The Fifth Precept

surāmeraya-majja-pamādaṭṭḥānā
veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi

I undertake the training principle of abstaining from intoxicating drinks and negligent states of intoxication.

~~~~

Of all the precepts this one is probably the one most commonly fudged. I know a lot of Buddhists who like a drink, and a few who take recreational drugs. I'll try to avoid being moralistic, but I want to explore the fifth precept and its implications.

Let's start with the translation. Although the first three words (which I have joined with hyphens) are often seen written as separate, the first two don't have inflections, and therefore the three must a single compound: surāmerayamajjapamādaṭṭḥānā which will require some unpacking. The word surāmeraya is itself a compound: surā and meraya are synonyms for intoxicating drinks. Surā possibly comes from the root √su meaning to 'press out' (from which we get the Vedic soma, the drug used by the early Vedic poets). While some information has been lost on what exactly these words refer to, the dictionaries link surā to distillation. I'm not sure what the level of technology was in the the Buddha's day - perhaps they were making distilled liquors then? The Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary (MW) suggests that it originally referred to a kind of beer (remembering that the earliest Vedic texts predate the Iron Age by some centuries). Meraya seems to have more or less the same reference, and is found in combination with surā more often than not (even in Vedic texts). Majja (Sanskrit madya) is a third almost synonymous word, though in this case more clearly related to mada from √mad 'intoxication'. I suspect that at the time the distinctions might have been more meaningful, although it is a feature of Pāli literature to use synonyms for emphasis. The intention seems to be to cover all kinds of intoxicating drinks, and probably all forms of intoxication.

The same root √mad occurs in the next word - pamāda - which is often translated as 'negligence'. [1] Keep in mind that in Buddhist texts the opposite appamāda 'vigilance' is almost always associated with objects of the senses - and is akin to 'guarding the gates of the senses'. The word ṭhāna means 'a state', so pamādaṭṭhāna is a state of negligence, especially with respect to the senses.

So the compound surā-meraya-majja-pamāda-ṭṭhānā unpacks as: 'intoxicating drinks and negligent states of intoxication'.

The rest of the formula - veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi - is relatively straight forward. The verb is samādiyati 'to take upon oneself, to undertake' in the first person singular: 'I undertake'. Veramaṇī is 'abstaining'. Sikkhapāda is a compound with sikkhā meaning 'training, discipline, precept', while pada here is 'an item': so sikkhāpada is a training rule or training principle, i.e. a precept. Note that the precepts are not really 'given' or 'taken' from another person. The form is 'I undertake', it is an individual act of will, a personal undertaking, though making a public declaration of one's intention to undertake this training usually indicates a deeper commitment to the training.

It is worth making the point that in the Buddha's day the attitude to alcohol was very different to our Anglo-Saxon attitude. This is brought out in in stark terms in the Dhammika Sutta:

The householder who finds pleasure in this Dhamma,
Should not practice drinking alcohol;
Should not cause any other good person to drink,
Knowing it leads to madness.

Intoxicated, they foolishly do evil,
And cause other negligent people to do likewise.
This occasion for disgrace should be avoided,
This crazy, idiotic pleasure of fools. [2]

Although some 'sophisticated' urban Indians have started drinking like Westerners, amongst the poorer and rural Indians that I know, drinking is still seen as a great evil. Of course drinking patterns in Europe and its colonies have typically been different. This does not mean that drink is not a great social evil in West. As the UK Office of National Statistics says:

The number of alcohol-related deaths in the United Kingdom has consistently increased since the early 1990s, rising from the lowest figure of 4,023 (6.7 per 100,000) in 1992 to the highest of 9,031 (13.6 per 100,000) in 2008. [3]

That's about 25 people per day dying alcohol related deaths in 2008, and doubling in the last 18 years. [4] Those people have families and loved ones who are affected by their deaths; by their drinking habits; by their behaviour. In the UK alcohol deaths far outstrip all other drugs combined except tobacco which kills more than 80,000 people a year on its own (and for what one wonders?). Alcohol is responsible for thee times as many deaths as road accidents, although clearly alcohol is also a major factor in causing road accidents. There is no doubt that alcohol is a major problem in the UK. Imagine if, instead of reporting the names of the soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan each day, a list of people who died alcohol related deaths in the UK (or wherever you live) were read on the news each day? In the USA the situation is very similar:

via +Vox 

One of the arguments about unethical products is that by not participating in the process of production, distribution and consumption we make that product marginally less profitable. By not eating meat, for instance, we reduce the demand for meat generally and this has an effect on the industry, making it marginally less profitable. Collectively we can have a great effect. It's worth considering that while you personally might not have a problem with alcohol, that on balance society does. By consuming it you help to keep the product economically viable and contribute indirectly to all the problems that alcohol creates. Is your personal pleasure at drinking enough to justify participating in the production of a substance that kills so many people?

