HH Dalai Lama XIV—A Modern Buddhist View ..............................120
LECTURE 35
HH Dalai Lama XIV—Discernment and Happiness........................124
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HH Dalai Lama XIV—A Modern Buddhist View
Lecture 34
[The Dalai Lama] has argued repeatedly that as far as he is concerned, it’s the deliverances of science that tell us about the fundamental nature of reality, not classical religious scriptures, and he has repeatedly said that where Buddhism or when any religion conÀ icts with science, we should go with science, not with the deliverances of religion.
T
he Dalai Lama’s view of the meaning of life is, of course, deeply inÀ ected and motivated by Buddhism, but he articulates it primarily as a modern secular vision, a vision with roots in ideas of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, democratic theory, and the importance of science. He follows Aristotle in seeing the universal goal of human life to be happiness, but that happiness can only be attained in the context of social interdependence. Like any Buddhist, the Dalai Lama sees the problem of life as constituted by suffering, whose modern sources he ¿ nds in consumer capitalism and industrialism. He sees the sources of happiness in purposive action in a human context.
The Dalai Lama agrees with Aristotle that happiness, À ourishing, meets the criteria for the highest good in life: ¿ nality and self-suf¿ ciency. The components of happiness in a modern life include food, shelter, physical security, peace, education, access to health care, the opportunity for free expression of ideas, a certain amount of leisure, and possibility for personal development. The fact that people around the world are willing to ¿ ght to achieve these goals must mean that they are universal.
Because the Dalai Lama’s is a Buddhist account of the nature of reality, it is rooted in the doctrine of dependent origination, in which all things are interdependent in three senses. The ¿ rst is causal dependence; everything occurs as a consequence of innumerable causes and conditions, and every event produces innumerable effects. The second form of interdependence is part-whole dependence; parts depend upon the whole for their nature and functioning, and wholes depend upon parts in order to exist. The third form of interdependence is dependence on conceptual imputation, that is, dependence of things for their identity and function on the way in which we think about them.
The Dalai Lama argues that interdependence provides us with the deepest analysis of the fundamental nature of reality. Everything around us, in particular, our own lives and the lives of the communities in which we participate, is characterized by this threefold interdependence. Moreover, the Dalai Lama emphasizes that this is completely consistent with the deliverance of modern science. Physics, for example, demonstrates that everything is part of a uniform, causal whole and interdependent in all these ways. He
argues that if our lives are to be meaningful, they must be grounded in reality, and given that interdependence is the fundamental nature of reality, a meaningful life is one that responds to and reÀ ects an appreciation of interdependence.
For the Dalai Lama, human interdependence deserves special emphasis. Social reality develops for us distinctive kinds of partwhole interdependence because so much of our lives and our identities are determined by the wholes of which we’re parts. Conceptual imputation in the construction of identity and roles is also salient in human affairs in ways that it’s not in physical affairs. Our decisions that a particular person is a
Interconnection also constitutes our happiness because so much of our happiness is social. We become happy when our actions actually match the goals and values we endorse. That’s often only possible socially because so many of our goals and so many of our values are collective social values.
criminal versus an upright citizen, a colleague versus a competitor, and so on determine the nature of our relations, the nature of our lives, and the nature of our happiness.
Each of the dimensions of interdependence is implicated in the arising of suffering and the production of happiness. All these forms of interdependence give us the possibility of having complex effects in our actions. Everything we do ripples through societies instantly and in countless ways and in ways that we can’t always control but that demand our reÀ ection. And because our actions have so many effects, we have obligations to make sure that
those effects are bene¿ cial, and we have responsibilities to those who can be affected by our actions.
According to the Dalai Lama, modern capitalism has brought Everything we do ripples through societies instantly and in countless ways and in ways that we can’t always control but that demand our reÀ ection.
the original source of suffering— primal confusion that results in attraction and aversion—to new heights. Advertising, for example, creates both need and fear, attraction and aversion, and it isolates us in a marketplace with a given commodity, forcing a decision on whether or not we need something. The Dalai Lama thinks that commodi¿ cation has also infected politics because it creates politicians and ideas as commodities, then generates attraction or aversion. The mass media and mass culture are, thus, sources of confusion and suffering.
