 b 1–2). Being aware is something we can presumably attribute to the Unmoved Mover as pure thought or understanding (nous).See Appendix 4. Aristotle: Pleasure Without Sensation.

2. Epicurus Appendixes: 5. Epicurus: True Belief About the Gods; 6. Epicurus: Katastematic, Kinetic, and Restorative Pleasure; 7. Epicurus: Theory of Perception and Atomism—the Psychological Dimension of Pleasure and Pain; 8. Epicurus: Mental Pleasures, Katastematic and Kinetic. 1. Epicurus, Principle Doctrines, or Kuriai doxai; hereafter KD. 2. Sharples, Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, 5–8. 3. For Epicurus’ doctrine of the gods as background to his belief about pleasure, see Appendix 5, Epicurus: True Belief About the Gods. 4. Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, 127; hereafter LM. 5. Epicurus, Principle Doctrine 29 and Scholium to Principle Doctrine 29. An alternative tradition is given by an anonymous commentator on Aristotle’s Ethics. See Sharples, Stoics, Epcureans, and Sceptics, 143n6; Annas, The Morality of Happiness, 192–93. 6. Epicurus, Vatican Sayings, 21. 7. Ibid., 73. 8. “Those natural desires which entail no pain when not gratified, though their objects are vehemently pursued, are also due to illusory opinion; and when they are not got rid of, it is not because of their own nature, but because of the man’s illusory opinion” (KD 30). 9. Translation of “tremble fearfully” for tarbōmen, by Konstan, “Epicurean Happiness: A Pig’s Life?” 10. As Julia Annas argues, it is unlikely that he suddenly changed his mind about what the final end (telos) of our lives is. Annas, “Epicurus on Pleasure and Happiness,” 8. 11. Yet at times it appears that he is also offering a critique to the Platonic and Aristotelian claim that virtue is intrinsic rather than simply instrumental to happiness. See Supplementary Note 11. 12. Supplement to On the Soul 150.33–34 = 398 U, trans. Wolfsdorf, in Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 177. Translation by R. W. Sharples: “The followers of Epicurus, on the other hand, thought that pleasure is the first appropriate thing without [ 286 ]

3. confucIAn HAppIness qualification, but they say as we progress this pleasure is subject to distinctions.” He notes the report of Cicero, Fin. 2.32, that for Epicurus “animals and small children experience kinetic pleasure, but not the katastematic pleasure which consists in the absence of pain.” Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias, 151 and note 515. 13. Contrast Kant’s argument in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. 14. Wolfsdorf, “Epicurus on Pleasure,” 7–8; “Epicurus on the Telos of the Mind.” 15. This may be counterintuitive to the contemporary reader. As my student Madeline Aruffo suggested, many of us would argue that we do find significant differences between the pleasures we are drawn to at varying times. 16. LM 128–29. 17. For a detailed exposition of this view, see Appendix 6. Epicurus: Katastematic, Kinetic, and Restorative Pleasures. 18. For a more detailed exposition, see Appendix 7. Epicurus: Theory of Perception and Atomism—the Psychological Dimension of Pleasure and Pain. 19. The third, preconception (proleipsis), is derived from repeated sense experiences. 20. See Asmis, “Epicurean Psychology.” 21. Cf. Rist, Epicurus, 102. 22. For more on pleasure in contemporary philosophy of mind, see Appendix 1. Pleasure: Attitude or Object? Buddhist epistemology has a similar description. Reflecting on the theory of the Vasubandhu, a great fourth-century theorist of the Yogacara (consciousness-only) school, Georges Dreyfus and Evan Thompson write, “Mental states are not just states of awareness; they also actively engage their objects, qualifying them as pleasant or unpleasant, approaching them with a particular attitude, and so on.” Thompson and Dreyfus, “Asian Perspectives,” 98. See also Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism. 23. Asmis, “Epicurean Psychology,” 21. 24. See Wolfsdorf, Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 168n11. 25. Cf. Rist, Epicurus, 102. For mental pleasures, see Appendix 8, Epicurus: Mental Pleasures, Katastematic and Kinetic. 26. Daniel Haybron counts attunement as an important dimension of happiness, which he contrasts with affective, psychic, or spiritual compression. See Haybron, The Pursuit of Unhappiness, 117–20.

3. Confucian Happiness Appendix 9. Confucius: The One Thread. 1. For Confucius as a virtue ethicist, see Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism; for Confucius as a resource for contemporary virtue ethics, see Cline, “The Way, the Right, and the Good.” 2. Moreover, as Bryan Van Norden points out, Confucian flourishing does not include the significant component of theoretical contemplation that we find in Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. See Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism, 99–101, 107. [ 287 ]

3. confucIAn HAppIness 3. Sarah Allan expresses these two complementary aspects of life as the public and the private, or the conformist or intellectual, as opposed to the natural and spontaneous. Allan, “Introduction to D. C. Lau,” xiii. 4. Slingerland, Effortless Action, 7. There is some debate about whether the term wu-wei describes only a quality of actions or can be used also for the state of mind of the agent. See Supplementary Note 4. 5. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China; see also Van Norden, “Introduction,” 20. 6. See Eno, “Introduction,” i; Fingarette, “The Music of Humanity in the Conversations of Confucius,” 350n4; Slingerland, “Kongzi (Confucius), ‘The Analects,’” in Van Norden and Ivanhoe, Readings in Classical Chinese Thought, 1; Van Norden, “Introduction,” 130. 7. For some attempts at historical reconstruction, see Brooks and Brooks, The Original Analects; Eno, The Analects: An Online Teaching Translation, iv–vi; Van Norden, “Introduction,” 13–18. 8. We can note a few examples of scholarship that takes into account historical layers. Robert Eno engages in a fascinating reconstruction of what he calls Confucius’s “doctrinal silence” on the concept of Heaven in contrast to the views set forth by the editors of the Analects. See Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 94–98. Bryan Van Norden seeks to unravel the “one thread” of Confucius’s teachings by ascribing some of its depiction to the disciples of Zengzi, one of Confucius’s younger disciples. See Van Norden, “Unweaving the ‘One Thread’ of Analects 4.15”; and his Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism, 72–82. For other reconstructions of the “one thread,” see Ivanhoe, “Reweaving the ‘One Thread’ of the Analects”; Fingarette, “Following the ‘One Thread’ of the Analects”; and Appendix 9. Confucius: The One Thread. 9. The new pinyin system of transliteration aims to more closely approximate the sound of Chinese in English. The old Wade-Giles system transliterated this as jen. 10. Hall and Ames, Thinking Through Confucius, 114. 11. Hall and Ames interpret ren as “authoritative person” and argue that ren is an integrative process of “person making,” whereby one transforms into a “profoundly relational person” (ibid., 114). Moreover, ren actions always involve one’s own cultivated judgment (ibid., 117). See ibid., 114–27. 12. Wade-Giles: chun-tzu. 13. Van Norden, “Introduction,” 19. Van Norden also notes the expressive or symbolic function of ritual (ibid., 19–20). 14. Fingarette, Confucius, 16–17, 77–79. Robert Eno notes the dancelike metaphor expressed by Xunzi in his description of the perfection of social action: “He moves along with time; he bows or arches as the times change. [Fast or slow, curled or stretched,] a thousand moves, then thousand changes: his Way is one.” Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 68, 235n21, 179–80. Bryan Van Norden, while appreciating several of Fingarette’s insights into ritual—that they are akin to “performative utterances,” sacred, and a mode of interaction that is neither self-conscious nor coercive—also follows Benjamin Schwartz in critiquing Fingarette’s philosophical behaviorism. In addition, he suggests that Fingarette fails to appreciate the role of ritual in inculcating and expressing human attitudes and worldviews. See Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism, 109–12; Schwartz, The World of Thought in [ 288 ]

3. confucIAn HAppIness Ancient China, 71–75. For the expressive and impressive functions of ritual, see also Ing, The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism, 28–37. 15. See Creel, “Confucius and the Struggle for Human Happiness,” 169; for expansive and restrictive understandings of li, see Ing, The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism, 20–24. 16. For a rich explication of awareness and attentiveness in the Confucian analects, see now Ivanhoe, Confucian Reflections, 72–84; on the sacred as that which invites reverence, see Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism, 102. 17. See The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhong-yong), 5.1, 12; trans. Chan in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, paragraph 20, 105; trans. Sommer as “Centrality and Equilibrium.” See also Tu, Centrality and Commonality. 18. The parent is to be loving, the child reverential; the elder sibling is to be gentle, the junior sibling respectful; the elder friend is to be considerate, the junior friend deferential; the ruler is to be benevolent, the subject loyal. None of these relationships is purely transitive, but they are mutual. 19. Analects 12.11. See also 6.25, 13.3. All translations by Slingerland in Confucius: The Analects. 20. On the significance of family relationships in particular in our own context as well as the Confucian, see Ivanhoe, Confucian Reflections, 59–71; Cline, Families of Virtue. For comparisons between Confucian ethics, feminist ethics, and the ethics of care, see ibid., 141–47ff. 21. See for example, Bowen, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice; Ackerman, A Theory of Family Systems. Bowen family systems theory has been explicated for a popular audience in several accessible treatments, well grounded in scholarship, by Lerner, beginning with The Dance of Anger. 22. Benedict, Patterns of Japanese Culture; Tsai and Tsai, “Cultural Models of Shame and Guilt.” 23. Thus, notes Bryan Van Norden, it is no wonder that, when asked about the way to govern a state, Confucius is reported to have said, “Let the prince be a prince, the minister a minister, the father a father and the son a son” (12:11). Van Norden, “Introduction,” 6; cf. Confucius, Confucius, the Analects, trans. Slingerland, xx. 24. See Van Norden and Ivanhoe, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 389; see also Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self-cultivation, xiii; and “The Concept of De (‘Virtue’) in the Laozi,” 240–42. 25. For extensive discussion of the similarities and importance differences between dharma and li, see the collection of articles collected in a special issue of Philosophy East and West 22, no. 2, devoted to that topic, especially Hansen, “Freedom and Moral Responsibility in Confucian Ethics; Tu, “Li as a Process of Humanization”; and Danto, “Role and Rule in Oriental Thought.” 26. Robert C. Neville argues that the Confucian notion of ritual extends beyond liminally separate events to a broad range of semiotically formed patterns of behavior. Just as babies learn some particular language, they learn how to stand, greet people, and engage with others in culturally appropriate forms. See Neville, Existence, 274–77. 27. The Confucian thinker Xunzi’s view is that ritual is the way humans clean up the messiness Heaven/Nature leaves us. We are born without a moral compass; we [ 289 ]

3. confucIAn HAppIness need to acquire morality through ritual. See Xunzi: The Complete Texts, trans. Hutton, xxvi–xxviii; Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self-cultivation, 29–42; Slingerland, Effortless Action, 217–64. 28. See Slingerland, Confucius: The Analects, xviii–xix; on the need to reconfigure Tian in a moral way, see Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 23–29; on Confucius’ reconfiguration of Tian, see ibid., 79–98. 29. See Xunzi: The Complete Texts, xxix and “Discourse on Heaven,” 175–82; also in Van Norden and Ivanhoe, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 269–85; Xunzi, Hsun Tzu, 79–111; Xunzi, “On Heaven,” On Ritual (Li),” 66–68; trans. Chan in A Source Book, 116–24; Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 131–69. 30. The term may have originally meant the power that accrued to one by sacrifice to an ancestor or spirit. See Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self-cultivation, ix–x. There is a vast but inconclusive literature on the etymology of the term. 31. Van Norden and Ivanhoe, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 389; Ivanhoe, “The Concept of De (‘Virtue’) in Laozi.” 32. See Shun, “Ren and Li in the Analects,” 68–69; see also Lau, Confucius: The Analects, 26–27. On yi as rightness, appropriateness, and personal disclosure of significance, see Hall and Ames, Thinking Through Confucius, 89–110; Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism, 118–19. 33. Hall and Ames, Thinking Through Confucius, 105. 34. On the system of li as a grammar of cultural behavior, see Ames and Rosemont, The Analects of Confucius, 51; Li, “Li as Cultural Grammar”; Shun, “Ren and Li in the Analects”; Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 31–41. For a Jewish parallel, see Spiro, “Halakhah as a Ground for Creating a Shared Spiritual Language.” On ritual as a grammar of behavior, see also Neville, Existence, 274–77. 35. See Michael, “Confucius and Laozi” and “The Daos of Laozi and Confucius.”}} 36. See Van Norden and Ivanhoe, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 389, 392. Later Daoists did conceive of the Dao as a personal deity. 37. Eno, The Analects: An Online Teaching Translation, 119–20. Slingerland suggests that the Zhou deliberately conflated their tribal god Tian with the Shang’s god, the Lord on High, Shang Di. Eno believes that, for the Shang, di was a plural, while the Zhou made Di into a singular, modeled upon Tian. Confucius: The Analects, trans. Lau, 239; Eno, personal communication; cf. Ames and Rosemont, The Analects of Confucius, 47. 38. Confucius: The Analects, trans. Slingerland, 239, 240. 39. Ibid. Robert Eno suggests that this is indeed the way the editors of the Analects depict Confucius’ relationship to Heaven. Examining carefully all the passages in which Confucius speaks of Heaven, he concludes that Confucius himself was more cautious and agnostic, that, as 5.9 suggests, he did not speak about metaphysical matters and mentions Heaven for rhetorical effect and legitimation of ritual behavior. See Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 79–98. 40. Robert Eno explains the context of this statement thus: “Huan Tui was minister of war in the state of Song. Jealous of Confucius, he threatened him when Confucius and his disciples journeyed to Song. Confucius calmed his disciples with this statement.” Eno, The Analects: An Online Teaching Translation, 33. [ 290 ]

3. confucIAn HAppIness 41. Eno explains: “the people of Kuang mistook Confucius for a well-known political outlaw from Lu. This passage and 7.23 are clearly variants of a single legend.” Eno points out that, reading the two passages together, we see the editors of the Analects suggesting that Confucius’ virtue is expressed in the style (wen) or ritualized patterns of behavior of the Zhou that Heaven has entrusted him to transmit. A text outside the Analects (the Shih-chi) depicts Confucius practicing li beneath a great ritual tree, suggesting the connection between Confucius’ virtue and his ritual action. See Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 82–84. 42. Eno translates as “recognizes.” He comments that this suggests both recognizing one’s talents and employing them in the court. 43. Ivanhoe, “Heaven as a Source for Ethical Warrant in Early Confucianism,” at 213–14, 217–219. As we have noted, Robert Eno argues that Confucius uses the concept of Tian to legitimize the Ruist focus on ritual action. The “virtue” that Tian engenders in Confucius is the “style” (wen), the ritual patterns of behavior of the Zhou; “what [Tian] prescribes is the ideal of Sagehood and the Ruist path to it. The linkage of T’ien to the everyday practice of Ruism is unmistakable: the Analects makes T’ien both the headmaster and the syllabus of the Ruist school.” Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 87. For Eno’s extensive investigation of the role of Heaven for Confucius and the Analects, see “Two Levels of Meaning; the Role of T’ien in the Analects,” in The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 79–98. 44. Tu Wei-Ming thus writes that in contrast to secular humanism, “Confucian humanism is inclusive; it is predicated on an ‘anthropocosmic’ vision. Humanity in its all-embracing fullness ‘forms one body with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things’ and enables us to embody the cosmos in our sensitivity.” He writes also that “the highest Confucian ideal is the unity of Man and Heaven.” See Tu, “Confucian Self-Realization,” 200–1. For a complex and creative description of the religious dimension of Confucianism, see “Field and Focus” and “Confucian Religiousness,” in Hall and Ames, Thinking Through Confucius, 237–46. 45. Ching, “Confucianism in Perspective,” 204. 46. Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 1, 33, 43, 53–60. 47. “R. Tarfon and the Elders were once reclining in the upper story of Nithza’s house, in Lydda, when this question was raised before them: Is study greater, or practice? R. Tarfon answered, saying: Practice is greater. R. Akiva answered, saying: Study is greater, for it leads to practice. Then they all answered and said, Study is greater, for it leads to action.” Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 40b. 48. For similarities between early Confucianism and Judaism, see the insightful study of Schofer, The Making of a Sage, 118; and Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 36–42. 49. Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 1, 33, 43, 53–60. 50. See Mullis, “The Ethics of Confucian Artistry,” 99–107. On the importance of participating in and learning from tradition, including in a discipline such as mathematics, see Ivanhoe, Confucian Reflections, 9–11. The early Confucian Xunzi emphasizes that recognizing our place in a long tradition enhances appreciation of our pursuits. Ibid., 12–13. 51. See Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 35. [ 291 ]

3. confucIAn HAppIness 52. See He, “Confucius and Aristotle on Friendship,” 291–307; “Confucius and Aristotle on the Goods of Friendship,” 391–405. 53. See Ravven, The Self Beyond Itself on the importance of group affiliation and extended boundaries of the self for ethical action. 54. Herbert Fingarette suggests that the second character should be read as a verb; thus a prince should prince, a minister should minister, a father should father. See Fingarette, “The Music of Humanity in the Conversations of Confucius,” 338. 55. Analects 9.12. For the two passages, see Supplementary Note 55. 56. Another interpretive tradition reads the passage differently: “To remain unsoured when others do not understand your teaching, is this not a junzi?” Eno, The Analects: An Online Teaching Translation; cf. Slingerland in Confucius, the Analects: “to be patient even when others do not understand—is not this the mark of a gentleman?” 57. On the internal values of the tradition, see Slingerland, Effortless Action, 48. 58. Aristotle likewise notes that honor cannot be the ultimate end of human life, because it is dependent on being honored by others. The human ideal should be something that a human can strive to achieve oneself. Nicomachean Ethics 1.5 1095 b 5. 59. For an insightful analysis of this passage, see Kupperman, “Naturalness Revisited.” For Eno’s poetic translation of this passage, see Supplementary Note 59. 60. Even countercultures recognize common rituals to bond and show affiliation, including “lawless” groups such as violent gangs. 61. Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences. The authors suggest that humaneness (ren) is the mode of acting ritually when there is no ritual to tell one what to do (ibid., 35). 62. Mischel, Ebbesen, and Raskoff Zeiss, “Cognitive and Attentional Mechanisms in Delay of Gratification,” 204–18. 63. Davidson, The Emotional Life of Your Brain, 230–31. 64. For the term ming, see Supplementary Note 64. 65. Seligman et al. push the point further, suggesting that humaneness is the capacity to act as ritual would dictate, even in the absence of specific ritual prescriptions. Thus learning to say please and thank you sensitizes us so that we will know how to express politeness and empathy in situations not specifically covered by ritual texts. See Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 35–36. 66. Isaiah 1:11, 1:15–17. Note another passage in Isaiah (58:5–6), which at first seems to reject the ritual of physical fasting in favor of sharing one’s bread with the hungry, suggesting a preference for ethical action over symbolic ritual. In the conclusion of the passage, however, the prophet affirms keeping the Sabbath in the true spirit of the ritual. See Supplementary Note 66. 67. One is reminded of the striking juxtaposition between an infant’s baptism by Mafia chiefs and simultaneous acts of violence these chiefs are carrying out in the non-sacred realm, in Mario Puzo’s film The Godfather, Part 1. 68. Slingerland, in Confucius, the Analects, 18, notes that the text of the Analects was edited to have this follow two statements in which Confucius criticizes particular rulers for their inappropriate use of ritual. It also stands as a broader statement of the importance of self-cultivation as the purpose of ritual practice. 69. Charles Taylor argues that this way of thinking about the self can be traced still earlier to Augustine’s invention of the inner self in the Confessions. See Taylor, [ 292 ]

3. confucIAn HAppIness Sources of the Self, 127–42; A. Dihle, The Theory of the Will in Classical Antiquity, 123–44, especially 144 and 132; Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 502–12, at 503; Ravven, The Self Beyond Itself, 143–50; Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 221. 70. See Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 70–72. As we noted previously, Western psychology has also moved in the direction of seeing the individual as part of a larger family and social system. 71. For a beautifully nuanced explication of ritual as a somatic or kinetic form of language in our own context, see Ivanhoe, Confucian Reflections, 31–44. Ivanhoe points out that the Analects offer an expanded conception of self that can enrich and give greater meaning to our lives (ibid., 22). 72. The musical analogy is pungent; as Edward Slingerland writes, “just as true music requires not merely instruments, but also sensitive musicians to play them, so true ritual requires not merely traditional paraphernalia, but also emotionally committed, sensitive practitioners.” Slingerland, trans., in Confucius, the Analects, 205. 73. Thus we can understand the move many traditional commentaries on the Analects make to see 17.11 as a critique of those who become preoccupied with the means and forget the true end or purpose of ritual. For Wang Bi’s commentary, see Supplementary Note 73. 74. See Slingerland in Confucius: The Analects, on 3:17, p. 24. 75. Ibid., on 3:23, p. 27. See also Scott Cook, “Zhuangzi and His Carving of the Confucian Ox,” 522–27; Ivanhoe, “The Contemporary Significance of Confucian Views About the Ethical Value of Music,” 123–33. 76. The line “Music is joy” appears twice in Chapter 20, “On Music” of the Xunzi. It also appears in the “Record of Music” (Yuezi) chapter of the Book of Rites (Liji). See Ivanhoe, “Happiness in Early Chinese Thought,” 267n7. The essay appears in a fuller version, “Music In and of Our Lives”; see 50n8. 77. Slingerland comments on 3.25: “The idea is that one’s moral character is apparent in the music one creates. King Wu found it necessary to restore to force in deposing King Zhow—rather than obtaining the world through wu wei, as did Shun (15.5) because of a slight flaw in his character that is revealed in his music and apparent to the subtle ears of Confucius.” Slingerland, in Confucius, the Analects, 28; see also Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism, 113–14. For the connotation of the term good here, see Supplementary Note 77. 78. Slingerland, Confucius: The Analects, 83. The Osprey (or “Ospreys”) is the initial song in the Book of Odes, one of the Five Confucian Classics. 79. Plato, Republic 401D. 80. For a rich explication of the diagnostic and therapeutic functions of music, see Ivanhoe, “Music in and of Our Lives.” Ivanhoe notes the power of music to move us in profound ways, given its visceral affect on emotions, body, and mind. 81. We see an example of this in Analect 9.30, where Confucius quotes and draws a moral lesson from an Ode: “The flowers of the cherry tree / Constantly flutter and turn / How could I not si (be thinking) of you? / But your house is so far away!” To this, Confucius comments, “He clearly was not thinking of her, (for if he had) what distance would there be?” See Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self-cultivation, 13. Robert Eno offers a more literal translation: “Rise with the Poetry, stand with li, consummate with music.” He explains that to rise is a technical term referring to the initial image of a [ 293 ]

3. confucIAn HAppIness poem. To stand means to take on a role of social responsibility. To consummate refers to the final coda of a musical piece or movement. Eno, The Analects of Confucius, Comment to 8.8, p. 37; see also Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 217–18, note 34. Ames and Rosemont suggest that the terms odes (songs), rites, and music either refer to the titles of the classical texts or the actual performance of the songs, rituals, and music. Ames and Rosemont, The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, 243, note 124. However, Slingerland notes that it is unlikely that such books existed in the time of Confucius, 81. 82. See Analects 1.15; Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self-cultivation, 13–15. See also 3.8. 83. The Song commentator Huang Kan notes, “Ritual governs reverence, dignity, temperance, and respectfulness and thus is the root of establishing oneself. A person who does not understand ritual lacks the means to establish himself in the world.” Slingerland on 20.3, in Confucius: The Analects, trans. Lau, 235. An interesting parallel in Jewish culture is the bar or bat mitzvah ritual, in which the child takes his or her stand in the community by standing up to read from the Torah for the first time and thus formally accepting the obligations of an adult. 84. See Confucius: The Analects, trans. Slingerland, on 8.8, pp. 80–81. Slingerland comments that this is a more succinct version of the course of Confucian selfcultivation described in 2.4. For further explication of this passage, see Supplementary Note 84. 85. Sommer, Chinese Religions, 58; Van Norden and Ivanhoe, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 138–39; Ivanhoe, “Happiness in Early Chinese Thought,” 268. The substance of humanity (ren) is the serving of one’s parents; the substance of rightness (yi) is obeying one’s elders; the substance of wisdom (zhi) is to understand humanity and rightness and to not let them go; the substance of ritual propriety is the regulation and adornment of humanity and rightness; and the substance of music is the joy one takes in humanity and rightness. Once such joy is born, it cannot be stopped. Once it cannot be stopped, then one begins unconsciously to dance it with one’s feet and wave one’s arms in time with it. (Slingerland, Confucius, the Analects, 81)

86. See Csikszentmihalyi, Flow. Traditional Hindu and Buddhist teachings recognize many kinds and levels of meditative absorption. Likewise, neuropsychologists who study meditative experience describe different kinds of meditative experience, with corresponding variations in brain activity. See, for example, Lutz, Dunne, and Davidson, “Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness”; Davidson, The Emotional Life of Your Brain, 238–9, and Chapter 10, this volume. 87. Chapter 6, “The Great and Venerable Teacher,” Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 86–87; Kjellberg, “Zhuangzi,” 235; Zhuangzi: Essential Writings, trans. Ziporyn, 49; Slingerland, Effortless Action, 183. 88. Literally: he “did not know” the taste of meat. Confucius, the Analects, 7.14. 89. Eno, The Analects: An Online Teaching Translation, 11, comment to 3.12. 90. Philip J. Ivanhoe points out that this sense of attentiveness in the Confucian tradition extends to all aspects of our everyday lives; thus the mundane becomes an opportunity for heightened awareness. See Ivanhoe, Confucian Reflections, 72–84. [ 294 ]

3. confucIAn HAppIness 91. Notes to 12.2, Eno, The Analects: An Online Teaching Translation, 59; See Shun, “Ren and Li in the Analects.” 92. Cf. Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 67–69, 70–72. How then should we characterize the relationship between li and ren? In 12.1–2 it seems that mastering the ritual forms of li is prior to and hence constitutive of the development of ren. Other passages suggest that ren is prior to li. “A person who is not ren—what does he have to do with li? (3.3) “If one is able to govern a state with li and deference, what difficulty will he have? If one is unable to govern a state with li and deference, what has he to do with li?” (4.13) “The junzi takes rightness (yi) as what is essential, and puts rightness into practice by observing li.” (15.18). Scholars mediate these differences in varying ways. Eno suggests that in the Analects “jen is ethically prior to li: the value of li derives from its power to generate ren, which is intrinsically good.” Once one has become a Sage, however, one can throw away one’s books and intuitively act as a perfect ritual actor. Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 69. Nevertheless, li is sequentially prior. It is through ritual practice that one develops the thoroughly ritualized character that is the ren ideal (ibid.). In an extended study of this problem, Kwong-Loi Shun opts for a middle ground between an interpretation that would make li purely instrumental for the development of ren or identify li definitionally as the expression of ren. He suggests that the ren ideal is expressed in Confucian society through Confucian ritual, but that the ideal cannot be reduced to li, since a virtue such as filial piety might find alternative expressions in another culture. Thus li is the behavioral language for the expression of ren. See Shun, “Ren and Li in the Analects,” 53–72. See also the response of Chenyang, “Li as Cultural Grammar.” For another fascinating explication of the relationship between ren and li, see Fingarette, “The Music of Humanity in the Conversations of Confucius.” 93. See Appendix 9. Confucius: The One Thread. 94. Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 180, 34. 95. In this analect Confucius asks his disciples what they would accomplish if a ruler gave them the opportunity to take charge of a state. Ivanhoe points out that the first response by Zilu describes grand social and political aims, while each successive response brings us closer to joy in our everyday life at hand. Ivanhoe, Confucian Reflections, 83–84, 110n21. 96. Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, 179–80. 97. Sufi and pietist thinkers of the Islamic and Jewish traditions debated this problem as well. How can one engage in pietistic behaviors purely for their own sake, as pure service of the divine, rather than for the approval of others? They called the striving for approval riyā’ (literally: “pretense, wanting to be seen”). See Lobel, A SufiJewish Dialogue, 167–70. 98. “6.9 The master said, ‘Worthy indeed was Hui! With a single bowl of food [to eat] and ladle of water to drink, living in a narrow lane—most could not have endured such hardship—but Hui never let it affect his joy. Worthy indeed was Hui!’” Confucius: The Analects, trans. Slingerland. One might argue that a Stoic strand is even more prominent in Zhuangzi, who responds to his wife’s death with Stoic restraint. Zhuangzi is a kind of paradoxically “playful Stoic.” For a tempered evaluation of Zhuangzi’s stoicism, see Ivanhoe, “Happiness in Early Confucian Thought,” 175. 99. See Ivanhoe, “Happiness in Early Chinese Thought,” 267–69. Ivanhoe has emphasized these themes in his article on Confucian happiness and his Confucian [ 295 ]

3. confucIAn HAppIness Reflections, both of which I read with pleasure toward the end of this study. I am in substantial agreement with his approach and presentation; they encapsulate many of the themes of this comparative work. 100. See Mencius 4A 27, Sommer, Chinese Religions, 58; Van Norden and Ivanhoe, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 138–39; Ivanhoe, “Happiness in Early Chinese Thought,” 268. 101. On the ways self-cultivation can significantly enrich our lives, see Ivanhoe, Confucian Reflections, xx. 102. Ivanhoe, “Happiness in Early Chinese Thought,” 268, 274. We will see that this is a difference between Confucian ritual and ritual in Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi’s rituals are individual; Confucian ritual always connects to the community. See Eno, “Cook Ding’s Dao and the Limits of Philosophy,” 142–43. See also Chapter 11, this volume; and Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura on vital engagement, the sense of connecting to a larger community of practice.

4. Daoism Appendixes: 10. Zhuangzi: Concentration of Spirit and Spiritual Fasting; 11. Zhuangzi: Skillful Action and Aristotelian Energeia; 12. Zhuangzi: The Question of Mystical Experience in Zhuangzi. 1. While early nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars made a separation between what they called Daoist philosophy (daojia) and Daoist religion (daojiao), recent scholarship has pointed to the intertwined nature of these dimensions of the Daoist tradition. See Sivin, “On the Word ‘Taoist’ as a Source of Perplexity,” 303–30; and his “Old and New Daoisms,” 31–50; Robson, “Introduction,” 45–67; Stephen R. Bokenkamp, “Daoism”; Michael, The Pristine Dao, 1–6. 2. For details on the dating of the text and his author, see Supplementary Note 2. Modern scholars generally agree that the book we have today is a compilation, drawn together from the sayings of a certain tradition, perhaps with internal commentary even within chapters. Many scholars believe the text may have reached something like its present form in the third century bce (about 225 bce); this is known as the “received” or Wang Bi version of the text. Because many scholars do see in the Daodejing a firm editorial hand with a coherent philosophical perspective, it is regarded as acceptable to refer to the text or its author as Lao Tzu or the Lao Tzu tradition. See Ivanhoe, The Daodejing of Laozi, xv–xvii; “The Concept of De (‘Virtue’) in the Laozi,” 253n1; Watson, “Introduction,” xii; Ziporyn, Ironies of Oneness and Difference, 139–40; Graham, Disputers of the Dao, 215–17. 3. Daodejing, Tao Te Ching, trans. Addiss and Lombardo. All translations are from this edition unless otherwise specified. I have altered the first two lines to capture a more literal translation of the Chinese, as discussed later in this chapter. 4. Analects 12.11. Confucius: The Analects, trans. Slingerland. Herbert Fingarette suggests that the second character is best understood as a verb; “if things are properly regulated in the community ‘the prince princes, the minister ministers, the father [ 296 ]

4. dAoIsm father, the son sons.’” Fingarette, “The Music of Humanity in the Conversations of Confucius,” 338. 5. For more on the first line, see Supplementary Note 5. 6. For more on the first two lines, see Supplementary Note 6. 7. See Ziporyn, “The Dao of the Daodejing.” 8. On the action of the Dao as non-purposive activity, see Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China, 125. Robert Eno suggests that the Chinese phrase actually refers to myriad kinds of living beings. Eno, Daodejing Selections I. 9. Analects 17.19. Confucius: The Analects, trans. Slingerland. 10. Analects 3.24, ibid. 11. Aristotle, Physics 206b 33. 12. One important interpretive question is whether this chapter suggests that Dao alone exists before heaven and earth were born, or whether something inchoate was born before heaven and earth. See Supplementary Note 12. 13. Liu Xiaogan argues that naturalness (ziran) is the core value in the teaching of the Daodejing, while wu-wei is the method of action Laozi recommends to realize or pursue that value. He thus argues that we should approach the text from the point of view of value theory. See Xiaogan, “An Inquiry Into the Core Value of Laozi’s Philosophy,” 215; Slingerland, Effortless Action, 95–104. 14. On the therapeutic effect of the sage, see Ivanhoe, “The Concept of De (‘Virtue’) in the Laozi.” 15. See Xialogan and Slingerland, cited in note 13. 16. On the reversal of usual values, see Graham, Disputers of the Dao, 223–26. 17. Cf. Schwartz, “The Thought of the Tao-te-ching,” 193. On the paradox that Nothing can give birth to Something, Slingerland writes: “nothing is in fact more real and enduring than all of the ephemeral ‘somethings’ that people value and pursue.” Slingerland, Effortless Action, 86. 18. See Graham, Disputers of the Dao, 223–34. 19. And with no particular purpose. Henricks, “Re-exploring the Analogy of the Dao and the Field,” especially 161–64; Cf. Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China, 125. 20. For a fascinating discussion of the evolution of the concept of de, see Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China, 124–28 and Supplementary Note 20. Ivanhoe, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 357–58; Ivanhoe, “The Concept of De (‘Virtue’) in the Laozi.” 242–50. See also Cline, “Two Interpretations of De in the Daodejing,” 219–33. 21. Mencius 2A2. 22. Western mystical traditions call this approach the way of unknowing. 23. Philip J. Ivanhoe translates pu as unhewn wood, pointing out that the common translation “uncarved block of wood” is a kind of oxymoron, since a block is carved. I have thus chosen the term uncarved wood. 24. Liu Xiaogan argues, on the basis of this passage and others, that the Daodejing is not advocating keeping the masses ignorant as a means of totalitarian social coercion, a common interpretation of Laozi’s theory of governance. What the passage shows is that the sage rulers too embrace simplicity and a form of holy “ignorance.” See Xiaogan, “An Inquiry Into the Core Value of Laozi’s Philosophy,” 228–30. The author’s self-depiction is reminiscent of the archetype of the holy fool. [ 297 ]

4. dAoIsm 25. For a graphic description of this process, see Slingerland, Effortless Action, 81– 82; see also Xiaogan, “An Inquiry Into the Core Value of Laozi’s Philosophy,” 225–27; Schwartz, “The Thought of the Tao-te-ching,” 201–3; Ivanhoe, “The Concept of De (‘Virtue’) in the Laozi,” 247–48. 26. We are most familiar with wu-wei as non-forced, interfering action. Slingerland points out that wei pronounced with a rising tone can either mean “to do” or “to be.” With a falling tone, it means “to take [something] to be [something else]” or less literally “to regard [something] as [something].” Thus Laozi bids us not only to embracing “non-doing” but also “non-regarding,” not acting obtrusively and not holding anything in regard or value over anything else. He sees these as two aspects of one spiritual state, the first behavioral and the second cognitive. See Slingerland, Effortless Action, 303n4, 89ff. On these two aspects as behavioral and cognitive, see Fox, “Wu-wei in Early Philosophical Daoism.” 27. See Ziporyn, “The Dao of the Daodejing.” 28. Ibid; see also Graham, Disputers of the Dao, 223–234. 29. In a fascinating study, Sarah Allan suggests that water and plant life are the root metaphors of foundational concepts in Chinese philosophy; she argues that the focal meaning of dao is not a roadway but a waterway. See Supplementary Note 29. Allan also connects water imagery with the concept of wu-wei; “wuwei is what water does; it has no will and does not act, but it moves spontaneously downward following the contours of the land and clears itself when it is still.” Allan, The Way of Water, 79. 30. See Henricks, “Re-exploring the Analogy of the Dao and the Field,” 161. Compare Smith, The World’s Religions, 198–99. For classical and modern interpretations of notions of Dao in the Daodejing, see Robinet, “The Diverse Interpretations of the Laozi,” 129–38. 31. Slingerland, Effortless Action; Fox, “Reflex and Reflexivity”; Loy, “Wei wu wei.” 32. See Ivanhoe, “The Paradox of Wu-wei?”; Fraser, “Psychological Emptiness in the Zhuangzi.” 33. However, Chris Fraser challenges the unitary nature of the Inner Chapters. See “Wandering the Way,” 543; and his review of Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters by Liu Xioaogan. 34. Fraser points out that this chapter itself may reflect a compilation, as Zhuangzi appears as a character in the chapter. 35. Translation by Graham, Chuang Tzu, 47. Watson: “Why don’t you plant it in NotEven-Anything Village, or the field of Broad-and Boundness, relax and do nothing [wu-wei] by its side or lie down for a free and easy sleep under it?” Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 35. 36. The term “spiritual rambling” is from Ames, The Art of Rulership. See Supplementary Note 36. 37. Michael Crandell, who also notes that the term wandering (you) occurs in the Zhuangzi almost as frequently as the term Dao itself. Crandell, “On Walking Without Touching the Ground,” 114. 38. Graham translates the title of the first chapter as “Going Rambling Without a Destination.” 39. See Chapter 10, this volume. 40. Fox, “Reflex and Reflexivity,” 209. [ 298 ]

4. dAoIsm 41. This could relate to the dance of the Mulberry grove, a Confucian ritual that appears in the Zhuangzi in the story of Cook Ding. 42. For other translations, see Supplementary Note 42. 43. For additional translations, see Supplementary Note 43. 44. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Chapter 6, “The Great and Venerable Teacher,” 86–87. 45. See Kjellberg, “Zhuangzi,” 239. 46. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Chapter 6, 88. 47. For other translations, see Supplementary Note 47. 48. See Supplementary Note 48. 49. Compare the description of Zhuangzi’s mourning his wife’s death and the interesting discussion by Nivison, “Hsun Tzu and Chuang Tzu.” 50. See note 65, this chapter. 51. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Chapter 3, “The Secret of Caring for Life,” 46. I have consulted several translations of the Zhuangzi, especially those by A. C. Graham, Burton Watson, Slingerland’s Effortless Action, Paul Kjellberg, and Brook Ziporyn. I will indicate in the text in each case which translation I have chosen. 52. This passage also introduces another key theme of Zhuangzi, that of the Dao as engendering endless transformation (hua). For this theme, see Michael Crandell, “On Walking Without Touching the Ground,” 105–8; Ziporyn, “Zhuangzi as Philosopher”; Tao, “Two Notions of Freedom in Classical Chinese Thought,” 466, who notes that we should understand Hua as transformation with things rather than of things. 53. See Ziporyn, “Zhuangzi as Philosopher.” 54. Ivanhoe, “The Theme of Unselfconsciousness in the Liezi.” 55. Watson notes that the Mulberry Grove is a rain dance from the time of King T’ang of the Shang Dynasty, while the Ching-shou music is part of a longer composition from the time of Yao. Both thus date back to the mythical time of the ancient sage kings. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 46, note 3. 56. See Robert Eno on the origins of Ruist ritual including sacred dance. Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven, especially 59–60. 57. See Hansen, “Chuang Tsu (Zhuangzi),” 135–36; Slingerland, “Appendix 1: The ‘Many-Dao Theory,’” in Effortless Action, 275–76. 58. See Hansen, “A Tao of Tao in Chuang Tzu.” 59. Brook Ziporyn speaks of the “ironic Dao,” the way that is not a prescriptive way. Ziporyn, “The Dao of the Daodejing.” 60. On Tian or Dao as an ultimate normative order, see Fraser, “Psychological Emptiness in the Zhuangzi,” 138. 61. Slingerland,” Effortless Action, 199–200. Cf. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 46–47. 62. As Michael Puett notes, “by allowing the ‘spiritual desires’ (shen yu) to go where they wish, Cook Ding accords with the Heavenly patterns (tian li).” See Puett, “‘Nothing Can Overcome Heaven,” 256, 259–60. 63. Slingerland, Effortless Action, 201, citing Pang Pu, “Jieniu zhi jie,” Xueshu Yuekan 3:11–20. 64. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Chapter 4, “In the World of Men,” 57–58. (with a few emendations). For other translations, see Supplementary Note 64. Chris [ 299 ]

4. dAoIsm Fraser notes difficulties in translating the phrase “Only the Way gathers in emptiness” and suggests various interpretive possibilities. See Fraser, “Psychological Emptiness in the Zhuangzi,” 143n13. 65. Ivanhoe suggests that this is a parody of Confucian practices of sacrifice and fasting. He extends the notion of parody of meditative practices to other passages as well. See Ivanhoe and Carr, The Sense of Antirationalism, 98, and below, note 95. The anti-Confucian stance is heightened in a parallel passage in Chapter 6, as Yan Hui’s fast enables him to gradually lets go of reliance on the Confucian virtues of humanheartedness (ren) and righteousness (yi) and the practices of the rites (li) and music (wen): Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 86–87. 66. See Slingerland, Effortless Action, 201. One is also reminded of the epistemological scheme of Plato’s divided line in Republic VI 509d-513e, which begins with ordinary sensory knowledge (eikasia), moves to belief based on the senses (pistis) and finally moves from ordinary mathematical and scientific reasoning (dianoia) to intuitive knowledge (noesis). Intuitive knowledge is what allows us to see in a deeper way, beyond the senses. 67. Compare Halevi, Kuzari 4.3. 68. Brook Ziporyn’s translation of the passage brings out well this deeper way of seeing; Zhuangzi: Essential Writings, 22. See Supplementary Note 68. 69. In the story of the Bell Stand from the School of Zhuangzi (Chapter 19), this will be called matching up Heaven with Heaven, the spiritual nature within to the nature of the nature of what is without. See Appendix 10. Concentration of Spirit and Spiritual Fasting. 70. Slingerland, Effortless Action, 201, based on other passages in the Zhuangzi and the Inner Training, an early Daoist text on self-cultivation. 71. Ibid. Thus Zhuangzi suggests that there is a part of the human being that connects with Heaven or the Way; at times Zhuangzi talks about it as the Heavenly Mechanism (2, 17) or the Spirit Tower (19). Cf. Slingerland, Effortless Action, 179. Chris Fraser points out that qi is a kind of liquid energy and may have been conceived of like water vapor. Thus “‘listening with the qi’ might be understood by appeal to the metaphor of a pool of still water or a cloud of water vapor responding to perturbation.” Fraser, “Psychological Emptiness in the Zhuangzi,” 144n15. 72. Slingerland, Effortless Action, notes a passage from the Outer Chapters, Chapter 11, that echoes Confucus’ advice to Yan Hui. In this passage “spirit” takes the place of qi. See Supplementary Note 72. 73. Fraser, “Psychological Emptiness in the Zhuangzi,” 132. 74. Tao Te Ching, trans. Addis and Lombardo and Ivanhoe: That which is not there can enter in, even where there is no space. Dr. Brian Loh noted that two of the four Chinese characters are the same. His literal translation renders Laozi: without having enters without space. Zhuangzi: without thickness enters with space. 75. See now Fraser, “Wandering the Way,” 26. I read this interesting paper, with which I am in substantial agreement, after I had completed this study. 76. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 47. Jiang Tao notes that the butcher and the ox are both transformed in this process. See Tao, “Two Notions of Freedom in Classical Chinese Thought,” 469. [ 300 ]

4. dAoIsm 77. And, indeed, commentators have noted that none of the skill passages in Zhuangzi actually use the term wu-wei. Thus scholars such as Chris Fraser have suggested that these skill passages suggest an ideal of being guided by spirit conceptually distinct from wu-wei, which they conceive of not being guided by direction or intention at all. See Fraser, “Psychological Emptiness in the Zhuangzi,” 131, 145 and notes 23 and 24. 78. Brook Ziporyn’s translation captures well this sense of waiting attentively for the prompting of spirit. Ziporyn, Zhuangzi: Essential Writings, 23. See Supplementary Note 78. 79. See, for example, Fraser, “Wandering the Way,” 26–28. He notes that Zhuangzi uses the language of wandering (you) in the Cook Ding story: “Within the interstices in the structure, he says, there is plenty of space for his blade to wander (you). The metaphorical implication is that we can wander through life by similarly finding our way through the ‘gaps’ in the inherent structure of our circumstances.” Fraser, “Wandering the Way,” 25–26. While Fraser acknowledges that this action is guided by spirit (see, e.g., “Psychological Emptiness,” 137), what is in dispute is whether we use the umbrella label wu-wei to describe this level of being guided by spirit in unselfconscious performances of skilled or artistic action. 80. However, Ivanhoe objects to the language of second nature, suggesting that from a Daoist perspective a second nature by definition would be unnatural. Ivanhoe and Carr, The Sense of Antirationalism, 105. 81. It is true that the goal of Confucian ritual is to achieve ren—a moral virtue of human heartedness; his actions come to harmonize with the moral norm. Zhuangzi’s actions, in contrast, are in accord with a Way he does not describe in moral terms. Nevertheless, scholars have noted that he does not describe mastery of evil or criminal arts and expresses a faith that when one lets go, one is guided by a Way that is benevolent and harmonious. See Ivanhoe, “Zhuangzi on Skepticism, Skill, and the Ineffable Dao,” 44. Michael Puett has argued persuasively that Zhuangzi’s ideal is a normative one, not achieved by adhering to prescribed rituals but by attuning oneself to the patterns assigned by nature. Thus there is a Stoic quality to Zhuangzi; happiness or harmony is achieved by accepting and going along with the transformations of nature, rather than denying or resisting them. See Puett, “Nothing Can Overcome Heaven,” 259–60. 82. See Slingerland, Effortless Action, 212–13. 83. Ibid., 212. See also Slingerland and David Nivison on the paradox of virtue in the Analects, which Nivison compares to the paradox of learning in Plato, Meno 80d ff. Slingerland, Effortless Action, 71; Nivison, “Weakness of Will in Ancient Chinese Philosophy,” 80. See also Nivison, “The Paradox of ‘Virtue,’” in the Ways of Confucianism, 31–43. 84. See Singerland, Effortless Action, 213, citing Kanaya Osamu and Mori Mikisaburo. For Zhuangzi’s faith in the natural, see also Ivanhoe and Carr, The Sense of Antirationalism, 171–72; Ivanhoe, “Happiness in Early Chinese Thought,” 265. 85. The image of a protective cocoon was suggested to me by Brian Loh. 86. For this passage, see Supplementary Note 86. 87. It is true, as Chris Fraser points out, that the most famous passages about skill in the Zhuangzi do not actually use the term wu-wei. But, as commentators through [ 301 ]

4. dAoIsm the centuries have noted, there does seem to be some phenomenological similarity between these skill passages and the concept of wu-wei. Through these stories, Zhuangzi illustrates the theme of effortless, unforced, natural action. See Fraser, “On Wu-wei as a Unifying Metaphor,” 101; and his “Psychological Emptiness in the Zhuangzi”; Fox, “Reflex and Reflectivity.” 88. Chapter 19, “Mastering Life,” Zhuangzi: Essential Writings, 120–21. 89. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow. See Appendix 11. Zhuangzi: Skillful Action and Aristotelian Energeia and Chapter 11, this volume; see now also Barrett, “Wuwei and Flow.” This passage is an interesting parallel to a passage in Mencius 2A2 about the concentration of qi. On the latter passage, see Mencius, Van Norden, “Mengzi (Mencius),” 125–27; Slingerland, Effortless Action, 153–57. 90. Ivanhoe notes that his disregard for himself leads him to liken his torso and limbs to mere things; they are not “his.” He has lost the sense of self. This, he notes, expresses the Daoist notion of the equality of things. Ivanhoe, “The Theme of Unselfconsciousness in the Liezi,” 137. Robert Eno takes a different perspective on this image; he comes to resemble a feature of the natural landscape. Eno, “Cook Ding’s Dao and the Limits of Philosophy,” 141. 91. Chapter 6, “The Great and Venerable Teacher,” Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 87. 92. This is what the Laozi has called “non-regarding.” See Slingerland, Effortless Action, 77–84 and 303n4. See now also Fraser, “Psychological Emptiness in the Zhuangzi, 123–47. 93. See Supplementary Note 93. 94. Chapter 4, “In the World Of Men,” Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 54. 95. Ivanhoe offers an intriguing and compelling reading of these passages on meditation as high irony. He suggests that just as Zhuangzi pokes fun at Confucians and Mohists, with their exorbitant confidence in logic, here too he takes aim at radical meditative practices. Ivanhoe suggests that Zhuangzi is pointing to a new form of cognitive awareness, rather than a radical meditative shift. His detailed reading of these passages accords well with Zhuangzi’s overall tone of humor and irony. See Ivanhoe and Carr, The Sense of Antirationalism, 95–105. A. C. Graham comments, “It is easy to withdraw from the world as a hermit, hard to remain above the world while living in it.” Graham, Chuang Tzu, 69. This can be compared to the ideal of karma yoga in the Bhagavad Gītā, which aims to achieve liberation while continuing to carry out one’s sacred duty in the world. See Chapter 5, this volume. 96. Alan Fox gives the example of the way we skillfully weave our way through a crowd; Graham mentions the way any rational adult can drive a car with effortless grace. See Fox, “Reflexivity and Reflection,” 212; Graham, “Taoist Spontaneity and the Dichotomy of Is and Ought,” 8. In each case, we make thousands of decisions without the use of rational intellect; our body and being have learned a way of navigating that is skillful, frictionless, and effective. 97. See Eno, “Cook Ding’s Dao and the Limits of Philosophy,” 133–36; Graham, “Taoist Sponaneity and the Dichotomy of Is and Ought,” 7–8; Fox, “Zhuangzi’s Weiwuwei Epistemology.” [ 302 ]

4. dAoIsm 98. For losing rather than gaining, see Daodejing, Chapter 48. On these paradoxes of self-cultivation, see Ivanhoe and Carr, The Sense of Antirationalism, 99–109. 99. We will see this paradox illustrated beautifully in the Bhagavad Gītā, 4:18: “He who is able to see the nonaction within action.” David Loy noted this parallel and calls both karma yoga and wu-wei types of nondual action, a paradoxical “doing nondoing,” in which there is no division between the person and the action. Action is accomplished, but there is no doer separate from the action; doing takes place, but we are not the agent. See Loy, “Wei wu-wei,” 78–79. 100. See Slingerland, Effortless Action, 182–203; Fox, “Reflex and Reflexivity.” 101. See Kjellberg, “Zhuangzi,” 209; Graham: “as if he had lost the counterpart of himself,” Graham, Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters, 48. Ivanhoe interprets this passage as a parody of meditative practice. See Ivanhoe and Carr, The Sense of Antirationalism, 95–96. 102. Brook Ziporyn suggests it may refer to the loss of one fixed, rigid perspective with which one identifies; see Ziporyn, “Zhuangzi as Philosopher”; see also Tom Michael, on the constructed self (wo) in contrast to the authentic self (wu). Michael, The Pristine Dao, 81–82. See also Jochim, “Just Say No to No-Self,” 56. 103. Graham notes that different notes can be blown by the same breath in the long and short tubes of the panpipes: “Chuang-tzu’s parable of the wind compares the conflicting utterances of philosophers to the different notes blown by the same breath in the long and short tubes of the pan-pipes, and these noises made by the wind in hollows of different shapes. It is natural for differently constituted persons to think differently; don’t try to decide between their opinions, listen to Heaven who breathes through them.” Graham, Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, 49 note. 104. Ziporyn, “Zhuangzi as Philosopher”; Yearley, “The Perfected Person in the Radical Chuang-tzu,” especially 135–37; Michael, The Pristine Dao, 81–82. 105. Daodejing, Tao Te Ching, trans. Addiss and Lombardo. 106. Kjellberg: “Saying is not just blowing. Saying says something. But if what it says is not fixed, then does it really say anything? Or does it say nothing?” Kjellberg, “Zhuangzi,” 212. 107. Graham, “Chuang-tzu’s Essay on Seeing Things as Equal,” 141–42. 108. The term circles of belief is derived from Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 109. Graham, “Taoist Spontaneity and the Dichotomy of Is and Ought,” 4–5; “Chuang tzu’s Essay on Seeing All Things as Equal,” 141–43. Ivanhoe notes that reason is neutral with respect to ends; if one reasons from incompatible premises, one often arrives at paradox. Moreover, people weigh evidence differently, especially on matters of value. See Ivanhoe and Carr, The Sense of Antirationalism, 49. 110. See Chapter 2, Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 35; trans. Kjellberg in Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 212–13; trans. Chan in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 182–83; trans. Ziporyn, Zhuangzi: Essential Writings, 12; trans. Graham, Chuang Tzu, 52–53. 111. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 36; Kjellberg, in Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 213; Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 184; trans. Ziporyn, Zhuangzi: Essential Writings, 13. [ 303 ]

4. dAoIsm 112. See Supplementary Note 112. 113. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 36; Kjellberg, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 213; Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 184; Ziporyn, Zhuangzi: Essential Writings, 14. 114. Ziporyn, “Zhuangzi as Philosopher” and “Using the Wild Card.” 115. Graham, “Chuang-Tzu’s Essay on Seeing Things as Equal,” 143. 116. Ibid. In his translation, Graham terms these the “that’s it which deems” (wei shi). As an example, Graham explains that when we are debating whether an object before us fits the name “ox,” the object is deemed (wei) an ox by the judgment “that’s it!” (shi). While Zhuangzi rejects the rigid “That’s it which deems” (wei shi), he allows the flexible “That’s it” which goes by circumstance (yin shi). See Graham, Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, Chapter 2, “The Sorting Which Evens Things Out,” 54. The terms flowing cognition and fixed cognition are those of Harold Roth, Original Tao, 132. 117. Graham, “Chuang-tzu’s Essay on Seeing Things as Equal,” 144. Graham uses the older Wade-Giles system of transliteration, which spells the word shih, whereas most scholars now use the Pinyin system. 118. Ibid. In the article he thus translates: “The adaptive ‘that’s it’ comes to an end; and when it is at an end, that of which we do not know what is so of it we call the Way” (ibid., 153). In his translation he revises slightly: “The ‘That’s it’ which goes by circumstance comes to an end; and when it is at an end, that of which you do not know what is so of it you call the ‘Way.’” Graham, Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, 54. 119. For the quite varied translations of this passage, see Supplementary Note 119. 120. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 41; Kjellberg, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 217; Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 188; Ziporyn, Zhuangzi: Essential Writings, 17. See Mencius 2A6 on the sprouts of benevolence and righteousness. 121. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 41–42; Kjellberg, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 217; Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 188; Ziporyn, Zhuangzi: Essential Writings, 18. 122. See Chapters 10 and 11, this volume, on the work of Ellen Langer, whose studies show graphically how we base our self-worth on arbitrary standards of authority. 123. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 44; Kjellberg, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 218; Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 189–90; Ziporyn, Zhuangzi: Essential Writings, 19–20. 124. See Fraser, “Skepticism and Value in the Zhuangzi,” 453–55. 125. Chapter 1, “Wandering at Ease.” 126. Zhuangzi, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 45; Kjellberg, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 219; Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 190; Ziporyn, Zhuangzi: Essential Writings, 21. 127. See Graham, “Taoist Spontaneity and the Dichotomy of Is and Ought,” 9–10; see also Ivanhoe, “Zhuangzi on Skepticism, Skill and the Ineffable Dao,” 647. Zhuangzi, Chapter 7, end. Graham, Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, 98; Zhuangzi: Essential Writings. Cf. Graham, Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, 259, a chapter of the “Syncretist,” cited by Ivanhoe, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, 647. On mind as mirror, see Ivanhoe and Carr, The Sense of Antirationalism, 56–57; and Cline, “Mirrors, Minds, and Metaphors.” [ 304 ]

5. tHe bhagavad gītā 128. See Ziporyn, “Zhuangzi as Philosopher.” 129. This perspective is made clear through the narrative of outer Chapter 21, which has been referred to as a conversion experience. Zhuangzi is wandering around a park and is entranced by the vision of a magpie. He is attracted to it as a tasty source for dinner, but then sees a predatory chain, each member of which is ready to abandon its own safety, lured by desire. He becomes dejected, realizing he too had “lost himself ” in his desire. This is a losing oneself opposite to the positive kind of losing one’s ego self we see at the beginning of Chapter 2. Zhuangzi’s desire causes him to lose his center. He also cites the words of his master: when one goes among the people, one must follow their ways. That is, one must adapt oneself to the ways of the world. See Ivanhoe, “Zhuangzi’s Conversion Experience,” 13–25. 130. See Puett, “Nothing Can Overcome Heaven,” 255–60.

5. The Bhagavad Gītā Appendixes: 1. The Bhagavad Gītā in the Mahābhārata; 2. The Bhagavad Gītā: An Exegesis of Sacrifice; 3. The Bhagavad Gītā: Who Is the Real Agent?; 4. The Bhagavad Gītā: Hierarchy of Practice in Chapter 12. 1. For example, Slingerland compares the paradox of wu-wei—the problem of how we can try to be effortless—to what he calls “the mystery of karma-yoga, a state where one can attain the fruits of one’s desires, only if one can be free of desire, and not attached to those fruits.” Slingerland, Trying Not to Try, 171. See also note 69, this chapter. 2. See Flood, Introduction to Hinduism, 23–35; Klostermaier, A Short Introduction to Hinduism, 5–8; Kinsley, Hinduism, 10–11. I draw in this chapter upon, material from Lobel, The Quest for God and the Good, 87–97. 3. Flood, Introduction to Hinduism, 33–34. 4. Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, 11. 5. Hiltebeitel, “Hinduism,” 337; Klostermeier, A Survey of Hinduism, 62–63. 6. Flood, Introduction to Hinduism, 35; Klostermaier, A Short Introduction to Hinduism, 16. Kinsley, Hinduism, 11. 7. Doniger, Hymns from the Ṛig Veda. 8. Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, 28; Kinsley, Hinduism, 11. 9. For meanings of Brahman, see Supplementary Note 9. 10. Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, 19–20, Olivelle, Upanishads, lvi; Edgerton, The Bhagavad Gītā, 116. 11. The distinction between Brāhmaṇas and Āraṇyakas is not absolute. See Supplementary Note 11. 12. Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 10.2.5.11. Cited in Flood, Introduction to Hinduism, 84, from Eggeling, The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. 13. For more on Brahman, see Supplementary Note 13. 14. Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, 31; Olivelle, Upanishads, xxxii; Zaehner, The Bhagavad Gītā, 37. 15. For further explanation of the term Brahman, see Supplementary Note 15. [ 305 ]

5. tHe bhagavad gītā 16. See “The Hymn of the Person,” in Doniger, Hymns from the Ṛig Veda, 24–25. 17. The term atmān is the common Sanskrit term for “self.” It is used generally as a reflexive pronoun, from which it took on the more specific meaning of the essential part of a human being. At times this was taken to be the living, breathing body, or the trunk of the body as opposed to the limbs, but gradually the atmān was distinguished from the physical body, and came to signify the inner self. See Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, 37; Olivelle, Upanishads, xlix. 18. Olivelle points to this as the final upaniṣad or equation: that between the individual ātman, the essential I, and the ultimately real. Olivelle, Upanishads, lvi. In its conventional etymology, the term upanishad was said to mean “to sit near” and referred to the practice of students sitting near their teachers and learning the sacred Scriptures; see Brereton, “The Upanishads,” 124–25; Olivelle, Upanishads, xxxii, lii– liii; Hitelbeitel, 341; Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, 36–37. Recently, scholars have argued that the term upaniṣad actually signifies “connection” or “equivalence.” See Supplementary Note 18. 19. See Supplementary Note 19. 20. Chāndogya Upanishad 6:1–6:16 (esp. 6:1, 6:2, 6:8, 6:10), in Thirteen Principal Upanishads, trans. Hume; Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, 43; Brereton, “The Upanishads,” 122–24. 21. Or: “thus are you!” “that’s how you are!” Chāndogya Upanishad 6:9–6:16. Compare Olivelle (Upanishads, 153–56): “The finest essence here—that constitutes the self of this whole world; that is the truth; that is the self (ātman). And that’s how you are, Śvetaketu!” Olivelle suggests that this is the final upaniṣad, the final equation or connection; brahman is the summit of the hierarchical scheme of the cosmos, and the final equation to be made is between the individual ātman and brahman. Olivelle, Upanishads, lvi. Olivelle’s translation appears to follow the persuasive argument of Joel Brereton, “Tat Tvam Asi in Context,” 98–109. See Supplementary Note 21. 22. Chāndogya Upanishad 8:1–3. 23. Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad 4.2–4.5, in Thirteen Principal Upanishads, trans. Hume; see Brereton, “The Upanishads,” 126–30; Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, 40–43, 45–47. 24. See Māṇḍūkya Upanishad and the teaching of Prajāpati in Chāndogya Upanishad, Chapter 8:7–12; see also Brereton, “The Upanishads,” 127–28; Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, 39–40. 25. On the non-dual Self according to Advaita Vedānta, see Radhakrishnan and Moore, A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, 507; Deutsch and van Buitenen, A Source Book of Advaita; Deutsch, Advaita Vedānta, 47–65; Danbekar, “Vedānta”; Zaehner, Hinduism, 83; King, An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought, 185, 217. However, scholars of Indian philosophy remind us that the Advaita Vedānta is only one tradition of the six schools of classical Indian philosophy. There are even other non-dualistic positions that are equally authoritative. See King, Indian Philosophy and Supplementary Note 25. On the qualified non-dualism of Rāmānuja, see Carman, The Theology of Rāmānuja, especially 114–33, 158–66; and his “Rāmānuja.” 26. Śaṅkarācārya. Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, 103–4. Scholars dispute whether the great scholar of non-dualist Vedānta Śaṅkara is the author of this text, but it is clearly from the Advaita (non-dualist) school. See Lorenzen, “Śaṅkara,” 64. [ 306 ]

5. tHe bhagavad gītā 27. Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad 3.2.13, 4.4.3–4, in Thirteen Principal Upanishads, trans. Hume; see Brereton, “Tat Tvam Asi in Context,” 132–33; Flood, Introduction to Hinduism, 86; Mahoney, “Karman: Hindu and Jain Concepts,” 263. 28. On earlier notions of karma and the afterlife, see O’Flaherty, “Karma and Rebirth in the Vedas and Purāṇas,” 3–37. On the later association between karma and saṃsāra, see Flood, Introduction to Hinduism, 86; Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, 50–51; Brereton, “The Upanishads,” 131–33. Smith, “Saṃsāra,” 56–57; and the articles collected by O’Flaherty in Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions. 29. Franklin Edgerton distinguishes between these two norms: the ordinary norm of fulfilling one’s dharma and upholding the world order and the extraordinary norm of renouncing the world and seeking complete liberation from the world order. He writes: “At the very outset this quest is complicated by a striking dichotomy in Indian culture. There are two radically different norms of human life and conduct, both at least tolerated, indeed in some sense accepted and approved, each in its own sphere. I shall call them the ordinary and the extraordinary norms. One strange thing is that one of them seems to involve a complete negation or rejection of the other as an acceptable norm.” Edgerton, “Dominant Ideas in the Formation of Indian Culture,” 151. This distinction is subsequently cited by Larson, “The Trimurti of Dharma in Indian Thought,” 149; and by Creel, in the same issue of Philosophy East and West, “Dharma as an Ethical Category.” On the terms dharma and moksha, see Supplementary Note 29. 30. In a late 1950s issue of Philosophy East and West, Professors J. A. B. van Buitenen and Daniel H. H. Ingalls present contrasting accounts of these ideals of dharma and moksha. See Supplementary Note 30. 31. For more on these two concepts of the human person—as an agent of action and as one who transcends agency—see Flood, “The Meaning and Context of the Puruṣarthas.” 20–21. 32. Ithamar Theodor describes this dynamic as an ethical ladder in which one can hold to the paths of both renunciation and action by performing action but renouncing its fruits. One ascends the ladder by sublimating action until one achieves pure devotion, which includes moksha. See Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā. Theodor introduces the ethical ladder in his introduction, 17–24, and draws upon it throughout his insightful work. For a detailed description of this ladder, see Supplementary Note 32. 33. See page 128. Of course the great non-dualist Vedānta philosopher Śaṅkara will interpret even the most blatantly dualistic passages to suggest complete non-dualism. See the Bhagavad Gītā, trans. Sastry. 34. See Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition, 40–43. 35. For a nuanced view of Arjuna’s dilemma articulated by Emily Hudson, see Appendix 1, The Bhagavad Gītā in the Mahabharata. 36. For the term karma, see Supplementary Note 36. 37. Klostermaier, A Short Introduction to Hinduism, 40–42. 38. Kosambi, “Social and Economic Aspects of the Bhagavad Gītā.” Cited by Brockingon, “The Bhagavad Gītā,” 36. On this moral problematic of the Gītā, see the discussion of Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 215–16. Theodor noted to me that the most radical solution to the tension between violence and non-violence is found in 18.17: that one who kills without a notion of ego does not actually kill. [ 307 ]

5. tHe bhagavad gītā 39. On diverse interpretations of the field of dharma, see Hirst, “Upholding the World,” 60–61. See also Supplementary Note 29 for more on the many connotations associated with the term dharma, especially as they pertain to moral obligations and virtuosity. 40. Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” 136. 41. See Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā, 33–34; Brockington, “The Bhagavad Gītā,” 37. 42. The context for this ethic of disinterested action was originally ritual. Krishna argues that rather than seeking the reward for ritual action, one should perform one’s duty without a specific desire or intention. See notes 62 and 72, this chapter. 43. As Brockington expresses it, “disinterested action, rather than mere inactivity, is the true opposite to action.” Brockington, “The Bhagavad Gītā,” 38. And if we are truly non-attached, we do not reap the fruits of karma—good or bad. 44. See Czikszentmihalyi, Flow; and Chapter 11, this volume. 45. We see a similar ideal in Zhuangzi’s archer, who does best when he shoots without being distracted by longing for the result. 46. Some text-critical scholars argue that this verse is a later, theistic interpolation to an earlier discussion of karma yoga. See Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 77. 47. In this passage, we hear that the goal is to become free of ahaṃkāra, the cognitive faculty of ego-consciousness that is much discussed in Sāṅkhya philosophy. See ibid., 78. 48. See Gītā 6.22. 49. King, Indian Philosophy, 182–83; Radhakrishnan and Moore, A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, 424–25; Harzer, “Sāṃkhya,” 47–51. 50. Radhakrishnan and Moore, A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, 424–25, 453–54; King, Indian Philosophy, 166–96. The term yoga derives from the root yuj, to bind together, hold fast, control, unite, or yoke. See Eliade, “Yoga,” 519; Flood, Introduction to Hinduism, 94. See also Edgerton, “The Meaning of Sāṃkhya and Yoga,” 1–45; Edgerton, The Bhagavad Gītā, 166. Sāṅkhya metaphysics is not only dualistic; it is pluralistic. There are many purushas, many individual spirits. In fact, in early Sāṅkhya teaching we find many spirits but no God. In the later philosophy of Yoga—a school related to Sāṅkhya, but exhibiting some distinct features—there exists as well a supreme Lord, who is Spirit and separate from nature. We find here a genuine personal God who can become the object of our worship. However, this is not a Lord who created the world, but simply a model of the practitioner of Yoga, the yogin who is eternally separate and has never mistaken himself for the object of experience. King, Indian Philosophy, 166–96, 211–12; Eliade, “Yoga,” 522. 51. On the term brahma-nirvana, see Zaehner, The Bhagavad Gītā, 158–59. Robert Minor notes that the Gītā uses it to refer to the happiness and peace of one who is eternally with Krishna after death (2.72, 4.9, 7.23, 8.21). See Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 78–79, 96–99, 198–200; see also Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 78–79. The term recurs in 5.24–25, where we find both the goal of personal liberation into a sublime state of peace and the value of preserving the well-being of the world as a whole, both themes important to Buddhism. The Gītā even suggests that liberation is available to us right here, within this life. The concept of a soul liberated in this life was known [ 308 ]

5. tHe bhagavad gītā as jivan mukta. See Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā, 59; Minor points out that 5.19 speaks of those who are liberated “right here in this world,” and asserts that they are jivanmuktas. Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 198. 52. See 5:18–21. Minor, a Sanskritist who has written a complete exegetical commentary on the Gītā, argues persuasively that, in this context in the Gītā, brahman is not an impersonal spirit but a state of liberation. Brahma-bhuta (become brahman, see 5.24, 6.27) or being established in brahman (5.18–21) does not mean a state of pure consciousness, but one of non-attachment, indifference, and tranquility, or of liberation while in this life. This seems to fit quite well the passages to which he refers: 2.72, 5.18–21. See Supplementary Note 52. See Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 78–79, 96–99, 198–200. 53. Minor has noted well that the state of liberation in the Gītā is one of going to Krishna’s presence (8.21, 15.6) and to his mode of being (4.10, 8.5, 13.18). Even those devoted to the unmanifest imperishable reach Krishna, rather than the unmanifest imperishable (12.1, 12.3–4). Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 80. 54. See Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā, 41–43. We can find a parallel in the thought of Aristotle; Gabriel Richardson Lear suggests that Aristotle is perhaps offering a way to imitate the pure life of contemplation (theoria) while we are engaged in action. Lear, Happy Lives and the Highest Good, 4. 55. We might compare this with Aristotle’s suggestion in Nicomachean Ethics Book 10 that there is a divine form of happiness for those who are suited to contemplation, and a human form of happiness for those more suited to life in the polis. 56. For a fascinating historical explication of the “wheel of sacrifice,” see Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 79–90. 57. We will see similar techniques in Buddhist mindfulness meditation. See Chapter 10, this volume. 58. On the integration of these three disciplines, see Brockington, “The Bhagavad Gītā,” 37. Some text critical scholars see 3.20–23 as another theistic interpolation back into an earlier strand of the text. See Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 93–94. 59. Brockington notes, however, that there is a countertradition, which asserts that since all beings are in the divinity one should behave in the same way toward all. He cites 4.35, 5.7, 6.29–32, 13.28. Brockington, “The Bhagavad Gītā,” 39. 60. See, e.g., The Bhagavad Gītā, trans. White, 57; Hirst, “Upholding the World,” 58. 61. This is the suggestion of Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā, 48; see also Brockington, “The Bhagavad Gītā,” 37. We are reminded of the Islamic tradition (hadīth) that the true striving (jihād) is the striving within, against the evil inclination: “A number of fighters came to the Messenger of Allah, and he said: “You have done well in coming from the ‘lesser jihād’ to the ‘greater jihād.’” They said: “What is the ‘greater jihād’? He said: “For the servant [of God] to fight his passions.” Translation by Cook, Understanding Jihad, 35. For Islamic evaluations of this hadīth, see Supplementary Note 61. 62. Although some scholars refer to this as the avatara doctrine, Malinar points out that the Gītā itself does not use the term avatara to refer to the descent or embodiment of Krishna. See Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 99. 63. 4.9–10. Cf. Brockington, “The Bhagavad Gītā,” 37, who cites 7.19, 10.3, 14.1–2. [ 309 ]

5. tHe bhagavad gītā 64. Sargeant: “attain my state of being.” Miller: “come into my presence.” Thompson: “come to me.” 65. Or: “come altogether to Krishna.” The adverb sarvasas can mean altogether, in all ways, wholly, completely, universally. The Bhagavad Gītā, trans. Thompson, 92n3. Sargeant has for sarvasas “everywhere,” “on all sides”: “men everywhere follow my path.” The Bhagavad Gītā, trans. Sargeant, 211. 66. Minor notes that one attains Krishna’s state of liberated consciousness, while retaining distinctions between self, Krishna, and nature. The Gītā expresses this both as a state of consciousness and a place of Krishna’s abode. Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 155. 67. We will see a parallel to this in Maimonides, who presents God as acting without moral qualities. Thus the prophet is to act like a Stoic sage who has extirpated his passions. See Guide of the Perplexed 1.54; and Davidson, “The Middle Way in Maimonides’ Ethics.” 68. Zaehner, The Bhagavad Gītā, 187, comment to 4.14. Minor notes that knowing in Indian thought “involves more than intellectual understanding. It is a change of being, a new stance taken toward Reality.” Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 159. See also Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, comparing the identical verses 3.23 cd and 4.11 cd on the way beings follow Krishna. 69. For an interesting comparison of non-attached, non-dual action in the Gītā and the Daodejing, see Loy, “Wei wu-wei,” 79. 70. We can recall a similar teaching in Daodejing 27: a good traveler leaves no tracks. Cf. Brockington, “The Bhagavad Gītā,” 37–38. 71. This is the suggestion of Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā, 53; cf. Brockington, “The Bhagavad Gītā,” 27. 72. See the discussion of van Buitenen, The Bhagavadgītā, 164, and Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 103–4. 73. Easwaran, The End of Sorrow, 247–48. 74. See also 3.9: “Action imprisons the world unless done as sacrifice. Freed from attachment, perform action as sacrifice!” Are we freed “by actions” or “from actions? Minor notes that both the Gītā’s doctrine and the Sanskrit allow either interpretation. By practicing non-attachment, we can be freed by actions. Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 134–35. 75. Cited by Easwaran, The End of Sorrow, 253. 76. Gītā IV:13–14; Easwaran, The End of Sorrow, 63–64, 253–4. 77. II:48, 50. 78. 2.48. 79. See Appendix 2. The Bhagavad Gītā: An Exegesis of Sacrifice. 80. This theme is reiterated in the final chapter of the Gītā, Chapter 18, in which Krishna distinguishes between the renunciation (sannyāsa) of action motivated by desire, and relinquishment (tyāga), which connotes giving up the fruits of all actions. Krishna thus rejects the Jain ascetic view that all actions should be abandoned in the quest for liberation; he upholds the view that traditional social and ritual duties should be upheld, while their fruits should be offered up to the deity. See Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 213–14. [ 310 ]