Of course the Buddhist drinker will usually argue that they do not drink very much, do not drink to excess, do not drink so that their "mindfulness is impaired" (as I have often heard). And perhaps this is true. Perhaps the are right to argue that it is the 'spirit' of the precept rather than the letter that should apply. However it's hard to tell how much alcohol it takes to affect your mind, partly because alcohol itself makes this kind of judgement more difficult - alcohol impairs judgement. I note for instance that over the years the acceptable level of alcohol when driving has consistently gone down, and that some authorities say that the limit should be zero. The argument on how much is too much is clearly not settled, but the cut-off has trended downward as investigations have intensified into the effects of alcohol on the brain.

Another 'let off clause' is that medical journalists have reported that drinking alcohol can actually be good for your health. Fully unpacking the problems with this would take an essay in its own right. The story on the health benefits from alcohol, and the type of alcohol involved, has changed regularly and considerably over the years. Some of the studies employed doubtful methods. Not every study has been able to confirm the health benefits found in the others, so there is no consensus. The issue is not clear, but journalists are not really interested in scientific process, and medical journalism is still about selling newspapers. If one is using popular press stories to justify stretching a precept that is shaky ground to take a stand on.

We often look for ways to rationalise our lax ethics. We cite the Aristotelian motto "moderation in all things" as a formulation of the middle way that allows for some moderate vices.[5] One needs to be clear about how the Buddha saw his middle way playing out in lifestyle terms. To the Buddha the idea lifestyle was to reject family, work, holidays, status, and possessions generally; to live simply, live on handouts, eat only once per day and then only enough to sustain your body; and importantly in this context he was insistent that the middle way did not include any intoxication at all. So if we want to cite the middle way as a guide for our lifestyle, then we need to be prepared to really take it on.

I take the spirit of the precept to extend beyond alcohol to include all sources of intoxication and intoxicated states (pamādaṭṭḥānā). It could conceivably also cover such things as television, films, and the internet as well (gulp!). Anything we turn to repeatedly in order to alter our perceptions to make our present experience more pleasurable has the potential to become intoxicating and addictive. And this is the heart of the problem with intoxicants - in taking them we are pursuing pleasure, or perhaps avoiding misery, in the mistaken view that by increasing the amount of pleasure we experience the happier we will be. This is the fundamental error of the unenlightened; this is how people get hooked. Not only does pursuing pleasure not lead to happiness, it actually has the opposite effect though we find it hard to see the cause and effect because we have a wrong view about it.

This is not to damn pleasure, only the unhealthy pursuit of it. Pleasure, in and of itself, is not the problem. Intoxication is. Hence the fifth precept is not simply tacked onto the end of a list of four important ethical training principles. It is not there to make Buddhists behave themselves; not a penitential after-thought; nor there simply to make up the numbers. It's not about being a 'good Buddhist'. The avoidance of intoxication is at the heart of the Buddha's transformative program; and if we take the Buddha seriously, we must also take the fifth precept seriously.

~~oOo~~

Notes

1. I've written before about my research into the words pamāda and appamāda and how in practice they relate to intoxication with the objects of the senses in my essay: The Buddha's Last Words, which is also summarised as a blog post: The Last Words of the Buddha.
2. Dhammika Sutta, Sutta-nipāta. Sn 398-9. My translation. Pāli text from tipitaka.org.
3. www.statistics.gov.uk
4. By contrast the UK recently made the drug Mephedrone illegal on the basis of reports of a possible 25 deaths since its introduction, though as I understand it none of these cases have been proven, and in at least two cases Mephedrone has subsequently been proved not to have been involved.
5. My, admittedly shallow, reading of Aristotle is that he thought it ethical to satisfy natural desires, such as thirst and hunger, but going beyond that was profligacy and therefore blameworthy. The question then is whether the desire for intoxication is 'natural'. The Buddha's position on this, as I understand it, is that it is not natural.

