The Death of a Child: Moral Particularism in Early Buddhism?

Nepalese Boy: Herald Sun

One of the questions that have concerned philosophers throughout history is whether or not there are universal moral principles. Most Buddhists consider that the moral principles of Buddhism are universal. Moral training rules (śikṣāpada/sikkhāpada) and monastic etiquette (Vinaya) are some of the most characteristic features of Buddhism. 

Although we generally see Buddhism as presenting general moral principles, in this essay I'm going to argue that there is at least an element of moral particularism in the Pāli texts. In the extreme this view says that morality is not about the application of moral principles and that, in fact, there are no universally applicable moral principles. Moral generalists argue that the same principles apply to the same situations all the time. A moral particularist denies this. For example we might say that because something is against the law that there is reason not to do it. But others will say that breaking the same law is a duty.

An interesting contemporary example is the case of Edward Snowden. Snowden was legally and contractually obliged to keep the secrets of the NSA secret. However because the NSA appeared to be breaking the law, and because he got no positive response through legally available channels, he decided that he must break the law and his contract. He stole documents, released them to the news media, and fled the country. For some people the ends do not justify the means. Snowden is simply a criminal who has broken the law and possibly harmed his country. Others see his broken promises as necessitated by the criminal activity of the NSA. Some people see moral rules as always applicable, while others see that each situation is unique. 

Buddhist ethics are spelled out in stories. Most people find it easier to understand a moral principle if they can relate it to through seeing people interact, whether in life or in imagination. This may be the reason that the Jātakas became the main vehicle for teaching ethics in Theravāda Buddhism. Below I very briefly outline three stories in which the moral problem is the same in each case - coming to terms with the death of a child. If there are universally applicable moral principles then we would expect responses to similar situations to be similar. If there are no universally applicable moral principles then we would expect the responses to be different in each case.  

Buddhists probably know the story of Kisā Gotamī and her dead baby. She takes the baby's corpse to the Buddha and asks his help for her "sick" baby. The Buddha says he can help, but only if Kisā can obtain some mustard seed from a house where no one has ever died. After traipsing around the town, Kisā cannot find a house where no one has died and comes to accept the fact that her baby has died, and that humans all die. The moral message is that death comes to all of us and not losing our heads when death takes our loved ones is an essential skill for a good life - because death always comes, and as one of my mentors once said, death is never convenient. The fact that Kisā is so attached to her child that she goes mad when it dies is not criticised.

By contrast in the Piyajātika Sutta (MN 87) the Buddha meets an unnamed man whose son has died and is beside himself. In Indian literature the unnamed person in examples like this is often called Devadatta:  it's the equivalent of "Joe Bloggs". So that's what we'll call him. Devadatta is walking the streets, dishevelled and unhinged calling out "my only son, where are you?" The Buddha simply tells the man, "That's just how it is, those we love cause us all kinds of grief and misery" (Evameva gahapati, piyajātikā hi gahapati , soka-parideva-dukkha-domanass[a]-upāyāsā piyappabhavikā 'ti) and he leaves it at that. The Buddha goes on his way but the Devadatta thinks that the Buddha has got it all wrong. Like most people he thinks that the people we love, especially our children, are a source of happiness. Devadatta seeks solace with gamblers, who represent the worst aspects of society, and they quickly confirm his view that the Buddha has it all wrong. King Pasenadi hears about the exchange and is rather disconcerted by this apparent callousness in the face of death. Pasenadi inquires of his wife, Queen Mallikā, whether the story is true and when she confirms it they discuss the implications together. In a set piece discussion, then deduce that those we love really are a source of all kinds of misery and that it is marvellous how insightful the Buddha is. In the end the shock of the initial rejection, which so strongly contrasts with the Buddha's reaction to Kisā Gotamī, is worked out to some extent, but the story remains unsettling to anyone who loves someone and does not want them to die.