Oddly, the sources of happiness in the modern world are similar to the sources of unhappiness. One such source is our interconnection with others, which enables us to produce both the material and the collective social goods we want and allows us to discover truth in learning from one another. This interconnection also brings us happiness in the form of social interactions and activities with friends and families. It offers us the opportunity to work out the kinds of social values and ideals we endorse and lead a life of integrity and authenticity. Ŷ
Name to Know
His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV, Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1935): The Dalai Lama lineage in Tibet is regarded by Tibetans as a reincarnate lineage: Each successive Dalai Lama is recognized as a rebirth of his predecessor, and all are regarded by Tibetans as emanations of AvalalokiteĞvara, the Buddhist celestial bodhisattva of compassion.
Suggested Reading
- Dalai Lama XIV, Ethics for a New Millennium.
- ———, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. https://www.scribd.com/document/577455896/The-Universe-in-a-Single-Atom-the-Convergence-of-Science-and-Spirituality-PDFDrive
- Prebish and Baumann, eds., Westward Dharma.
Study Questions
1. In what sense is the Dalai Lama’s diagnosis of modern life Buddhist? In what sense is it modern?
2. What is the difference between the analysis of modernity presented by Gandhi and that presented by the Dalai Lama?
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HH Dalai Lama XIV—Discernment and Happiness
Lecture 35
The union of compassion and discernment is a union of moral perceptual skills—where, when we see a situation, we see the sources of suffering, we see the possibilities for happiness—and the interpersonal skills that allow us to see what kinds of interventions will be most useful and commit us to those kinds of interventions.
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s we saw in the last lecture, dependent origination grounds the possibility of both suffering and happiness. For the Dalai Lama, the source of suffering in the modern world is the ideology of commodity fetishism, and the only solution to suffering is to develop a deep kind of compassion, an attitude that respects interdependence and commits us to the creation of happiness.
The Dalai Lama notes that unhappiness doesn’t derive directly from external circumstances but from our emotional reactions to adversity. Such emotional reactions arise from both attachment and aversion and can be either individual or collective. The Dalai Lama thinks of emotions that cause suffering as pathologies; examples include greed, lust, hate, and so on. In some cases, such as when we speak of righteous anger, we mistake pathology for virtue, but as we’ve seen, anger never results in positive outcomes. If we’re going to understand the nature of suffering and happiness, we must be able to distinguish between bene¿ cial and pathological emotions.
According to the Dalai Lama, pathological emotions are grounded in confusion, a misperception of reality. We see something else as the source of our unhappiness instead of ourselves; we see some object as necessary instead of simply an option. To cultivate positive emotions, we need a clear, accurate understanding of reality and not just on a theoretical or abstract level. We must seek instinctive, spontaneous responses to the world as causally dependent, part-whole dependent, and dependent on imputation. This instinctive cognitive habit is dif¿ cult to accomplish, and that’s why the notion of karunƗ—compassion—is so important. KarunƗ gives us commitment, that altruistic aspiration to act, impelling us to develop spontaneous ways of interacting with the world in place of our ordinary approaches. The use of moral imagination is important here because we need to be able to understand that the interests of others are, in a deep sense, just like our interests and that their pain is just like our pain.
The Dalai Lama argues that the cultivation of compassion comes in two parts: the cultivation of restraint and the cultivation of virtue. By restraint, he means the holding back of instinctive negative reactions, actions of anger, greed, carelessness, and so forth. By virtue, he means developing a positive commitment to bene¿ t others. Restraint cuts off the roots
To cultivate positive emotions, we need a clear, accurate understanding of reality and not just on a theoretical or abstract level. of suffering by prompting us to reÀ ect on the causes of pathological emotions, thus subverting primal confusion and ignorance. ReÀ ection also highlights the impermanence of the world, including the
impermanence of the things that cause us to experience suffering and
our own emotional reactions. Through reÀ ecting on selÀ essness, we’re able to suspend the ordinary cognitive habit of thinking of ourselves as subjects and everything else in the world as objects. That way of thinking reÀ ects the nature of reality as determined by a polar coordinate system with oneself at the center and everything else arrayed in terms of its relationship to the center. This conception gives rise to conÀ ict, but by reÀ ecting on selÀ essness, we come to take our own importance less seriously.
Restraint keeps us from doing bad things, but it doesn’t by itself motivate us to do the things that are necessary for own happiness or the happiness of others. To do that, we need to cultivate generosity, the willingness to detach ourselves from our possessions. As ĝƗntideva reminded us, virtue also requires patience, not only with others but with ourselves. The moral development that we come to demand of ourselves when we adopt this understanding of the nature of our lives isn’t acquired in a moment.
