Nature, Nurture, and No-Self:
Bioengineering and Buddhist Values
By Michael G. Barnhart
PART 3
Kingsborough Community College, CUNY
Brooklyn, New York
MBarnhart@kbcc.cuny.edu
So where does Buddhism stand on the moral acceptability of using such genetic technologies? To begin with, if the conclusion of our initial discussion of Buddhism and genetic determinism is correct, then Buddhism cannot take a position similar to Kass’s. That is, Buddhists cannot argue that we are in fact playing God when we clone people, that we are depriving individuals of their future or their right to an open future, which, in a Buddhist context, would mean, I suppose, their right to achieve individual enlightenment, or nirvāṇa. Cloning is not the Promethean fire that elevates humans to a divine status because cloning does not in fact involve deterministic control over the life of another. It may involve deterministic control over the genotype of another, but that is not the same thing, according to the skandha theory. However, cloning may face other concerns and objections from a Buddhist standpoint.
Buddhism, generically speaking, recognizes a variety of purposes worthy of seeking and that are enshrined in its various moral precepts such as the precept against deliberate killing. However, as a number of scholars have argued, this is not the last word on Buddhist morality. Rather, such rules point to a deeper layer of goods and life purposes that motivate the sincere Buddhist practitioner. This deeper layer is variously understood. Keown has suggested that it comprises the three fundamental goods of wisdom, friendship, and life. David Kalupahana has further identified it with the achievement of nirvāṇa (or nibbāna). But whatever the details of these accounts, the point of a Buddhist life is ultimately somehow connected to the goal of enlightenment and freedom from bondage to the ego-self. Of course, different Buddhist traditions have understood this quest differently. Arguably, the early Theravādins saw it as a matter of individual enlightenment, becoming an arhat, while Mahāyāna Buddhism tended to encourage collective enlightenment after the example of Avalokiteśvara, who puts off his own achievement of final release until all sentient beings are enlightened and freed. But again, whatever the differences, the importance of achieving nirvāṇa cannot be understated. Furthermore, such an achievement involves thorough confrontation with the personal ego through meditative practice and generally selfless behavior. The main obstacle to enlightenment and a constant source of suffering remains human bondage to the ego, which is rooted in the delusion of a substantial self at the core of an individual life.
Because a self or soul remains the delusional issue for all varieties of Buddhism, ego-transcending conduct is of universal value in all Buddhisms. Correspondingly, egocentric conduct constitutes the great moral error. Thus, in confronting various human practices such as genetic engineering or cloning, Buddhist moral judgment is probably most productively directed toward examining the intentions and desires that motivate their use. Disapproval of a practice in itself would have to be rooted in a finding that the only motivating reasons are purely egocentric ones. That is, a specific practice would have to obstruct the pursuit of nirvāṇa to merit explicit moral condemnation on the part of Buddhism. This is perhaps the reason why so few practices other than the usual murder, theft, and mendacity are explicitly prohibited by Buddhism, and also the reason why Buddhist moral discourse seems so overwhelmingly focused on recognizing the connection between desire, egocentricity, and suffering—that is, on moral psychology.
In light of this, what does Buddhism have to say regarding the moral acceptability of cloning, IVF, gene therapy, or other biotechnological innovations? Do any of these practices deserve blanket condemnation? If not, are there any general regulatory guidelines Buddhist moral reflection can offer? In answer to the second question, I think not. That is, there is no problem in principle with such practices in themselves. Or, to put it differently, there are potentially acceptable uses to which these technologies may be put. The moral problem is not the instrument but the mind of the user. However, in saying so, we meet the objection that the use of cloning specifically and assisted reproduction generally is always self-regarding and therefore egocentric. As such, it might be supposed worthy of Buddhist disapproval. If we examine the reasons behind the decision to clone, even those that seem least objectionable, one might argue, they remain entirely self-regarding. Take, for example, the desire to avoid passing on dangerous heritable illnesses to one’s child. Typically in these cases, the reason not to use donated reproductive cells, or even to contemplate adoption for that matter, is to have a child that is, biologically speaking, one’s own. Is this not an exercise in self-gratification? It certainly is not undertaken solely to benefit the child or better the lot of any existing person. In what sense is it an act of compassion, for example? How could Buddhists approve of or recommend such action? And if all rationales for cloning are based on this desire for a child “of one’s own,” so to speak, is this not a good Buddhist reason to at least morally disapprove of the practice?
However, I’m not convinced of such casuistry because I’m not convinced that self-regard and egocentrism are exactly the same thing. To be egocentric is to be selfish, that is, concerned with one’s own welfare exclusively, to be unwilling to elevate another’s needs in importance over one’s own. To be self-regarding is another matter.