The third story is generally also well known, but not for the particular aspect I will highlight here. I've covered it in writing about the saccakiriyā or "truth act" and it involves the Buddha intervening in the difficult, potentially fatal birth of a child, by giving Aṅgulimāla a magic spell to recite. Here the almost fatalistic acceptance of death is seen in a new light. In this story the magic of the saccakriyā or truth act is used to ensure mother and baby don't die in childbirth. The Buddha intervenes to prevent their death. The implication here is that their death was unsettling to Aṅgulimāla and the Buddha simply enabled him to do something about it.

So here we have three distinct attitudes to the death of a child: 

1. gentle coxing towards the acceptance of the universality of death; 
2. fatalistic acceptance that love implies attachment and that attachment brings suffering; 
3. the use of taboo means (i.e. magic) to avoid the death of mother and child. 

Now clearly these stories are not precisely the same. The comparison between the cases of Kisā and Devadatta is striking. In one the Buddha is portrayed as kind and compassionate. He takes time and effort to help Kisā to understand. Devadatta however is simply left with the barest of factual accounts: "C'est la vie" (Evameva). We suspect that the case of Devadatta was inexpertly composed to provide a frame for the discussion between Pasenadi and Mallikā. It provides them with the stimulus to consider the consequences of familial love and attachment in a way that is far more sympathetic than the frame story. But because the story is canonical we must consider that at some point some early Buddhists thought this a plausible enough depiction of the Buddha dealing with a distraught grieving father to compose and preserve it. On the face of it the Buddha fails to help Devadatta and appears rather callous.

Of course death is inevitable. For any self-aware living being this knowledge is terrible. As living beings we desire continued life above all things. So the irresistible force of life meets the immovable object of death and, in the cases of Kisā and Devadatta, the result is madness. In one case the madness is cured and in the other it is not. But in the case of Aṅgulimāla the prospect of death is put off by the use of magic. Buddhist texts are rather ambivalent about magic. Some miracles are performed by the Buddha and form an important aspect of his hagiographies: the so-called "twin miracles" or the conversion of the Kassapa brothers at Uruvela are two examples. And yet in other places the monks are forbidden to use magic, and in another the Buddha denies rumours that he is (simply) a wizard.

My point here is that there does not seem to be a moral principle which applies in each case. Sometimes one can use magic and other times not, with no discernible pattern, Sometimes the Buddha takes extraordinary care of a grieving parent and other times he simply says "C'est la vie". These stories taken together seem represent at least some level of moral particularism. We can deduce from these stories that early Buddhists did not see behaviour simply in terms of general moral principles, but allowed for different responses to seemingly similar situations depending on factors which are not preserved in the stories themselves.

~~oOo~~

A very good introduction to the subject of moral particularism can be found in this interview with Jonathan Dancy on Philosophy Bites. [Thanks to Dhīvan for pointing this out]. 

Diamond Sutra: Connections to the Past

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One of the unresolved discussions in Buddhist Studies is the relative date of the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā (Vaj). Conze placed it in the same period as the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya ca 350-500 CE calling this a "period of contraction" after the gradually expanding versions in 18,000, 25,000 and 100,000 lines. We now know that the Hṛdaya was composed quite a bit later, ca. 7th century according to Nattier. Japanese scholars have also argued for a much early date for Vaj, placing it a little before 8000 line Perfection of Wisdom text (these scholars were writing in Japanese and although their arguments are mentioned by many English language writers, I'm not aware that they have been reproduced in any detail in English). Thus it's quite likely that Conze's "period of contraction" is a mirage.

One of the interesting features of Vaj is the references to ideas and texts from early Buddhism. For example section 6 there is a reference to Alagaddūpama Sutta or a text very like it, i.e. to the simile of the raft and to dharmas and non-dharmas. The problem of what was meant by dhamma/adhamma in the Pali text was explored in The Simile of the Raft, with inconclusive results. There is no consensus on what is being referred to by dhamma/adhamma in this passage. As I pointed out, the Buddhadharma never ceases to be a refuge even for the liberated, so the suggestion that we abandon it post-liberation is not sensible. The reference is found in Vaj 6:

"If the aspirant has a perception of a fundamental object (dharma) they might grope towards really existing substance (ātma). They might grope for being (satva), for a soul (jīva) or a homunculus (pudgala)." Similarly if they have a perception of a non-object (adharma). This is a reference to the kolopamaṁ dharmaparyāyaṁ "the way of explaining the Dharma that is like a raft".