The concept of virtue that the Dalai Lama emphasizes requires attentive concern, mindfulness, discernment, and compassion. The dimension of attentiveness commits us to truly understanding the nature of the problem and the solutions that would rectify it. The dimension of concern is a commitment to take action. Mindfulness of our own emotional states enables us to focus on virtuous rather than nonvirtuous emotions. Discernment is necessary to allow us to understand the details of any particular situation: What are the causes, conditions, and effects? Finally, we need compassion in the sense of karunƗ, an altruistic commitment to act. For compassion to be genuine and ef¿ cacious, it must rest on discernment, a deep analytical understanding of suffering.
The Dalai Lama emphasizes that this kind of compassion entails a Gandhian universal responsibility, a responsibility for the welfare of all, because there are no limitations on compassion. Any limitations could originate only in pathological distinctions between ourselves and others. Compassion must be rooted in the de-centering of the individual, which will make such distinctions impossible. What we’re seeing here is a modern version of the bodhisattva path: the altruistic resolution to act for the bene¿ t of all sentient beings. Ŷ
Suggested Reading
- Dalai Lama XIV, Ethics for a New Millennium.
- Queen, Engaged Buddhism in the West. https://www.scribd.com/book/265261204/Engaged-Buddhism-in-the-West
1. In what sense is the Dalai Lama’s recommendation for a meaningful life different from those of Gandhi and Lame Deer? In what respects is it similar?
2. Why is compassion, as opposed to a sense of duty, the foundation for a meaningful life in the modern world, according to the Dalai Lama?
So, What Is the Meaning of Life?
Lecture 36
Often, one is led to ¿ nd super¿ cial similarities and to overemphasize those and, therefore, to lose a lot of the texture and detail that’s bequeathed to us by the textual traditions that we’ve been examining.
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e’ve encountered a great deal of diversity in this course, but we can still point to certain recurrent themes. For example, almost every position we’ve considered has emphasized the importance of a
connection between our own lives and some larger context, of temporality, of some ideal of human perfection, and of spontaneity. In conjunction with spontaneity, we’ve seen an emphasis on freedom. We’ve also seen the need to understand the nature of the world we live in and the nature of our own lives in order to live an authentic life. In this lecture, we examine each of these themes to see what general conclusions we might draw.
The larger context required for a meaningful life has sometimes been conceived as a universal, divine, or cosmic context, as in the BhagavadGƯtƗ, the book of Job, and the Stoics. For the Daoists, this larger context is similar but more impersonal; it’s the context of the dao, the way of things. Sometimes, this context is a bit more narrow—a global context or a natural one. Lame Deer, for instance, emphasized that the context of our lives that matters most is that of nature, and the Dalai Lama, along with Aristotle, Confucius, and others, emphasizes a social context. In each case, the key to ¿ nding meaning in our lives is to ¿ rst identify the larger context in which our small lives make sense, then to understand how we can make our lives meaningful by connecting them to that context.
With regard to temporality, the Stoics emphasized the eternality of the universe and the fact that the period of our existence is brief and bounded by in¿ nite gulfs of our absence. Buddhism also emphasizes a constant awareness of impermanence, the beauty of impermanence, and the urgency that impermanence gives to our lives. Tolstoy, Lame Deer, and Nietzsche pick up on the theme of mindfulness of death: At each moment in our lives, we need to be aware of our own mortality and ¿ nitude.
In the texts we’ve examined, we’ve often seen the question of the meaning of life addressed in terms of an account of human perfection. Aristotle offered us an ideal of the perfect human life in the concept of eudaimonea, À ourishing, and tells us that this ideal can be achieved through a life of activity in accordance with virtue, through moral strength and
practical wisdom, and through friendship. The Daoists and Zen Buddhists give us the sage as the ideal of perfection, one who pays attention to the empty spaces This spontaneity is motivated by the idea that our actions and values don’t need to be brought together arti¿ cially.
and who lives spontaneously, effortlessly. ĝƗntideva and the
Dalai Lama extend this account of perfection to encompass the cultivation of a certain kind of compassion, a commitment to altruistic action on behalf of others. For Kant and Mill, human life is focused on reason, discourse, and participation in liberal democratic societies. That ideal was challenged by Nietzsche, who emphasized that what makes our lives beautiful is our artistry and spontaneity, our ability to re-evaluate the values we’re taught and lead our lives in harmony with values we ourselves create.
