Buddhism and Human Flourishing by Seth Zuihō Segall

Author:Seth Zuihō Segall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030370275
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

This is one area where the Buddhist and Aristotelian approaches to right and wrong (kusalaand akusala) desire seem to be in agreement.

On the other hand, Keown ends his discussion of desire by noting that according to the Vinaya, upon his enlightenment, the Buddha was freed of all desire (chanda) for “forms, sounds, colors, odours and tangible objects.”11 In other words, the Buddha was freed of all desire for sense pleasures—although he retained wholesome desires, such as the desire to end the suffering of all sentient beings. He now only desired what he understood to be truly valuable, and sense pleasures were not on that list.

Most modern Westerners would probably disagree with the traditionalist Buddhist argument that because sense pleasures are fleeting and tinged with suffering, they’re not worth pursuing. Even when fleeting and mixed with sorrow, sense pleasure, according to the eudaimonic model, seems an important part of a well-lived life. As Lord Tennyson noted, “‘tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

If we never experienced pleasure, we’d have little reason to go on living. Life would be—to paraphrase Hamlet—weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable. There seems nothing unwholesome about deriving pleasure from the colors of the sunset, the sounds of a Beethoven symphony, the scent of the sea, or the loving caress of another human being. Indeed, our capacity for their enjoyment seems an essential part of what makes a good life “good.” A life where only ethically good things mattered seems a diminished kind of life.

Some traditional Buddhists might be tempted to rebut this argument by saying that they aren’t opposed to experiencing sense pleasure per se when they adventitiously happen upon it. They are only against desiring pleasure and making efforts to seek it out. “If I happen to smell the scent of the sea, it’s delightful, but I don’t plan a vacation by the sea in order to seek out the pleasure. I just experience it when I happen to be there and then let it go.” This seems to me a rather weak argument. If people didn’t desire to create or seek pleasant sense experiences, there would be no Beethoven symphonies to hear, Michelangelo sculptures to see, Shakespearian plays to attend, or botanical gardens to visit. As I argued in Chap. 3, aesthetic pleasures are as constitutive of well-being as are the moral virtues.

There may also be important exceptions to the idea that our desires should always be temperate and infused with rationality. There are certain intense and passionate desires—like the stirrings of romantic love, the throes of artistic inspiration, or the drive to win a marathon—that add a kind of zest, color, and excitement to life that we would sorely miss if our lives were always rational and well-modulated. As long as these desires are consistent with our higher-order goals and values—and as long as they are in accord with our abilities to pursue them with some reasonable chance of success—they also add something important to our sense of well-being.

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