Doug Robnett has been a Buddhist practitioner for nearly three decades. He’s ready to answer your questions about the faith. What do you want to ask a Buddhist? Fill out the form below or submit your question online.
By Doug Robnett
If science were to develop the ability to preserve life forever (and if not the body, perhaps the mind) what would a Buddhist perspective on this be? We have been extending the lives of many people through science already (which I don’t think that Buddhism has a problem with, for example vaccines, chemotherapy, etc.) so is this a natural development? Is there a conflict in Buddhism with this possibility? If so, at what age, or extent of injury, should we cease our acceptance of potentially lifesaving intervention?
The very question of eternal life or extreme longevity has, at its base, an unexamined premise: that there is some thing to be extended or preserved. What are we? Is there something solid and permanent, unchanging, that we refer to when we say “I.” Or are we a process? And if we are a process what is it that creates this strong sense of myself as an entity capable of preservation?
These are pretty basic ontological questions – sort of existence vs essence –that religions have grappled with for as long as they have been around. For Buddhist these questions are foundational. They are the source of Buddhist philosophy, psychology and the praxis of the religion. So, at the risk of getting too esoteric, I am going to lay out a bit of basic Dharma.
According to the Buddha, there is no independently existing “self.” This is at odds with the way most of us perceive our lives and ourselves. In Buddhism, the self is seen as a configuration of kandhas or aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. A metaphor the Buddha used to describe the kandhas is that just, as when we say “chariot,” we are naming a concept that refers to the coexistence and particular arrangement of certain parts at a certain time, when we say “me” we refer to the constantly changing arrangement of the kandhas. There is no permanence. There is a form in constant flux, feelings of attraction, aversion and neutrality, perceptions or concepts that inform our story (mental formations), and finally consciousness or the “I” as object. All these are flashing into existence and out of existence. What we perceive as continuity are the mental formations, I call them our stories, that are always also in change.
The desire to find a fixed point we can cling to as self is powerful. It is also the source of our suffering since, as it is based upon a profound misunderstanding of the nature of self, the desire will always fall short of fulfillment.
So, in terms of the Dharma, the very desire to extend life is a type of clinging and this clinging is born of a fundamental ignorance of what life is and what self is and as such is not only the cause of suffering but is, indeed, inseparable from suffering and unfullfillment.
On the surface it seems that we cling mostly to this life – at all costs. There are, of course, smaller, less all-encompassing appetites, at which we grasp, but the big one is life and we equate life with self. We hold tight to this in spite of the fact that, generally, we are not satisfied with the life we have.
At most moments our minds are occupied with desires built upon this foundation of dissatisfaction, desires that constantly pull us into some imagined future free from present maladies, or that cause us to relive the past creating a script where the story line of events arcs towards different endings. The cliché is that we want better jobs, better relationships, better stuff, better bodies, better minds, better motivation, better – fill in the blank. When we achieve any of these the contentment is short lived. The job of which you dreamed and were so joyful to get, in the end, is still a job with all the imperfections, difficulties (and joys) but always needing to be, somehow, fixed or different.
Yet this is the life we fantasize about extending without end. What is it really that we are clinging to with that desire? What does this mean – to live “forever” or for an unimaginable duration? Is there an enduring object we called life or self? In the context of the question at hand these areas are essential ponderings.
Start with the body. When we settle down and look at what we mean by life some sort of physical form seems to be inescapable. The idea of our mind living in a computer might sound appealing but really, is life without any sense organ other than the mind what we fantasize about? Even if we had senses – could look out at the world, smell and taste the world, maybe touch it but had no physical agency, wouldn’t this represent a distressing departure from what we think we value.
Most people have difficulty sitting and meditating for an hour let alone millennia. Is that the vision? Or do we imagine a sort of Matrix model where we have simulated forms. Bodies that seen real, but are projections, constructs. Would these bodies be us? Are we them? This loops us back to identifying ourselves essentially with a form that is subject to change, decay, and all the unfilled desires that, I would argue, necessarily come with any form. And, if it is just our current bodies free from aging, they are created to be dissatisfied – too cold, too hot, tired, wired, and never for long just right. So even in physical terms extreme longevity doesn’t seem to free us from suffering. Indeed, it might magnify it over time.
It does not seem possible then to escape being attracted to something, wanting other things to just go away, and for most things, just feeling pretty neutral or unexcited about them. And coming out of these feelings are the stories we use to form our sense of self – “this is good because” or “I don’t like it because” or “I am really good at this” or “I am afraid.” These stories are built upon our feelings of what attracts us, what repels us, and what we generally don’t really notice too much. They act to reinforce our habit; our ideas of who we are and what our value is or isn’t. And from all this: our physical form (or lack there of), our feelings, perceptions, and habits, comes a view that there is an enduring form we call our self, that this is what we irreducibly are.
When I think back to myself as a 5-year old, 10-year old, 25-year old, what it is the story I cobble together that makes me believe they are the same person? I don’t think I can even imagine my 5-year-old self. Can any of us know with confidence that they are able to see the world as a 5-year-old does? I have some memories that are strong but the very texture and weight of the air was, it seems to me, different. It is something I am unable to recover more than some sketchy outlines. Even to see through the eyes of the 25-year-old I was takes a pretty heroic bit of imagination. It is as if I have to recut the puzzle pieces to try to make them fit this concept of continuity and even then the fit is contrived and awkward. I seem to have changed and while I can trace the change and perhaps understand the path, the change is still radical. Likes and dislikes, stories of the world, habits – the further back I go the less recognizable each of these becomes.
So, when we come upon the desire to extend our lives what is it we want to extend? What is lost? Is there wisdom to be gained in dealing with an aging body? Where do the central questions go when we no longer have to hold the hands of people we love as they die? And what about an urgency to do what is difficult to find wisdom? Where do we cling and at what cost? And this lies at the root. Because where and how we focus our attention has consequences.