5. tHe bhagavad gītā 81. This move is adumbrated in 4.6–9, where Krishna discloses his divine birth and actions. For the notion of agency, see Appendix 3. The Bhagavad Gītā: Who Is the Real Agent? 82. For brahmanirvana and Buddhist conceptions, see Supplementary Note 82. 83. See Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 117. 84. Minor describes this move well. The Gītā uses strong language of unity, without obliterating the distinction between Krishna and the self. Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 225. 85. Theodor notes that these passages, describing experience of divinity as both impersonal and personal, suggest a sequence of experiences. In 6.28 the yogin enters the blissful state of the experience of brahman; in 6.29 he finds a unifying experience in which one sees the self in all beings and all beings in the self. In 6.30 one sees the Supreme Person in all things—not just the Self, but the personal Divinity. 6.31 introduces an element of devotion to Krishna, which leads to a vision of the identity in all beings by comparing them all to the self within him. Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā, 65–66. 86. Both Miller and Thompson translate as “the life-force that sustains the universe.” For more on the term jiva-bhutam see Supplementary Note 86. 87. One might be unaware of the thread strung through the pearls of a necklace, but without its presence the necklace would be broken and the pearls would scatter. Thus Krishna is the thread upon which all is woven, an invisible cord connecting the entire universe. I owe this astute observation to a student, Namank Shah, who sat in on a class on Scriptures in World Religions, not for credit, but purely for love of learning. See also Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā, 71, and Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 131, who notes that Krishna “is the string that holds together all beings and imparts ‘wholeness’ to what would otherwise be just a grouping of particles.” 88. For Zaehner’s pungent words, see Supplementary Note 88. 89. He is referring to Chapter 11 (11.47. 11.54), but the point is the same. Van Buitenen, The Bhagavad Gītā, 29. 90. Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā, 70. 91. “As a spider might come out with his thread, as small sparks come forth from the fire, even so from this Self come forth all vital energies (prāṇa), all worlds, all gods, all beings. The mystic meaning (upaniṣad) thereof is ‘the Real of the real. Vital energies, verily are the real. He is their Real (Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad 2.1.20). “Hence, now, there is the teaching ‘Not thus! Not so!’ (neti, neti), for there is nothing higher than this, that he is thus. Now the designation for him is the Real of the real. Verily, breathing creatures are the real. He is their Real” (Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad 2.3.6). Thirteen Principal Upanishads, trans. Hume, 95, 97. 92. Chāndogya Upanishad 6.9.1–6.14.3; Gītā 7.7; Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad, 3.82. “That, O Gārgī, which is above the sky, that which is beneath the earth, that which is between these two, sky and earth, that which people call the past and the present and the future—across space is that woven, warp and woof.” 93. For the veil of illusion (māyā), see Supplementary Note 93. 94. Malinar notes that the text’s use of the term dear (priya) draws on the original use of the term priya as “being one’s own,” expressing a sense of “‘belongingness,’ [ 311 ]

5. tHe bhagavad gītā being part of each other”; thus Krishna “regards the bhakti as being his self, that is, part of him.” Malinar, 133. 95. See Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā, 72. 96. See Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 134 and note 128. 97. See Rahner, “Anonymous Christians” and “Anonymous Christianity and the Missionary Task of the Church.” 98. See also 9.25. 99. In a fascinating parallel passage (15.16–18), the Gītā speaks of a perishable purusha and an imperishable. The perishable is all beings; the imperishable is called the one who is aloof or sublime (kutashta; or the one who dwells on the mountaintop). Rāmānuja’s interpretation of this passages is that the perishable person is the sum total of embodied souls conditioned by matter and transmigrating from body to body (see 15.7–11); the imperishable Person is the sum total of disembodied souls who have attained liberation and are freed from matter. Beyond them stands the Supreme Person, who stands above and surveys the two Persons. This interpretation is accepted by Brockington, Zaehner, and Theodor. See Brockington, “The Bhagavad Gītā,” 44–45; Zaehner, The Bhagavad Gītā, 366–68, Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā, 119. See also 2.24–5, 6. 8, and 8.4. For the term Highest Person, see Chāndogya Upanishad 8:12–8:13, in Thirteen Principal Upanishads, trans. Hume; on the three purushas, see also Deutsch, “The Meta-theological Structure,” 170–90; Deutsch and Siegel, “The Bhagavadgītā,” 126; Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 205–6. 100. Here many translators take Brahma as the creator God, the creative aspect known in the Triple form (trimurti) of Creator (Brahma), Sustainer (Vishnu), and Destroyer (Shiva). 101. George Thompson points out that Krishna is identifying himself with the eternal unmanifest being. Even when he says “this one,” the pronouns are masculine; thus, he may be pointing to himself, as the next verse suggest. Thompson, The Bhagavad Gītā, 96n5. 102. Zaehner affirms that the unmanifest beyond the unmanifest of 8.20 is identical with the imperishable Brahman of 8.3; it is the personalized form of the unmanifest. See The Bhagavad Gītā, trans. Zaehner, 268; and Supplementary Note 102. 103. Jan Gonda points to the Vedic and later usage of the term abode (dhama), where it connotes the location of the divine presence and hence where the divine presence is most strongly felt. Here in the Gītā it has the sense both of presence and state of being. Gonda, cited by Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 277. For three ways in which the term purusha is used in the Gītā, see Supplementary Note 103. 104. On the paradox of transcendence and immanence in the Gītā, see Olivelle, “The Concept of God in the Bhagavad Gītā,” 528–29. The relationship between beings and Krishna is one of dependence; all beings are founded on Krishna and not the reverse. Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 285. Rāmānuja: “my continued existence does not depend on them, and because their continued existence depends on me, I do not need them in any way.” See also Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 148–49; and Supplementary Note 104. 105. These are characteristic of Sanskrit literature, going back to the Ṛig Veda. Thompson, The Bhagavad Gītā, xlv–xlvi. Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 153, notes that this passage is an abbreviated hymn of self-praise; we will comment below on the more elaborate version in Chapter 10. [ 312 ]

5. tHe bhagavad gītā 106. Or, in a wordplay, “yoga and peace” (yogaksema). Thompson, The Bhagavad Gītā, 96n4. Miller: “Men who worship me, thinking solely of me, always disciplined, win the reward I secure” (86). Van Buitenen: But to those who serve me while thinking only of me and none other, who are always yoked, to them I bring felicity” (107). Minor suggests that in contrast to those who worship others, those who worship Krishna receive “the security of yoga” yoga-kshema, or attainment of what is acquired. “The sense is that the liberation attained in Krisna is permanent and eternal and not that which “comes and goes” (9.21) as is the finite fruition of those who worship other gods (7.23).” 107. Krishna claims that he is in fact the enjoyer and lord of all sacrifices; those who sacrifice to other deities with faith are actually sacrificing to Krishna. The reward of other sacrifices is impermanent, however; votaries of the gods go to the gods, but worshippers of Krishna go to Krishna’s eternal realm (9.25). See also 7.23, discussed in the previous note, 106, this chapter. Malinar notes both positive and negative implications of this inclusivist stance (The Bhagavadgītā, 154–56). 108. Or: from one whose self is pure; see The Bhagavad Gītā, trans. Sargeant, 402. Ramanuja interprets this as a “pureminded devotee,” i.e., one of pure devotion. Minor comments: “The person is no longer attached to Nature (prakṛiti), nor merely attached to his true self (ātman), but he is attached to that to which his true self is eternally devoted, Krishna. See Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 299. Compare Psalm 24:3–4: “Who will ascend upon the Lord’s mount and who will stand in His Holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not taken My name in vain and has not sworn deceitfully.” 109. Minor notes that this was hinted at in 3.30, that all actions should be offered to Krishna: “Just as Krishna expanded the idea of sacrifice in Chapter Three to include all actions, so he expands the idea of offering to include all actions.” Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 299. Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 155, notes that this is the final step in the reinterpretation of renunciation; “true samñyasa means neither giving up all social and ritual obligations, nor giving up one’s attachment to action (karmayoga), but offering it up in Krishna as the only agent and lord. Therefore the devotee whose self is controlled by the ‘yoga of renunciation’ (samñyasa-yoga) will be liberated and reach the god.” 110. Śankara compares Krishna to a fire that indiscriminately sheds warmth, while one who draws nearer is the warmest. See Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 300. Compare Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 1.54 and Chapter 7, this volume. 111. On the ethical implications of this verse, see Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 301. 112. We will see a similar evaluation of the path of the heart over the path of knowledge in the Sufi poem Conference of the Birds. See Chapter 8, this volume. 113. Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā, 85–86. 114. Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 312. Arjuna goes on to declare that Krishna alone knows himself by means of himself alone (10.15). This is an interesting shift from an earlier statement that one should lift oneself alone by means of oneself alone (6.5). He has gone from a human-centered perspective, in which we seek to realize our own self, to a theocentric stance, in which we are in awe of the divinity of the supreme being. 115. Thompson, following Brockington, points out that in 10.10, Krishna declares he receives those who devote themselves to him with love and the yoga of insight. [ 313 ]

5. tHe bhagavad gītā In 10.18 Arjuna asks for more insight into Krishna’s yoga and his divine powers. In the remainder of Chapter 10, Krishna reveals his divine powers to Arjuna; his fuller explanation of yoga comes in Chapter 12, where he explicates yoga as a means of attaining to Krishna. Thus this discussion continues as if the vision of Krishna as the god of time in Chapter 11 had not occurred. Thompson, The Bhagavad Gītā, xlvii; Brockington, “The Bhagavad Gītā,” 48. On the form of hymnic self-praise, see also Thompson, “Ahamkara and Atmastuti”; Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 161–63. 116. For the significance of Saṃjaya as witness and reporter, see Supplementary Note 116. 117. On the agency of time and destiny, see Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 175–79. 118. See Theodor, Bhagavad Gītā, 97. Malinar emphasizes that bhakti is characterized by “mutual dependence, reciprocity, affection and a sense of belongingness. Wellestablished social relationships of kinship (father-son), friendship/comradeship (sakha) and love (priya) are now placed within the religious framework of bhakti.” Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 184. Indeed the verbal root bhaj, from which bhakti derives, is related to “mutual sharing” (ibid., 185); Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary: “to divide, distribute, allot or apportion to (dat. or gen.), share with (instr.).” 119. See Theodor, Bhagavad Gītā, 97. 120. Malinar points out that concentration on the unmanifest is difficult for embodied creatures, because the unmanifest lacks any visual or corporeal sign to grasp. Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 188. 121. For Krishna’s grace, see also 9.22. 122. See Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 368; Malinar, The Bhagavadgītā, 189. For a penetrating analysis of the relationship between the three yogas, see Eliot Deutsch, “The Nature of Karma Yoga,” in The Bhagavad Gītā, 161–169; Deutsch and Siegel, “The Bhagavadgītā,” 127. For the problem of the hierarchy of practices in 12.8–12, see Appendix: Hierarchy of Practice in Chapter 12. 123. This ideal creates a bridge to the theistic traditions of the West. We might think that focus on a God removes us from the world. However, devotion to a personal God can also be a mode of intentional awareness of this world. We see this in the words of the Islamic philosopher Avicenna about the Sufi knower of God who looks to the Sacred Reality and then to the world, back and forth, until he or she sees no distinction between them. One can focus on the divine until one sees the world as suffused with the divine. This will be the mode of attentive awareness we find in St. Augustine, Maimonides, and the poem Conference of the Birds. Avicenna, “al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt,” fasc. 4, ii, 15ff; Livres des directives et remarques, 493.

6. St. Augustine 1. Augustine, Retractions 1.1.2. 2. Augustine, City of God 19.10; cf. Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 211. 3. See Fredriksen, “The Body/Soul Dichotomy,” 93. In contrast, Simon Harrison has recently made an argument for the unity of the work as a philosophical dialogue, tracing the development of its themes rather than seeing a shift in emphasis from [ 314 ]

6. st. AugustIne early to later, which most scholars emphasize. See Harrison, Augustine’s Way Into the Will; cf. his earlier article, “Do We Have a Will?” 4. See Fredriksen, “The Body/Soul Dichotomy,” 97. 5. Cf. ibid., 97, 103. 6. Romans 7:18–23. 7. See Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 223; Harrison, Augustine, 92. 8. Confessions 8.8, trans. Hannan, “Conversion and Perseverance,” 97. 9. See Hannan, “Conversion and Perseverance”; Fredriksen, Sin, 117–18. 10. Confessions 8.10. Trans. Hannan, “Conversion and Perseverance.” 11. I am indebted here in my understanding to the lucid explication of Confessions 8 by Hannan, “Conversion and Perseverance,” Chapter 4. John M. Connolly explains that the conflicting wills are not faculties of soul but sets or patterns of habitual desires. Connolly, Living Without a Why, 67. 12. See Sorabji, “The Concept of Will from Plato to Maximus the Confessor,” 19–20. On the will in Augustine, see also Stalnaker, Overcoming Our Evil, 101–4. 13. There is debate over whether Augustine conceives of the will as an actual faculty of soul. See Connolly, Living Without a Why, 36; McDonald, “Primal Sin,” 117; Byers, “The Meaning of Voluntas in Augustine.” 14. Connolly, Living Without a Why, 53. For the notion that Augustine invented the modern conception of the will, see Dihle, The Theory of the Will in Classical Antiquity, 123–44, especially 144 and 132; Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 502–12, at 503; Ravven, The Self Beyond Itself, 143–50; Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 221; Kahn, “Discovering the Will from Aristotle to Augustine.” 15. He is thus described as a teleological eudaimonist. See Connolly, Living Without a Why, 46. 16. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 1.1, 1; Augustine, Confessions, 7.3, 136. 17. See Baltzly, “Stoicism”; White, “Introduction,” 3. 18. On this point, see Fredriksen, “The Body/Soul Dichotomy,” 93. 19. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 1.3, 5–6. Augustine may be reflecting upon the story of the Garden of Eden. It is clear that Adam and Eve were given all they needed to enjoy life; the story suggests that it is desire that causes human beings to want more when we actually have all we need. See also Augustine, The Happy Life, 2.11, 58. In other works, Augustine explains that love must be properly ordered. It is not just a matter of the amount of love, but loving the right thing at the right time and in the right way. 20. See e.g. Epictetus, The Handbook (the Encheiridion). 21. Plato, Apology 28b, 30c–d, in The Complete Works of Plato. Aristotle, too affirms that we can find peace and happiness through maintaining our moral integrity, which is wholly under our control. Blessed people will never be miserable, for they will never do hateful and base actions. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.10, 1100b35. 22. See, for example, Plato, Meno 77b–78b, in The Complete Works of Plato; Plato, Protagoras 358d; Kraut, “Socrates,” “Socratic Intellectualism.” 23. Plato, Republic 437b–441c. 24. Charles Kahn notes that whereas Plato describes psychic conflict by distinguishing three different factors or faculties of the soul—reason, thumos, and appetite—Augustine describes it in terms of a fragmentation of a single principle, the [ 315 ]

6. st. AugustIne will; the divided self is a divided will.” Kahn, “Discovering the Will from Aristotle to Augustine,” 257. He notes that for Plato it is reason that should give commands in the soul; for Augustine, in contrast, it is the will. One should identify one’s true self or source of virtue not with reason, but with the will (ibid., 257). 25. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 1.6, 11. 26. Ibid., 14. 27. Plato, Republic 441e–442a; 443 d–e, 432a. 28. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 1.11, 17. 29. Martha Nussbaum, in her capabilities approach to global human rights, argues that a good way to think about constitutional guarantees is to think of them as capabilities or opportunities for full human functioning and the provision or protection of circumstances that allow people to choose to function in these ways. These kinds of external conditions—such as basic access to education, health care, freedom from physical and economic hardship—are not widespread in major parts of the world. For her current list of capabilities, see the Introduction, Note 12, this volume. 30. Augustine, City of God 5.19.20; Sermons, 150, 5–9; Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 215. 31. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 1.12, 19. 32. Ibid.,1.13, 20. 33. Indeed, his character Evodius exclaims, “I can hardly keep myself from shouting for joy that such a great and easily attainable good has suddenly sprung up within me” (ibid.). For spiritual exercises, see Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life; for spiritual exercises in Augustine, see Stalnaker, Overcoming Our Evil, 211–36. 34. See Dihle, The Theory of the Will in Classical Antiquity, 123–44, especially 144 and 132; Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 502–12, at 503; Ravven, The Self Beyond Itself, 143–50; Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 221; Kahn, “Discovering the Will from Aristotle to Augustine”; Plato, Protagoras 357e–358d; Meno 77b–78b, 87d–89a; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2. 35. See Kahn, “Discovering the Will from Aristotle to Augustine,” 253. 36. See Dihle, The Theory of the Will in Classical Antiquity; Kahn, “Discovering the Will from Aristotle to Augustine,” 258; Ravven, The Self Beyond Itself. 37. This new conception of a human being has both Stoic, Platonic, and Biblical origins. The Stoic Epictetus emphasizes that our entire internal world is “up to us”— our feelings, emotions, choices, and decisions. And Augustine locates our will in a disembodied, spiritual realm that he learned about from reading the Platonists. Above all, we can see that his essential notion of happiness owes much to the personal voluntarist God of Biblical tradition. See Kahn, “Discovering the Will from Aristotle to Augustine,” 251–55. 38. Compare the words of a twentieth-century teacher of Hindu Vedānta philosophy, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: “Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.” Maharaj, I Am That, “Chapter 46, ‘Awareness of Being Is Bliss,’ ” 212. 39. Augustine, City of God 14.28; cf. The Literal Meaning of Genesis 2, 15, 20, 201; Connolly, Living Without a Why, 70. 40. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 2.13, 56. [ 316 ]

6. st. AugustIne 41. Plato, Republic 508d–e, 518d. 42. See also Augustine, The Happy Life,4:34, 82. Augustine in his later works will continue to identify the Truth most closely with the Second Person of the Trinity: Christ as the Word that contains all things. For Augustine, Plato’s forms become Forms in the Mind of God, just as for Plotinus and the Middle Platonists, Plato’s forms had become Ideas in the universal hypostasis of Intelligence (Nous). 43. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 2.13, 56. 44. Plato, Republic 518d. Kenneth Sayre notes that in the Philebus Plato identifies the Good as a unified trio of beauty, proportion, and truth, which are responsible for what is good in any mixture, and concludes that there are three dialogues that feature the Good, and each emphasizes one of these aspects. The Republic’s discussion of the Divided Line emphasizes the aspect of Truth, the Symposium that of Beauty, and the Philebus that of Proportion (192–95). Sayre, Plato’s Literary Garden, 188–94; see also Sayre, Plato’s Late Ontology, 171–4. 45. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 3.25, 121–23. 46. Ibid., 1.16, 60. See also De Magistro 14.46: “To know Him and love Him is the happy life which all profess to seek, although there are few who may rejoice in having really found it.” Mendelson, “‘By the Things Themselves,’” 488. For another translation, see Supplementary Note 46. 47. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 1.15, 59. 48. Ibid., 2.18, 64; Augustine, Confessions, 7.12, 148. 49. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 2.18, 65. 50. Ibid., 66. Evil is the turning of the will from the unchangeable good toward a changeable good (ibid., 2.19). But what allows the will to turn away? This would seem to be the true source of evil, and we know that Augustine does not want to locate the source of evil in God. Augustine answers in a way that echoes Plato’s Timaeus. In the Timaeus Plato presented the world in an original state of chaos, with particles of earth, air, fire, and water in an initial inchoate mix; these fundamental particles are shaped into order by a god or Demiurge, by means of shapes and numbers. Indeed, Plato affirms that it is order that points to the presence of divinity (Timaeus 53b–d, in The Complete Works of Plato). Augustine here asserts likewise that every nature has measure, order, and number; each derives from God. If we take away measure, order, and number, there is nothing left (On the Free Choice of the Will, 2.20, 69). Augustine adds that every defect comes from nothing. Sin is a defective movement, and thus comes from nothing; it does not come from God. The movement is voluntary, under our control (ibid.). This argument echoes his Neoplatonic resolution of the problem of evil found in the Confessions. Everything that God created is good; natural, metaphysical evil is an absence, a lack. In Free Choice he applies this same reasoning to moral evil. The will that turns away from God is defective. It lacks measure, order, and number; it does not come from God (ibid., 2.20; The Happy Life, 3.34). Although it is a lack, it does come from us; it is voluntary. The origin of all evil is fully under our control in a completely voluntary motion of our own free will. 51. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 3.1, 71. 52. Ibid., 72. As we have seen, the emphasis on will as central to human cognition is a synthesis created by Augustine. In the Platonic conception, human moral evil [ 317 ]

6. st. AugustIne stems from ignorance; for Aristotle, it stems from inadequate training and habituation. Augustine puts will at the center of his conception of both humanity and God. God’s acts for Augustine stem more from God’s will than divine wisdom and just so, human acts stem from free acts of the will and are to be praised or blamed and held morally accountable. See Ravven, The Self Beyond Itself, 146–48. 53. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 3:1, 72. 54. Augustine, Confessions 7.3, 136. 55. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 3:19, 107. 56. See Chapter 5, this volume. We see this theme in Buddhism as well. Mahāyāna and Pure Land Buddhism suggest that “the help or power of another” is more appropriate than “one’s own power” of Theravada Buddhism. See Gethin, Foundations of Buddhism, 264. 57. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will, 3.3, 76. 58. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being. 59. See Lobel, “Being and the Good,” 2–5; for its expression in Aristotle, 23–24. 60. See Chapters 1 and 9, this volume. 61. See Fredriksen, Sin, 112–34; Mann, “Augustine on Evil and Original Sin,” 47–48. 62. Cf. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 1.2. Paula Fredriksen notes that the treatise On the Free Choice of the Will begins on an optimistic note, in which Augustine believes the will is free to determine its own choices and can learn from education (1.1, 2). To achieve the happy life, one only need will it (1.13). In Books 2 and 3, however, he sounds a more somber, pessimistic tone, in which humans are conditioned by ignorance and difficulty, trying to keep one’s gaze fixed on the light of Christ while the devil is always threatening near at hand (3.20, 3.24). Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews, 171–72. 63. Retractions 1.1.2, trans. Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 209. 64. See also Tkacz, “Aristotle’s Appropriation and Transformation of Aristotelian Eudaimonia”; Mendelson, “‘By the Things Themselves.’” 65. On the Epicureans and Stoics, see Sermon 150, in Sermons; and Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 211. 66. The Trinity, 13.18.11; Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 210. 67. City of God 22.24; Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 212. 68. Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 212. 69. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 9.4. 70. The Trinity 9.8.13; Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 214. See also Connolly, “Augustine’s Conception of Will,” at note 26; O’Donovan, The Problem of Self-Love in St. Augustine, 112–17; Rist, Augustine, 162–68. 71. See also Augustine’s On Christian Teaching (De Doctrina Christiana), where he explores whether other people are to be “used” (uti) or “enjoyed” (frui). There he suggest that only God is to be loved for his own sake, or “enjoyed,” while all other beings, including human beings, are loved for the sake of God, or “used.” In later works, such as the True Religion, he changes terminology, suggesting that we should love people and ourselves for their own sakes as well as for God, loving other beings as related to God. See Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 1.22.20; The Trinity, 9.8.13; Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 214; Harrison, Augustine, 98. 72. Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 215. [ 318 ]

7. mAImonIdes 73. Augustine, City of God 5.19.20; Sermons 150.5–9; Kent, “Augustine’s Ethics,” 210. 74. On his famous vision of the light, see, e.g., Cary, Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self.

