Your Questions, My Answers ~ YOUR
CHOICE
QUESTION:
"We can easily understand
that abortion is immoral and criminal and cannot be
sanctioned by religion, as it is nothing less than
murder. But what about birth control? I know the Catholic
Church opposes and condemns it, but I’m not
sure why. What is the Buddhist standpoint on it?"
ANSWER:
Well, first of all, according to what the
Buddha taught, for conception to take place, there
must be not only the union of the sperm with the ovum,
but a third factor: the incoming consciousness—which
some would call the soul or spirit—of the being-to-be-born;
it is not just a matter of the physical elements of
the parents, but also of the mental element—the
mind—of what will later become the child.
Genetics can explain our physical make-up—and
much of our mental make-up, too—in terms of
heredity; but not everything can be thus accounted
for, and much remains a mystery. There is, for example,
the phenomenon of child prodigies—that is, children
who show remarkable and unaccountable abilities like
speaking and writing in various languages at an early
age, when they could not possibly have learned them
in the present life time, and composing wonderful
music, together with the written score, as did Mozart
and Beethoven. In most child prodigy cases, their
parents and grandparents had no such abilities, nor—it
seems—did the prodigies pass them on to their
descendants—where they had descendants—in
like measure, as we might expect if it were all due
to heredity.
This, therefore, lies outside the present
ability of Science to explain. Asian religions account
for it by the theory of reincarnation or rebirth,
by which it is assumed that this is not our first
life, but the most recent of many. The body dies each
time, but the mind, consciousness or spirit, survives
and takes birth for another period, another series
of experiences. Thus, people who were highly skilled
or learned in previous life times carry their abilities
over with them to the subsequent lifetimes. Whether
this theory is true or not, I can neither say nor
demonstrate, but am merely stating it as the view
of most Eastern philosophies; the fact that I accept
it and find it reasonable myself should not interest
others; it is still only a concept.
Now, I don’t remember the moment of
my conception—though I suppose the memory of
it is stored somewhere in the vast labyrinth of my
mind—but I’ve read of people being regressed,
through hypnosis, to and through their childhood and
infancy, to their birth, their intra-uterine state,
and back to the moment of conception, which some have
described as ‘like being sucked up by a vacuum
cleaner’—speaking of their consciousness,
that is. (It may be worth stating here that, according
to Buddhist theory, most of us have little or no control
over where we will be reborn, rather like coconuts
falling from a tree: it cannot be predicted where
they will come to a standstill. But others, it is
said, having gained a degree of mastery over their
minds, do have some choice in this matter; they are
like birds flying from tree to tree, and can choose
where they will be reborn). Some people have even
been regressed to previous lifetimes and spoken about
things that they had no knowledge or experience of,
but which were later verified. We shall probably hear
more of this kind of thing as hypnosis loses its not-so-good
reputation of the past and gains wider acceptance
by the scientific community; it is happening now.
Any mother knows that the foetus in her
womb reacts to sudden loud noises; the child is a
sentient-being—feeling, sensing, sensitive—and
sentient-beings are psycho-physical, not just physical.
So, it would seem that there is consciousness in the
womb from the moment of conception. Why, then—some
will ask—does nobody remember it, or their nine
months of confinement therein? One explanation is
that birth is such a traumatic experience that anything
previous is forgotten. And anyway, who can consciously
recall even as far back as their actual birth? I’ve
met only one person who claimed he could, but whether
he was honest about this or not, I don’t know.
My earliest memory is of when I was about three years
old.
The practice known as ’In-Vitro-Fertilization’—IVF—does
not disprove the Buddhist theory of conception, which
needs only the three factors of sperm, ovum and consciousness,
and can take place just as well in a test tube—’test
tube babies’ —as in the uterus; the mind
has no shape, size or weight.
Now, however, with the advent of cloning,
the Buddhist concept is facing a major challenge—one
that we are going to have to deal with very soon.
