I’m not a big fan of David Brooks, but a friend brought today’s column, "Neural Buddhists," to my attention, and it seems right for a post here.

    Brooks is thinking about the intersection of recent popular publications on neuroscience and enduring questions of spirituality.  He anticipates a new debate on science versus faith, one that puts the defenders of faith on the defensive; or, at least, challenges defenders of particular faiths.   The new science creates more subtle understanding about the human brain/mind and the creation and perpetuation of belief.  Here’s a key graf:

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in
the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might
call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I’d
recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga,
Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get
up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the
wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a
dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of
different religions, people around the world have common moral
intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to
have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and
overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one
experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

    My peculiar critique – peculiar, that is, to my interest in ancient Chinese thought – would be: why label these ideas as "Buddhist?"  They may be Buddhist, to some degree, but they are also to be found in other systems of thought, particularly Confucianism and Taoism.

     Take those first two points, for example: self is relational and morality is inborn.  This is right out of Mencius.  For example:

We are, by constitution, capable of being good….That’s what I mean by good.  If someone’s evil, it can’t be blamed on inborn capacities.  We all have a heart of compassion and a heart of conscience, a heart of reverence and a heart of right and wrong.  In a heart of compassion is Humanity, and in a heart of conscience is Duty.  In a heart of reverence is Ritual, and in a heart of right and wrong is wisdom.  Humanity, Duty, Ritual, wisdom – these are not external things we meld into us.  They’re part of us from the beginning, though we may not realize it.  Hence the saying: "What you seek you will find, and what you ignore you will lose."  Some make more of themselves than others, maybe two or five or countless times more.  But that’s only because some people fail to realize their inborn capacities.   (11.6)

     The "we" here is not confined to any particular cultural or national group.  Mencius means all of us, anywhere in any historical time period.  It is an argument about universal human qualities.  Barbarians, uncivilized people who do not realize their inborn capacities, can learn to be good.  They can learn to express their innate moral sensibilities.   And those notions of Humanity and Duty are all about social selves: individuals  embedded in social relationships.  Indeed, the self, from a Confucian perspective, is literally meaningless outside of its social context.  As the context develops and changes over time, as we move from one set of relationships and duties to another, the self, too, changes.  The self is social and dynamic.

     And take that last line of the Brooks excerpt above: God is "…the unknowable total of all there is."  If a Taoist read that phrase, she might say, "that’s not God, it’s Tao."  And so it is.  Transcending boundaries is what Taoism is all about, as is accepting the infinitude of Way.  The love part is a bit more difficult, since Chuang Tzu might ask us to reduce our emotional attachments to life generally, but there is certainly the possibility of joy and happiness there.

     In any event, my point is simple: it’s not just about Buddhism.  I suspect Brooks’ invocation of Buddhism simply reflects a certain ignorance of ancient Chinese thought.  Americans just don’t know enough of it to bring it into these kinds of conversations, even when the reference is obvious.

     Oh well, I guess I have a lot of work to do in my calling to bring ancient Chinese thought into modern American life.

     And one more thing.  I think, for the purpose that Brooks has created here, Confucianism and Taoism might be better references than Buddhism.  They provide most of what the was searching for in the Buddhism reference but without the additional matter of reincarnation, which I suspect, the neuroscientists might question…

UPDATE: Commenters have raised the question of a Mencius bumper sticker to raise his visibility in the US.  It’s a branding thing.  Well, here’s an image; we might have to spice it up a bit, but it’s a start: