The Three Poisons

We are living today in a world economy which depends for its continued functioning on the digging up and burning, “cracking”, “fracking”, fissioning, or other processing of prodigious amounts of various noxious poisons out of the bowels of the Earth. Simpleminded people of all previous human societies surely would have concluded such a thing to be demonic. But any well educated member of the modern, smarter, “better living through chemistry” generation could easily disabuse them of such quaint superstitions. Fast forward fifty years to today, however, and most scientists are soberly but urgently trying to get through to us that, actually, the simpletons of yesteryear largely had it right, and that our continued survival on the planet now depends on taking a rather sharp u-turn. How did we arrive at such a strange impasse?

In Buddhism, it is taught that there are “three poisons” with which the human condition is inevitably beset: greed, hate, and delusion. To be sure, they are internal conditions, but they manifest in outward forms. To successfully wrestle with them, it is crucial that we attain clarity around our own intentions. Probably the greater part of what Buddhism calls “practice” involves seeking this clarity, as well as techniques for cultivating good intentions. The intersection between the inner and outer worlds is precisely where the most vital work happens.

In light of such a truth, I can hardly imagine a more pernicious doctrine than one which deliberately attempts to confuse matters, by taking the skull-and-crossbones off a bottle containing a poisonous substance and deliberately mislabeling it with, say, a smiling face. And yet, such doctrines are routine things in our world.

Take the old chestnut, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Ok, let us assume good intent about the original thought here: Perhaps it is not a deliberately vicious effort to sow confusion. It does point to the fact that the world can be complex, and that unintended consequences can arise from actions that come from a benign motivation. But the same thing can be said, equally if not far more likely, of actions motivated by bad intentions. So why not simply say, “the road to hell is paved with unforeseen or unintended consequences”? That is a pretty reasonable truism that is not ideological, but strictly practical.

Ideology exists, however, as surely as the sun, the moon, and the stars. Another word for it, the Buddhist one, is “delusion” (one of those poisons again!) Ideology is the particular form that delusion takes when it attempts to articulate justifications for things that are contrary on their face to the expectations that people of good will generally have about the world. So although some may quote the saying I have cited about “the road to hell” with benign if confused innocence, others have a very calculated ideological intention.

I am looking at various problems here through a Buddhist lens simply because it is the one with which I am most familiar. But one could equally well use a Christian or other lens from any of the world’s other “wisdom traditions”. Some essential qualities of wisdom are: deeply looking into the truth of things, beyond mere transitory “facts”, which may require constant revision from one moment to the next, as well as rigorously examining and clarifying distinctions between means and ends, and candidly noting and acknowledging anywhere that the two come into clear conflict.

There are real world consequences to unresolved internal contradictions in ourselves. In fact, life under capitalism derives its most stressful qualities from the lack of clarity around intentions, and conflicts between means and ends, conflicts arising both within ourselves and between ourselves and others. The excessive valuation and promotion of competition as an end in itself already flirts dangerously with the “three poisons” of Buddhism. In a world where the all-consuming “pursuit of happiness” for oneself, devil-take-the-hindmost, is the highest purpose of our economic lives, we find that, all of a sudden, we cannot trust either our own intentions or those of the people around us. I can hardly imagine a more senselessly stressful condition in which to place ourselves.

The aspiration towards “utopia” can be compared with the aspiration in Buddhism for a perfect alignment between means and ends, intentions and actions. Both of them depend crucially on the same purification of those intentions. A key insight of Buddhism is that the purification of intentions requires ongoing work, and is not compatible with laziness or lax morals. Instead, a rigorous personal examination of one’s own actions and mental states is called for. (In years past, left-leaning people have called for developing the habit of "self-criticism". Sounds familiar!) And the fact that an ideal is never perfectly attained is not an acceptable excuse for failing to try, just the opposite!

Here again, we can see one of those ideological blinders with which our civilization routinely seeks to cloud our thinking. “Oh, that can never work! Get with the real world!” is the kind of refrain anybody hears as soon as they promote an idealistic goal in any practical undertaking, especially business or economics. And yet, the world has now arrived at such an impasse that, ironically, only so-called “impractical idealism” can now save us. “Soyez réaliste. Demandez l’impossible,” exhorted the situationists in 1968. Today, these are practical and sober instructions frankly required for our basic physical survival.