References to early texts dwindle as time goes on and thus might provide some clues to the relative age of Vaj. However some of the ideas were kept alive by being repeated in later texts so this may not be a direct reference. For example in the Schøyen Vaj manuscript (VajS), at the end of section 4 there is this sentence:

api tu khalu punaḥ subhūte evaṃ bodhisatvena dānamayaṃ puṇyakṛyāvastuṃ dānaṃ dātavyam.

Even so however, Subhūti, in this way, an aspirant should give a donation whose basis in good action (puṇyakriyāvastu) consists of generosity (dānamaya).

This sentence is not found in the other versions of the text, which are generally considered later. Here we also seem to have a backward glance. There are two interesting terms here.

• puṇyakriyāvastu: from puṇya-kriyā ‘a good action’; puṇyakriyā-vastu ‘whose reality is a good action’, the ‘reality of a good action’. BHSD: “object or item of meritorious action” (though what does this mean?). 
• dāna-maya 'consisting of generosity' 

Compare this with the Puññakiriyavatthu Sutta:

Tīṇimāni, bhikkhave, puññakiriyavatthūni. Katamāni tīṇi? Dānamayaṃ puññakiriyavatthu sīlamayaṃ puññakiriyavatthu, bhāvanāmayaṃ puññakiriyavatthu.(AN iv.241 ; Cf. DN iii.218; M ii.204). 

"Bhikkhus, there are these three bases of meritorious activity. What three? The basis of meritorious action consisting in giving… virtuous behaviour… meditative development." (Bodhi's translation; p.1170)

There appears to be no Chinese equivalent of this text (none is listed by the Sutta Correspondance project). Here Bodhi interprets vatthu (Skt vastu) as "basis". This seems more likely.

The point of this passage seems to be that those who practice actions based on dānamaya and sīlamaya but not bhāvanāmaya can expect a rebirth in one of the deva realms, but it is implied that they do not attain liberation. At DN iii.94 the Buddha remarks that, “‘They don’t meditate now’ is the meaning of ‘brahmin student’”. (Na dānime jhāyantīti kho, vāseṭṭha, ‘ajjhāyakā ajjhāyakā’ tveva tatiyaṃ akkharaṃ upanibbattaṃ). The author is forming a pun by reading ajhāyakā (= ime na jhāyanti 'they don't meditate') ‘non-meditators’ for ajjhāyakā ‘Brahmin students’. 

MN 99, closely related to the Tevijjā Sutta (DN 13) in form and content, suggests that this was originally a critique of Brahmins. 

Yeme, bho gotama, brāhmaṇā pañca dhamme paññapenti puññassa kiriyāya kusalassa ārādhanāya, cāgamettha brāhmaṇā dhammaṃ mahapphalataraṃ paññapenti puññassa kiriyāya kusalassa ārādhanāyā’ti (Mn ii.204). 

“Gotama, of these five things declared by Brahmins for the making of merit (puññassa kiriyāya), for accomplishing what is good, they declare the greatest fruit derives from generosity (cāga).”

The critique is that no Brahmin can say from personal experience that the five things lead to merit. This may indicate that puṇya was being used in an anachronistic way to indicate good ritual actions -- i.e. making the appropriate sacrifices, at the appropriate time, as prescribed by Brahmanical ritual manuals -- rather than morally good actions. Thus dānamaya may originally have been a Brahmin concept that was criticised, then adopted and naturalised to Buddhism.