Many of the philosophers and theologians we’ve examined have urged us to cultivate spontaneity in our lives. This spontaneity is motivated by the idea that our actions and values don’t need to be brought together arti¿ cially. For Aristotle and Confucius, the model here is that of the artist, one who practices endlessly to achieve a second nature. For Daoism and Zen, the emphasis is on the need to pare away the arti¿ cial second nature and return to naturalness. Ultimately, Lame Deer tells us that we need to understand that we are fundamentally part of the biological world, a world of circles rather than squares.
For the thinkers we’ve explored, a meaningful life necessarily entails freedom. The GƯtƗ emphasized the fact that freedom emerges from discipline, while the Daoists urged us to free ourselves from social standards. Hume and Kant emphasized the need to attain freedom from authority, an idea that Mill extended to an insistence on absolute freedom of thought. Nietzsche was concerned with freedom from philosophical ideas and from an intellectual tradition that makes creativity impossible. Gandhi emphasized selfmastery similar to that in the GƯtƗ, the kind of discipline that frees us from consumerism and other external constraints.
The answer to our original question is deeply complex and conÀ icted; it requires us to cultivate an awareness of reality in all its complexity and adversity, to understand that our lives are ¿ nite, and to develop a commitment to achieving individual excellence and to creating meaning in the lives of others. Perhaps the ¿ rst step in ¿ nding meaning is to ask the question, then to engage, as we have done in this course, with the wide diversity of answers that have been given throughout history and around the world. Ŷ
Study Questions
1. What are the major dimensions along which accounts of the meaning of life differ from one another? How would one go about choosing one approach over another?
2. What common insights survive these differences? Why do these ideas transcend the different approaches? Are they consistent with one another?
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Glossary
ahimsa: Nonviolence, or refraining from harming others.
Analects, The: The collection of sayings and dialogues attributed to Kongfuzi (Confucius). It relies on a set of key philosophical ideas, including:
x ren: Humanity, warm-heartedness x li: Ritual propriety, etiquette x de: Virtue, integrity, moral rectitude
x xiao: Filial piety; respect for, and obedience to, one’s parents, elders, and superiors x tian: Heaven, or the order of the universe
x wu-wei: Inaction or spontaneous, effortless activity in contrast to studied, deliberate action aretƝ: Virtue or excellence.
awarƝ: In Japanese Buddhist aesthetics, the particular beauty that derives from the impermanence of things, the beauty things have just before they fade.
being-time: The intimate union of existence and temporality; the fact that to exist is to be impermanent yet to have a past and a future to which one is essentially connected and the fact that human existence is always experienced in relation to past, present, and future.
bodhisattva: In Buddhism, one who has formed the altruistic aspiration to attain awakening for the bene¿ t of all sentient beings.
Chaldeans (Book of Job): An ancient Near Eastern people who lived in Mesopotamia.
depersonalization: Abstraction from one’s own personal interests or place in the world; taking a disinterested view of things.
dharma: A word with many meanings the root of which means “to hold.” Meanings include duty, virtue, doctrine, entity, and reality, depending on context.
Epicurean: A school of Greek and Roman philosophy following the teachings of Epicurus (4th3rd century B.C.E.). Central doctrines of the school were atomism, materialism, and an emphasis on the attainment of peace of mind through moderation and control of the emotions.
ƝthikƝ/ethos: Behavior or conduct.
eudaimonea: Human À ourishing, a good life, often translated as “happiness.”
foundationalism: The doctrine that knowledge must rest on a basis. Examples of foundations of knowledge are perception and reason.
Jainism: An Indian religion in which nonviolence is the central value.
karunƗ: Compassion, the commitment to act to relieve the suffering of others.
kratƝ: Moral strength, the ability to stick to one’s resolve in the face of temptation or fear.
Krishna: An Indian manifestation of divinity.
libertarianism: The belief that individuals should have the maximum personal liberty consistent with the liberty of others; resistance of the intrusion of the law into the private sphere. metaphysics: The study of the fundamental nature of reality.
neo-VedƗnta: A late 19th- and early 20th-century philosophical movement in India grounded in a revival and reinterpretation of the ancient Indian texts collectively called the Vedas. Prominent neo-VedƗnta philosophers included Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo.
phenomenology: Inner experience, or the theory of inner experience.
phronesis: Practical wisdom, the ability to deliberate wisely about how to accomplish one’s goals.
postmodernity: An ideological outlook that rejects the fundamental tenets of European modernism—the unity of the subject, the fact that knowledge constitutes a uni¿ ed system that rests on sure foundations, the conviction that civilization is progressive—in favor of a conviction that subjectivity is variable and often fragmented, a suspicion of uni¿ ed systems and a conviction that knowledge is socially constructed and À uid, and a suspicion of a single narrative of human progress. The term also refers to the social conditions that reÀ ect this view, namely, conditions in which fundamental claims are contested, societies are pluralistic, and values do not sustain a uni¿ ed view of knowledge or progress.