7. Maimonides Appendixes: 17. Maimonides’ Human Ideal; 18. Maimonides: Love as an Attribute of Action. 1. This term can be psychologically problematic, as one may despair of living up to an unrealistic ideal. For another approach to Maimonides’ views on happiness, see Tirosh-Samuelson, “Maimonides’ View on Happiness” and her fascinating volume, Happiness in Premodern Judaism. For the related theme of joy, see Blidstein, “Joy in Maimonides’ Ethical Teaching”; Sokol, “Maimonides on Joy.” 2. Josef Stern has recently highlighted this important point. See Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide, 14–15. The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Rabin; Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Pines. Although Pines’s 1963 translation is the standard English scholarly translation, I have found that students and general readers find Rabin’s translation easier to understand, and it is equally faithful to the Arabic original. 3. See for example, Harvey, “The Mishneh Torah as a Key to the Secrets of the Guide.” 4. As Sara Klein-Braslavy has explicated clearly, Adam is an equivocal term. In the Garden of Eden story, it means not the first human being but humanity in general. This is a turn we all undertake. See Klein-Braslavy, “The Creation of the World and Maimonides’ Interpretation of Gen I–V,” 71–77; and her Maimonides as Biblical Interpreter, 79–86. On the ultimate end of humanity in the end of the Guide as returning to the original state of humanity at the beginning of the Guide, see Jospe, “Rejecting Virtue as the Ultimate Human End,” especially 81. 5. For illuminating recent developments in our understanding of Maimonides’ concept of divine will, see Manekin, “Divine Will in Maimonides’ Later Writings.” 6. On the intriguing question of Maimonides’ interpretation of the origin of the world, see the important collection of papers from a recent symposium on the topic in Jospe, Jewish Philosophy. The symposium includes four papers: Kreisel, “Maimonides on the Eternity of the World”; Seeskin, “Maimonides on Creation”; Weiss, “Comments on Kreisel’s and Seeskin’s Essays on Maimonides on Creation”; and Manekin, “Comments on Professor Kreisel’s Paper.” 7. The view that all is contingent and interdependent is one we find in Buddhism; see Chapter 9, this volume. On the Necessary Existent as the principal of selfsufficiency, see Goodman, Rambam, 114–19. 8. See Harvey, “Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas,” 73–76; “Maimonides’ First Commandment, Physics, and Doubt,” 150–51. 9. On the importance of this theme in Maimonides, see Stern, “Maimonides on Language and the Science of Language” and now The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. Lenn Goodman has emphasized that the Arabic term nisba in this context connotes [ 319 ]

7. mAImonIdes more specifically proportionality, correlation. Discussant at panel, “Pines’ Guide of the Perplexed at 50,” Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference, December 2013. 10. For Maimonides and Neo-Platonism, see Alfred Ivry, “Neoplatonic Currents in Maimonides’ Thought.” 11. This reflects a preference in Chinese thought for focus upon the proper way to live. 12. Maimonides’ God does bear the forms of the species; in a certain sense then, like the Dao, the Necessary Existent bears the patterns of the world, or at least the Active Intellect does. See Goodman, “Maimonidean Naturalism”; Kogan, “What Can We Know and When Can We Know It?” 13. Maimonides, Guide 3.21, trans. Pines. 14. For the importance of intellect in Maimonides’ conception of God, see Kasher, “Self-Cognizing Intellect”; cf. Benor, “Meaning and Reference in Maimonides’ Negative Theology,” 354–59. 15. Guide 3.32. 16. On Maimonides’ God and Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura, see Fraenkel, “Maimonides’ God and Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura.” 17. For the distinction between the via negativa of Maimonides and Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura, see Wolfson, “Via Negativa in Maimonides and Its Impact on ThirteenthCentury Kabbalah,” 406–7. 18. See Guide 1.54, 3.53. 19. Aristotle, Metaphysics 12.7 1072b4. Is Aristotle’s language of love and desire simply a simile? For the view of his medieval commentator Averroes, an important resource for our understanding of the Arabic Aristotelian tradition of which Maimonides is a part, see Supplementary Note 19. Like Aristotle, Averroes explains that all the other celestial bodes are moved by their desire for the motion of the first body. 20. Pines, “The Philosophical Purport of Maimonides’ Halachic Works,” 9–10, and “Le Discours theologico-philosophique dans les oevres halachiques de Maimonide.” 21. Pines, “Translator’s Introduction,” xcviii. 22. Harvey, “Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace,” 67. 23. Al-Ghazālī, Al-Munqidh min al-dalāl, 69–70; “Deliverer from Error (Al-Munqidh min al-dalal),” trans. Watt, 63; Freedom and Fulfillment, trans. McCarthy, 63. 24. On purposes for the commandments, see Stern, “The Idea of a Hoq in Maimonides’ Explanation of the Law,” especially 122–25. On perfection and welfare of the soul and body, see Kaplan, “I Sleep, but My heart Waketh,” at 154–59n20; Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide, 332–33ff. 25. Guide 3.51; The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Rabin, 187; Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Pines, 620. 26. See Goldman, “The Worship Peculiar to Those Who Have Apprehended the True Reality” (Hebrew); Benor, Worship of the Heart; Blumenthal, “Maimonides: ‘Prayer, Worship, and Mysticism’ ”; Harvey, “Avicenna and Maimonides on Prayer and Intellectual Worship.” 27. See, for example, Reines, “Maimonides’ True Belief Concerning God.” 28. Guide 1.63. 29. Ibid., 2.36–2.38. 30. Ibid., 3.51–3.52. [ 320 ]

7. mAImonIdes 31. Ibid., 1.1–1.2. 32. For example, nuclear physicist Victor Weisskopf titled his memoir, The Joy of Insight: Passions of a Physicist. Albert Einstein told one friend, “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than any talent for absorbing absolute knowledge. . . . All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration. . . . At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.” Hence his famous statement that, for creative work in science, “imagination is more important than knowledge.” The Expanded Quotable Einstein, cited by Root-Bernstein and Root-Bernstein, “Einstein on Creative Thinking”; Langermann, “My Truest Perplexities,” 307–10. 33. The passage goes on to discuss Moses and the Patriarchs, who were able to engage in worldly, political activity and yet remain undistracted from their concentration upon the divine. 34. See Guide 2.36; cf. Langermann, “My Truest Perplexities,” 308. Abrahamov, “Maimonides and Ibn Sina’s Theory of Hads.” On hads in Avicenna, see Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 159–83. In contrast to Abrahamov, Klein-Braslavy, Herbert Davidson, and Michael Schwartz, Amira Eran argues that Maimonides was ambivalent toward hads, believing the theory suggests a dangerous embrace of the imagination, which Maimonides regards as unreliable. See Eran, “Intuition and Inspiration,” especially 57–71, and 60n60. As I have suggested, my interpretation is somewhat different. See also Kreisel, Judaism as Philosophy, 277–8n15; and his Prophecy, 254–57; as well as his Maimonides’ Political Thought, 77–79, 292–93. 35. Reines, “Maimonides’ Concept of Mosaic Prophecy.” Reines describes two features of prophecy: gestalt intuition and premise intuition. Maimonides comments that his understanding of the Book of Job came to him in something resembling prophetic revelation (waḥy). Reines suggests that this is a gestalt intuition. Maimonides had studied the book thoroughly; the meaning of the book came together in a flash of insight after a period of long study. Maimonides’ interpretation “must have occurred through a flash of intuitive reasoning in which his knowledge of the text of Job and his understanding of metaphysical science suddenly coalesced into a gestalt in which the two sources were immediately structured into a coherent and integrated whole” (ibid., 339). This is precisely the way Avicenna and Maimonides describe the process by which philosophers, who spend long hours contemplating philosophical issues, may develop prophetic insights. 36. Guide 3.32; Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Pines, 525; The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Rabin, 180. 37. Ibid., 2.12; Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Pines, 280. 38. Avicenna describes this process in his treatise on prayer. When one has attuned oneself through contemplative prayer, an emanation of understanding overflows from the Highest Intelligence. Avicenna, Risāla fī māhiyyat al-ṣalāh, 39; Avicenna on Theology, 50–63, 60. The Jewish thinker Baḥya Ibn Paqūda similarly describes illuminative insight flowing toward the wise. Baḥya Ibn Paqūda, Torat Hovot ha-Levavot, 89–90; Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, 145–46. This is an easy connection to make for these Neoplatonic thinkers, for whom the intellect is the bridge to the divine. This kind of bridge goes back to Plato, whose philosopher contemplates the Good and has a “synoptic vi[ 321 ]

7. mAImonIdes sion” of the forms (Republic 537c). Plato, Philo, and Plotinus all represent a way of thinking in which contact with the Good, the divine, or the First Intelligence brings intellectual understanding and insight. For Peter Adamson’s reflections on non-discursive thought on Avicenna, see Supplementary Note 38. 39. Guide 3.51, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Rabin, 187; Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Pines, 620. 40. See Supplementary Note 40. 41. See note 36, this chapter, and Harvey, “Avicenna and Maimonides on Prayer and Intellectual Worship.” 42. Eudemian Ethics 8.3. Harvey pointed out to me that while this is true, neither Avicenna nor Maimonides would have known this text, which they did not have in Arabic translation. 43. “We must consider also in which of two ways the nature of the universe contains the good and the highest good, whether as something separate and by itself, or as the order of the parts. Probably in both ways, as an army does; for its good is found both in its order and in its leader, and more in the latter; for he does not depend on the order but it depends on him.” Aristotle, Metaphysics XII:10, 1075a 12–5. See the discussions of Stephen Menn, “Aristotle and Plato on God as Nous and as the Good,” 549–51, 556; and Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology, 273–76, 276–86. 44. Kaplan describes well that this is how they could engage in worship while contemplating God. Their actions were a pure form of divine service, because their intention was to create a community that would know and serve God. See Kaplan, “I Sleep, but My Heart Waketh.” 45. See Guide 3.17–18. 46. See Guide 3.54; “Laws of Repentance (Hilkhot Teshuvah),” Chapter 9; Introduction to Pereq Heleq. 47. See Avicenna, “Risāla fī māhiyyat al-Ṣalāh (Treatise on Prayer)”: Worship is knowledge, and to be aware of the existence of One Whose Being is necessary and absolute, being seized of his being with a pure heart, a spirit undefiled and a soul wholly devoted to Him. The real nature of prayer is therefore to know Almighty God in His Uniqueness, as a Being wholly Necessary, Whose Essence is infinitely exalted and Whose Qualities are infinitely holy, with habits of sincerity in prayer (ikhlāṣ); by which sincerity I mean, that one should know the Qualities of God in such a manner that there remains no opening to a multiplicity of gods, no intent to join others to His worship. (Avicenna, Avicenna on Theology, 55; “Risāla fī māhiyyat al-Ṣalāh (Treatise on Prayer),” 35)

48. See Guide 3.54, 2.11, 2.38. In Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 538–44, Jospe offers a nuanced explication of competing interpretations of imitatio dei at the end of the Guide, with a cogent argument for his interpretation that imitation of God for Maimonides lies in God’s governing of the universe; c.f. Seeskin, Searching for a Distant God, 91–123; Kellner, “Spiritual Life.” 49. This is very much like the philosopher depicted by Judah Halevi in his opening speech in the Kuzari and the way Sufi saints are depicted by Sufi-influenced think[ 322 ]

7. mAImonIdes ers such as Ghazālī. See Kuzari 1.1; Al-Ghazālī, “Deliverer from Error (Al-Munqidh min al-dalal),” 63. 50. This is a Sufi motif echoed in the Jewish Sufi-influenced thinker Baḥya Ibn Paqūda (c. 1050–80), whom Maimonides certainly read, and who was an important source for Maimonides’ intellectualist spirituality. See Lobel, A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue, 47–50. See Chapter 8, this volume, for the mirror as a central motif in the Persian Sufi poem Conference of the Birds. 51. See, for example, Shatz, “Worship, Corporeality, and Human Perfection”; Harvey, “Political Philosophy and Halakhah in Maimonides,” English trans. Friedman. 52. See also Guide 1:15 on Jacob’s ladder: “The ladder, one end of which was in the sky and the other end of which was on the earth, on which ascends everyone who ascends. . . . The messengers of God are the prophets. . . . How wise is the statement ‘ascending and descending,’ the ascent before the descent. For after the ascent and reaching known rungs on the ladder, comes the descent . . . to govern and teach the people of the earth.” 53. Frank Griffel has clarified that al-Ghazālī did not retreat into complete solitary contemplation, but taught in private madrasas. See Griffel, Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology, 48–53. 54. Al-Ghazālī, “Deliverer from Error (Al-Munqidh min al-dalal),” 82–83. 55. For a consonant view of the Maimonidean ideal, see Kellner, “Is Maimonides’ Ideal Person Austerely Rationalist?” 56. See Guide 1.57; Jospe, Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 534; Lobel, Quest for God and the Good, 173–74; Harvey, “Avicenna and Maimonides on Prayer and Intellectual Worship.” For the tension between contemplation and community service, see Appendix 17, Maimonides’ Human Ideal. 57. Guide 3.5, Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Pines, 624; The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Rabin, 192. 58. “Eight Chapters” [Shemonah Perakim], Chapter 5, in Ethical Writings of Maimonides, trans. Butterworth. See also Guide 1.39. 59. Harvey, “The Perplexing Case of the Missing Happiness in Maimonides’ Guide,” unpublished MS. On the use of the Arabic terms sa’ada, ladhdha, and khair to describe happiness, see Berzin, “The Concept of Happiness in the Teachings of Maimonides and Rabbi Chasdai Crescas”; and her “‘Osher’ ‘Ta’anug,’ ve-’Tov’”; Lasker, “Models of Spirituality in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” 183. 60. Alfarabi, “The Political Regime (Siyāsāt al-madaniyya),” cited by Harvey in “The Perplexing Case of the Missing Happiness in Maimonides’ Guide.” 61. See Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge According To Al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides”; Galston, “The Theoretical and Practical Dimensions of Happiness”; Ibn Ṭufayl. Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy Ben Yaqdhān, trans. Leon Gauthier; Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, trans. Goodman. 62. See Harvey, “Maimonides’ First Commandment, Physics, and Doubt”; “Maimonides on Human Perfection, Awe, and Politics.” 63. See Altmann, “Maimonides’ Four Perfections”; and his “Ibn Bajja on Man’s Ultimate Felicity.” See the fascinating passage from the Letter of Farewell translated on p. 67 of the latter, which is close to a passage in the Guide 1.54: “For one who knows God with a true knowledge knows that the greatest misery is His anger and the [ 323 ]

7. mAImonIdes distance from Him, and the great felicity (saʿd) is His benevolence . . . and being near to Him. And man will not be near to Him except through the knowledge of the essence therefore [ . . . of the Intellect].” Guide 1.54: Those who know him are those who are favored by him and permitted to come near him, whereas those who do not know him are objects of his wrath and are kept far away from him. For his favor and wrath, his nearness and remoteness correspond to the extent of a man’s knowledge or ignorance.” Translation by Chaim Rabin: “Everyone who knows him is well beloved and drawn near; but he who does not know him is in disfavor and rejected. The degree of favor or disfavor, drawing near or rejecting, is in proportion to the degree of knowledge” (Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Rabin, 72). Cf. Śankara on Gītā 9.29; Śankara compares Krishna to a fire that indiscriminately sheds warmth, while one who draws nearer is the warmest. See Minor, Bhagavad Gītā, 399. 64. Where we can be led either out of perplexity—or perhaps to the true state of perplexity engendered by the limitations of our knowledge and our proximity to the divine. 65. See, e.g., Kellner, Maimonides on Human Perfection; Frank, “The End of the Guide.” 66. See Maimonides, Dalālat al-hāirīn/Moreh ha-nevukhim, 655n2, 658n27 and sources noted there; Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide, 306. 67. Cf. Maimonides, “Laws of Repentance,” 8.4. 68. Harvey, “The Perplexing Case of the Missing Happiness in Maimonides’ Guide.” In Guide 3.51, Maimonides says explicitly that knowledge brings passionate love and joy. He even says that this is what the intellect experiences when it is about to leave the body. 69. Literally: the heavenly host or the souls of the righteous al-milla al-ula, a term used by Halevi in his description of prophetic experience. Kuzari 4.3. 70. Yitzhaq Shailat also notes the possibility that the delight cannot be compared to the good itself. Maimonides, “Pereq Heleq,” trans. Shailat, 134n6. 71. Ibid., 466 (Arabic); 134 (Hebrew); Mishnah ʿim perush rabbenu Moshe ben Maimon (Arabic text with Hebrew translation by Josef Qafih, 204–5; English translation by Abelson, “Maimonides on the Jewish Creed,” 38–39; English translation of Arnold J. Wolf in A Maimonides Reader, 411–12. Translation is my own, based upon those of Abelson, Shailat, and Qafih, with some revisions. Eran has offered persuasive evidence that one source for Maimonides’ conception of the spiritual pleasures of the afterlife is al-Ghazālī, who drew upon some conceptions of Avicenna but also offered unique details, nuances and parables. See Eran, “Al-Ghazālī and Maimonides on the World to Come and Spiritual Pleasures.” See Supplementary Note 71. 72. I thank Bernard Septimus for the suggestion. 73. Warren Zev Harvey notes that both Spinoza and Maimonides cite Psalm 91 as support for the notion that passionate love overcomes death. See Harvey, “ʿIshq, Hesheq, and Amor Dei Intellectualis.” 74. Robert Eisen notes that in the introduction (Pines, Guide of the Perplexed, 10), Maimonides states that the non-exegetical chapters—more precisely, those that do not contain an equivocal term—are preparatory for those that contain equivocal terms or for those that deal with Biblical parables. Thus he suggests that the discus[ 324 ]

7. mAImonIdes sion of the categories of evil in 3.12 is preparatory for the discussion of providence in the chapters on Job. Eisen, The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 55. 75. See Eisen, The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 50–62, on the interpretation of angels, sons of elohim, and Satan in chapters on Job given by various medieval and modern commentators, 76. There has been a debate over contradictory elements in Maimonides’ teaching on providence from his own time on. For the views of Samuel and Moses Ibn Tibbon and Narboni, see Supplementary Note 76. 77. Noted by Harvey, “The Perplexing Case of the Missing Happiness in Maimonides’ Guide.” 78. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.10 1101a; Raffel, “Providence as Consequent Upon the Intellect 65; Jospe, “The Book of Job as a Biblical ‘Guide of the Perplexed.’” 79. I thank Bernard Septimus for this suggestion. 80. See Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide, 85–86, 147–8, 181–85, 187, 189, 300–1, 308–11. 81. Kraemer, Maimonides, 467–68. 82. Kraemer, “Is There a Text in This Class?” 295–98. See also Seeskin, Searching for a Distant God, 195n32. 83. See “Laws of Repentance,” 8:3, 9:1, and Altmann, “Maimonides on the Intellect,” p. 90. See likewise Lasker, “Love and Knowledge of God in Maimonides’ Philosophy,” 342–45. 84. Professor Isadore Twersky emphasized that Maimonides always speaks of intellectual and spiritual attainment in degrees, according to each person’s ability. Apparently this is true of the afterlife as well. 85. See now the beautiful exegesis of Diamond, Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon, 32ff. Likewise for Maimonides, love and awe are two sides of the same experience. Maimonides’ view is close to the classic description of religious experience given by the nineteenth-century thinker Rudolf Otto. Otto describes the dual response of both powerful attraction and fear and awe, encounter with the mysterium tremendum et fascinans—the tremendous and fascinating mystery—that is the Sacred Presence. Norman Lamm, “Maimonides on the Love of God,” 133n9; Lobel, “Silence Is Praise to You,” 47–48. See also Lasker, “Love and Knowledge of God in Maimonides’ Philosophy”; and his “Can Jewish Philosophers Love God?” 86. Book of Commandments (Sefer Ha-Mitsvot), 59; trans. in A Maimonides Reader, 432. My translation builds on these two. 87. See Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide, 318n12. 88. See Supplementary Note 88. Stern’s portrait of Maimonides as calling for skeptical epoche is reminiscent of the stance of Epicurus. Stern writes: “Knowledge of the cosmos is therapeutic: by coming truly to know who and where one is in the greater scheme of things, one frees oneself of a false, imaginary, and often distorted picture of his own place and false importance, with all its attendant anxieties and uncertainties.” Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide, 313, citing Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 87–97–99. Epicurus too believed that understanding one’s place in the cosmos frees one from irrational fears of the gods and of death. On skeptical epoche, see also the studies of Klein-Braslavy and Kasher cited in Appendix 17. Maimonides’ Human Ideal. [ 325 ]

7. mAImonIdes 89. Pines, “Translator’s Introduction,” 17. 90. For divine graciousness and love, see Appendix 18, Maimonides: Love as an Attribute of Action.

8. The Sufi Path of Love in ‘Aṭṭār’s Conference of the Birds 1. Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 6–7. 2. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 31–41; and her “Sufism.” 3. ‘Aṭṭār, Tadhkirat al-Awliyā’ I, 69, 73; Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, 169; see Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam, 3. 4. Suhrawardi, ‘Awārif al-Ma’ārif, Ihyā, IV, 343 (margin); trans. Smith, Rābiʿa the Mystic, 98. She says as well: I have made you the companion of my heart But my body is available for those who desire its company And my body is friendly towards its guests But the Beloved of my heart is the Guest of my soul. My peace is in solitude, but my Beloved is always with me. Suhrawardi, IV, 358 (margin); Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt 1, no. 230. 5. Al-Qushayrī, Risāla, 149: cited by Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 29; and Smith, Rābiʿa the Mystic, 27. 6. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 305; cited by Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 152. 7. For an insightful footnote, see Sviri, “Mysterium Coniunctionis.” 8. Morris, “Reading the Conference of the Birds,” 78. The legend of King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, the hoopoe as the bird who is the messenger between the two, and the fact that Solomon was entrusted with the divine language of the birds, is attested in Rabbinic literature. 9. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, trans. Davis, 39 (1st ed., 29). 10. See Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, Chapter 1. 11. Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 638. 12. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 40 (1st ed., 30). 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 40–41 (1st ed., 30–31). 15. Ibid., 42, (1st ed., 32). 16. Schimmel, “Sufism.” 17. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 43 (1st ed., 33). 18. Ibid. 19. Qur’ān 50:16. 20. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 45 (1st ed., 34–35). 21. This ḥadīth is often quoted by mystical thinkers, but its chain of authentication is not verified by many Orthodox Muslims. See Furuzanfar, Aḥadīth-i masnavī, 29 (cited by Sufis such as Najm al-Dīn Dāya, but rejected by Ibn Taymiyya and others). Thanks to Carl Ernst for the source of this much-cited tradition. See [ 326 ]

8. tHe sufI pAtH of love In ‛Aṭṭār’s ConferenCe of the birds Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, 231n7. ‘Aṭṭār himself quotes the tradition in ‘Aṭṭār, “Asrārnāma.” Also alluded to in ‘Aṭṭār, Ilāhīnāma, 4, note 10. See Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 642. 22. See the prose translation, The Conference of the Birds, trans. Nott, 28. 23. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 60, (1st ed., 49–50). 24. Ibid. 25. Ethics of the Fathers (Pirqe Avot), 2:16. 26. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 63 (1st ed., 52). 27. Plotinus, Enneads V.8.12. 28. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 63 (1st ed., 52). 29. Ibid., 63–64 (1st ed., 53–54). 30. Ibid., 60 (1st ed., 53). 31. Ibid., 64 (1st ed., 54). 32. Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 627. 33. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 66 (1st ed., 55–56). 34. This tradition is attributed to Yaḥyā ibn Mu’ādh (d. 871, Nishapur). On Yaḥyā as source of this ḥadīth, see Suyūṭī, Durar al-muntathira fī l-aḥādīth al-mushtahira, 152; cf. Massignon, The Passion of Ḥallāj, 38, note 93; Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Judaism,” 1. Ritter asserts that the saying is attributed to Muhammad by the Pure Brethren of Baṣra (Ikhwān al-ṣafā’). Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 637. 35. Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 637–38. 36. On the connection between relationship and vulnerability and its tension with the ideal of autonomy, see Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness. 37. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 67 (1st ed., 56–57). 38. See Morris, “Reading The Conference of the Birds,” 80. 39. A teaching ascribed to the Chinese Ch’an master Lin-chi I-hsüan (d. 866). In full, his teaching reads, “If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha; if you meet the patriarchs, kill the patriarchs; if you meet an Arhat, kill the Arhat; if you meet your parents, kill your parents . . . in this way, you attain liberation” (Taisho 47: 500b, Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 447. A Zen student is presented with a scroll containing the greatest legacy of the Master’s teachings; the student tosses the scrolls into the fire. The teacher is appalled: what are you doing? The student responds: What are you saying? See Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, 59, no. 67. 40. For a poignant story on this theme, see Singer, “A Nest Egg for Paradise.” 41. Theodor, Exploring the Bhagavadgītā, 85–86. 42. Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.7. See Supplementary Note 42. 43. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 71 (1st ed., 60). 44. Ibid. (1st ed., 61). 45. See Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, 56–74. 46. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 75 (1st ed., 64). 47. Ibid., 78 (1st ed., 68). 48. Ibid., 82 (1st ed., 71). 49. Sometimes ‘Aṭṭār conceives of physical death as extinction (fanā’). See Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 602. 50. See Nasr, “The Spiritual States in Sufism.” [ 327 ]

8. tHe sufI pAtH of love In ‛Aṭṭār’s ConferenCe of the birds 51. “And behold, We said to the angels: ‘Bow down to Adam’ and they bowed down. Not so Iblīs (Satan): he refused and was haughty: he was of those who reject Faith” (Qur’ān 2:34). See also 7:11–13, 17:61–62. 52. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 183 (1st ed., 169). 53. Ibid. 54. See Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 76–83. 55. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 184 (1st ed., 170). 56. Ibid, 191–192 (1984 ed., 177); see Davis, “Introduction,” 21 (1984 ed.). 57. Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, 158. 58. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 192 (1984 ed. 177). “You will lose what you consider to be valuable, but you will soon hear the sacramental word “Enter.” The Conference of the Birds, trans. Nott, 106. 59. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 193 (1984 ed., 179). 60. Davis, “Introduction,” 11. 61. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 194 (1984 ed., 179–80). 62. Ibid., 195 (1984 ed., 180). 63. Ibid. (1984 ed., 181). 64. See the words of St. Paul, “the wisdom of this world is foolishness” (I Corinthians 3:19). 65. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 200 (1984 ed., 185). 66. Ibid., 201 (1984 ed., 186). 67. On monism in the works of ‘Aṭṭār, see Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 620–26. 68. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 201 (1984 ed., 187). 69. Ibid., 206 (1984 ed., 191). 70. Ibid., 209–10 (1984 ed., 194). 71. Or: “in which God has encased us as a body.” Al-Ḥallāj, Kitāb al-ṭawāsīn, where the last verse is replaced by another. 72. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 208 (1984 ed., 193). For the theme of losing one’s own being in the being of God, see al-Junayd, “Some Points on tawḥīd” and “The Book of Fanā’ (Kitāb al-fanā’) in Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, 251–65. 73. See Ritter, “Extinction and Union with Divinity.” 74. See Plato, Meno 80a, 84a–d. 75. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 216 (1984 ed., 201). 76. Ibid., 201 (1984 ed., 205). 77. For the theme of Muhammad’s ascent through the seven heavens to the divine throne, see Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, 47–56. This tale of the vision of levels of heaven and hell may have been a model for Dante. 78. The source of this story is al-Ḥallāj, Kitāb al-ṭawāsīn, 16–17, cited by Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 606. 79. ‘Aṭṭār, Conference of the Birds, 222 (1984 ed., 206). 80. Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 348. 81. Ibid., 619. 82. Ibid., 650. 83. Nyberg, Kleinere Schriften des Ibn al-’Arabī, 102. 84. Avicenna, Al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, fasc. 4, ii, 15ff; and Livres des directives et remarques, 493. This passage is also quoted by the thirteenth-century thinker Ibn [ 328 ]

9. mIndfulness, eAst And West Ṭufayl: The soul then becomes “a polished mirror facing the Truth. . . . At this level, he sees both himself and the Truth. He still hesitates between them; but then, becoming oblivious to himself, he is aware only of the Sacred Presence, or if he is at all aware of himself, it is only as one who gazes on the Truth. It is then that true union [wuṣūl] is achieved.” Trans. Lenn Goodman in Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, 97. See also Hayy the Son of Yaqzan, trans. Atiyeb, 137. 85. Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 650–51. 86. Ibid., 609. 87. Ibid., 220. 88. On the historical basis for the martyrdom of Ḥallāj, see Ernst, Words of Ecstasy in Sufism. ‘Aṭṭār recounts the death of Ḥallāj in Tadhkirat al-awliyā’ (Memorial of the Friends of God) as well. 89. Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul, 220. 90. ‘Aṭṭār, Asrarnama, after 5; end of 40, before the Khatima, trans. Ritter, ibid., 652. 91. Compare Maimonides’ description of Moses’ attunement to the Truth through prophetic inspiration.