It has become possible to dispense with parents altogether,
and to bring into being/cause the arising of/make/manufacture/mass-produce
sentient beings (including, without a doubt ‘humans’),
without the previously indispensable elements of sperm
and ovum. Just by taking a single cell from any part
of any living thing—plant or animal—it
is possible to replicate a whole being, with every
part complete. The implications of this are staggering.
It has already been done with monkeys, sheep and pigs,
but as far as we know—or as far as they want
us to know—humans have not yet been cloned,
so we cannot say anything about the mental state of
cloned humans; it’s only a matter of time, however,
before we will know—or become aware of—it,
for with the means now available, all the promises,
all the legislation, and all the safeguards in the
world will not prevent someone—individuals,
organizations or governments—doing something
that was previously impossible; and morality will
not be a guiding factor, either; science is amoral.
Conception is the coming-together of the
factors needed to produce birth, while contraception
is the prevention of conception, a deliberate act
by one or both partners, and it is this that the Catholic
Church opposes, claiming it is against the laws of
God and is unnatural. Well, this is true: it is unnatural
to use condoms or pills, but it’s not the only
unnatural thing in our lives. In fact, it can be said
that we are unnatural, for, unlike other animals,
we wear clothes, cook our food, drive cars, live in
houses with electricity and all the things operated
thereby, and so on. All these things are unnatural,
and if we were to be natural, we would have to give
them all up and go naked, live in caves, hunt our
food, and eat it raw. But long, long ago we began
to rebel against Nature, and our journey away from
it has gone on ever since. (I cannot resist telling
here the little story of the Salvation Army captain
who was walking backwards down a country lane as she
led her brass band along, when they came upon an old
farmer sitting on a fence smoking a pipe. The captain
stopped and indignantly said to him: "Now, listen
here, my good man, if God had intended you to smoke
He would have given you a chimney on top of your head!"
"Aye, ‘appen you’re right",
replied the farmer, "and if ‘e’d
intended you to walk backwards, ‘e’d have
given you eyes in your butt!").
Once in a while we might go camping, thinking
we are ‘getting back to nature’, but this
is our delusion, because we take with us tents, cooking
utensils, beds and bedding, food, radios, books, lighting
equipment, and so on; we never really ‘go back
to nature’, like Tarzan in the jungle, nor can
we. And, while I do think that our lives are far too
complex and would be better simplified, I’m
not saying we should go back to nature; I would not
like to give up everything and live like a prehistoric
cave man, nor do I know anyone who would. So, before
we talk about ‘being natural’ we must
understand what it really means, instead of holding
romantic notions about it.
"Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill
the earth and subdue it", was God’s exhortation
in Genesis 1:28. But we long ago got to and passed
the point where the following of this ‘order’
became not only unwise and impractical, but downright
irresponsible and dangerous; since then, we have overpopulated
the world, and continue to multiply rapidly, so that,
if we go on at this rate, the present population of
almost six billion will double within fifty years!
(I’m doing my share for population control,
but it’s not enough!) Disastrous consequences
of this, in forms of famine, drought, starvation,
deforestation, war, disease, pollution, and a decreasing
standard of living are already upon us, with worse
looming on the horizon. Why is God such a poor warden
of the planet? Why did He not say, when the planet
was able to support its population in a reasonable
condition: "Okay, enough now; relax, and take
it easy!"?
As it is, the Catholic Church continues
to oppose birth control and express its disapproval
of sex by saying it is not something to be indulged
in for pleasure but only for the sake of procreation.
But can the Church reasonably expect people to engage
in sex only when they intend to procreate? How many
people would conform to such restrictions? Most would
just follow their feelings, and some would become
burdened with guilt thereby, because of these anti-human
teachings.
Buddhism is not so prim about sex, and recognizes
it as a form of pleasure, though not a very refined
form; it is regarded as legitimate when it is not
adultery, rape, incest or other improper forms that
cause suffering.
Many Catholics today, however, do use contraceptives,
in spite of their Church’s opposition. They
prefer to do so rather than bring children into the
world that they do not really want or cannot afford;
it is a matter of practicality. In ‘third-world’
countries especially, large families are still common,
but mainly among the poor and uneducated—the
very people, in fact, who can least afford them! This
results in things like the spread of urban slums,
rising crime rates, the so-called ‘flesh-trade’
with the rampant VD and AIDS that accompany it in
such countries as Thailand, India and the Philippines.
