The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized

6 Virtue and Happiness

6 Virtue and Happiness This alone—one’s service to sentient beings (sattvaraddhana) is pleasing to Tathagatas [Enlightened or Awakened Ones]. This alone is the actual accomplishment of one’s goal. This alone removes the suffering of the world. Therefore, let this alone be my resolve. —SƗntideva, The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, VI, 127 Thus, one who has patience should cultivate zeal, because Awakening is established with zeal, and there is no merit without zeal. . . . What is zeal? It is enthusiasm for virtue. —SƗntideva, The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, VII, 1, 2 Upon mounting the chariot of the Spirit of Awakening, which carries away all despondency and weariness, what sensible person would despair at progressing in this way from joy to joy? —SƗntideva, The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, VII, 30 Psychological Laws and Normative Laws I have offered an analysis of eudaimoniaBuddha . Eudaimonia—flourishing, or happy flourishing, or happiness and flourishing, or more likely flourishing that often or usually leads to some sort of happiness of a serene sort— involves reaching a state, better: achieving a way of being, feeling, and acting constituted by wisdom (prajna) and virtue (sila, virtue, or karuna, virtue of the sort where compassion is the highest or master virtue) and mindfulness. Only in wisdom and virtue and mindfulness do we actualize our full potential, our proper function, as human beings and achieve eudaimoniaBuddha . In all likelihood we are happy, contented, happyBuddha . Here I continue the profitable comparative and cosmopolitan conversation between Buddhism, Aristotle’s philosophy, and the Hellenistic 166 Chapter 6 therapeutic schools, focusing specifically on their respective ethics, to see what happens, what insights about virtue, flourishing, and happiness, if any, turn up. I am not committed to the view that Buddhist and Aristotelian or Stoic or Epicurean ethics are similar or very similar. It is just that they are all worthy participants in a potentially profitable anachronistic, ethnocentric, and cosmopolitan conversation about the good life. Assume for analytic purposes that we possess Buddhist wisdom and are mindful in the ways Buddhism recommends: What goods does being virtuous in a Buddhist way add? Many think that Buddhism really only requires a certain kind of moral personality and that the threefold chord picture is elitist. Wisdom and mindfulness are luxuries of people with a lot of extra time, the philosophically curious, and so on. The elitism charge is not crazy, so examining Buddhism as if the ethics could stand alone has precedent, even if the view on offer here is the New York pretzel one. Three issues absorb me: (1) What is the connection between virtue and happiness generally (if there is any general truth in this vicinity), and what in particular is the alleged, and what is different, actual connection between virtueBuddha and happinessBuddha ? Is virtue the normal cause of happiness, even a necessary condition? Is the claim that there is strong, possibly necessary , connection between virtue and happiness (either generally or in the Buddhist case) an empirical psychological claim or is the claim a normative one?1 A descriptive psychological thesis would be that virtue and happiness do go together; a normative claim would say that in a good or just world they ought to go together. (2) Which theory—for the sake of conversation, Aristotle’s or Buddha’s—provides the best or most defensible conception of virtue? Is it possible that Aristotle’s theory is too undemanding, and the Buddha’s too demanding? (3) How much work needs to be done, specifically , on moderating, modifying, possibly eliminating destructive states of mind before virtue and flourishing and happiness (conceived by Aristotelians or Buddhists) can take hold? A Key Difference between Aristotelian and Buddhist Ethics There are some structural features, a conception of eudaimonia and a certain teleological structure, that allow comparisons of Aristotle’s ethics and Buddhist ethics. To a point, Buddhism can be illuminated by viewing it ethnocentrically through our own concepts of the proper function (ergon) and ideal end (telos) of humankind. However, there are also important contentful differences between what could look like an elegant isomorphism between Aristotelian reason and virtue and Buddhist wisdom and virtue. Virtue and Happiness 167 Reason, insofar as it is relevant to ethics, consists of the practical intelligence (phronesis) to see things as they are, assess a situation for what it is, evaluate means-ends relations, and settle on an appropriate course of action in conformity...