As Mill pointed out, there are some decisions and situations that concern primarily ourselves alone, for example, in matters of thought and expression, and where self-regard is entirely appropriate. In fact, it would be highly perverse to act without self-regard in such circumstances, and one must remember that Buddhism condemns self-punishment as strongly as it condemns self-gratification. The salient issue is not whether the self is a matter of moral concern; it is in how one conceives of the self, the manner of one’s regard. To seek either to punish the self or indulge the self is to treat it as having a transcendent value that it cannot merit. Nor is it the case that the self cannot be a matter of moral concern because of the doctrine of anātman. However, such a doctrine does place certain constraints on the nature of our self-regard. If self-regard is aimed at a “plan of life” (to use Mill’s phrase) that is primarily preoccupied with achieving a specific identity, a list of attributes or social role, for example, then it may well be self-regarding in a delusional sense from a Buddhist perspective. If, by contrast, it aims at enlightenment through wisdom and compassion, it at least sounds more authentically Buddhist.(23)
Of course, to pay lip service to such ends and to actually seek them in the acts of a particular life are quite different matters. But whatever the epistemological challenges of defining the necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying an authentically Buddhist form of life, the fact remains that authentic self-regard aims at self-transformation consistent with the sorts of Buddhist goods that Keown mentions, to wit, wisdom, friendship, and life. So, if prospective parents were to argue that they seek a child with whom their biological tie is the strongest possible, because that is the felt imperative of their relationship and their roles as parents, who are we to say that this is egocentric and inauthentic? Certainly, it is self-regarding, but that does not automatically make such a decision egocentric. Why isn’t it as much an expression of the compassionate embrace of future life as any other decision to procreate? If such parents embrace the results of their actions, no matter how they turn out, in what way is such a decision a denigration of the goods of friendship and wisdom? And to the extent that such procreative decisions respond to deep existential imperatives within human experience, why can’t we say that they reflect a kind of wisdom, a living within one’s nature and a refusal to adopt doctrinaire attitudes about one’s conduct? To be dogmatic in this matter would be to have a child of a certain sort or in a certain manner because it is right or proper or “correct.” Furthermore, such correctness represents an attitude of control and purposiveness that can hardly be called egoless. To acknowledge one’s prejudices and predispositions in regard to how one would prefer to have a child and then to act in a way consistent with maximal commitment to the welfare of that future child as a separate individual might well be an opportunity for self-transcending and enlightening action. In other words and despite the insufficiencies in my formulation, the issue is not which choice one has made but the moral psychology that underlies the judgment. Buddhism suggests a specific pattern of deliberation in the execution of practical judgments. It is not obvious that a decision to clone necessarily deviates substantially from that pattern, at least in some cases.
If utilizing gene therapy, assisted reproduction, and so on cannot be directly ruled out within a Buddhist moral framework, then the question becomes what sort of ethical guidelines Buddhism might contribute toward the regulation of such practices. At this point, perhaps Kass’s list of objections to cloning becomes more useful than before when considering blanket condemnation of the practice. To reiterate, Kass felt that cloning risked confusion of identity and individuality, represented a commodification of life, and afforded an inordinate amount of despotic control over the life of the clone. From a Buddhist perspective, as well, these seem to be reasonable concerns in regard to the deep psychological risks associated with not only cloning but any technology that allows greater control over procreation than we presently have.
To the degree that we seek to reproduce someone through cloning, say, in cloning a dying child so that he or she may in some sense “live on,” we assume there is something to be preserved or passed on. It is just such an ego concept that Buddhism rejects and that is the ultimate source of suffering. Or, should we begin to regard our children as products such that cloning affords us better quality control over the outcome and, therefore, a more desirable way to reproduce, then once again we seek to mold or craft a self and so misunderstand the nature of suffering and compassion. Ultimately, with regard to one’s children, it is not the self that they are that is the point, it is their individual capacity to go beyond the self that they are. We ensure such a capacity by providing to the best of our ability the goods central to a Buddhist life—wisdom, compassion, and life (individual). The same applies to the danger of despotic control, that in cloning a parent seeks a means to engineer the person or perpetuate a life already lived. To do so is again to aim at a particular self rather than no self.
The same cannot be said, though, for the decision to have a child free from various heritable diseases. That a parent might use a variety of technologies to avoid passing on cystic fibrosis, for example, does not represent an attempt to despotically direct another life. The fact is that to suffer in such a fashion is to diminish one’s ability to realize all goods, including Buddhist ones, and so it is compassionate action to assist a future individual in avoiding such diminishment. Thus, whatever precepts Buddhism might wish to formulate in governing the medical uses of such technologies, they would have to follow such a pattern that they reinforced the guiding elements in the moral psychology, namely, encouraging a focus on nonegocentric and compassionate judgment. The main precept I would offer might be to choose only that which benefits those relevantly affected others as individuals in their own right able to pursue a life of enlightenment and compassion. Following such a precept would require any choice of available biotechnologies to pass the three forms of scrutiny that Kass’s list of objections suggests. Namely,
- (1) A choice would have to be free of confusion of identity. In fact, it would have to be free of motivations based on the possession or failure to possess a particular identity;
- (2) A choice would have to respect the integrity of the natural process without illusions of Frankensteinian powers of control;
- (3) A choice would have to respect the integrity and separate individuality of a resulting life. Indeed, such choices must aim at preserving this integrity.
On a metaphysical note, (3) does not imply that there is any core of individuality such as a soul or ego. The individuality of a life is one thing; the question of the basis of personal identity, or even the existence of personal identity, is another. To say that my life is uniquely my own is not to say that there is particularly one thing that I am and you are not.
To sum up, choices that do not violate stipulations (1)–(3) have at least a prima facie Buddhist case in regard to their moral acceptability. Obviously, these considerations apply at the level of individual moral judgment between an individual and his or her conscience, or at most, between the individual or individual couple and a counselor. They certainly do not apply at the level of public policy, although another case might be made that, were it impossible for individuals to sort out such issues within the space of conscience, Buddhistically prudent public policy might dictate the avoidance of such choices altogether. After all, if we face only confusion in such matters, then such choices tend not to edify.
Read more
- Nature, Nurture, and No-Self : Part 1
- Nature, Nurture, and No-Self : Part 2
- Nature, Nurture, and No-Self : Part 3
By Michael G. Barnhart
Kingsborough Community College, CUNY
Brooklyn, New York
MBarnhart@kbcc.cuny.edu
Copyright 2000
Source Journal of Buddhist Ethics