9. Mindfulness, East and West Appendixes: 21. Mindfulness: Model of the Senses; 22. Mindulness: Meditation and Neuroplasticity; 23. Mindfulness: Mindful Awareness and the Nature of the Self; 24. Mindfulness and Low-Egoic Experience; 25. Mindfulness, East and West: Further Clinical Reflections. 1. See Ryan and Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potentials.” 2. Flanagan suggests that eudaimonia Buddha involves two aspects: a stable sense of joy and serenity, caused or constituted by enlightenment, wisdom, virtue, or goodness, and meditation or mindfulness. The first condition specifies the subjective, “happy” aspect, and the second the form of life or way of being that causes this kind of mental, happy state, which could be called happiness Buddha. Flanagan, The Boddhisattva’s Brain, 16. 3. Rhys Davids 1881, 145, cited by Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 264. For more on the translation of Sati, see Supplementary Note 3. 4. Saṃyutta Nikāya, Indriya–vibhanga Sutta 48.10 (Saṃyutta Nikāya, Indriya–vibhanga Sutta/“Analysis of the Five Mental Faculties,” trans. Bhikkhu). For another version of the four establishings of mindfulness, see Supplementary Note 4. 5. Mendis and Horner, The Questions of King Milinda, 35. 6. Ibid., 37. 7. For sati as presence of mind, see Supplementary Note 7. 8. See Dreyfus, “Is Mindfulness Present-centered and Nonjudgmental?” 45–48. 9. Dunne, “Buddhist Styles of Mindfulness.” 10. See Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 270. 11. Lutz, Dunne, and Davidson, “Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness,” 504–5; Bodhi, “What Does Mindfulness Really Mean? 33–35. Indeed, it seems [ 329 ]

9. mIndfulness, eAst And West that there are several stages to the ordinary process of attention. George Dreyfus has outlined these steps lucidly. See Supplementary Note 11. 12. Thompson and Dreyfus, “Asian Perspectives,” 99; Dreyfus, “Is Mindfulness Present-centered and Nonjudgmental?” 45; see Supplementary Notes 11 and 12. 13. For a bridge between sati as lucid presence and as memory, see Supplementary Note 13. 14. Dreyfus, “Is Mindfulness Present-centered and Nonjudgmental?” 49–50; Bodhi, “What Does Mindfulness Really Mean? 26, 33–35. To remember means to bear in mind, not to lose focus on what one is contemplating, as well as to keep in mind the soteriological framework of one’s contemplative practice. Dunne, “Buddhist Styles of Mindfulness,” 15–18; Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 270. For Ven. Anāyalo on memory, see Supplementary Note 14. 15. Lutz, Dunne, and Davidson, “Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness,” 504–5.We recall that Epicurus also engaged in a cognitive meditation upon the real nature of things that would release us from emotional habits based upon irrational fears of the gods and death. See Chapter 2, this volume. 16. Cf. Dunne, “Buddhist Styles of Mindfulness,” 10. 17. King, Theravada Meditation, cited by Gethin, Foundations of Buddhism, 200, 293n42. 18. Bronkhorst, The Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India, cited ibid., 200. 19. However, it seems that as time moved on there was an increased willingness in some of the commentaries to conceive of complete awakening as taking place without the prior of the stages of absorption (dhyāna/jhāna). See ibid., 200–1; Cousins, “Samatha Yana and Vipassana Yana.” 20. Lutz, Dunne, and Davidson, “Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness,” 506–7. 21. There is a confusion of terminology that is important to note in the discussion of mindfulness, based on the ambiguity of the terms mindfulness and awareness. See Supplementary Note 21. 22. The title has traditionally been translated as the “Discourse on the Establishment of Mindfulness.” For the term satipaṭṭhāna, see Supplementary Note 22. 23. Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta: The Foundations of Mindfulness, translated from the Pāli by Nyanasatta Thera. 24. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu notes that sati connotes appropriate attention, not bare attention. He also notes that one might translate “non-reactivity” and “radical acceptance” into classical Buddhist notions of equanimity, patience, and contentment. He points out that while these are of course important to Buddhist practice, they are not identical with what Pāli texts mean by mindfulness. Bhikkhu, “Mindfulness Defined”; see also Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 266–69; Bodhi, “What Does Mindfulness Really Mean? 26–27; Dunne, “Buddhist Styles of Mindfulness,” 14–18; Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 270. For Ven. Anāyalo on memor; Dreyfus, “Is Mindfulness Present-centered and Nonjudgmental?” 43 and throughout; Dunne, “Toward an Understanding of Non-dual Mindfulness,” 78–79. 25. For a fuller description of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s response, see Supplementary Note 25/45. 26. See Fronsdal, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” [ 330 ]

9. mIndfulness, eAst And West 27. Nyanaponika, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, 24. Quoted by Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 266. 28. Noted by Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 266. 29. Nyanaponika, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, 30. Quoted by Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 267. For sati in contrast to attention, see Supplementary Note 29. 30. Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 267. 31. Ibid. 32. Bodhi, “What Does Mindfulness Really Mean? 30; Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 266–67. For Anāyalo on attention, see Supplementary Note 32. 33. Bodhi, “What Does Mindfulness Really Mean? 30–31. For bare attention and deautomatization, see Supplementary Note 33. 34. Bodhi, “What Does Mindfulness Really Mean? 27. 35. Ibid., 27. 36. Ibid., 29–30; Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 266–67. 37. Gethin, “On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 267; see also Fronsdal, “Insight Meditation in the United States.” 38. Dunne, “Toward an Understanding of Non-dual Mindfulness,” 77–84; Dunne, “Buddhist Styles of Mindfulness,” 26–33; Lutz, Dunne, and Davidson, “Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness,” 513–17. 39. Dunne, “Buddhist Styles of Mindfulness,” 14. 40. Ibid., 17. 41. Ibid., 17–18, 34–37. On the ethical dimension of mindfulness training, see also Kabat-Zinn, “Some Reflections on the Origins of MBSR,” 294–95. 42. Grossman: “Mindfulness,” citing Olendski, “The Construction of Mindfulness.” 43. Grossman: “Mindfulness.” 44. See Gilpin, “The Use of Theravada Buddhist Practices.” 45. Ibid., 244. For Jon Kabat-Zinn’s response to critiques, see Supplementary Note 25/45. 46. Dunne and Harrington, “Mindfulness Meditation,” 24. For example, David McMahan, in The Making of Buddhist Modernism, has suggested that the emphasis on positive valuation of the present moment is a peculiarly modernist construction, a response to the desacralization and disenchantment of reality. McMahan is here drawing upon Charles Taylor’s description of two new views that arose during the Protestant Reformation: affirmation of the value of ordinary life and the notion that sacredness and dignity can be found not in an afterlife but in this life. However, McMahan notes that the devaluing of this world of samsara and monastic asceticism was revised to a certain extent by Mahāyāna Buddhism, which stresses the identity of samsara and nirvana, and the Boddhisattva’s work of compassion in this world. Thus Mahāyāna and Zen discourse is not as far from contemporary emphasis on the value of this world that we find in current mindfulness meditation (234); McMahan cites Dōgen for his appreciation of the beauty of this world’s mountains and rivers (161–62); see Chapter 10, this volume. Nevertheless, he does not find evidence in traditional texts for the use of mindfulness to appreciate the moment and do one’s work with skillful ease. For a more detailed critique, see Supplementary Note 46. We [ 331 ]

9. mIndfulness, eAst And West find an interesting parallel to traditional vs. modernist constructions of mindfulness in a debate between Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem over the valuing of this world in eighteenth-century Hasidism. See Supplementary Note 46. 47. Bodhi, “What Does Mindfulness Really Mean? 35–36. 48. In reflecting upon the fact that the Buddhist term mindfulness originally referred to “remembering,” it is also tempting to note other meditative traditions centered upon the notion of remembrance. For example, the Islamic and Sufi practice of zhikr is one of constantly remembering God by chanting the name Allah. Likewise the Jesus prayer, as described by an anonymous monk in the Christian Orthodox classic Way of a Pilgrim, functions to remind the person to always remember the name and being of God. The Hindu tradition too features names of God as the center of mantra meditation. However, while it is instructive to compare practices across traditions, we have seen that even within a tradition there are important differences in both practice and terminology. As Lutz, Dunne, and Davidson note, to talk about meditation or mindfulness as if it is one thing is like talking about sports, without noticing the vast differences between tennis, soccer, cricket, and fencing, or like saying “I like music,” without specifying whether one is fond of rhythm and blues, jazz, or Buddhist sacred chant. 49. Siegel, The Mindful Brain, xiii. A student gave a poignant example: when she walks her dog, her dog will not tolerate her talking on the cell phone. The dog can intuit that she is not giving her full presence and attention to their time together. 50. Ibid., xiii–xiv. 51. In a literary analog, the Biblical character Job is initially distressed by the absence and hiddenness of God. While God’s appearance at the end of the story does not remove his pain, Job is nevertheless comforted by the fact that God is present with him in his distress. See the Book of Job, Chapter 42. 52. Siegel, The Mindful Brain, xix. He proposes one do this with curiosity, openness, acceptance, and love. 53. Ibid., 69. 54. Ibid., 72. 55. Siegel suggests that nonjudgmental awareness may mean not grasping onto the inevitable judgments that the mind creates from the top down process of the cortical critics of the mind (ibid., 74). Jon Kabat-Zinn likewise argues it is inevitable that the mind creates judgments. What we can do is to allow these to arise and pass without clinging; this allows us to see reality clearly as it is, without the filters of distorting judgments and preconceptions. On the role of preconceptions and judgments in filtering experience in Epicurus, see Chapter 2, this volume. 56. Siegel, The Mindful Brain, 16–17. 57. For more detailed analysis of this process, see Supplementary Note 57 and Appendix 22, Mindfulness: Meditation and Neuroplasticity; 23, Mindfulness: Mindful Awareness and the Nature of the Self; 24, Mindfulness and Low-Egoic Experience. 58. Siegel, The Mindful Brain, 40–42. 59. Siegel’s hypothesis is that it may be the right hemisphere of the brain, as well as integration of the two hemispheres, that can enable one to experience uncertainty in a more mindful way, thriving in the open possibility of experience. [ 332 ]

9. mIndfulness, eAst And West 60. We can recall Cook Ding’s attentive awareness and ability to pause at a difficult point, waiting for the guidance of spirit. For further reflections on the role of observation, see Supplementary Note 60 and Appendix 22, Mindfulness: Meditation and Neuroplasticity. 61. Langer, Mindfulness, 87. 62. Siegel, The Mindful Brain, xi; Langer, Le, and Ngnoumen, The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Mindfulness, 2014. 63. Langer, The Power of Mindful Learning, 111. 64. Ibid., 28–31; Langer, Mindfulness, 134–35, Siegel, The Mindful Brain, 234. 65. Siegel, The Mindful Brain, 232. He uses the phrase “cognitively mindful state.” 66. Langer, Mindfulness, 127. 67. Ibid., 127–28. 68. Langer, “Mindful Learning,” 221–22. 69. She suggests this may account for certain gender differences in the learning of mathematics: “good girls” learn the basics in an absolute way from the teacher/ authority. Boys may learn in more conditional ways, which allows them to be more open to revising views as they progress. Ibid., 222. 70. Ibid., 221–22. 71. Langer quotes a story from Zhuangzi cited by a Japanese philosopher, which points to this open, playful mode of awareness: One day Soshi [Zhuangzi] was walking on the bank of a river with a friend. “How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water,” exclaimed Soshi. This friend spoke to him thus, “You are not a fish, how do you know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?” You are not myself,” returned Soshi, “how do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?” Kakuzo Okakura, cited by Langer, The Power of Mindful Learning, 139. The original source is Zhuangzi, Chapter 17, “Autumn Floods.” Zhuangzi is a creative thinker who upsets our conventional categories and shows the flexibility of thinking Langer calls mindful rather than mindless. 72. Langer, Mindfulness, 109–21. 73. Ibid., 159–75; Langer, On Becoming an Artist, 198–200. 74. Langer, “Mindful Learning,” 222. 75. Ibid. 76. Langer, Mindfulness, 45. 77. Langer, On Becoming an Artist, 78. 78. Ibid., 36; Langer, The Power of Mindful Learning, 26–28. 79. Langer, On Becoming an Artist, 35–36, 28–30. 80. Langer, Mindfulness, 56. 81. Ibid., 86. 82. Ibid., 82. 83. Although Langer is somewhat modest about tying her work to Eastern approaches to mindfulness, she explicitly connects her work to intuition, which is often encouraged by Eastern disciplines of meditation and contrasted to Western models of rationality. 84. Langer, Mindfulness, 125. 85. Ibid., 126. Cited by Goldberg, The Intuitive Edge. 86. Davidson, The Emotional Life of Your Brain, 239. [ 333 ]

9. mIndfulness, eAst And West 87. Carmody, “Eastern and Western Approaches to Mindfulness,” 52–53. 88. See Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire. 89. In the body scan, the practitioner learns to notice whatever sensations are present in each part of the body and to notice the difference between sensations, the feeling tone associated with them (pleasant/unpleasant/neutral), and any cognitive commentary (I like this; I don’t like this; I shouldn’t be experiencing this; I’m glad to have this sensation). For further mindfulness techniques, see Appendix 25, Mindfulness, East and West: Further Clinical Reflections.

10. Dōgen’s Sōtō Zen and Suzuki’s Zen Mind Appendixes: 19. Dōgen and Suzuki: One Continuous Mistake; 20. Suzuki: God Giving. 1. See Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, xii–xiii; Davis, “The Philosophy of Zen Master Dōgen,” note 3; and Dōgen, Moon in a Dewdrop, 24–25. Note that Dōgen was first treated as a philosopher in Japan in the early twentieth century by thinkers such as Watsuji Tetsurō and Tanabe Hajime. For translations into English, see Supplementary Note 1 to this chapter. 2. Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, 332. 3. For two penetrating studies of the history and development of the concepts of Buddha nature and Buddha Mind, see Lai, “The Meaning of ‘Mind-Only’ (Wei-hsin)”; King, Buddha Nature. See now also Schroeder, “Practice-Realization.” For the debate over original awakening in critical Buddhism, see Shiro, “The Doctrine of Tathagāta garbha Is Not Buddhist”; King, “The Doctrine of Tathagāta garbha Is Impeccably Buddhist”; Stone, “Some Reflections on Critical Buddhism” and her Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism. 4. Heinrich Dumoulin renders it “All sentient beings without exception have the Buddha nature.” Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, 80. 5. Heinrich Dumoulin: “whole being is the Buddha-nature; I call one integral entity of whole being ‘sentient beings.’” Ibid., 80. 6. Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 20. 7. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Bendōwa,” reprinted in The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 19; “On the Endeavor of the Way,” 12; “A Discourse on Doing One’s Utmost in Practicing the Way of the Buddha,” 12. See also Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, 79. 8. On the importance of the body, and realizing this unity through zazen, see Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, 78. 9. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Bendōwa,” 146–48; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 22–23; Moon in a Dewdrop, 154; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 15; Shōbōgenzō, trans. Nearman, 16–17. 10. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Uji,” “Being-Time”; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 47–58; Moon in a Dewdrop, 76–83; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 104–11; Shōbōgenzō, trans. Nearman, 108–16; Flowers of Emptiness, 124–34. For a penetrating analysis of this complex text, see Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, 87–89.

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10. dōgen’s sōtō Zen And suZukI’s Zen Mind 11. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Buddha Nature” (Bossho)” (see also Abe’s discussion, 52ff ); The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 75–77; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 243–44; Shōbōgenzō, trans. Nearman, 256–57; Flowers of Emptiness, 77; Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 82. 12. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Bendōwa”; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 13–14; Moon in a Dewdrop, 147; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 7; Shōbōgenzō, trans. Nearman, 6; Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, 170; Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 76–77; 78–79. 13. I owe this penetrating analysis to Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 79. 14. Ibid., 71–77. 15. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 77. See also Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, 77 and note 116. 16. Dōgen, “Bendōwa,” 136–37; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 13–14; Moon in a Dewdrop, 147; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 7; Shōbōgenzō, trans. Nearman, 6; Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, 170; Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 76–77; 78–79. 17. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 78; Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 11. 18. See Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, 78. 19. “Uji,”in Shōbōgenzō, trans. Nearman, 112; trans. Waddell, 120–21; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 51–52; Flowers of Emptiness, 227; see also Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 80. 20. For this historical debate, see King, Buddha Nature, 99–104; Lai, “The Meaning of ‘Mind-Only’” and her Buddha Nature, especially 73–76. 21. On the dynamic nature of being-time, see Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, 89. 22. See Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 80. 23. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Bendōwa,” 136–37; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 13; quoted also by Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 78–79; Moon in a Dewdrop, 147; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 7; Shōbōgenzō, trans. Nearman, 6. 24. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 80. 25. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Genjokoan,” 135; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 41; Moon in a Dewdrop, 70; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 30; Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 66; Shōbōgenzō: Zen Essays, trans. Cleary, 33; Shōbōgenzō, trans. Nearman, 33. 26. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Bendōwa,” 146; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 21; Moon in a Dewdrop, 33; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 14; Shōbōgenzō, trans. Nearman, 15. 27. Schroeder, “Practice-Realization,” 47; citing Abe, “God, Emptiness, and the True Self,” 26–27; “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata”; and “A Rejoinder,” see especially, 174–75 in “A Rejoinder.” 28. Shōbōgenzō, “Bussho (On Buddha Nature),” trans. Nearman, 256; Dōgen, “Dōgen on Buddha Nature,” 52; Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 82; Shōbōgenzō, “Buddha Nature,” 91; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 75; Flowers of Emptiness, 77. 29. Shōbōgenzō, “Bussho (On Buddha Nature),” trans. Nearman, 249–50. Explication by translator, 250, note 5. 30. See Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 82. 31. Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 21–22. 32. Okumura, Realizing Genjokoan, 13–14. 33. Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 21–22; Okumura, Realizing Genjokoan, 13–14, Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 83. Thomas Cleary expresses this succinctly: “genjo means [ 335 ]

10. dōgen’s sōtō Zen And suZukI’s Zen Mind actuality—being as is, at hand, or accomplished, as of an accomplished fact.” Shōbōgenzō: Zen Essays by Dogen, trans. Cleary, 29. 34. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 83; Davis, “The Philosophy of Zen Master Dogen” and “The Presencing of Truth.” 35. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Genjokoan”; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 39. 36. Dōgen, Flowers of Emptiness, 55n1; cf. Davis, “The Presencing of Truth,” 252–54. 37. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 83, citing Heinrich Dumoulin’s translation, “offentliche Bekanntsmachung” or “offentliche Aushang.” 38. Kasulis suggests that the full phrase genjokoan would thus mean something like “the individuality of things manifesting themselves equally,” without evaluation, categorization, retrospective objectification. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 83. 39. Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 21–22 and 129n8. Shohaku Okumura, also reflecting on the interpretation of the earliest commentary (Senne and Kyogo’s Gosho) writes, “we are the intersection of equality (universality, unity, oneness of all beings), and inequality (difference, uniqueness, particularity, individuality.” Okumura, Realizing Genjokoan, 16. Hee-Jin Kim likewise suggests that koan signifies “the nondual oneness of identity and differentiation, of emptiness and form, of one and all” (Flowers of Emptiness, 56n1). Shohaku Okumura notes that this way of interpreting koan, followed by Senne and Kyogo, is based on the fact that Dōgen uses a less common spelling for an, according to which an means “to keep one’s lot.” He points out that Senne was a direct student of Dōgen; he lived and practiced with him for many years, was once his personal attendant, and compiled several volumes of his formal dharma discourses. It is thus likely that his interpretation of the meaning of koan here was that of Dōgen. Okumura, Realizing Genjokoan, 15–16. See also Supplementary Note 39. 40. Thomas Kasulis thus suggests the paradox we explored in connection with Daoist wu-wei: that paradoxical nature of the attempt to achieve a realization that cannot be directly willed. See Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 83–84. 41. Takahasahi, The Essence of Dōgen, 8, 13. See also Davis, “The Presencing of Truth,” 255. 42. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 84. 43. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 84; Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 3. 44. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 84. 45. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Genjokoan,” 138; “Manifesting Suchness,” in The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 43–44; “Actualizing the Fundamental Point,” in Moon in a Dewdrop, 71–72 , Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 31–32; trans. Cook, “Manifesting Absolute Reality,” in Sounds of Valley Streams, 68; trans. Nearman, “On the Spiritual Question as it Manifests before your very Eyes,” Shōbōgenzō, 34. 46. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 85–86. Sallie King suggests that the language of thusness or suchness (tathata) itself moves beyond reification; thusness is not a monistic concept. “The word for Thusness in Chinese, ru, means ‘like, as’ . . . comparing qualities and actions rather than things . . . although it does have an ontological quality to it, Thusness refers to how something is, rather than what it is, it speaks of an adjectival quality of things rather than a nominative thingness as is. All it means is that things are ‘as they are.’ In a sense it is a pure tautology, a simple “thus” attributed to all things.” The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna points out that “the word Thusness is not a term that has the qualities or attributes of being ‘this’ or ‘that’; it [ 336 ]

10. dōgen’s sōtō Zen And suZukI’s Zen Mind is a word by which words are undone, a word that points at our language and indicates that it will not do.” King, Buddha Nature, 102, citing “Da Sheng Qi Xin Lun,” Taisho 32, no. 1666: 576a; cf. Augustine, The Awakening of Faith, 33. 47. See Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 21. 48. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “One Bright Pearl (Ikka Myōju)”; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 31–38; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 34–38; Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 71–75; Shōbōgenzō, trans. Nearman, 36–41. 49. See Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 20–24. “Therefore, the very impermanency of grass and tree, thicket and forest, is the Buddha-nature. The very impermanency of men and things, body and mind, is the Buddha-nature. Nations and lands, mountains and rivers, are impermanent because they are Buddha-nature. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Buddha Nature,” 93; The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 76–77; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 244; Flowers of Emptiness, 78; Shōbōgenzō, trans. Nearman, 257. 50. Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 27. See also Kim, Dōgen Kigen, 262, for the notion that Dōgen’s view of enlightenment is one of realization rather than transcendence. 51. Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 27. Shunju (“Spring and Fall”), trans. Cook, in How to Raise an Ox, 151–57; “Spring and Autumn,” in Moon in a Dewdrop, 108; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 631. 52. The formative Mahāyāna thinker Nāgārjuna, too, emphasized that we shouldn’t speak as if Emptiness is a self-existent ontological reality; Candrakīrti compares this to someone who, when told that a merchant has nothing to sell, asks if he can buy some of that nothing. Emptiness, like the Upanishadic Self—becomes another substance to cling to. Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Root Verses on the Middle) 24.18, 15.3; King, Indian Philosophy, 120–21; Rupert Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism, 238–42. 53. Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 58. Compare notions we have seen of emptiness in the Daodejing. 54. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, “Genjokoan,” note 25; Dumoulin, A History of Zen Buddhism, 167; see also Davis, “The Philosophy of Zen Master Dogen,” Oxford Handbooks online, 6; and his “The Presencing of Truth,” 252. 55. See Chapters 9 and 11, this volume, on Ellen Langer. 56. See Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 85. 57. We find resonant echoes of this view in a Western context in the work of psychologist Ellen Langer on seeing the world in flexible, open, and creative ways. See Chapters 9 and 11, this volume. 58. Tom Alden, personal communication, February 17, 2014. 59. Okumura, Realizing Genjokoan, 76; the notion of the “deeper self taking flight” is that of Taigen Dan Leighton in his forward to Realizing Genjokoan, xi. 60. Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 87–88. 61. See Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 88; see also Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 27 and passim; Okumura, Realizing Genjokoan, 79–80. 62. Cook points out that an alternative way to think of these experiences is as post-reflective, rather than pre-reflective. We might think of pre-reflective experience as the unitive experience of the infant who has not yet learned to differentiate between itself and its surroundings. The infant has no words or categories by [ 337 ]