_____________________
25 Sept 2010. This post generated a lot of comments which explore the issue further. I did not at the time draw attention to the 17th of Dr Ambedkars 22 conversion vows:

"I shall not take intoxicants like liquor, drugs etc."

Note the unequivocal phrasing here!
_____________________

6 Feb 2017

See also: Alcohol in Pre-Modern South Asia. James McHugh

Confessions I

I've been reading an interesting paper by Eviatar Shulman on an interpretation of paṭicca-samuppāda. [1] We come to similar conclusions, but interestingly I disagree to some extent with how he gets to his conclusion. I'd like to write more about his thesis later, but today I am in a confessional mood. What I want to confess is that I simply do not understand paṭicca-samuppāda. The primary way that paṭicca-samuppāda is explained is through reference to the 12 nidānas. It's here that I want to focus, and I could begin by saying that other numbers of nidānas do not always number 12 - so is 12 the definitive number or just the most popular?

Some of the terminology is confusing: e.g. saṅkhārā, nāmarūpa, bhava. The confusion is only added to in the process of translation. Some of the explanations are confusing as well, but my focus here is on the canonical presentation. I should say upfront that although the idea that the 12 nidānas occur over three lifetimes is traditional, that idea is not explicit in any sutta. So I don't think this was the idea the Buddha had in mind, and I don't think we can use it to explain the scheme, though I will make some nods in that direction.

I think it's fair to say that saṅkhārā is the most confusing term in Buddhism. It literally means 'making together, or completing'. (Note the relationship to the name Sanskrit (saṃskṛta) which is often said to mean 'perfected' or 'polished'.) The most literal English translation would be confection: con = sam; khāra is from √kṛ 'to make or do', which is not cognate but coincides very closely to the Latin facere [2] and therefore to words such as affect, confect, defect, effect, faculty (etc there are many more examples). Saṅkhāra has several distinct senses but in this context is variously rendered "volitional tendencies, volitional formations (or just formations), mental dispositions, determinations". The idea that saṅkhāra is about volition or will I take to be related to the texts that explain it as cetanā, e.g. at S iii.60 saṅkhāra is explained as six kinds of cetanā: rūpasañcetanā, sadda-, gandha-, rasa-, phoṭṭabba- and dhammasañcetanā. Bhikkhu Bodhi renders them as 'volition regarding forms, -sounds, -odours, -tastes, -tactile objects, and -mental phenomena'. I'm still none the wiser - what is "volition regarding forms"? As I have often said: cetanā is how the Buddha defines kamma, but in this context it doesn't help.

Things get more complex when the texts say that saṅkhārā conditions viññāṇa - (typically translated as consciousness). The relationship is sometimes described as causal so formations (or whatever) cause consciousness, but the Pāli terminology suggests a conditional, rather than a causal relationship. [3] So volition precedes consciousness and is a (the?) condition for it to exist, and similarly when there is no volition there is no consciousness. The question then is how do volitions precede consciousness, in order to be a condition for it to arise? Are volitions not a product of consciousness rather than the other way around?

The situation gets substantially worse with nāmarūpa. Although the tradition is fairly unanimous that it means "mind and body" scholars are by no means agreed what the word means in a Buddhist context (or why it means that). Like saṅkhāra it is an old Vedic term and Joanna Jurewicz (a Sanskritist specialising in the Vedas) has used the Vedic origins of the names for the nidānas as a cipher to show that the Buddha intended them as a parody of the Vedas. However my friend Dhīvan examined this claim from the Buddhist point of view in his M.Phil thesis, and didn't find a great deal of evidence to support Jurewicz's conjecture. Let us leave aside the confusion amongst scholars and focus on the idea that nāma-rūpa means 'body and mind'. There are two conclusions from this. Firstly that body comes into being some time after consciousness has been operating - so volition precedes consciousness and body, and consciousness precedes body - this is somewhat counter-intuitive (backwards even). It gets worse if we follow some traditions and take form to be objects of consciousness - now consciousness is a condition for existence more generally (a variation on the strong Anthropic Principle?). Secondly we now effectively have the sequence: mind conditions mind, which conditions mind. Which is meaningless.