Now, we might make a case here for this being a reference to an early text. However this subject is expounded on at some length in the sixth chapter of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (Aṣṭa). Here the three types of good action practised by everyone (sarvasattvā) are contrasted with a single type of good action characteristic of the aspirant: anumodanāpariṇāmanā-sahagataṃ puṇyakriyāvastu "good actions associated with bringing sympathetic joy to fruition". The term puṇyakriyāvastu is used about 40 times in this section. According to Conze the Vaj is a derivative of Aṣṭa and thus might be drawing on it for this teaching. But if the Japanese scholars are correct and Vaj in fact predates Aṣṭa, this inclusion might tell a different story. Indeed the treatment in Aṣṭa looks to be much more fully developed and to be incorporated fully into a Mahāyāna framework by the comparison with the puṇyakriyāvastu of the bodhisattva. By comparison in Vaj the reference refers to dānamaya as the best puṇyakriyāvastu for a bodhisattva which seems to present the idea in terms more similar to the Pāli texts than the Aṣṭa. 

Taken in isolation this use of puṇyakriyāvastu seems to place VajS closer to the Pāli texts than to Aṣṭa. Which is not to say that we must now interpret one text as deriving from another. We need to keep in mind that the idea of puṇyakriyāvastu only occurs in this manuscript and not in the others. The presence of an extra line in this ms. which is not found in the later mss. just goes to show that there is no simple progression here, and Paul Harrison's comment about the lines not converging is right. 

The situation is likely to be this: in a pre-sectarian Buddhist environment there was a loose tradition of preserving texts orally. It's quite possible that groups anthologised a few texts. Out of this relatively amorphous body of literature crystallised a number of written texts and collections. A project of standardisation occurred at some point, probably associated with King Asoka, which in all likelihood weeded out a great deal of material. Information was able to be transmitted at many different levels: individual phrases and passages; ideas; partial and whole texts. So even relative chronologies of texts might not be trustworthy - again, the Buddhist tradition is a braid not a tree.

However we can see the idea developing here. It starts out as a criticism of Brahmins who don't meditate. However as the Brahmanical practice of accumulating merit (for a good rebirth) is more fully assimilated and naturalised (so that it comes from ethical and not ritual action) then it finds a place in lists of Buddhist teachings. In VajS a fairly straightforward reference to this mature version of the teaching is made. In Aṣṭa another step has occurred taking the teaching into a Mahāyāna milieu. Though of course we are talking here about an edition of Aṣṭa which does not list variants and not of the whole of the extant Aṣṭa tradition. To really understand the situation we'd need to use a critical edition or revisit the extant manuscripts. On the face of it this passage argues for a older rather than younger Vaj, though as Nattier points out it seems to have been written in quite a different milieu to Aṣṭa and its descendants. 

~~oOo~~

Commodification and the Buddhadharma

image: moneysister

In the world of modern Buddhism there seems to be a growing concern about commodification of the Buddhadharma. I'm seeing more and more complaints about it from Buddhists. Commodification is a process in which something which is not usually considered to be bought and sold is transformed into a product with a monetary value. I have for instance argued that the re-packaging of our thoughts and emotions by websites like Facebook to help them sell advertising constitutes a commodification of the self. I argued that this was a bad thing. "Our online persona becomes like a soap opera that is processed and sold as entertainment and enriches those who facilitate the process, with little or no real benefit to us despite the hype." However when one looks more closely at the concerns one often sees that they are based in a Romantic picture of Buddhism and they generally ignore our history. Buddhist ignorance of Buddhist history is something to be really concerned about. We tend to believe the lovely stories about our chosen religion that are completely unrealistic. We don't see the problems that we face in the light of how earlier Buddhists faced them, we don't even see that they faced them. This makes us and our age seem much more different from the past than is the case. 

The Romance of Buddhism.

In an interview in Tricycle Online Mu Soeng, said "Most people forget that they began practicing [sic] for the sake of liberation." Really? Because in twenty years of practising Buddhism I've rarely met anyone who confessed to begin practising for the sake of liberation. We usually have no idea what liberation is at the beginning. Of course some people are attracted by notions of transcendence, especially if they've taken hallucinogens, but most people I meet are simply looking for ways to suffer less or to live better (i.e. to make the most of saṁsāra). Liberation is a concept internal to Indian religions, it's not a concept we can understand prior to beginning to practice. Even the idea that, having become Buddhists, each one of us is striving for liberation is a Romantic conceit. Most of us are far too settled and comfortable to be taken seriously as genuinely seeking liberation. We seem loath to admit to this, but it is natural and entirely consistent with our history. It takes a particular personality and temperament to really take on the challenges involved and most of us are not up to it. 

