Talk Given by Doug Powers
Excerpt from the article “Buddhism and Modernity” in Religion: East and West, vol. 1
As we begin a new millennium, our societies are entering into an unprecedented state of interconnectedness—the “globalization of the world.” This concept implies a closely interrelated society with no separate cultures, countries, or peoples. Everything interlinks and in a sense homogenizes.
While globalization has a good side—instilling a sense of shared humanity and helping to break down generations of prejudice and suspicion—it also has a rather frightening shadow side. The values, ideals, and principles that drive this interconnected world are usually greed and desire. Selfishness and self-interest, the desire to acquire and have, are fast becoming universal norms. If, on the other hand, values of virtue and compassion become the central focus and organizing principles of societies worldwide, this would provide a much more positive environment in which people would serve to benefit others as well as themselves.People place great value on being free and are even willing to die for it. The contemporary notion of freedom traces its roots back to some key intellectuals in the European traditions, most notably Plato, Nietzsche, Locke, Mill, and Freud. Western psychology—Freud in particular—developed the concept that freedom means acting on one’s desires. In other words, every action allowing for uninhibited expression of desires represents freedom. Thus, many modern people, either consciously or unconsciously, adhere to the belief that acting on their impulses, emotions, and desires constitute an act of freedom or an avenue to freedom.
From a Buddhist standpoint, this notion is backwards. One of the Buddha’s first and most fundamental awakenings centered on the insight that to act on desire—on impulse, on instinct—is actually a form of bondage. Desire, rather than expressing our more refined sensibilities, is instinctual or karmic in nature. It’s a pattern, an almost involuntary reflex that actually holds us in bondage to a previous habit pattern. Every time we yield to and act on a habitual desire it becomes more ingrained and consequently harder for us to break in the future.
If, for example, I take a drink of alcohol, the first act of drinking the alcohol might seem liberating. But with the first drink, I’ve set in motion a process of enslavement whereby each subsequent drink renders me less and less free. With each drink I become less capable of sound judgment and self-control. But more importantly, the illusory feeling of freedom the drink provides is located outside my own mind and power, and therefore ironically increases my dependence.
Buddhism has a very important principle to offer to the modern world: the concept of true freedom. True freedom paradoxically comes not from getting what you want but from not wanting to get. In short, freedom means being free from desire, free from greed, free from habits. It is not pursued nor even won; rather, freedom comes from letting go or, more precisely, not grasping. It exists already within our nature and so is absolute, something we cannot lose. This distinction between the conventional and the Buddhist understandings of freedom is a critical concept and needs to be better understood.
Freedom, which the modern world is striving so hard to attain, is within the grasp of any person. But the only way to attain this kind of freedom is to overcome our habits and our desires, to get past them and reach a clear, more peaceful place.
