Meaning vs. Pleasure

I want to return again to the ever-sharp Takuan Soho on the question of what to put first: virtue or life.  In one set of his now famed letters, he dedicates an entire letter to the question, approaching it in a variety of unique and cutting ways. One of the strongest arguments that he makes, though, is the following:

Those who were cut down in the face of battle—their number can hardly be known. All were men who died for right-mindedness. With this in mind, it can be said that all men value right-mindedness over desire and life.

It's a solid argument that points to a problem at the heart of much of Buddhist philosophy: if we take relief of suffering and attainment of pleasure as the primary purpose of life and as a foundation of ethics and psychology, why, throughout history, so many people have chosen to die for a cause greater than themselves?  It would be much better if the soldiers did their best to wait at the back and try to get through combat unscathed, but, quite contrary, many soldiers clamber to lead the charge and win the glory. What follows is a brief examination of the consequences of this antagonism in Buddhist ethics and its consequences for our own lives.

These Soldiers Are Deluded

Some orthodox Buddhists might argue that these soldiers are simply fools.  Sure, courageous and steely, but fools none-the-less.  As a counter-example, they'd point to the pandemic of addiction sweeping through the Canada and the US right now.  Clearly, shooting fentanyl between your toes is not going to bring lasting happiness, yet millions do it every single day, and, for thousands, to their own death.  Like fentanyl addicts, the soldiers are confused about what will truly bring happiness.  Instead of finding a joy rooted in a harmless life and patiently accepting the consequences of invasion or injustice, the soldiers cling to misguided ideas of community, perpetuity, and goodness.

If these soldiers truly seek happiness, they must follow the Eightfold Noble Path and abandon their violent path as a frontline soldier.  Thus, for the orthodox Buddhist, these soldiers are forced to reap the inevitable consequences of their actions in some distant future life and in the present due to the hehavy negative karmic imprints it will leave in the mind. But, for a warrior, does this make sense?

Let's start by examining the second point: that killing inherently comes from a negative state of mind. After reading dozens of war memoirs and researching war for decades, this is a half-truth. Many soldiers, like Kevin Lacz of SEAL Team 3, Robert O'Neill from SEAL Team 6 who killed bin Laden, or John Meyer, a SoG Green Beret during Vietnam, felt no remorse for their actions. Many, such as Lacz, actually became addicted to the exhiliration of killing and the thrill of combat. While war does bring with it psychological stressors, it's not necessarily the killing, but it's the death, the grinding, 24/7 schedules, the nagging insecurity, the lack of sleep, everything.  Many soldiers and other's who've killed have done so with a clear conscience.

Some soldiers certainly do experience remorse and trauma as a result, but not all. In a majority of cases, killings which provoke real distress are ones which are unjustified or gray-area. Bobby Cumines, a famed British gangster, for example, said that he never felt sorry for any murder save for the one that landed him in prison: a botched kidnapping attempt that led to his hostage choking to death on his own vomit. Killing's not intrinsically wrong, nor does it intrinsically create an unwholesame state of mind. The idea's a bunch of bollocks trotted out by monks serenely sitting in their huts freaking about accidentally stepping on an ant, not as peopel crawling their way through the world.

Regarding the second point, that killing creates intrinsically negative karma which will be reaped in future lives, I'm not so sure.  First, I'm not sure that there's a future life. I believe life goes on without break or interruption, but I don't think that my consciousness goes into some purgatory before being reborn again in another realm.  The supernatural elements of Buddhism behave very similar to the God of the Gaps of the Christians - receeding further and further into the fringes of human knowledge and power over the last few centuries.  In the Suttas, a naga was literally ordained as a monk when taking the disguise of a human.  The famed Metta-Sutta was given to the monks to chant to protect them from vengeful nature spirits intruding on their meditation.  But now, most Buddhists would dismiss these things as ridiculous. Instead, nagas live in some alternate realm of existence or can only be contacted by very powerful meditators. Strange how that turned around so quickly after smartphones inundated the culture.

Also, I don't believe in the rebirth because I just don't see any strong proof of it.  The only strong sliver of evidence for it is Jim Tucker's research on the topic, but his research fails to accomodate the diverse realms that Buddhism accepts. For example, there are few reports of children who claim to remember being a dog and start humping desk legs at the age of 5, or who remember being an angel and having wild sex orgies and listening to divine music for aeons without end.  While there's certainly something curious there, the knee-jerk reaction that most take it as: an immediate confirmation of their system of reincarnation is reaching too far.

Instead of seeing these soldiers as deluded, I see them as awake as hell.  These soldiers recognize that life doesn't begin and end with their fleshbag.  It is their family, friends, community, and nation which lives far longer than them and through them, their life continues.  On a deeper level, they are indistinguishable from life, just as the wave is indistinguishable from the ocean, rendering gain and loss, birth and death as insignificant as a wave crashing back into the ocean.  Whatever the shape, it's still water.

This is what I believe Takuan Soho is pointing at in the above passage: on a deep, intuitive level, we recognize the porous, mycellium-like state of our being with tendrils extending forward and backward in time and spreading outwards into the present.  That's why humans choose meaning over pleasure so often: because pleasure's such a cheap, shallow thing, because meaning offers something that surpasses our own petty, individual aspirations and helps us connect us with others, with the past, future, and present.  Meaning's greater than pleasure, and, thus, rather than being the fool, the brave soldier who charges into the enemy lines at great risk to his life is affirming what so many of us know deep down inside: we are greater than this tiny, brief experience.