The idea that every Buddhist might be actively striving for liberation is one that has no history. The number of people genuinely striving for liberation has always been dwarfed by people of less inspiration and less commitment, who are none-the-less sincere in their support for the Three Jewels and their attempts to live good lives. Most of us are just hanging around with Buddhists and though quite pious in our own way, cannot realistically expect to be liberated.

I begin to wonder if this idea that we can all be liberated is in fact part of the commodification of Buddhism in the West: the selling of Buddhism as a cornucopia and universal panacea. Sure, in theory we can all be liberated, but in practice most of us won't be. We make our contribution in other ways - be it making donations, helping to organise a teaching centre, or even just being a positive presence in the community (or writing essays). Being a member of a vibrant and supportive community of people with a common goal and sense of purpose can make us a great deal happier. It will bring out the best in us and help actualise our potential, whatever our potential is. For Buddhism to thrive it is quite important to have such a community around the more serious practitioners in order to support and sustain them.

But most of us are people are towards the middle of the bell curve. This "we're all Buddha's" stuff is like saying "We're all capable of getting a PhD and should all be enrolled in a program and pursuing research". No one would take this idea seriously. Some people do very well to get a bachelors degree, while others do fine with a basic education.

So Buddhists say things like "Most people forget that they began practicing [sic] for the sake of liberation" and it keeps the punters on the hook (and this may not be conscious because we unconsciously pick up on what the people around us are saying and repeat it to reinforce our group membership). Buddhists worry about not practising enough or in the right way and they become consumers of what Buddhist "teachers" are selling: they buy books, attend expensive seminars and retreats, and mālās, and little vajras to wear around their necks, and get a tattoo of a mantra and so on. As long as they are not at ease with who they are, they keep spending money on more teachings, more initiations, and more paraphernalia. Burn more incense, light more candles. There's a kind of anxious piety about many Buddhists, linked to an exaggerated concern for authenticity. The anxiety that the "true teaching" will be lost in the crowd of "false teachings" is visible in every layer of Buddhist literature, but quite pronounced in the voices of Buddhist converts from societies which have been largely Christian for centuries. Heresy is a particular anxiety for Christians as they only have one shot at heaven and they've left their mark on our psyches. Maybe we're getting spillover from that.

The Mindfulness Heresy

One of the problem areas that has emerged recently are the so-called Mindfulness Based Therapies (MBT) spawned by John Kabat-Zinn's application of Buddhist awareness techniques to managing pain. One sees and hears a great deal of bitterness, resentment and/or contempt towards practitioners of MBT from supposedly tolerant and pacific Buddhists. But let's be clear, the reason we've heard of JKZ is because his approach to pain management was incredibly successful in helping people with with chronic pain. And as someone who suffers from chronic pain I have nothing but respect and admiration for JKZ.

There seem to be two main complaints about MBT. That it is incomplete; and that it commodifies the Buddha's teaching.

Some Buddhists imagine that MBT is being touted as an alternative to Buddhism (it isn't) and that MBT is positioning itself as a competitor to Buddhism (it isn't). When martial artists claim to use Buddhist principles and practices in order to better defeat opponents in combat, we Buddhists have not complained that they are trying to undermine Buddhism or steal our ideas. If anything most Buddhists seem attracted to the idea of a martial wing to our culture as the fascination with samurai persists. As Buddhists we apparently see ourselves as in possession of a (the) panacea that we must retain control over. And the popularity of MBT compared to tradition Buddhist teachings has threatened our control over the ideas and practices of Buddhism. MBT has escaped from the hegemony of Buddhist orthodoxy. This is something to laugh about. It's hilarious.