China and India, the two most populous countries
in the world, have attempted to deal with their exploding
populations by rigorous birth control programs, and,
while they have not had the success hoped for, it
is scary to contemplate what it would have been like
without these programs! In India, the Hindus have
responded better than the minority Muslims who wish
to increase their numbers. The Indian government offers
incentives in the form of things like transistor radios
to people who volunteer for vasectomies or sterilization,
while China’s government penalizes people who
have more than the permitted one child in ways such
as delays in job promotion, set-backs on the list
for public housing, non-issuance of ration cards for
extra children, and so on; yet the population continues
to rapidly increase.
My maternal grandmother died giving birth
to her eighth child, and my mother, as the eldest
at the tender age of only twelve, had to take her
place. Contraception, even in those days, was available,
but people were not so well informed as now, or simply
did not care. For one thing, there was no social security
system then, and so large families were regarded as
‘insurance policies’ for people’s
old age.
It is useful to reflect upon something that
has puzzled people down the ages: Do we have free
will, or is everything predestined? This baffles people
as they see it as an either/or situation, unaware
of a ‘higher third’. We cannot really
talk of ‘free will’ when even the words
we use are not ours but are inherited from others;
moreover, we are products of our environment and live
and act according to our conditioning. But, to say
that everything is predestined is also incorrect,
for though the present is the culmination of everything
that preceded it, it is open ended, and what we do
with it now has an effect—sometimes a great
effect—on what will come after. Of course, everything
happens in a moment-by-moment sequence and not in
big chunks like years, months or even days (which
are all made up of moments in any case).
So, although we cannot really act freely
unless and until we fully understand our conditioning
and motivation, there is no-one else responsible for
our actions, and it is unreasonable to blame others
for what happens to us. We must learn to accept responsibility
for our own lives and see what we can do with them.
Don’t waste time wishing you had been born wealthy
or into the aristocracy instead of into the working
class; be happy to be human and strive to understand
what it means; don’t just accept other people’s
standards as your own, but look a little deeper than
most people. And then, instead of giving way to envy
and despair, you will find a sense of direction and
value in your life.
Now, because the present is open ended,
we have some choice; we are not robots, programmed
to act in certain ways —or are we? And when
we have choices, we must be responsible enough to
accept the consequences thereof. It is true that the
Pill and other forms of contraception have changed
the way we live considerably; some say they have made
people more promiscuous, and this is probably true;
ours is known as ‘the permissive society’.
But, because of contraception, people can avoid unwanted
pregnancies and plan their families. Even so, the
abortion rate continues to rise, and this is a very
big problem, for it means we are treating human life
very lightly, as something of little significance.
We know that abortion is nothing new and has gone
on throughout the ages, in back rooms under unsanitary
conditions. But now that we have contraceptives the
abortion rate should be expected to decline instead
of increase. What has happened? Why aren’t people
using these things responsibly and for their intended
purpose?
Have you ever known children who were not
wanted? The world’s streets are full of them,
living rough, getting into and causing trouble. I
worked with such people in Manila’s jail. Lacking
love and affection, it is almost automatic to join
others like them, and fall into bad ways. More to
be understood than condemned, they do not understand
themselves and do not wish to be unwanted and unloved;
they did not ask to be born as ‘accidents’,
as it were.
With the variety of contraceptive devices
available today, there is really no excuse for bringing
unwanted children into the world, and we cannot say
that those who do not use—or refuse to use—contraceptives
are more moral than those who do; the abortion clinics
and increasing numbers of ‘street kids’
are evidence to the contrary.
So, choose, with whatever information and
wisdom is available to you. And, having chosen, with
awareness of what you are doing, accept the consequences
thereof. If you choose to do something you know is
not right, well, it would be unreasonable to complain
about the consequences, would it not? Remember, too,
that your children are not just your children, but
the children of the world.
THE END |
