Simple Rules
By Julia Van Develder
Jan13
In his controversial 2002 book A New Kind of Science, mathematician and MacArthur winner Stephen Wolfram puts forward the theory that everything is a computation. Everything—the entire physical universe, including you, me, and everyone we know—is the product of a few simple rules played out ad infinitum. We’re talking mathematical rules here, as in: if A, then B multiplied by C equals F.
So. Take leaves on trees, for example. There are thousands of leaf shapes, and thousands of variations on those shapes. In other words—complexity. And it turns out that all of those iterations can be generated by a mathematical rule played out ad infinitum.
These rules are called cellular automata (which, I think, refers to the discrete cells on a page of graph paper, not biological cells), and they’re the subject of intense study and speculation among physicists, biologists, mathematicians, and other scientists because they show how extraordinarily complex and unpredictable patterns can arise from the application of very simple rules. (If you’re interested in looking at an example of a cellular atomaton, google the Game of Life, a fun little automaton developed by John Conway, a British mathematician. For a very readable analysis of Wolfram’s ideas, get a hold of The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul by Rudy Rucker.)
What interests me is not the math (I hate math!), but the idea that there may be a similar principle operating on a moral or spiritual level—that the entire spiritual universe is the product of a few simple “rules” played out ad infinitum. Spiritual automata, if you will.
Take the situation in Gaza today. The situation is as complex and tangled as any highly charged political conflict the world has ever seen. You could devote your entire life to becoming an expert on any one aspect of the situation. You could become a historian of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. You could look at the conflict from the perspective of a political scientist, an economist, a sociologist, a scholar of religion. You could build an entire career on your expertise and become a Middle Easternist at a well known university or in a think tank or at the State Department or at the CIA.
You could. Or you could simply state the obvious: violence begets violence. The violence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is so exponential at this point that even if both sides laid down their weapons today, it would take centuries for the consequences of their prior aggression to play themselves out.
So the spiritual automaton would be something like this: If you kill another human being because s/he is a member of a group that you hate, you create the possibility that a group you belong to will be the target of hateful aggression. The automaton couldn’t be something as straightforward as, if you kill another human being, you will be killed, because that would effectively eliminate hateful aggression in the world, and we know that’s not the case.
But there’s something there. Violence does beget violence. Who doesn’t know that?
There is a corollary spiritual automata that goes something like this: If you are the victim of hateful aggression and you refrain from retaliation, you create the possibility of a nonviolent future. Every major religion—Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Confuscianism, and, yes, Islam—has codified a version of this spiritual automata—turn the other cheek. So why do we still have wars, most of them fueled by religious intolerance?
Because the automaton is simple, but its outcome is not. Turning the other cheek doesn’t guarantee that you personally will be spared (Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr.) or that you will be immediately victorious or that peace will reign on the earth. At least—not in the short term. Not until it’s played out ad infinitum. Plus, even if you have the courage to initiate the nonviolence automata, it’s going to take time before the violence automata plays itself out. It is, however, literally the only hope for change in the direction of peace.
Of all the world religions, Buddhism seems to come the closest to describing something like this idea of spiritual automata. According to Buddhist thought, every single thing you do, think, or say plants a karmic seed. We are each planting these seeds at the rate of about 60 per second. How the Buddhist thinkers came to this number, I don’t know. And whether or not it’s accurate I have no way of knowing. Maybe it’s only 10 per second, or 1 per second, or 10 per day. That’s still a lot.
The seeds are deposited in the alaya—the spiritual ground, so to speak. And when the conditions are right, those seeds sprout. So many seeds are being planted that there’s no way, even if you are a highly trained holy person, to control them all. However, even those of us at the bottom rung of the spiritual ladder can practice controlling the most basic ones. We can, for example, not retaliate.
Let’s take an example from the playground. Bobby hits Billy. First, let’s examine Billy’s victimhood. Is he a victim? Perhaps he never did anything to Bobby. But has he ever engaged in an act of aggression? Is there a five-year-old who hasn’t?
For the sake of argument, let’s agree that the effect that Billy is seeing in his own life (getting hit) was caused by his own previous aggressive behavior (a seed he planted in the alaya). At this moment, Billy has a choice. If he retaliates, he plants another seed of aggression that will sprout in the future. If he restrains himself, he creates a different future. He may still have some other aggressive seeds waiting to sprout, but at least he won’t be planting any new ones.
At the moment of choice, what is it that creates the possibility of doing something different? Christianity would say that this is the moment of grace, of divine intervention. Buddhism calls it basic goodness, bodhichitta. Christianity posits an external goodness that reaches in and touches the basically corrupt being and changes it. Buddhism posits a core of goodness, or intelligence, within the human being that arises at such a moment.
I suspect that Christianity characterizes this as a moment of divine intervention because it is, at first glance, so contrary to “human nature.” When we are hurt, our first impulse is to lash out, to protect ourselves, to reduce the aggressor to ashes if possible. What could restrain us at such a moment other than God, or if not God then the teachings that have been transmitted to us about what God wants from us. At such a moment, you want to kill the other person, but the voice of your Sunday school teacher speaks up in your mind and tells you to turn the other cheek.
Buddhism questions whether this impulse to retaliate is “human nature,” or all of human nature. We can think of less dire moments where our human nature is to refrain from retaliation. Say, for example, that your baby is teething and in pain and his/her flailing arms land a blow to your nose, and it hurts! You don’t then punch your baby, do you? You are in pain, but at the same time you feel compassion for the suffering of your child. And this compassion is as much a part of our “human nature” as the other part that desires revenge. Which impulse becomes stronger depends on which one we exercise.
But the end result is the same, isn’t it? Whether you are a Buddhist or a Christian, the idea is that you are to refrain from retaliation.
There is a difference. In Christianity, we are advised to turn the other cheek, but there is a suggestion that this is the stuff saints and holy people are made of, not ordinary folks like us, and not people in the real world, where terrorists crash planes into skyscrapers. Furthermore, if you do turn the other cheek, you can now at least have the satisfaction of thinking that you are superior to the person who attacked you.
From a Buddhist perspective, the rationale for turning the other cheek is much more practical. You do it not because you are holy or better than the other person but because you are tired of getting slapped, and you know that if you retaliate, you will most certainly get slapped again at some point in the future.
One thing I like about the Buddhist notion of how the world works is that it applies to everybody. The rules, just like physical rules, are universal. The laws of gravity apply to everyone, whether you’re a Taoist or a Muslim, whether you live in Russia or Spain. It makes sense to me that spiritual rules are universal as well—that whether you are a Buddhist or a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu or an atheist, the same spiritual automata are at work.
We might not know what every one of these automata are, and we might not be able to unravel the complexities of how they all interact, but we do know what the main ones are. In fact, every single one of them derives from one primary, universal automata: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you. Confucianism, Analects of Confucius, 15:23
This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you. Hinduism, Mahabharata 5:1517
None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself. Islam, Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadiths
A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated. Jainism, Sutrakritanga 1.11.33
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. Buddhism, Udana-Varga 5:18
As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. Christianity, Luke 6:31, King James Version
And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbor that which thou choosest for thyself. Baha’i, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Judaism, Leviticus 19:18
Don’t do things you wouldn’t want to have done to you. British Humanist Society
Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. Taoism, T’ai Shang Kan Ying P’ien
Whatever is disagreeable to yourself do not do unto others. Zoroastrianism, Shayast-na Shayast 13:29