The apparent commodification of Buddhism by practitioners of MBT seems to be a more problematic issue. MBT is generally speaking quite expensive. In the UK it is much more expensive than a beginners meditation class. But not more expensive than other types of pain management or psychological therapy. The idea behind this complaint seems to be that Buddhists have always taught for free. But this is simply not true. At the very least, as is shown at some length in Reginald Ray's book Buddhist Saints in India, Buddhist teaching was part of a social contract in which laypeople agreed to provide for all of the material needs of the entire monastic and forest-dwelling community in return for pastoral care and instructions. I will say more about the funding of Buddhism below, but we need to be clear that sustaining a group of people who do no productive work requires resources to be diverted from the productive part of society. Buddhist teachers have always been supported. And historically this has lead to massive accumulations of wealth (and therefore power) in monastic communities.

So it seems to me that Buddhists complaining about the success of MBT is bizarre and laughable. But complain they do. Indeed the backlash against MBT may be growing if rumblings in the blogosphere are anything to go by. 

Naïveté and Romanticism

This is not to say that consumerism is a good thing. Consumerism is not a good thing. But neither is it an entirely new thing. One of the problems Mu Soeng sees is the rise of the teacher who wants to be a teacher for the kudos. Becoming a Buddhist teacher is a source of social standing and charisma (in the sense of the ability to influence one's social group and perhaps beyond). It's a way for some people to climb the social ladder. But again this has always been true. There are Pali texts reflecting just this problem - bhikkhus who went forth because they got a better living as a monk than their previous life. In Japan in the late 8th century people were pretending to be Buddhist monks in order to avoid forced labour. People become Buddhists for all kinds of reasons; they become "teachers" for all kinds of reasons; they become followers for all kinds of reasons. Some followers are only satisfied by a charismatic and ambitious teacher, which is why such people are able to succeed.

The general assumption seems to be that the teacher-pupil relationship is an asymmetrical power relationship - that it is characterised mainly by the exertion of power by the teacher. Typically, for some reason, as followers we expect to give up responsibility for decision making to our guru, even when the main teaching is take responsibility for yourself. Most people seem to be hopelessly naive and puerile when it comes to the religious life. Many are looking for a parent substitute and easily slip into a subordinate, childlike state in the presence of their teacher. Traditional Buddhist teachers do seem to encourage this unfortunately, though I think many Asians have been tripped up by how puerile we Westerners really are.

At present the fashion is to blame the teacher when something goes wrong. I'm not quite sure where the ideology of asymmetric power relationships comes from, but it is stated as an absolute fact time and again in the various sex scandals. It seems to me to be incredibly unhelpful in sorting out the problems that ensue from abdication of responsibility to a parent substitute because it completely ignores that side of the problem. One positive thing one can say about theism, is that at least the parent substitute is an imaginary figure in the sky, rather than a human being. Imaginary friends seldom let us down in the way that humans are wont to do. It really is unfortunate when people prey on naivete. But how else are the naive going to grow up except through betrayal? Naivete is positively dangerous in adults. We see the disastrous results all around us.

It is only when we realise that our parents are not omniscient and omnipotent, that they make mistakes, that they are not always kind and good to us, that we begin to grow up. If we reject that transition and go looking for a guru to play God, then we should not be surprised by the behaviour of the gods. In fact if we read mythology we discover that Gods are often immoral in the extreme. Greek myth for example is often bowdlerised for consumption by children, but the adult versions show how capricious, unsentimental and amoral (not to say immoral) the gods can be. One subjugates oneself at one's own risk.

Historically Romanticism was a reaction to the perceived mechanistic worldview of the Enlightenment thinkers. In Nietzsche's terms the dominant paradigm had become decidedly Apollonian. Romantics embraced Dionysus partly as a way of disrupting that. Certainly Romanticism is valuable in the way that it revalorises nature and the environment. In the present day, however, I see Romanticism as encouraging escapism and naivete. It's all too easy for us to escape into the world of imagination these days and to fail to engage with the practical problems facing us: from the baleful influence of Neolibertarianism (with it's roots in a dehumanising Utilitarianism and Game Theory) to the increasingly urgent problem of climate change. These problems of the material world are too remote for those who see themselves as spiritual beings, floating above the turbulence and uninvolved. Rather like our idealised Buddha figures who float above the world on pretty flowers, depicted as eternal youths and damsels.

