Beliefs can be Heaven or Hell

I want to start this post by giving my free rendition of a Pāli Sutta, and then follow with a little commentary.

The Conch Blower
Saṃyutta Nikāya 42.8 (iv.317)

One time when the Blessed One was staying at Nāḷandā in a mango grove he was approached by Asibandhakaputta, the head man of his village and a disciple of the Jain teacher Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta. After exchanging greetings, the Blessed One asked, “how does your teacher explain the cosmic order?”

“Well sir”, replied Asibandhakaputta “he teaches that anyone at all who takes life, takes what is not given, indulges in sexual misconduct, or tell lies, is bound for a state of misery, bound for hell. Whatever state one is habitually in will determine one’s rebirth”.

“Well in that case, Asibandhakaputta, no one will ever be born in a state of misery or go to hell. Think about it: which is more frequent, how much of the time is one, for instance, taking life? A much greater time spent not taking life, isn’t it?”

“I see what you mean, sir”.

“In which case because they spend more time not taking life, they will not have a bad rebirth.”

“Imagine Asibandhakaputta that someone who had confidence in his teacher held this view. Haven’t we all at some time acted unskilfully and broken a precept? A person with that belief who breaks a precept will believe that they are bound for misery and hell, and holding to that view will be hellish.”

“Now imagine that a fully Awakened Buddha comes along to teach. He criticises and censures the taking of life and so on. He says: don’t do it! If someone has faith in the Blessed One they reflect on their conduct, and acknowledge that at times they have acted unskilfully. They know that this was not good or proper, and although they regret it, they know that evil deeds in the past cannot be undone. This reflection will help them to restrain themselves in the future and keep the precepts. He will abandon, and abstain from: taking life, taking what is not given, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, idle speech, covetousness, illwill, and, wrong views.”

“Then, purified in this manner, the disciple of the Noble One will practice the Brahmavihara meditations. Pervading the entire world in all directions with a mind imbued with loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, vast, exalted, and measureless, without hostility or illwill. Just as a strong conch blower can make his note heard in the four quarters when the liberation of the heart by the Brahmaviharas is developed and cultivated any action in the sensuous sphere does not remain or persist.”

“Excellent, Sir”, exclaimed Asibandhakaputta. “Please accept me as a lay follower from now on.”

The sutta feels a bit like a Socratic dialogue. The Buddha begins by asking what Asibandhakaputta's teacher says about the dhamma (which I am reading here as 'cosmic order' on the basis of the context, and on historical grounds), then points out the fallacy, and substitutes his own view. I'm pretty sure that what Asibandhakaputta describes is not a fair representation of the Jain Dharma, although it does resemble it.

My two main points are suggested by my title. The Buddhist position, as represented by this text, is that it does matter what we believe in. If we believe like Asibandhakaputta does originally that the slightest unskilfulness means we are going to hell, then most likely we will end up living in hell. I follow Chögyam Trungpa in taking this kind of statement as a psychological metaphor: believing that one is inevitably destined for hell is hellish.

I have already mentioned in a previous post that the literal meaning of Brahmavihara is dwelling with God. The Buddha took the goal of Brahminical religious life at the time and used it as a metaphor. By dwelling with unbounded, vast and measureless loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, one is effectively in heaven. It doesn’t get any better than this. In fact this is also the liberation of the heart (cetto-vimutti), or the goal of the Buddhist religious life as well.

Believe yourself destined for hell, and you will be; believe yourself destined for heaven and you will be.

The Buddha calls for a rational approach to ethical precepts. We cannot be absolutely pure of conduct until Awakening. Reflecting on our conduct can give us the motivation to make ethical progress. It is the remorse born of reflecting that makes us want to do better in the future. Although it is tacit in this particular sutta what we reflect on is: cause in the form of our motivations; and effect in the form of the consequences of our actions. Although the focus here is on unskilfulness there is no reason not to reflect on positive results coming from positive intentions, indeed I would say it is a necessary test of the theory.

