[Buddha-l] Batchelor

[Richard Hayes]

On May 19, 2010, at 10:18 AM, Joy Vriens wrote:

> Allan wrote:
> 
> So much of human behavior can be seen as a kind of flight from
> contingency.

> Something bothers me in the choice of the word flight. Perhaps that's what I
> couldn't put my finger on. The word flight in connexion to Buddhism, then
> again to moving away from Buddhism, moving away from a Unconditioned (where
> who knows what people could hide there), ready even to amputate the notions
> of Unconditioned and anything escaping our control.

As long as people are voicing what makes them uncomfortable, I have a terrible allergy to the term "Unconditioned" (spelled with a capital letter. What could it possibly mean? How does invoking such a word help?

The word "flight" does not trouble me at all. I take it that it simply means that one is trying to run away from whatever frightens one, as in "fight or flight" as the two basic responses to threats. Contingency, as Dan explained very well, simply means the fact of being conditioned and therefore having a mode of being that is neither pure happenstance nor strictly determined or necessary. I take it that most Buddhist thinkers regarded everything, without exception, as caused (therefore not happenstance) but not necessary. So when one is trying to flee contingency, one is trying to escape what cannot possibly be escaped. There is no escaping contingency, so trying to feel it results most of the time in duḥkham.

> There, I feel suspicious of the word flight and of those using it. I sense
> an attempt to manipulate.

How long have you been having these flights into paranoia? Suspecting that people are trying to manipulate you is a form of duḥkham that can easily be avoided. All you have to do is stop being suspicious. (A good start is to stop reading Lusthaus, who is suspicious of everything, but who almost always chooses fight over flight.)

Richard