Sabeans (Book of Job): An ancient Near Eastern tribe that lived near present-day Yemen.
Samaj movements: The Arya and Brahmo Samajs (Samaj means “society”); two prominent modernist religious reform movements that swept India in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Both emphasized a return to classical Indian texts and ideas but also the abandonment of ritual, the rejection of caste, and an embrace of modernity and Indian nationalism.
Sanskrit: The language of classical Indian scholarship, as opposed to Prakrits, classical vernacular languages.
Sapere Aude!: Kant’s motto of enlightenment: “Dare to know!”
satyƗgraha: A Gandhian term: holding on to, or insisting on, the truth. A refusal to act in accordance with any principle one does not endorse and a commitment to principled action and honesty.
Sheol (Book of Job): The underworld, the place where the dead reside in the ancient Hebrew tradition.
Ğramana: A wandering ascetic of ancient India.
svadharma: One’s own particular duty or role in life, often in India tied to caste.
swadeshi: Literally, one’s own country. Commitment to the value and practices of one’s own country or culture, to self-reliance, and to consuming only what is produced locally.
swaraj: Self-rule. This can mean individual self-mastery or the selfgovernment of a people or nation. For Gandhi, these two senses were deeply connected. theophany: Revelation of the deity.
Transcendentalists: A group of American philosophers, poets, and writers who looked to Asia for inspiration and who were oriented toward mystical values and concerns that transcend the mundane world. Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman were prominent Transcendentalists.
Utilitarianism: A moral theory according to which actions are right to the degree to which they promote happiness or pleasure and wrong to the degree that they promote unhappiness or pain.
yoga: Discipline or spiritual practice. The Bhagavad-GƯtƗ enumerates three kinds of discipline, representing three aspects of life:
x karma yoga: The discipline of action, the pursuit of divinity through action
x jñƗna yoga: The discipline of knowledge, the pursuit of divinity through knowledge
x bhakti yoga: The discipline of devotion, the pursuit of divinity through devotional practice
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Biographical Notes
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.): Aristotle was born in Stageira and moved to Athens in his youth, where he was a prominent aristocrat. He studied under Plato at the Academy. After Plato’s death, he traveled in present-day Turkey, conducting scienti¿ c research. In 343 B.C.E., he was appointed tutor to Alexander the Great. In 335 B.C.E., he returned to Athens and established the Lyceum, where he taught for 12 years, probably his most philosophically creative period. He left Athens to avoid prosecution for impiety and died at age 62 in Chalcis. Aristotle, like Plato, wrote philosophical dialogues, but none of his original works survives; what we have instead are lecture notes from his students. He wrote and taught on virtually every academic subject, including the natural sciences, rhetoric, poetry, metaphysics, logic, ethics, and political philosophy. Aristotle was enormously inÀ uential in the development of Islamic philosophy and medieval European philosophy.
Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi) (perhaps c. 370–c. 300 B.C.E.): There is no consensus regarding the existence of Chuang Tzu, who may have been created as a ¿ ctional author of the text that bears his name. This text, however, may be the work of multiple authors over several centuries. It is said that he left a minor government position for a life as a hermit philosopher and that he once turned down a prime ministership.