Disengagement is the besetting problem of the last few generations. Present day Britain is once again dominated by Victorian thinking because successive generations of have either bought into the Neolibertarian lie, or simply dropped out of political life (the term for such a person in Greek was "idiot" from idios 'one's own'). The Romantic sees themselves as standing alone against an uncomprehending world. My own teacher has described the True Individual as characterised by "frequent aloneness". Romantics see the True Individuals as possessed of a refined soul in contrast to the gross materiality of the world. By contrast I argue that more than ever we need to see ourselves as inseparably interconnected with others and functioning better in groups than alone; and as rooted in the material world and willing to get our hands dirty to solve problems in the material world. What's worse is that Neolibertarians exploit the tendency to disconnect, encouraging and facilitating escapism while continuing to accumulate wealth and power. 

The Funding of Buddhism

If the legends can be believed the first Buddhists were rather extreme ascetics by out standards. There were more extreme lifestyles available at the time, but these people lived on one meal a day which they begged at the doors of whatever settlement they were near, made their clothing from discarded rags, and wandered from place to place. But if they did live this way it doesn't seem to have lasted long. Wealthy patrons already feature in the earliest literature and many of them are very wealthy. Maybe having your generosity immortalised in a sutta was a bit like today's naming rights? Anāthapiṇḍika's Ārāma (garden) as the Pāḷi equivalent of the "O2" arena? Soon the incrowd and socialites of ancient India were donating many expensive gifts and large sums of money to Buddhist beggars. They went from being possessionless beggars in rags, to being substantial property and land owners in silk robes in a relatively short space of time. And they have remained in this position ever since. People donated over and above what was needed in to gain merit for a better rebirth. Why Buddhist monasteries accumulate wealth is open for discussion.

When Kūkai visited Changan, the imperial capital of China in 804-6 CE, there were some 90 Buddhist temples, alongside substantial buildings belonging to other religions. Some of these temples recorded huge donations (e.g. a billion copper coins) and were possessors of incalculable wealth. What's more they were involved in usury and owned productive land. And as ever they were not subject to the usual taxes. The imbalance was so great in China that, much like Britain in the 16th century, the Imperium, on the verge of bankruptcy, turned on the Buddhists and took all that wealth by force, sacking the monasteries. Having a large Buddhist establishment in your economic sphere is a vast drain on resources and history shows that supporting such a large unproductive sector frequently leads governments into economic difficulties. This may be why Zen monks ended up having to work for a living in Japan, where they had plenty of experience of wealthy and powerful monks interfering in government. In Tibet the monks solved this potential problem by becoming the de facto government and convincing peasants that a revered religious leader reincarnated time and time again to be their king. This produced an isolationist, stagnant, despotic feudalism that was largely disinterested in solving problems in the material world, while at the same time selling the story that they were engaged in saving all beings from suffering using supernatural means. The irony with Tibet is that had the Chinese not invaded we might still never have heard of Tibetan Buddhism. 

One of the features of the work of Professor Gregory Schopen has been to show how ancient monasteries, to the extent that they have been excavated, were always involved in direct economic activity. From donating cash to monumental building programs to minting their own coins, all the evidence points to Buddhist monasteries as domains of power and wealth. The massive "university" at Nalanda was not built for free. We tend to forget that every building must be paid for. Land and bricks have to be bought, builders have to be paid and so on. All the evidence is that Buddhists were active in this sphere, though not productive. They simply accumulated wealth and property. And they still do. And what they offer in return is a little teaching, rituals to ward of misfortune, and the promise of a better rebirth for the donors. Buddhist monasteries have always been centres of wealth and power. Celibacy stops that wealth leaking away to children. 

