Buddhism, Intuition, and Virtue

1. Introduction

Buddha's Four Noble Truths seem to embody a practical morality that values beneficial consequences and the minimization of suffering. However, there is a tension between the aim of this practical morality and Buddhism's highest good of nirvāna: although the Noble Truths aim at the reduction of suffering, they also seem to identify the pursuit of happiness and the avoidance of suffering as among the roots of delusion and attachment to self. Moreover, this practical morality seems to depend in large part on conceptual understanding of the causes of suffering and delusion, as expressed, for example, in Buddha's articulations of the Noble Truths and the Perfections. Yet conceptual modes of thought are also linked in deep ways to attachment to self.

Gowans (2015) summarizes the key points as follows:

A person on the path to enlightenment, but far short of enlightenment, may well succumb to something akin to akrasia: recognizing that something is wrong, but still doing it on account of lust, anger or other hindrances. Moreover, on common Buddhist models of the path to enlightenment, there is no suggestion that philosophical understanding of a sound argument for no-self or emptiness, or for universal compassion, would by itself make a person compassionate. The intellectualism sometimes associated with the Socratic claim, that a purely rational understanding of what is good would be sufficient for actually being good, has no counterpart in these Buddhist perspectives.

(186)

These troubles about the relationship of reason and attachment obscure Buddhism's philosophical as well as its ethical import.

Indeed, one might argue that Buddha's concern is with liberation and not morality at all—an amoralism often attributed to figures in the Chan and Zen Buddhist traditions—and typically seen as reflecting Daoist influences on the development of Chinese Buddhism. Daoism's emphatic assaults on conceptual/symbolic reasoning raise some serious questions about how a practice aimed at liberating us from self and reason can assist in the living of a reasoned moral life. However, I think that we can address these concerns by drawing on recent research on the psychology and neuroscience of the emotions and particularly what this research tells us about the relationships between emotion and reason.¹

First I will develop two preliminary points: (1) that initial tensions between Buddhism's apparent consequentialism and its central focus on nirvana can be addressed; and (2) its apparent antipathy to conceptualized principles of morality can be partly addressed by considering its primary concern with the cultivation of virtue and not the articulation of codes of conduct. However, this only sets the stage for inquiry into the deeper connections between ethical transformation and selflessness, especially as articulated in the thoughts of the influential Third Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, Jiangzhi Sengcan (496?–606 CE), and particularly as expressed in certain passages of a work attributed to him, the Xinxinming (The Verses of the Heart-Mind). Although these can be interpreted as defending an amoralistic, possibly iconoclastic reading of Buddhism, I will support a reading with a quite different thrust. I argue that Sengcan offers a subtle understanding of the place of traditional religious practices such as meditation (zazen), sūtra study, and adherence to codes of proper conduct, essential for the cultivation of insight and moral character, while at the same time being mindful of two dangers: (1) that traditional practices alone may well reinforce afflictive tendencies if they serve only as means of escape from uncertainty and suffering—a defining feature of Chan—and (2) a related failure to appreciate the subtler and spiritually powerful attachments to beliefs, manifest in the ways we hold or favor or identify with beliefs.

The two tendencies are interrelated: by suppressing thought and feeling, one prevents the inward reflection needed to reveal deeply seated emotional leanings. Jeff Shore (2016) remarks:

If zazen is thoroughgoing, one's mind is not caught or hindered by anything. But if zazen is not yet settled, one may enter the concentrated oneness of Samadhi—then get stuck there and dwell in it, using it as an escape. It becomes itself a hindrance. The clarity...