Confucius (Kongfuzi) (c. 551–479 B.C.E.): Confucius was born in the Chinese state of Lu (the present-day Shandong province of China) to a military family near the end of the Spring-Autumn period of Chinese history, a period that saw a great deal of warfare between small Chinese states. His father apparently died when Confucius was young, leaving the young boy and his concubine mother in poverty. Confucius clearly studied the Chinese classics with great success and spent most of his life as a low-level civil servant. He became famous as a teacher and spent much of his life traveling from state to state, teaching philosophy and politics. The texts by means of which we know Confucius’s thought are records of his conversations and teachings preserved by his disciples.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV, Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1935): The Dalai Lama lineage in Tibet is regarded by Tibetans as a reincarnate lineage: Each successive Dalai Lama is recognized as a rebirth of his predecessor, and all are regarded by Tibetans as emanations of AvalalokiteĞvara, the Buddhist celestial bodhisattva of compassion. Dalai Lamas are, hence, regarded by Tibetans as physical manifestations of compassion in the world. The Dalai Lama has traditionally been both the spiritual and political leader of Tibet. The present Dalai Lama was born in a small village in Amdo, in far northeastern Tibet. When he was 3 years old, he was recognized by a search party as the rebirth of the 13th Dalai Lama and brought to Lhasa for enthronement and education. In 1949, the Army of the People’s Republic of China entered Tibet, and despite his youth, the Dalai Lama assumed, at the age of 14, political leadership of Tibet. Shortly after this, he completed his monastic education and earned the highest academic degree conferred in Tibet, the geshe lharampa (a Ph.D. with highest honors). For 10 years, the Dalai Lama attempted to cooperate with the Chinese government in order to allow Chinese authority and modernization while preserving Tibetan cultural identity. But as Chinese repression grew more severe, Tibetan resistance increased. In 1959, the Tibetans rose up against Chinese occupation, and the Dalai Lama was forced to À ee into exile in India, followed by several hundred thousand Tibetan refugees. In India, the Dalai Lama has led a government-in-exile and overseen the establishment of Tibetan schools, orphanages, hospitals, social services, monastic institutions, universities, and ¿ nally, a democratic Tibetan government, stepping aside as head of government. He has opened a long-running dialogue with scientists and has published dozens of books, ranging from highly technical books on Buddhist philosophy to popular guides to happiness. The Dalai Lama has taught or spoken in countries around the world, always promoting nonviolent conÀ ict resolution, interfaith harmony, and a humanitarian social identity. In 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Dǀgen (1200–1253): Dǀgen was the illegitimate son of a high-ranking Japanese courtier, who died when her son was 7 years old. Early in his life, Dǀgen joined the great Tendai monastery at Mt. Hiei. But he was dissatis¿ ed with Tendai philosophy, bothered by the problem of the need to seek awakening if all sentient beings are primordially awakened. He moved to a Zen temple in Japan, studying under the great Zen master Eisai until the latter’s death. In 1223, Dǀgen traveled to China to search for teachings that would resolve his remaining concerns. After visiting several monasteries, he encountered the Zen teacher Rujing, under whom he had his awakening experience. In 1228, Dǀgen returned to Japan with the Sǀtǀ Zen lineage inherited from Ruing; he taught at several important temples and wrote hundreds of essays, laying the philosophical foundations of Sǀtǀ Zen in Japan. He settled near the end of his life at Eiheji, which became the headquarters of the Sǀtǀ Zen lineage in Japan.
Epictetus (55–135 C.E.): Little is known of the life of Epictetus, who was born a slave. He lived the ¿ rst part of his life in Rome but was exiled to Greece. He studied Stoic philosophy in his youth and, at some point, gained his freedom. He was a popular teacher and widely respected both as a Stoic philosopher and an orator. None of his writings, if ever there were any, survives. The fragments that constitute his corpus are, in fact, lecture notes.
Gandhi, Mohandas K. (1869–1948): Gandhi was born in Porbandar, then a small princely state, in the modern state of Gujarat. His father was diwan of that state. Gandhi’s parents were both devout Hindus, but much of the surrounding community was Jain; hence, he grew up in a context of great piety and commitment to nonviolence. He was married at age 13. At age 18, he left India for London, where he studied law. While in England, he was active in the Vegetarian Society and came into contact with theosophists; thus, he developed a broader interest in world religions. Gandhi also studied liberal political theory and read Tolstoy and the American Transcendentalists. He returned to India in 1891 and, after some desultory practice, accepted a position in South Africa in 1893. In South Africa, Gandhi encountered ¿ rsthand the racial discrimination that pervaded the British Empire. Most famously, he was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg when he refused to vacate the ¿ rst-class compartment for which he had a ticket. This event and others led Gandhi to lead massive nonviolent protests against discriminatory laws. In this context, he formulated his principle of satyƗgraha—insistence on the truth and principled nonviolence as the only ways to challenge overwhelming repression. Gandhi returned to India in 1915, joined the Indian National Congress, and became active, ¿ rst, in the congress’s efforts to resist unjust laws and policies, then in the independence movement. Gandhi led this movement to Indian independence through careful cultivation of nonviolent resistance and refusal to comply with British imperial rule. He led numerous public protests and was jailed regularly but maintained his paci¿ sm and tolerance. Gandhi was deeply opposed to the partition of India and deeply saddened by that eventuality and the violence that came in its wake. He was assassinated by a Hindu fundamentalist terrorist as he walked to prayers in 1948. Gandhi has been a major inÀ uence on such subsequent advocates of nonviolence and insistence on truth as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa, and HH the Dalai Lama XIV.
Hume, David (1711–1776): David Hume was a philosophical prodigy and a central ¿ gure of the Scottish Enlightenment. He entered the University of Edinburgh when he was 12 years old, rejecting the study of law for philosophy. After a brief career in business, he traveled to La Flèche, where in conversation with Jesuit philosophers and with access to an excellent library, he wrote his Treatise of Human Nature, published when he was 26 years of age. The Treatise is today recognized as one of the great masterpieces of Western philosophy but was ridiculed by critics at the time of its publication. Hume was undaunted and continued to publish philosophical essays, many of which were well-received, and his monumental History of England, a text that remained a standard history for more than a century after his death. He aspired to a chair in philosophy at Glasgow but was rejected as an atheist. Hume was widely admired as a humanist and as a scholar. He died in Edinburgh a very happy man.
Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804): Immanuel Kant is almost universally regarded as the greatest of all European philosophers. He was born and spent his entire life in Königsberg (present-day Kalningrad) in Prussia. Indeed, he never ventured more than 100 miles from that city. Kant studied at the University of Königsberg, then spent his entire career teaching there. He was a proli¿ c writer, but most of the books of his early years are no longer inÀ uential. In 1781, however, he produced his masterpiece, The Critique of Pure Reason, one of the most profound philosophical investigations undertaken in the Western tradition. This was followed by both The Critique of Practical Reason and The Critique of Judgment, extending Kant’s philosophical system from epistemology and metaphysics to ethics, then to aesthetics and a number of smaller but important texts. It is fair to say that Kant completely transformed the face of European philosophy. He was the ¿ rst professor of philosophy to be an important philosopher in his own right; he developed the ¿ rst comprehensive European philosophical system since the Enlightenment; and he demonstrated that philosophy can take natural science seriously yet remain an autonomous domain of thought. Today, nobody can become a serious philosopher without ¿ rst studying the work of Kant.
Lame Deer, John (1900–1976): John Lame Deer was a Lakota Sioux medicine man born on the Rosebud Reservation and educated in Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. In early adult life, he was a rodeo rider and led the rough life of that trade. After meeting the keeper of the medicine pipe of the Lakota people, he became a medicine man. The second half of his life was devoted to educating Lakota and other Americans about Lakota culture, to the revival of Lakota culture, and to the recovery of traditional Lakota land in the Black Hills.
Lao Tzu (perhaps 6th, 5th, or even 4th century B.C.E.): There is no consensus about whether Lao Tzu (Laozi) ever existed. Many scholars regard him as a mythical ¿ gure constructed as the author of the Daodejing, which may well have developed under the hands of multiple authors over several centuries. Putative biographies locate his birth in Chu (Henan province) and state that he spent much of his adult life in Zhou, near present-day Luoyang, working in a library. He is said to have left the court and disappeared into the West.
Marcus Aurelius (121–160 C.E.): Marcus Aurelius was the son of a wealthy, noble Roman family living in present-day Spain. Marcus was educated by eminent tutors and adopted, in 138, by the emperor Aurelius Antoninus (Pius), under whom he served as consul for some time. While in public service, Marcus continued to pursue his education, studying Greek, literature, philosophy, and rhetoric with some of the most prominent teachers in Rome. He also studied law, a subject for which he appears to have had little appetite. In 161, on the death of Antoninus Pius, Marcus assumed the throne as emperor of Rome along with his adopted brother Lucius, who died soon thereafter, leaving Marcus as sole emperor. His reign was marked by many border wars, all of which concluded satisfactorily for Rome. He was noted as a skilled legislator and judge and was apparently much occupied with administration. Marcus continued to pursue philosophy throughout his life and, on a visit to Athens, proclaimed himself “Protector of Philosophy.” He died while on tour in what is now Vienna.
Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873): John Stuart Mill was the son of the historian James Mill, a close follower of the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Bentham and Mill developed a rigorous system of upbringing and education for the young John Stuart, who was isolated from other children and taught Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and algebra from age 3. By the time he was 10, he could read Plato in Greek and composed poetry in classical Greek. In his teens, Mill studied logic, rhetoric, history, and economics, but by age 20, he suffered a psychological collapse. Mill married Harriet Taylor, a brilliant young woman, and with her was a forceful advocate for the rights of women, for political liberty, and for a social policy aimed at the bene¿ t of the masses of ordinary people. Mill’s essays on political philosophy were widely read in his own time and are still inÀ uential today.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900): Nietzsche grew up in a middle-class Prussian family. He excelled in his studies, particularly in music and literature, and pursued theology and philology at the University of Bonn. Despite his parents’ piety, he dropped theology and devoted himself to classical philology. Under the inÀ uence of Arthur Schopenhauer, he also developed an intense interest in philosophy and science. In 1869, Nietzsche was appointed, at age 24, professor of philology at Basle. Nobody before or since has held such a chair at such a young age. Nietzsche held the chair for 10 years, before his health declined, and during that period, he began his philosophical work. He was a close friend of the composer Richard Wagner during his early days at Basle but became estranged from Wagner later, breaking with him over political and cultural issues. In 1879, Nietzsche resigned his chair because of ill health, and for the next 10 years, he traveled Europe and wrote almost all of his most inÀ uential philosophical books. By 1889, however, Nietzsche descended into madness. From that time, his sister and mother cared for him, and he was frequently hospitalized. He died in 1900.
ĝƗntideva (8th century C.E.): We know almost nothing of the life of ĝƗntideva. All biographical sources agree that he was born a Brahmin, converted to Buddhism, and studied at Nalanda University in present-day Bihar state in India. He composed two principal works, Siksasamuccaya
(“Collection of Teachings”) and BodhicƗryƗvatƗra (“How to Lead an Awakened Life”).
Seneca (c. 4-65 CE): We know little of Seneca’s early life, although his was an inÀ uential family. One of his brothers was a proconsul, and Seneca himself became tutor to the emperor Nero. He studied Stoic philosophy with eminent teachers but seems to have been at odds with the court, nearly executed by Caligula and exiled by Claudius. Nonetheless, he returned to Rome to serve as Nero’s tutor and counselor. Once again, however, he fell into political disrepute and retired to write. Seneca was later accused of participating in a conspiracy to assassinate Nero and was ordered to commit suicide, which he did. He was a remarkable writer, and his letters and essays have been widely read and have inÀ uenced many subsequent ethicists and moral psychologists.
Siddhartha Gautama (c. 500 B.C.E.–c. 420 B.C.E.): Siddhartha Gautama, more commonly known as ĝakyamuni Buddha or just the Buddha, was born in Lumbini to the royal family in the small state of Kapilavastu, in presentday Nepal. The precise dates of his life are uncertain, and he may have lived as much as 50 years earlier or later than the dates indicated here. What we know of his life derives from the record of his teachings and from frankly hagiographic biographies. He was raised in the royal palace as crown prince, but in his early 30s, he abandoned the palace for the life of a wandering ascetic. He studied for several years under a series of teachers and ¿ nally set off on a solitary quest for understanding, culminating in his experience of awakening at Bodh Gaya, in present-day Bihar state in India. Following that experience, he taught for about 50 years, wandering through what is now northern India and Nepal, attracting numerous disciples and the patronage of several powerful kings, and establishing a monastic community. He died at the age of 80 in Kushinagar in what is now Uttar Pradesh state.
Tolstoy, Lev (Leo) (1828–1910): Count Leo Tolstoy was born into one of the most distinguished Russian noble families, but his own youth was undistinguished. He did poorly in school, dropped out of university, ran up huge gambling debts, and joined the army. Between 1857 and 1861, Tolstoy traveled extensively in Europe. During this time, he met eminent European writers and political thinkers, experienced the difference between liberal European states and the repressive Russian regime, and was exposed to new ideas about education. He returned to Russia an anarchist and a paci¿ st and with a passionate interest in the elevation of the serfs through education. He founded schools for his own serfs’ children and began to write the magni¿ cent novels for which he is so famous, novels critical of war, of the state, and of middle-class society. Tolstoy became a devout Christian and fused his Christianity with his commitment to nonviolence. He communicated with Gandhi and was inÀ uential in Gandhi’s own fusion of religious fervor, nonviolence, and criticisms of modernity and the state. At the end of his life, at age 82, Tolstoy renounced his wealth and left home to become a wandering ascetic, but he died of pneumonia shortly after setting out.