The implication in this sutta is that we practice ethics, which I will gloss here as 'acting as though we had no greed, hatred and delusion', in order to more fully express loving kindness and the rest. We practice loving kindness and the rest in order to actually liberate our consciousness from what afflicts it: that is greed, hatred, and delusion.

What is it that Arises in Dependence of Causes?

I've been asking myself this question lately - it has become a kind of koan. I think early on in my love-affair with Buddhism I answered this question quite differently to how I would answer it now. Dependent Arising is the most important idea in Buddhism. Of course as Buddhists we say that mere words and concepts cannot completely encompass this central Insight of the Buddha, but in conceptual terms Dependent Arising is the sine qua non.

When we discuss this concept Buddhists often make the point by using examples from what I've been calling the objective pole of experience. That is to say we use examples from the world of objects that, from our dualistic points of view, appear to exist independent of us. I don't have a problem with positing objects in this way. There is quite a broad consensus amongst people in their right minds that there are objects, and I have no certain proof that there are no objects. So for instance we might illustrate dependent arising by using a traditional simile involving a chariot: it has wheels, an axle, a frame, a yoke, etc. Without all the parts assembled in the correct order the concept 'chariot' doesn't occur to us (there's a clue here to what I'm going to say next). Things, we say - implying objects - depend on causes, otherwise things don't exist.

One might complain, as I sometimes do, that not much change is visible in some objects. On my desk I have a sphere of polished crystal which has not perceptibly changed in many years. Some clever Buddhists answer that the crystal is busy changing at the atomic and sub-atomic level. But we must be careful about explaining Buddhist doctrine in scientific terms because such observations were not available to the Buddha. The Buddha had no knowledge of atoms or electrons or any of that. I prefer then, despite my scientific training, to try to explain the idea in terms that the Buddha himself would understand and use.

The problem disappeared for me one day when I was discussing this apparent difficulty with a friend. I observed that the huge chunk of rock towering over us had not perceptibly changed in several weeks of watching it. "Close your eyes", my friend said. Which I did. "Has your perception of the rock changed?", he asked. And of course my perception of the rock had completely and utterly changed from one of a sight experience to one of a memory experience. So here is the rub. Objects themselves may not be changing that much, but our minds our changing constantly.

The idea was powerfully reinforced for me by Professor Richard Gombrich when, during his 2006 Numata lectures, he emphasised that dhammas, the basic elements of the world from in Buddhist doctrine, are mental phenomena. I would now say that dhammas are the constituents of experience - they are to the mind, what forms are to the eye, or sounds to the ear.

So I would now say that what arises in dependence on causes is dhammas. This is to focus on what I tend to call the subjective pole of experience. I do not deny that objects are experienced, and that there is frequently a consensus about the existence of objects. But what we know about objects is mediated by the senses and the mind. There is no way around this - all information that we have about any object is via the senses and the mind. This leaves open the ontological status of objects - they may well be real, but we have no way of proving this. Equally we have no way of proving that objects are not real, and the consensus about the experience of some objects suggests that they are not particular to individuals in most cases. If two people agree that there is an object then it would seem to be independent of either person. It gets tricky however because my information about what your information comes to me via my senses. There is no way around this basic fact.

The Buddha described the unenlightened as obsessed by, and intoxicated with, the objects of the senses. In his last words he says that it is through appamāda that one attains [awakening]. My analysis of the etymology of the word appamāda, as well as how it is used throughout the Canon, is that it means something like "not blind-drunk on the objects of the senses".

The practical implication of focusing on dependent arising as referring to the arising of experience is that one can lessen the obsession, can sober up and see what is happening more clearly. When the Buddha says that all compounded things are impermanent and impersonal he is not, I think, referring to objects but to experience. He says "all compounded things are impermanent", but compounded things are known to be made up of dhammas and as I have said, dhammas are the elements of experience. It is experience which is impermanent, rather than things, although it is also true that things are impermanent. It is experience which is impersonal, and experiences which are unsatisfactory.


image: moonrise by Synapped