10. dōgen’s sōtō Zen And suZukI’s Zen Mind which to classify experience. Sense experience is direct and momentary, with no overlay of prior thought and no retention of the experience in memory. In contrast, the term post-reflective experience highlights that if asked, an adult can describe his or her experience through analysis. Thus when we are sipping tea we are simply one with the sensations of warmth and taste, but if asked, we could reflectively call the beverage “tea.” At the moment, writes Francis Cook, the tea “is just what it is, hot pungent, and fragrant, but it is not ‘tea.’” Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 52. Whether pre- or post-reflective, the immediate experience of tea is a unitive one in which we forget the self. 63. See Chapter 11 for cognate views in Csikszentmihalyi’s description of flow and Ellen Langer’s contrast between the experiencing self and the evaluative self. When we are in the experiencing self, the evaluative self is not present. Likewise, Francis Cook writes that we can have the experience “in total selfless openness, where the intrusive and distorting self has been, so to speak, left out of the picture.” Ibid., 53. 64. Ibid., 13. 65. The term shinjin suggests the unity of body-mind. See Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 90–91; see also Okumura, Realizing Genjokoan, 88–90. 66. Okumura, Realizing Genjokoan, 81–87. 67. Ibid., 89. 68. Mencius 2a.6. 69. See Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 91–92. 70. Ibid., 92. 71. See Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 54. Note the interesting parallel with twentieth-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s conception of actual occasions as drops of experience. 72. The language of “primordial person” is Kasulis’s translation from “Genjokoan” (Kasulis, Zen Action/Zen Person, 93). Waddell and Abe translate, “the Person of his original part” (Shōbōgenzō, “Genjokoan,” 135); “the Person of your original part,” The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, 41; “your original self,” Moon in a Dewdrop, 70; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 30; Cook, “the Original Man,” Sounds of Valley Streams, 66; Cleary, “the original human being,” in Shōbōgenzō: Zen Essays by Dogen, 32; Nearman, “his Original State,” in Shōbōgenzō, 32. 73. We must note that the compilation Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind is only a fragment of the larger Suzuki archives. As Taigen Dan Leighton pointed out to me, this work is addressed to lay students rather than his advanced disciples. The more extensive archive has been compiled primarily by his biographer, David Chadwick, and includes unedited and complete teachings, including those to his students at Tassajara Monastery. This study thus represents Suzuki’s more popular translation of Dōgen for his lay audience and is in no way exhaustive of Suzuki’s relation to Dōgen. There remains much further work to be done in studying the larger collection from Suzuki’s archives, which has been made generously accessible online by David Chadwick at http://www .shunryusuzuki.com/suzuki/cl.htm. 74. Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, 119. See also the unedited version, January 6, 1966, and compare the sesshin lecture on Genjo-Koan, Paragraphs 1–3, Sunday morning, March 13, 1966, Lecture A. [ 338 ]

10. dōgen’s sōtō Zen And suZukI’s Zen Mind 75. Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, 119. For additional translations see Supplementary Note 75. On the difficulties of translating this passage, see Heine, “Multiple Dimensions of Impermanence in Dōgen’s Genjokoan.” 76. Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, 116. See also the unedited version, December 30, 1965. 77. A teaching ascribed to the Chinese Ch’an master Lin-chi I-hsüan (d. 866). In full, his teaching reads, ‘If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha; if you meet the patriarchs, kill the patriarchs; if you meet an Arhat, kill the Arhat; if you meet your parents, kill your parents. . . . In this way, you attain liberation.” Taisho 47:500b; Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 447. 78. See “Going Beyond Buddha,” trans. Mel Weitsman and Kazuaki Tanahashi, in Moon in a Dewdrop, 203–10; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, 315–23; Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 107–17. On Meister Eckhart, see Meister Eckhart, Sermon 52, 200, 202; McGinn, “The God Beyond God.” 79. The notion that every part of reality contains the whole is expressed in the image of Indra’s net, which spread throughout the universe. In the intersection of each weave of the net is a jewel that reflects every other jewel in the net. Looking into any one jewel, one sees them all. This image is expressed by Fazang, one of the Huayan patriarchs. See Yu-lan, “Hundred Gates to the Sea of Ideas,” cited by Liu, Introduction to Chinese Philosophy, 260; Lusthaus, “Buddhist Philosophy, Chinese.” 80. We find a rich example of this theme in the piece “God Giving,” in Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. For an extended treatment of this piece, see Appendix 20, Suzuki: God Giving. 81. Thus in “Mind Waves” Suzuki suggests that when practicing zazen, one should not try to stop thinking, but let thinking stop of itself. This can be traced to Dōgen’s zazen instruction, in which he distinguishes between not thinking and what he terms “without thinking,” which is not the suppression of thought. The image of waves and water is a common one in Mahāyāna Buddhism, from early Mahāyāna texts such as the Lankāvatāra Sūtra and the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna to the teachings of masters of Huayan and Ch’an/Zen. The notion of the unity of waves and water is especially prominent in Huayan. Huayan’s first patriarch Du-shun writes: “the waves are waves which are none other than water—the waves themselves show the water. The water is water, which is no different from the waves— the water makes the waves. Waves and water are one, yet that does not hinder their difference. Water and waves are different, yet that does not hinder their unity.” Trans. Liu, An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy, 263; cf. Lai, “Ch’an Metaphors.” We see here the positive Zen resonance Suzuki has given to human experience, an extension of that we see in Dōgen. The goal of meditation is not complete stillness or states of calm tranquility (samādhi), as we see in some models of Theravada meditation. When one realizes that each mental event is simply an unfolding of the big mind that is Buddha nature, one can accept and embrace each experience and not seek only those of expansive joy. Suzuki, “Mind Waves,” 36. For calm in Theravada meditation, see King, Theravada Meditation, cited by Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism, 200, 293n42. 82. The notion that every moment is disconnected and complete within itself is called occasionalism. For Islamic occasionalism, see Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism. In [ 339 ]

10. dōgen’s sōtō Zen And suZukI’s Zen Mind the Islamic context, all is held together by the will of Allah. In Buddhism, momentary events called dharmas simply flash into the phenomenal world. However, clusters of events arise in patterns that provide causal continuity, so that a human being does not suddenly wake up as a dog. See Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism, 142. 83. The language of flashing into existence is drawn from Dōgen. Although Dōgen does not use the term flash of lightening (denko) in the Shōbōgenzō, he does use it in the short piece “Recommending Zen to all People” (“Fukanzazenji”), and it also calls to mind a verse at the end of the Diamond Sutra. See Supplementary Note 83. 84. See Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams, 66 and 136n4. 85. See Blue Cliff Records-6, Ummon’s Every Day Is a Good Day, November 1962 [62–11–00]: “Ummon introduced the subject by saying: I do not ask you about fifteen days ago. But what about fifteen days hence? Come, say a word about this. He himself replied for them: Every day is a good day.” Commentary by Shunryu Suzuki: “Today does not become yesterday, and Dogen-zenji states that today does not become tomorrow. Each day is its own past and future and has its own absolute value.” http://www.shunryusuzuki.com/suzuki/base.htm. 86. Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, 104–5. See also the unedited version, January 20, 1966. As Nāgārjuna expressed it, because each moment of existence is unique and independent, we are not trapped in the world of birth and death (nirvāṇa). Every existence is empty of being an independent causal agent, which means that each is caused by the entire interdependent network of relationships. We are at any moment free to realize this free and empty nature of our being. See Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24.18, 15.3; King, Indian Philosophy, 120–21; Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism, 238–42. Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24:14; Eckel, “A Question of Nihilism,” 275, includes translation of Chapters 18, 24, 25 of Bhāvaviveka’s Prajñāpradīpa, Commentary to Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. See also Streng, Emptiness, 213, 217; Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 25:19; Eckel, “A Question of Nihilism,” 314; Streng, Emptiness, 217. The image of firewood and ashes is borrowed by Dōgen from Nāgārjuna. Dōgen’s image comes from a famous passage in the first fascicle of the Shōbōgenzō, “Genjokoan,” one of Dōgen’s most famous discourses; see Supplementary Note 86. For an astute analysis of Nāgārjuna’s concept of emptiness, see Jiang, “Incommensurability of Two Conceptions of Reality.” 87. In “Control” Suzuki alludes to the Japanese art of wabi sabi, the beauty of imperfection. Japanese artists make creative use of imperfection, seeing the beauty in that which is not perfectly symmetrical. See Supplementary Note 87. 88. For an extended treatment of Dōgen’s explication of this theme, see Appendix 19, Dōgen and Suzuki: One Continuous Mistake.

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11. creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng

11. Creative Engagement and the Art of Living Appendixes: 11. Zhuangzi: Skillful Action and Aristotelian Energeia; 26. Zhuangzi’s Easy Wandering and Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: A Critique. 1. Ben-Shahar, The Question of Happiness, 14. 2. Ibid., 14. 3. Ibid., 15. 4. Ibid., 18. 5. See Chapters 1 and 2, this volume. See also Griswold, “Happiness, Tranquility, and Philosophy.” 6. Ben-Shahar, The Question of Happiness, 20–21. The thought experiment appears in Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 42–45, repr. Cahn and Vitrano, Happiness, 236–37. 7. See Annas, “Happiness as Achievement,” Daedelus, repr. Cahn and Vitrano, Happiness, 238–45. 8. Ibid., 243. 9. Ben-Shahar, The Question of Happiness, 22; Annas, “Happiness as Achievement,” 243; Griswold, “Happiness, Tranquility, and Philosophy,” 26–29. For a challenge to this as the upshot of Nozick’s thought experiment, see Weijers, “Intuitive Biases in Judgments About Thought Experiments.” 10. Ben-Shahar, The Question of Happiness, 27. See Griswold on the importance of reflection for a meaningful life: “Happiness, Tranquility, and Philosophy,” 29–33. cf. Nussbaum, in her critique of positive psychology, “Who Is the Happy Warrior?” S91–92. 11. Ben-Shahar, The Question of Happiness, 29. 12. Ibid., 30. 13. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 99. 14. Ellen Langer, too notes that to truly be mindful “it would behoove us” to engage something outside of or other than ourselves. When we stop experiencing ourselves, we begin to treat ourselves as objects of evaluation, which is painful. Langer, On Becoming an Artist, 21. 15. For Aristotelian and Confucian critiques of Martin Seligman’s positive psychology, see Supplementary Note 15. 16. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, 31 17. Ibid., 36–39. 18. Ibid., 40. 19. Ibid. We have noted that the vision of life as a series of orchestrated flow experiences distinguishes Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of flow from Daoist ideals of wuwei. We do not get the sense in Laozi and Zhuangzi that one should coordinate the activities of one’s life to experience wu-wei; rather, one is carried along effortlessly by the river of life. For the Daoists, if there is anything that arranges or guides one’s life, it would be Heaven or the Dao itself. However, it is unlikely that for Laozi and Zhuangzi the Dao is a purposive agent in that sense. 20. Ibid., 41. [ 341 ]

11. creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng 21. A recent study shows that the effort and engagement required in taking notes by hand rather than laptop increases what Robert Bjork calls “desirable difficulty,” improving learning and retention of material. See Oppenheim and Mueller, “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard”; Graham, “Taking Notes?” 22. Nettle, Happiness, 180, who adduces Robert Puttnam’s notion of social capital, the informal networks of aid and information exchange that keep communities vital and interconnected. See Puttnam, Bowling Alone. 23. Ibid, 41. Classical Jewish thinkers describe the prayer “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One” as the unification of the name, but argue that its goal is not only to assert the unity of God but to unify various forces of ourselves. See Lobel, A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue, 150. 24. Plato, Republic, 433a–434a, 443c–e, 432a. Plato suggests that the cause of injustice is pleonexia, always wanting to outdo others, seeking what belongs to others (359 c, 343 e). Its opposite is doing or having one’s own, the definition of justice (434a, 441 d–e). See ibid., 20n18. In the Bhagavad Gītā we find a similar theme—that each person should do his or her own duty and not the duty of others. 25. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, 43–44. 26. See Introduction, note 00. 27. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, 46. 28. The demands of the experience are so engaging and pressing that we are not distracted by self-doubt, questioning, anxiety, or other intrusions. 29. Mark Leary has noted that the evolution of a human self was a mixed blessing, as self-consciousness brought in its wake self-critique and self-judgment. Leary and Guadagno, “The Role of Hypo-egoic Self-Processes. 30. Csikszentmihalyi’s description thus has a very different flavor from the stories of Zhuangzi; the idea of carefully orchestrating flow experiences would seem out of character for a life of free and easy wandering. In contrast to the non-striving, uncontrived nature of Zhuangzi’s wu-wei, Csikszentmihalyi’s flow is orchestrated and planned; in contrast to Aristotle’s focus on the intrinsic excellence of activity, Csikszentmihalyi’s flow is designed to maximize engagement and fulfillment. See Woolfolk and Wasserman, “Count No One Happy”; Appendix 26, Zhuangzi’s Easy Wandering and Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: A Critique and Appendix 11, Zhuangzi: Skillful Action and Aristotelian Energeia. While Daniel Haybron, too, emphasizes that the goal of Aristotelian eudaimonia is to promote excellent activity rather than a state of “flow,” he also acknowledges that Aristotle’s account of pleasure—so closely tied to engaged activity, done with absorption and interest—clearly resonates with Csikszentmihalyi’s description of flow activities. Haybron, The Pursuit of Unhappiness, 115. For Aristotelian critiques of positive psychology, see Supplementary Note 15. 31. Csikszentmihalyi derives this characterization from Roger Caillois, a French psychological anthropologist. Caillois divides the world's games into four classes: games of competition (agon), games of chance (alea), games of vertigo (ilinx), and games of mimicry, which creates alternative realities, including dance, theater, and the arts. 32. See Chapter 3, this volume; and Ivanhoe, “Music in and of Our Lives.” 33. NE 9.4 1166a 25. 34. Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, 150–51. [ 342 ]

11. creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng 35. Gerald Holton reported this to me at a Cambridge roundtable on Science and Religion with speaker Rebecca Goldstein, Harvard Faculty Club, April 3, 2014, and confirmed the information in an e-mail exchange, April 4, 2014. 36. Ivanhoe, “Happiness in Classical Chinese Thought,” 274; “The Values of Spontaneity,” 192. Daniel Haybron adds an important dimension of somatic confidence, being at home and safe in one’s body. See Haybron, The Pursuit of Unhappiness, 117. 37. Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura, “The Construction of Meaning Through Vital Engagement,” 85. In their view, our very self emerges when “consciousness becomes aware of itself as information about the body, subjective states, and the personal past and future” (ibid.). For the relevance of George Herbert Mead’s view of the self, see Supplementary Note 56. 38. Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura, “The Construction of Meaning Through Vital Engagement,” 86. 39. Dewey, Interest and Effort in Education, 17; cited ibid. 40. Ibid., 86–87. Martin Seligman, one of the key theorists in the discipline known as positive psychology, described four ways to experience a flourishing life: pleasure, engagement, meaning, and accomplishment or achievement. Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi describe the experience of flow as including dimensions of pleasure and engagement. While Seligman claims that a person can find happiness in any one of these four ways, Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, like Tal Ben-Shahar, make the stronger claim that a flourishing life must include both engagement and meaning. Jayawickreme, Pawelski, and Seligman, “Happiness,” 4–10. 41. Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura, “The Construction of Meaning Through Vital Engagement,” 88–89. 42. Ibid., 89. 43. Ibid., 89–90. 44. Ibid., 95. 45. For the related concept of personal projects, see the intriguing work of Brian Little, most recently, Me, Myself, and Us, 181–99. 46. Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura in their examples leave out the religious domain. For a fascinating application of theories of conversion to the history of religion, see Segal, Paul the Convert. 47. MacIntyre, After Virtue. 48. Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura, “The Construction of Meaning Through Vital Engagement,” 99–100. 49. We recall the lesson of the Bhagavad Gītā’s karma yoga: whatever we do, we should do with devotion. This attitude gives us a sense of place in the world. Work is not just something to get over with, but is an offering of love. See Hirst, “Upholding the World”; and Killingley, “Enjoying the World.” 50. Langer, On Becoming an Artist, 59–60. Likewise, Zhuangzi asks: “Suppose you and I have had an argument. If you have beaten me instead of my beating you, then are you necessarily right and am I necessarily wrong? If I have beaten you instead of your beating me, then am I necessarily right and are you necessarily wrong? Is one of us right and the other wrong? Are both of us right or are both of us wrong? If you and I don’t know the answer, then other people are bound to be even more in the dark.” Zhuangzi, “Discussion on Making All Things Equal,” 48. [ 343 ]

11. creAtIve engAgement And tHe Art of lIvIng 51. Langer, On Becoming an Artist, 60. 52. Goldberg, “Are Women Prejudiced Against Women?” cited ibid., 200–1. 53. Ibid., 200–2. 54. Langer’s questioning stance also recalls the perspectival relativism of Zhuangzi; both thinkers suggest that all evaluations are based on perspective. Both highlight the advantage of a non-evaluative stance, what Zhuangzi called inhabiting the pivot of the Dao, from which one can respond openly to all perspectives and transformation. 55. On Becoming an Artist, 145–46. 56. For example, she points out that children delight in pushing elevator buttons. Now we do it mindlessly and no longer enjoy it (ibid., 77). 57. Ibid., 78. 58. She notes that the Balinese don’t have a word for art; since they strive to be engaged in everything they do, everything is raised to the level of art (ibid., 18).

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Index

Abhidharma, 217 Activity, happiness in: Augustine on, 160; in the Bhagavad Gītā, 9, 127–28; Confucius on, 74, 75; Csikszentmihalyi on, 257–63, 273–74, 342n30; in the Daodejing, 100, 103, 106, 107; Langer on, 230–32; Maimonides on, 173. See also Aristotle Alexander of Aphrodisias, 47 Al-Fārābī, 168, 176–78, 181; on happiness, 176 Al-Ghazālī, 170, 174–75 Al-Ḥallāj, 204, 210 Altmann, Alexander, 182–83 American Buddhism, 223 Analects (Confucius), 56–78. See also Confucian tradition Annas, Julia, 251 Appetite: in Aristotle, 21; in Augustine’s account of the will, 151–52 Aretē, 5 Aristotle: eudaimonia, 13–18, 25, 40, 43, 181, 257, 261, 275n3, 276n7, 285n108, 342n30; friendship, 8, 16, 17, 32–34; God, 7, 24–26, 31, 38, 40, 268; the good life, 4, 5, 14, 15, 16, 17–18, 19,

23–25, 26; happiness in activity, 2, 3, 5, 13–17, 21–41, 275n3, 278n9, 280n31, 280n41, 281n42, 281n46, 282nn58, 59, 283n66, 284n85, 285n100; on honor, 14–15, 44–45; Telos/end, 15, 16, 23, 24, 26, 28, 31, 33, 34, 35, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48; value, 9, 15, 28, 29, 30–32, 36, 37, 38, 40; virtue, 5, 6, 15, 24, 32, 33, 35, 39, 276n4, 277n8, 280n37, 284n86, 284n88; weakness of will, 17, 18, 19; well-being, 15, 17, 29, 32, 33–35 Asmis, Elizabeth, 52, 53 Ātman, 120–122, 123, 124, 130, 132, 137, 141, 236, 306n17, 306n21 ʿAṭṭar, Farīd al-Dīn, 10, 186. See also Conference of the Birds Attentive awareness, 3, 8, 9, 11, 12, 27, 35, 56, 72, 107; across traditions and texts, 267, 268; in the Bhagavad Gītā, 144; in Confucian tradition, 74–77; in the Daodejing, 114; in Dōgen, 272, 274; in Maimonides, 164, 169; and mindfulness, 223, 254, 273; in Zhuangzi, 94–98, 116 Attitude, Aristotle on pleasure as, 29, 31

[ 375 ]

index Augustine of Hippo: autonomy of the will, 152; chain of being, 157; conflict of drives and will, 152; criticism of Epicureans, 159; criticism of Stoics, 160–61; on divided human will, 147–48, 151; divine grace as ultimate source of happiness, 145, 162; eternal happiness as only true happiness, 159; eudaimonia not an end it itself, 160; eudaimonistic view of the purpose of life, 146; evil, 149; existence as source of happiness, 157–58; free will, 155; free will and divine foreknowledge, 156–57; God and Plato’s form of the Good, 154; the good will, 152; happiness as finding joy in the eternal, 156; human happiness and divine happiness, 159; identification of God and the good, 146; life of the mind as highest form of happiness, 159; on love of ourselves, 160; as a Manichaean, 149; need for God’s grace to attain salvation, 146–47; original sin, 158–59; against Palagius’ view of human will, 147; natural law, 150; on Platonic view of eternal forms, 150–51; potential tensions in view of happiness, 160; problem of theodicy, 149–51; relationship with personal God as source of happiness, peace, 162; relief that God is not source of evil, suffering, 156; spiritual biography, 152; spiritual exercises, 153, 158; story of the Fall, 154–55; theocentric ethics, 161; two parts to happiness, 153; unhappiness as being cut off from God, source of being, 157; virtue, 160; vision of Truth, 154; voluntaristic viewpoint in early works, 151; the will, 148 Avicenna, 166, 169, 209 Awakening, 10, 198, 237, 238, 239, 271, 272

Benedict, Ruth, 58 Ben-Shahar, Tal, 11, 249–52, 254, 273, 343n40; and experience machine thought experiment, 251; four dimensions to happiness, 249; “happiness boosters” and overcoming of challenges, 252; happiness course, 249; happiness as “ultimate currency,” 249; meaning, 251; overall orientation and purpose of one’s life giving meaning to the present, 249–50; pleasure is the present benefit of an activity, meaning is its value in the future, 250; positive emotions, 251 Bhagavad Gītā, 117–44; action for the sake of duty, 125; Brahma-Nirvana (state of pure calm of infinity), 129; contemplation in action, 129; democratic, egalitarian path, 141; devotion to Krishna as highest path, 144; discipline of action, 125; discipline of knowledge (jnanayoga), 125; goals of Sāṅkhya and Yoga, 124; and inclusivism, 139; loving attention on Supreme Person, 144; skillfulness in action, 128; theophany Arjuna sees, 142–43; three categories of action, 133–34. See also karma yoga, Krishna Bhakti yoga (discipline of devotion), 131, 137, 143 Bikkhu Bodhi, 220 Boddhisattva, 190 Brāhman, 119, 120–23, 129, 136, 138–40; identity between atman and brāhmanin the Upanishads, 124, 128, 132; joy of contact with brāhman; and Krishna, 137, 141, 142–44 Brāhmaṇas, 119, 120 Broadie, Sarah, 25 Buddha, 97, 196, 215, 217, 218, 220, 224, 236, 243, 245, 246, 248, 327n39 Buddha nature, 10; Dōgen on, 235–42, 245, 248; Suzuki on, 246–47

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index Buddhism: early Buddhism’s idea of eudaimonia in the language of release from suffering, 234; Mahāyāna school’s shifting the eudaimonistic goal to the realization that saṃsāra is nirvāṇa, 234; Noble Eightfold Path, 215, 220; “Three marks of existence,” 217 Capabilities approach, 7, 257, 316n29 Ching, Julia, 63–64 Cicero, 42, 46, 49; criticism of Epicurus, 46 City of God (Augustine), 146, 153, 160, 161 Community, importance of living in: Aristotle on, 15–16, 33; Confucius on, 55, 57, 58, 65, 66, 70, 78; in Islam, 190 Conference of the Birds (ʿAṭṭar), 186–213; allusions to traditional Qur’ānic stories, 187; community to share in spiritual journey, 190; descent of soul into nothingness, 205–6; divine manifested in human beings and the world, 191–92; dual movements of annihilation (fanā’) and eternal abiding (baqā’), 204, 210; ectasy of love, 196, 197–98; imminence of God, 191; journey to God and then within God, 211–12; King Solomon, 187; life of fulfillment is the journey to rediscover the beloved Truth, 213, 271; love for the beloved more powerful than theology or asceticism, 197–98, 200, 201, 201–2, 271; the mirror of truth and creation, 210, 271; mystery of revelation of the divine in one’s soul, 194–95; non-dualism, 203–4; path of fall and redemption in the story of the sheikh, 198–99; personal God, 193; scriptural allusions, 189; seven stages on the Sufi way and the Seven Valleys, 199–206; the Simorgh, the goal of the quest, 193; Simorgh formed and manifested in all, 208–9;

story of Joseph as allegory for selling soul into slavery, 207–8; story of Sheikh Sanʿan and the demand of ultimate sacrifice from love for the Divine, 196–97 Confessions (Augustine), 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 153, 156, 161–162, 317n50; divine sweetness, 161; speaking to personal God in personal way, 161 Confucian tradition: and ancestor spirits, worship in China, 60; attentive awareness, 56, 74–77; beauty and the arts’ role in moral self-cultivation, 71; contextual self, 58, 66; contextual self forged through social relationships, ritual, 58–59; cosmology, 59–60; dance and music as metaphors for li, 61, 65, 71, 77; de (moral charisma), 61; Five Constant Relationships, 58, 66; fixed social roles, 59; friendship, 65; full absorption in activity, 74; Golden Rule, 75–76; humanity innately good or bad, 68; joy in three things, 79; junzi, 57, 61, 295n92; learning for the sake of doing, 64; li, 56, 57–58, 66–69; on music, ritual, and humaneness, 71–73; Neo-Confucianism, 63; pleasure and joy in ritual and the Way, 77–78; pleasure and joy as normative concepts, 79; pleasure as what the good person enjoys, 79; rectification of names, 58; as religion or ethical humanism, 59–60; ren, 56, 70; respect, reverence, 67; ritual sacrifice, 70, 75; ru (elite), 64; sagehood, 77; scholasticism in, 64; self-mastery, 68; role of teacher to student, 66; Tian (Way of Nature or Heaven), 60, 62–64; wu-wei harmony, 61, 72, 73, 75, 77; yi (rightness), 61 Confucius: centrality of ritual, 55; life in context of Chinese culture of the time, 59; spiritual autobiography, 68–69; as virtue ethicist, 55 Connolly, John M, 148