Having given rise to the body in this unusual fashion the sequence settles down and becomes conceptually easier - the senses are the condition for contact (phassa the meeting of sense organ and sense object) which is the condition for sensations (vedanā), which are the conditions desire (taṇha - literally 'thirst') which is the condition for grasping (upādāna). Grasping gives rise to being or becoming (bhava - although as previously stated we already 'are' by this time). I've discussed in the past that upādāna could mean 'fuel' and I would argue that desire fuelling the fire of becoming, makes marginally more sense than grasping as a condition for becoming. But what is bhava, what is becoming or being? Bhava means 'being' in quite a similar range of senses to the English word. It's an action noun from √bhū which is cognate with 'be'.

Perhaps at this point the early Buddhists realised that this is a bit circular - we've already come into being (in body and mind - mind three times even!), and now the nidānas are telling us about how being is conditioned. This short circuits the nidāna chain. But it leaves two links unaccounted for: birth (jati), old age and death (jarāmaraṇa). Sometimes all the various kinds of suffering are added onto jarāmaraṇa - especially the wonderfully miserable compound sokaparidevadukkhadomanassupāyāsā. The move from becoming to birth is fine, except that we already have both mind and body, etc. The death, which does follow naturally from birth, but then where do we go? In Indian thinking we go to birth. The traditional circle suggests that death is a condition for ignorance. But again this makes no sense, and in any case we do not find the Pāli phrase anywhere in the canon: jarāmaraṇapaccaya avijjā. Old age and death are not in fact a condition for anything!

One major problem with the idea that the nidānas occur over three lifetimes is that if each link can only cease by the ceasing of the previous one, then we need to tackle ignorance (avijjā) in a past life in order to be liberated in this or a future life. This necessity for retro-active action is probably the greatest flaw in that in approach and seems to be an insurmountable problem.

Far from being a straight forward chain or circle the nidāna sequence is like a game of snakes and ladders (one proceeds up, down, sideways, and often retraces one's steps). I've realised that in fact it does not make sense to me on it's own terms. I've always found the received explanations quite pleasing and even useful - and I've been hearing about it for more than 15 years. But when I look closely it's not quite that the emperor has no clothes, it's more like he got dressed in the wrong order and used a mix of styles. It's disconcerting to get this far and realise that I can't make head nor tale of the Buddha's most important teaching on its own terms!

One of the ways scholars have understood the nidāna chain is to chop it up: it is "clearly" made of at least two, if not three shorter sequences mashed together. I was not initially very happy with this approach, but it's grown on me. I can more or less make sense of the chain from the six senses up to becoming. I think we can hive off birth and death as explanatory of what is meant by becoming - becoming is the cycle of birth and death (and therefore only makes sense in the context of rebirth). In which case, contra the three lifetimes model, the last two links go nowhere, they just cycle from birth to death. The most worrisome part are the links from ignorance to name and form. My inclination is just to say they don't make sense, but I think it's important to say that they don't make sense to me. However we hardly need them because the process we are interested in does not require them. I think ignorance as a problem comes in later after we have contact, but as a cause it probably conditions all the other links directly.

Eviatar Shulman points out that at some points there really are ontological implications to the nidānas (if for instance viññāṇa gives rise to nāmarūpa (and rūpa is either 'the body' or 'forms'); or taṇha/upādāna give rise to bhava 'being': this is ontology), but I notice that the terms which appear to have ontological implications are also the ones involving most confusion and ambiguity. I'd like to focus on this in a future post.

So I can make sense of the teaching, but I have to do what other Buddhists have done and chop it about, make stuff up, and bluff to a certain extent. Which is hardly intellectually satisfying. It's all rather embarrassing.

Notes.

1. Shulman, Eviatar. 'Early Meanings of Dependent-Origination,' Journal of Indian Philosophy, 36(2) 2008: 297-317. http://www.springerlink.com/content/7656238535363p05/
2. A direct Sanskrit cognate to facere would be √dhā present dadhati, though the sense has drifted away from 'do' towards 'put'.
3. Contrarily as Krishna Del Toso makes clear in his blog post on cause/condition in early Buddhism the distinction between the two types of relationship (hetu vs paccaya) only solidified in later texts. In favour of my statement the imasmiṃ idaṃ hoti formula, which almost always appears in conjunction with the 12 nidana paṭicca-samuppāda formula and appears to be a comment on how the links are connected, implies a conditional rather than causal relationship; as does the word paṭicca itself.