It's clear that a great deal of effort these days is going into producing Buddhist consumer goods: "Dharma" books, DVDs, paraphernalia, cushions, statues, apps; and Buddhist services: retreats, seminars, workshops, pilgrimages and initiations. This seems, historically speaking, to be business as usual. Running Buddhism and expanding it is not cheap and Buddhists have more or less always had to generate a huge amount of cash to fund it. Perhaps our culture of consumerism is more intense than before. Perhaps the average person is considerably more affluent than before. But the basic pattern of attracting donors to fund the maintenance and spread of Buddhism, involving the material support of a large unproductive clergy, as well as the accumulation of wealth and power by ruling elites, is nothing new. Commodification is the historical norm from the earliest textual and archaeological records. The Romantic idea of Buddhists living "pure" spiritual lives unconcerned with the material world is a story that has never been true in Buddhism history. Unproductive priests require the material support of their followers.

Conclusion

I was listening to the radio recently and someone said that one can tell the health of a religion by whether it is looking for converts or heretics. The implication was that looking for converts is a sign of health and looking for heretics a sign of ill-health. Clearly different parts of the Buddhist world are at different places on this spectrum. It's partly this that makes the reaction to MBT as a heresy alarming. But also it's another reminder that Buddhists don't really understand their own history and they don't understand economics. And isn't this because these are "material world" subjects that are considered to be below the spiritual aspirant who has renounced the world?

Isn't this another manifestation of the ontological dualism outlined in my essay, Metaphors and Materialism, this split in our minds between matter and spirit. Don't we, as Buddhists, long to belong to the world of spirit, free of the corruptions of matter? Aren't we simply disgusted by bodies, money, and sex? Don't we imagine ideal worlds in which we have bodies of light, all our wants fulfilled with no effort; where everyone loves each other but no one has sex? And isn't that really the problem we have with the supposedly new, but in fact ancient phenomenon of commodification and the practical application of our techniques? It spoils the illusion that we are part of something so spiritual that you can't buy it over the counter.

The production of food involves costs - it require input from the three factors of production: labour, capital and land. We would probably add a fourth factor these days: knowledge. These costs must be met or food production becomes unsustainable. So labour generates wages, capital generates profit, and land generates rent. What knowledge generates in compensation I don't know (my Marxist economics is a bit out of date!). If someone gives up their spare time to teach then maybe they can do so at little cost, except for the lost opportunities to do something else with that time (and the preparation time). But if someone gives up their working time to teach then we must provide them, one way or another with the means to survive or even to thrive. Since in the West we have no culture of supporting people in the traditional Buddhist manner, teachers must charge a fee or go get a job. And if they have a job they'll do a lot less teaching. We either have to create a culture in which ordinary Buddhists give up a substantial portion of their own income to support teachers (the tithe of old) or reconcile themselves to paying fees. History suggests that this has always been the case.

In any case, if we're going to have a discussion about commodification let's do it with some awareness of our own history and the politics of our day!

~~oOo~~

Some views of Mindfulness etc. in no particular order

• Why Mindfulness isn’t a Good Thing (…or New) The Naked Monk. (13 July 2013)
• TIME's Beautiful, White, Blonde 'Mindfulness Revolution', Huffington Post (29 Jan 2014) though generally the Huff is a HUGE FAN.
• Corporatist Spirituality. Richard K. Payne. (18 Feb 2014) See comments from me and RKP.
• Protesters crash Google talk on corporate mindfulness at Wisdom 2.0 conference. Tricyle. (17 Feb 2014) Though note that the protest itself was not about Mindfulness, but "about Google and other Tech giants" forcing up rents in some areas of San Francisco. [Read the comments also]
• Mineful Response and the Rise of Corporatist Spirituality. Speculative Non-Buddhism. (17 Feb 2014). SNB specialises in angry and reductio ad absurdum arguments.
• The mindfulness business: Western capitalism is looking for inspiration in eastern mysticism. The Economist. 16 Nov 2013.
• Beyond McMindfulness. Huff Post. 7 Jan 2013.
• Enlightenment Engineer: Meditation and mindfulness are the new rage in Silicon Valley. And it’s not just about inner peace—it’s about getting ahead. Wired.  (18 Jun 2013)

• Mindfulness is Political: Viśvapāṇi and other posts on his blog. (ca. 20 Feb 2014). A bit of balance. 
• diy dhamma drama or here we goes agin. 108zenbooks.