The Fool and the Wise

By Wong Weng Hon

Introduction

Cravings shape the human personality of the ordinary worldlings. Ordinary worldlings’ social philosophy is rooted in selfish or egoistic desires or aspirations . Buddhism opposes selfish desires or aspirations but recommends selfless desires or aspirations. Because of cravings, a worlding strives to gain livelihood to satisfy his or her selfish aspirations or desires i.e his or her cravings. For one, who does not apprehend the right view or the true doctrine of Buddhism, it seems that the Buddha’s teaching is not compatible or conflicts with the nature of man- the selfish desire to acquire, to possess and to excel. The perverse worldlings perceive that it is the nature of Man to be selfish or greedy. The Buddha does not deny the existence of diverge forms of desires because, devoid of desires, man can not survive. What the Buddha objects is the impure, unhealthy or unwholesome desire rooted in greed, hatred and delusions. An impure mind is conditioned by these three types of defilement. Selfish desires are constructed on the basis of self-identity expressed in terms of the notion of I-ness or Mine-ness. Egotism emerges from the erroneous notion of I-ness or Mine-ness or the grasping upon the five aggregates as This is I; This is Mine; This belongs to me.

Only Process or Activity

Śākyamuni Buddha promulgates the doctrine of Anatta (Non-self) to awaken us that the notion of I or Me or You is an illusion. The self-identity of I, Me or You has been superimposed by one’s ignorance of the true nature of the human personality or the five aggregates. I, Me or You does not exist in the ultimate sense. All activities of sentient beings, including human beings of course, occur devoid of any permanent substance called Self or Soul which gives rise to the false concepts of I, Me and You. Human personality is merely the selfless or soulless operation of the five aggregates. There is no agent nor instrument called Self nor Soul which regulates all sensual or conscious activities. There is neither the seer nor the seen. It is merely the dynamic process of seeing. When the eye is normal or undeformed and the object of sight is present, the phenomenon or process of seeing naturally occurs. The same principle is applied to the activities of the other senses. There exists merely activities without any actor; there exists merely doing without a doer.  

Fool and the Wise

In Buddhist perspective, there are broadly two categories of human beings, namely, the worldling and the wise. The worldling or the deluded one is ignorant of the ultimate truth of selflessness or soullessness of the human personality. He acts with the obsession of the notion of I, Me or You. The superimposition of self-identity which does not exist in the ultimate sense makes him a selfish man when he is exposed to a pleasant object and makes him averse when he meets with an unpleasant object. His dispositions are characterized by the three evils of life, namely, greed, hatred and delusion. Conversely, the wise or the enlightened one is one who has intuitively apprehended or discerned the profound message of Anatta. He is not conditioned by the stimuli of the environment. He is unperturbed and composed by neither pleasant or agreeable stimuli nor unpleasant or disagreeable stimuli. He is equanimous. Greed or anger can not be aroused in him. In the mundane sense, he has consummated as a man of superior virtue or the man of ethical excellence. In the supramundane sense, has escaped from the suffering of the cycle of death and birth. In the worldly sense, he is nibbānic in the sense that he has consummated total mental appeasement. His mental factory of production of kammas is entirely eliminated and his selfish self is annihilated. In the supramundane sense, he is nibbānic in the sense that he has escaped the suffering of transmigration .

The Buddha’s Discourse on Desires ( Kāma-sutta of Mahāniddesa of Khuddaka-nikāya) categorizes human Desires into two broad categories, namely:

1. Objective Desires (Vatthu Kāma)
2. Subjective Desires (Kilesa Kāma)

Objective desires are those desires which are basically needed by all human beings. Desires, such as needs for nutrition, shelter, transport, clothing, and so forth are objective or elementary human desires. No one can live without them. The subjective desires are secondary desires or super-needs of modern men. The desires for housing , cars, computers, self-improvement, good education, charity and so forth are subjective desires.

Pure and Impure

One, who commits wholesome actions with the notion of self-identity, is better than one who commits unwholesome actions which injure others or the interests of others. According to Śākyamuni Buddha, actions committed on the basis of self identity are defiled. Only actions committed without the superimposition of self-identity which does not exist in the ultimate sense are purified. The Buddha rejects defiled actions and recommends undefiled or purified actions. Actions can only be purified by insight or wisdom of discerning Anatta (alternatively called Emptiness (Sunyata) in Mahāyāna tradition) as the true nature of all phenomena . Nevertheless, Buddhist personal development commences with the conventional truth of self-identity and consummates in the ultimate truth of selfless identity. Purification of mind is actualized through the wise perception of two-fold purity. The two-fold purity is the intuitive perception of selflessness of oneself and the selflessness of the object of perception. Two-fold purity is non-duality between the perceiver and the object of perception. The subject and the object of perceptions are not viewed as two separate substantial entities or self-contained entities. The perceiver and the perceived are perceived as one and the same. They are dependently co-arisen. Buddhist experience of self-enlightenment is entrance into the door of non-duality or non-discrimination. All objects or phenomena of multiplicity are not perceived as individual independent self-contained entities. All conditioned phenomena or contigent beings of the infinite cosmos dependently co-produce one totality or oneness which is borderless. Hence, all conditioned phenomena or contigent beings of the multiplicity of the empirical world are interrelated and interdependent. Therefore, in the ultimate sense, they are signless, markless or characteristic-less. The sole purpose of perceiving the ultimate truth of signlessness, marklessness or characteristic-less is to eradicate the grasping or clinging upon the five aggregates. Having acknowledged the ultimate truth of insubstantiality, the apparent substantiality of signs, marks or characteristics ought not to be denied. The knowledge of conventional truth can not be denied because it is still of pragmatic value in mundane or worldly social intercourse or inter-communication. In short, though language and concepts do not mirror the ultimate truth, they are still pragmatic and useful for conventional or mundane living activities. It is thus that the middle philosophy of the Buddha is preserved.

Conclusion

An ordinary man’s activities are basically or intrinsically driven by cravings. The Buddha enunciates that the basic nature of human sensuality will not impair the spiritual development towards the final emancipation of Man. Once the wisdom (insight into things as they really are) is realized, the basic sensuality of man does not obstruct his spirituality. Before enlightenment, the dispositions are not appeased; after enlightenment, they  are appeased. After enlightenment, the sensual organs are not destroyed; they are merely appeased.