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index Contemplation, pleasure of: Aristotle on, 21, 25, 38; Augustine on, 154, 160, 181; Epicurus on, 44–45; Maimonides on, 165, 171, 173–76, 184, 270 Cook, Francis, 235 Creative engagement, 3, 5, 7, 12, 246, 267; Langer on, 265–66 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 11, 106, 127, 170, 252, 254–62, 273–75; Aristotelian account of pleasure in engagement in activity, 256–57; attentive awareness and optimal experience, 255; distinction between pleasure and enjoyment, 256; flow experience, 11, 170, 254–61; flow experience and loss of sense of self-consciousness, 258–59; flow experience and sense of freedom, 259; flow experience in structured activities, 259–60; flow experience in music, in martial arts, and in study, 260; and Freud on importance of human relationships, 260–61; integration of all parts of ourselves and with others and the world, 255–56; a phenomenology of enjoyment, 257–58; on resilience and responding to stress, 261; unified sense of purpose giving meaning, significance to life, 262 Cyrenaics, 45–46, 48, 49, 53 Dao: In Confucian tradition, 81; various meanings in Chinese culture, 81. See also Daodejing Daodejing, 80–94; attack on Confucian values, 90–93; Dao as empty or as non-being, 83; Dao as immanent, 94; Dao as inexhaustible, 84; Dao as source of all change, 85–86; Dao as undefined or nameless, ineffable, 81–82, 94; Dao that can be dao’d is not Dao, 81; feminine imagery for Dao, 85, 88, 93; reversal of values, 88–89 Daoism. See Daodejing, Zhuangzi

Davidson, Richard, 232, 272, 332n48 Death: cycle of birth and death in Hinduism, 123, 125; Epicurus on fear of death, 51; moment of, 129, 132, 179, 180, 224, 260; no fear of, 194 Desire: Aristotle on, 15, 16, 17, 19, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32, 33, 38, 39, 320n19; Augustine on, 147–49, 150, 151, 153, 155, 157–59, 315n19; in the Bhagavad Gītā, 122, 124, 128, 132, 134, 136, 139, 305n1, 308n42, 310n80; in Buddhism, 129; in Conference of the Birds, 197, 199, 202; Confucius on, 69, 71, 77; Csikszentmihalyi on, 256, 257; in the Daodejing, 81, 82–83, 87, 91, 93; Epicurus on, 43–45, 48–49, 51, 52–54, 286n8; Maimonides on, 165, 168, 177, 178; Plato on, 152; Zhuangzi on, 98, 101, 104, 299n62, 305n129 Despair: Augustine on, 152–153, 157–158, 270; in Conference of the Birds, 199, 201, 203 Devotion: in the Bhagavad Gītā, 124, 130, 131, 133, 137–44; in Maimonides, 164, 168–70, 171, 176, 180, 185 Dharma: in Buddhism as elements of existence, 216; in Buddhism as teachings, 224; contemporary Hindu understanding of finding one’s calling in life, 132; as sacred duty in the Bhagavad Gītā, 117, 123, 124, 125, 126, 131, 132, 270; as the way things are in Hinduism, 60 Doctrine of the Mean (Confucius), 58, 59, 63 Dōgen, 10, 11, 234–48, 271, 272, 274; being-time, 236–39, 246; Buddha nature as eternal and changing, 238; Buddha nature is temporal experience, 238; Buddha nature as true reality of each being, 235, 236; emptiness, 242; expansion of notion of enlightenment, 241–42; language of awakening rather than enlightenment, 237; non-dualism, 236–38; as perspectivalist, 241; the

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index self and no-self, 243–45; sitting in zazen, 238; sitting in zazen as letting go of identifications the mind creates, 244; three principle doctrines, 235; two modes of time, the moment and flowing time, 236–37; zazen as pre-reflective thoughts, 237; zazen as temporal experience without a concept of past, present, or future, 237 Dunne, John D., 216, 221, 223, 332n48 Easwaran, Ekthnath, 134 Egoism, 6 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 126 Energeia (“activity”), 21, 22, 26, 27, 30, 38, 40 Enjoyment: in Aristotle, 2, 11, 14, 23, 29, 31, 32, 35, 38, 41, 268; in Augustine, 160; in Csikszentmihalyi, 256–64; in Epicurus, 46, 50; in Langer, 265–66; and mindfulness, 228, 254; in Tal Ben-Shahar, 251, 273 Enlightenment: in Buddhism, 10, 190, 234, 244; in Dōgen, 235–38, 239, 240–41, 242, 245, 248, 271–72 Eno, Robert, 64, 288n8, 288n14, 290nn39, 40, 291n43, 293n81, 297n8 Epicurus, 5, 8, 23, 25, 42–54, 77, 98, 158, 214, 233, 251, 256, 257, 260, 268, 281n48, 282n54, 325n88, 330n15; ataraxia (mental undisturbedness), 46–47; biography, 42; definition of pleasure, 45; feeling as basis for judging the good, 48; highest pleasure is calmness of soul and lack of pain, 46; katastematic and kinetic pleasure, 53–54; pleasure is highest good, 42, 48, 49; pleasure as lack of pain, 46, 50; and quantitative hedonistic calculus, 51 Equanimity: in the Bhagavad Gītā, 127; in Daoism, 8, 9, 94, 97; and mindfulness, 222–23 Ernst, Carl, 201 Ethics of the Fathers, 176

Eudaimonia, 1–5. Augustine on, 159–60. See also Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Eudaimonia Buddha, 214 Eudemian Ethics (Aristotle), 16, 18, 33, 283n72 Eudoxus, 23, 25 Evil: in Augustine, 146–54, 156, 157, 317n50; in Conference of the Birds, 206–7; in Frankl, 254; in Maimonides, 180–81, 324n74; in Plato and Aristotle, 317n52 Excellence, human: Ancient Greek concept of, 5; in Aristotle, 23–24, 26, 41 Existentialist logotherapy, 252 Feeling: in Daoism, 92, 109–10, 114; happiness as a feeling, 1–2; in Mencius, 245; and mindfulness, 215–16, 221, 225, 232, 255, 256; in Stoicism, 316n37 Fingarette, Herbert, 58 Flanagan, Owen, 214, 329n2 Flow: Csikszentmihalyi on, 106, 127, 170, 254–56, 258–64, 273; in Daoism, 127; Dōgen on, 236–39, 271; Epicurus on, 52–54; flow activity, 11; Langer on, 231–32. See also Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly Flowing cognition, 113, 116, 226 Form of the Good, 9, 154, 161, 162 Frankl, Victor, 11, 251, 252–54, 255, 273; all have individual vocation or mission, 252; primary motivation of human life is a will to meaning, 252 Freud, Sigmund, 58, 260 Friendship: Aristotle on, 8, 16, 17, 32–34; Confucius on, 65, 78, 79; as shared awareness, 225 Gandhi, Mahatma, 134–35 Garden of Eden: in Augustine, 158, 165, 177, 315n19; in Maimonides, 319n4 Genesis (coming to be), 27 Genjōkōan, 239, 240, 241, 243 Gilbert, Daniel, 250

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index God: Aristotle on, 7, 24–26, 31, 38, 40, 268; Augustine on, 9, 146, 147, 149–50, 152, 153, 155–57, 159, 160, 161–62; in the Bhagavad Gītā, 132, 133, 134, 137, 138, 141, 144; in Conference of the Birds, 191–98, 211–12; Maimonides on, 163, 165–68, 169, 170, 171–72, 173–75, 176–78, 181, 182, 183–85, 270 Good Life, the: Aristotle on, 4, 5, 14, 15, 16, 17–18, 19, 23–25, 26; Augustine on, 156; Epicurus on, 42–43; Freud on, 260 Gorgias (Plato), 18 Gosling, J. C. B., 20 Gratification, 14, 68 Grossman, Paul, 222 Ground of being, 9, 162 Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides), 164–65, 168–71, 174–80, 184–85; and al-Ghazali’s return from contemplation to service, 174–75; differing interpretations of happiness attainable in the Guide, 176–77; distinction of true and false happiness, 181; evil and suffering due to the nature of the material world and human ignorance, 180–81; goal to bring reader back to pure contemplation of reality as it is, 165; goal of guiding student through perplexity, plus Sufi subtext, 184–85; God’s providence, 180–81; greater knowledge bringing love, joy, and perplexed dazzlement, 185; highest goal of meditative contemplation, 170; instructions for the devotional life, 169; Jewish liturgical prayer as training for attentive awareness, 169; meditation on two central Jewish prayers, the Shema and Amidah, 169; metaphorical reading of some interpreters of Maimonides’ discussion of dialogue between God and Moses, 171; Pines on four strands of the Guide, 168; Platonic

image of the cave, 174; prayer and commandments and focused concentration on the Divine, 170; rare use of the word for happiness in the Guide, 176; rational purposes of the commandments, 170; receiving guidance from the active intellect as service to God, 175; state of intellectual love and delight as one approaches death, 179–80; suffering and limits of human knowledge, 182; tranquility in not trying to understand what we cannot understand, 182; ultimate human perfection, 176, 178; ultimate purpose or end of life, 176–77 Hadot, Pierre, 153 Hall, David, 57, 61 The Happy Life (Augustine), 145 Harvey, Steven, 169, 176, 180, 182 Harvey, Warren Zev, 177 Hawking, Steven, 181 Haybron, Daniel, 2, 13, 275n3, 278n1, 287n26, 342n30, 343n36 Health, 47, 180, 229 The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (Nyanaponika), 219 Hedonist, 5, 23, 25, 33, 43, 45, 275n3 Hinduism: brahmins, 119–20; dharma, 117; history and origins in Indus Valley Civilization, 118; prakṛiti and purusha, 128; rebirth, 123; sacrifice, 119–20; Vedic hymns, 118–19. See also Bhagavad Gīta Ibn Bājjah, 176, 177 Ibn Tufayl, 176 Illness, 21, 98, 115, 181, 199 Immortality, 168, 176 Intrinsic value, 40 Isaiah (Biblical prophet), 69 Ivanhoe, Philip J., 63, 78, 100, 261, 293n71, 293n80, 294n90, 295n95, 297n23, 300n65, 301n80, 302n90, 302n95, 303n109

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index Job, book of, 180–82, 332n51; and coping with loss, 181–82; God’s providence, 181; highest happiness as being in God’s presence, 180; Maimonides’ interpretation of, 180–82 Joy, 1, 2, 8, 10, 31, 44, 46, 47, 50, 52, 54, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 97, 98, 109, 112, 115, 122, 123, 126, 127, 135, 136, 139, 147, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158, 178, 179, 180, 183, 184, 185, 190, 212, 225, 233, 258, 260, 263, 268, 275n3, 281n46, 293n76, 294n85, 295n98, 316n33, 319n1, 324n68, 329n2, 339n81 Judaism, 70, 163, 164, 165, 167, 169 “Just for the Time Being, Just for Awhile (Uji)” (Dōgen), 237–38 Kabat-Zinn, Jon, 218, 219, 221, 332n55 Kant, Immanuel, 287n13 Karma, 123, 124, 133, 134, 141, 150, 307n28, 307n36 Karma yoga (“non-attached action”): action for the preservation of world order, 130; actions performed in spirit of sacrifice, 130; dedicated in devotion to the Deity, 130; and imitation of Krishna, 132–35; impartial to success and failure, 127, 128, 134; and renunciation of action, 124, 125, 127, 129, 130, 133, 135–36, 141; as witness of action, 131 Kennedy, John F., 135 Kenny, Anthony, 256, 280n31 Kinēsis (“process”), 22, 27, 53 Knowledge: Aristotle on, 14, 283n72; Augustine on, 162; Avicenna on, 322n47; in the Bhagavad Gītā, 125–26, 129, 131, 132–34, 138, 139, 141–42; in Conference of the Birds, 187, 198, 203, 212; Confucius on, 64; Daodejing on, 90–92; in early Hinduism, 120; Maimonides on, 167, 170–71, 173–75, 177, 181–85, 323n63, 324n68, 325n88; Plato on, 300n66; in the Upanishads, 121–23; Zhuangzi on, 101–2, 107 Koan, 233, 239–43

Kraemer, Joel, 182 Kraut, Richard, 276n7, 284–85n98 Krishna: accessible and universal, 137; attachment to Krishna, 138; and brāhman, 129; grace of Krishna, 141, 145; as highest reality, 142; “I am” statements, 142–43; and inclusivism, 139; manifest and unmanifest, 139–40; meditation on Krishna, 128; as model of karma yoga, 132–35; mystical devotion to, 137; as personal deity, 133; quintessence of all things, 138; as supreme brāhman, highest reality, 129, 136, 137, 139, 140, 142, 143–44 Langer, Ellen, 11, 227–32, 233, 265–66, 333n71, 333n84, 341n14, 344n54 Laozi, 8, 9, 80–94, 100, 112, 116, 167, 269, 298n26, 341n19. See also Daodejing Letter to Menoeceus (Epicurus), 46, 47, 50 Li (ritual): aesthetic beauty of, 71; fostering humaneness, 69; and intentionality, awareness in, 74; interpersonal nature of li, 65; joy in, 75 Love, 3, 10, 12, 267, 274: in Augustine, 146, 147, 150–51, 153, 154, 155, 158, 160, 161–62; in the Bhagavad Gītā, 4, 9, 134, 137, 137, 142, 144; in Conference on the Birds, 10, 183–85, 186–93, 195–207, 210–13, 271; in Confucian tradition, 77, 78; Frankl on, 253; Freud on, 260; Maimonides on, 168, 169, 177, 179, 180, 181, 185; Suzuki on, 245–46 Lovejoy, Arthur O., 157 MacIntyre, Alasdaire, 264 Mahābhārata, 117 Mahaparinirvāṇa Sutra, 235 Maimonides, Moses: active intellect as link between human and divine, 172, 174; degrees of happiness in the afterlife, 182; divine attributes, 167–68; esotericism, 164; on Garden

[ 381 ]

index Maimonides, Moses (cont.) of Eden story as philosophical parable, 165; God as conscious being, in contrast to Dao, 167; God as ineffable and unknowable, 167; God as Necessary Existent, 165–66; God as recipient of human love, 168; happiness as ultimate end in early works, 178; intuitive understanding, 172; knowledge as love and joy for the divine, 183–85; as Neoplatonic metaphysical purist, God as ontological first principle, 167; overflow of the intellect, 173, 174; philosophical interpretation of Jewish scripture, 164; physical and metaphysical proofs for the existence of God, 166; on prophecy and intuitive understanding, 171–73; to reconcile Judaism with Aristotelian thought, 163, 164; therapeutic advice on limits of human knowledge, 182; whether happiness is attainable, 182–83 Manichaean dualism, 148, 149, 153 Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankl), 252–54; desire to fulfill something outside us, 252–53; in triumph over suffering that we rise to our full dignity as human beings, 253–54; ways to discover the meaning of life, 253–54 Mantras, 119–20 Marx, Karl, 7 Mead, George Herbert, 259 Meister Eckhart, 238, 246 Mencius, 68, 78, 109, 115, 245 Mencius (Mencius), 56, 73 Meno (Plato), 205 Metaphysics (Aristotle), 24, 27, 31, 320n19 Mill, John Stuart, 43, 285n102 Mindfulness: approaches to mindfulness in classic texts, 220; as “bare attention,” 219; brings cognitive flexibility and enjoyment

to learning, 228; and Buddhist system of virtue, 223; characterization of mindfulness as non-judgmental present awareness, 219; in clinical, psychotherapeutic setting in the West, 223; contemporary psychologists in the West and mindfulness, 214; in creative people such as scientists, artists, and writers, 231; debate over whether calm required for insight, 217–18; in early Buddhist context, 216; and educators, 229; ethical dimension of, 221; as insight into emotions, 217; Mahāmudrā aim of cultivating concern for suffering through mindfulness, 222; mindful awareness as being a friend to oneself, 225–26; mindful learning, 227–30; Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), 218, 223; neuropsychological research on how mindfulness can sharpen mental focus, 232; non-dual awareness in Tibetan Mahāmudrā meditation, 221; and the Pāli term sati, 215; as presence of mind, attentiveness to the present, 216; as staying open to possibilities, 227; Tibetan Buddhists’ integration of mindfulness and insight, 218; and two distinct purposes of meditation, mindfulness and insight, 216–17; as the welcome and willing embrace of all dimensions of experience, 222; Western focus on bare attention, non-judgmental aspect of mindfulness, 221; and Western philosophers who have encouraged similar path of self-examination and awareness, 233 Mischel, Walter, 68 Mishneh Torah (Maimonides), 164, 166, 184 Moksha, 117, 123, 133 Montessori, Maria, 252

[ 382 ]

index Music, 23, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, 52, 54, 65, 69–74, 77, 78, 79, 104, 109, 190, 229, 230, 231, 259–60, 264, 268, 280n32, 283n68, 293n72, 293n76, 293–94nn80, 81, 294n85 Nāgārjuna, 234, 337n52, 340n86 Nakamura, Jeanne, 11, 261–62, 274, 343n40 Nettle, Daniel, 1, 2 Neville, Robert C., 289n26 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 13, 14, 16–40. See also Aristotle Nirvāṇa, 129, 136, 234, 236, 241, 248 Nous, 153, 173, 286n110, 317n42 Nozick, Robert, 251 Nussbaum, Martha, 7, 257, 316n29 Nyanaponika, 219–21; importance of verbal labeling of our mental states for purification of the mind, 220; mindfulness as “bare attention,” 219 On the Free Choice of the Will (Augustine), 145, 148–49, 317n50 On the Soul (Aristotle), 17, 25, 29 Original sin, 146, 152, 158 Owen, G. E. L., 23 Pain, 5, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 29, 35, 38, 39, 43, 44, 45, 46–49, 50–53, 196–98, 224, 244, 245, 250, 253, 284n85, 284n88 Pereq Heleq (Maimonides), 178–79 Philebus (Plato), 18 Physics (Aristotle), 27 Pines, Shlomo: four strands or discourses in the Guide of the Perplexed, 268; Maimonides’ shared conception of God and Nature with Spinoza, 167; only political happiness possible in Maimonides’ view, 176–77 Pirsig, Robert, 249 Plato, 9, 14, 16, 18–19, 21, 23, 43, 48, 55, 66, 72, 79, 121, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 164, 197, 205, 256, 260, 270; on eudaimonia, 16; the Forms and

happiness, 150–51; just, harmonious balance in our own soul makes us more capable of acting justly with respect to others, 256; the just soul, 152; moral psychology, view of the divided soul in the Republic, 151–52; on pleasure, 18 Play, 94, 98, 99, 103, 115, 232, 266 Pleasure: artificial pleasures, 39; distinguished from enjoyment, 256–57; excessive or intense pleasures, 39; as highest good for Epicurus, 42, 48, 49; as an intentional state, 53; katastematic pleasure, 46–50; kinetic pleasures, 46, 48–54; luxurious pleasures, 44, 52; pleasures of the senses, 8, 31, 40, 52; restorative pleasures, 20 Plotinus, 193, 197 Political Regime (Alfarabi), 176 Potential/Potentiality, 2, 4, 7, 13, 15, 17, 22, 24, 26, 30, 83, 88, 93, 172, 173, 231, 235, 239, 241, 243, 253, 254, 257 Practical wisdom (phronēsis), 45 Principle Doctrines (Epicurus), 42, 49–50 Questions Addressed to Simplicism (Augustine), 150 The Questions of King Milinda, 215 Rābiʿah Al-ʿAdawīyah, 186 Rahner, Karl, 139 Rāmānuja, 143, 312n99 Reconsiderations (Augustine), 146, 149 Ren (humaneness). See Confucian tradition Republic (Plato), 18, 49, 72, 150, 151, 152, 154, 300n66, 321n38, 342n24 Ṛg Veda, 118–20 Rhys Davids, Thomas W., 215 Ritual sacrifice, 70–71 Roochnik, David, 22, 28, 40, 281n46 Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn, 187 Ryle, Gilbert, 36, 256

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index Sāṅkhya philosophy, 124, 128, 129, 137, 308n50; dualism of purusha and prakṛiti, 128 Śankara, school of, 143, 144 Samatha meditation, 216–17 Saṃsāra, 123, 140, 141, 234, 236, 241 Sati/smṛti, 215–17, 330n24 Schroeder, Shudo Brian, 238 Self-sufficiency, 15 Seligman, Martin, 276n5, 343n40 Shields, Christopher, 35, 280n32 Shiva, 118 Siegel, Daniel, 11, 224–27, 272–73, 332n55; mindfulness building gradual attunement, 224; mindfulness as transformative, 224; neuropsychological study of mindfulness, 224; streams of awareness, 225–26 Siegel, Madeleine W., 227 Slingerland, Edward, 55, 61, 62, 292n68, 293n72, 293n77, 297n17, 298n26, 305n1 Socrates, 72, 111, 151, 154, 233 Sōtō Zen Buddhism, 10, 234–45 Spinoza, Baruch, 167, 169, 233; and Maimonides, 167 Stern, Josef, 177, 182, 184 Sufism: Baqāʾ, eternal abiding of the self in God, 190; fanā’, or annihilation of self, 190; and concern for reward or punishment, 186; God’s passionate love for human beings, 195; Muhammad’s mystical experiences, 189; name of Sufi drawn from wearing of a ṣūf, simple garment, 186; origins of, 186; satisfaction found through love rather than knowledge, 188; surrender interpreted in mystical terms, 188–89; two senses of Self, 189 Suicide, 157–58 Suzuki, Shunryu, 10–11, 234, 245–48, 265, 271, 272, 338n73, 339n81; accessible articulation of Dōgen’s

teachings, 245; attachment and non-attachment, 245–46; on Dōgen’s instructions on “thinking nonthinking,” 247; every moment and person independent but all intertwined, 246–47; learning through mistakes, 247. See also Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind Symposium (Plato), 16, 154, 197 Tarfon, Rabbi, 192 Taylor, Charles, 292n69 Telos/Teleion: Aristotle on, 15, 16, 23, 24, 26, 28, 31, 33, 34, 35, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48; Augustine on, 155 Theodicy, problem of, 149–51 Theodor, Ithamar, 138, 139, 141, 197, 307n32, 311n85 Theōria, 46, 309n54 Tibetan Buddhism, 218, 221 To Simplician—on Various Questions (Augustine), 146 Tu, Wei-ming, 63 Unhappiness, 13, 155, 156, 157 Unmoved Mover, 24, 25, 31, 36, 40, 41, 168, 268 Upanishads, 120–23, 128, 129, 132, 136, 137, 138, 203, 306n18 Utilitarianism, 7, 43, 51, 111, 126, 142 Vaillant, George, 261 Value: Aristotle on, 9, 15, 28, 29, 30–32, 36, 37, 38, 40; Augustine on, 160, 162; Frankl on, 253 Van Norden, Bryan, 276n4, 288n8, 288n14, 289n23 Vatican Sayings (Epicurus), 44, 47 Vipasyanā, 217 Virtue, moral: Aristotle on, 5, 6, 15, 24, 32, 33, 35, 39, 276n4, 277n8, 280n37, 284n86, 284n88; Augustine on, 152–53, 155, 159–61; in Buddhism, 214, 223; Confucius on, 55–58, 60–61, 65, 73, 77, 78, 84, 102, 287n1;

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index Daodejing on, 91, 93, 98; Epicurus on, 45–46, 48, 286n11 Virtue ethics, 55, 57, 287n1 Weakness of will, 17, 18, 19 Well-being, 15, 17, 29, 32, 33–35, 43, 150, 152, 214, 222–23, 233, 241, 265, 272, 275nn2, 3, 276n5. See also Eudaimonia Wolfsdorf, David, 37, 49, 284n84 Wu-wei (uncontrived action), 8, 56, 71, 75, 77, 82, 87–90, 94–98, 105–6, 112–13, 127, 135, 254, 269, 288n4, 297n13, 298n26, 298n29, 301n77, 301–2n87, 305n1, 341n19, 342n30

Yin and yang, 55, 93 Yoga (“discipline”), 117, 124, 129, 132, 135, 136, 308n50, 314n115 Yogin, 127, 128, 129, 133, 136, 137, 311n85 Zazen, 236–39, 242, 244, 247, 339n81 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig), 249–50 Zen Buddhism, 10–11, 196, 198, 221, 234–48, 271–72, 274, 331n46 Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Suzuki), 10, 234, 245–48, 338n73 Zhuangzi, 2, 8–9, 62, 94–116. See also Wu-wei Zhu Xi, 64

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