Early Buddhists and Ātman/Brahman

It is well known that the teachings on anātman (translated variously as 'no-self', 'non-self', 'no-soul', 'not-soul' with variations particularly in capitalisation of self/soul) are important to the overall Buddhist program of transformation. Several books and many articles have been written arguing for and against various interpretations of the relevant texts - some finding an ātman affirmed, some finding it denied, and some taking a middle way between these two extremes.

It is widely accepted that the teachings on anātman must be set against the background of Brahmanical thought of the day. It is further generally accepted that the texts that have come down to us as the Upaniṣads, especially the Bṛhadāranyaka, Chāndogya, Taittirīya and Aitareya Upaniṣads, reflect the Brahmanical religion at the time. In the the Tevijja Sutta (DN 13) we find references to these four for instance [1]. It is often assumed that the Brahmanical faith formed the mainstream of religion at the time and place, though this is now plausibly disputed (see Rethinking Indian History), and it seems likely that Brahmins and their religion were new comers to the North-east of India, and in fact in the process of absorbing ideas from the samaṇa movements. In any case many people have pointed to passages in the Pāli Canon which show that early Buddhists were familiar with the Upaniṣads - and anatta in relation to ātman is one of the key aspects of this theme.

Just as the central uniting concept across all of the Buddhist texts is paṭicca-samuppāda, the central subject in these early Upaniṣads is the identity of brahman and ātman: the former being the universal essence, while the latter is the manifestation of that universal essence in the individual. As Signe Cohen puts it:

"An Upaniṣad can, most simply, be defined as an ancient text in Sanskrit that teaches that ātman and brahman are one and the same, and that the knowledge of this identity leads to liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth." [2]

However at the same time there was a theistic tendency present in the Upaniṣads which gradually became more prominent. In its theistic guise the grammatically neutral brahman becomes the grammatically masculine brahmā, and is equated with Prajāpati 'Lord of Progeny' aka the Creator God. The two terms are often ambiguous: as the first member of a compound they are both brahma-. Additionally the two are sometimes used side by side as if to make it clear that they are not to be considered distinct. As time goes on brahman is used less, and brahmā more.

We know a certain amount about the Buddha's contemporaries from polemics and parodies directed against them in the Pāli texts, though of course such portrayals must be taken with a grain of salt. Jains, Ājivakas and Brahmins are recognisable in the texts from the way they behave and how they speak. However, and this is my main point today: nowhere in the Pāli canon, so far as I can tell, does any Brahmin so much as express an opinion on ātman, and nowhere is the ātman doctrine attributed to a Brahmin. This is a surprising situation since this doctrine is one of the most characteristic and distinctive of that group. A subsidiary point is that while the founders and important teachers of religions are mentioned, Jains for instance talk about former teachers, and while there are even lists of the seven Vedic ṛṣi - the star of the early Upaniṣads - Yajñavalkya - is not mentioned in Pāli.

In Pāli the two Sanskrit words brahman and brahmā have coalesced into the single form brahmā (a masculine noun) which sometimes stands for religious ideals in general (it is often translated as 'holy' or 'divine' for instance), but in our present context always means the creator god. [3] The coalescence may be reflected in the confusion of the declension of the noun, [4] and we do not know whether the single, if somewhat variable, grammatical form in Pāli represents the state of Buddhist knowledge of Brahmanical beliefs, or whether a mechanical process of grammatical change obscured a difference (c.f. my comments on sattva, satka, satva in Philological Odds & Ends III sv bodhisattva). Notwithstanding the ambiguity of brahma- as the first member of a compound, in the context of the beliefs put into the mouths of Brahmins (or indeed into the mouth of Brahmā) there is no clear reference to brahman in any text in the Pāli Canon. [5] I'm not the first to make this observation, but don't have references to hand.

Parodies of the creator god are some of the funniest, and most damning of the Buddhist polemical texts - the creator god is portrayed as a deluded and bombastic fool, afraid to look bad in front of the other gods. The central Brahmanical idea of the identity of brahman and ātman is completely absent and has been replaced by the idea of brahmasahavyata - companionship or union with Brahmā. The word brahmavihara 'dwelling with Brahmā' is a synonym of this. However note that I have summarised Gombrich's discovery that the Buddhist texts seem to have lost the true sense of this allusion before the fixing of the Canon - The Buddha and the Lost Metaphor.

The clear references to Vedic texts noted by Gombrich and others (including me) have established that the Pāli texts themselves are aware of Vedic concepts. We find the names of Vedic ṛṣi, and Vedic traditions; references to sacrifices, sacred fires, mantras (in particular the Sāvitṛ mantra); references to sacred bathing, to worship of the sun. We find a high awareness of Brahmanical class (vaṇṇa) prejudice. We also find more oblique references to the five fire wisdom, and to Vedic cosmogony (especially as found in the BU and Ṛgveda 10.90). Many of these ideas and practices are still current in India more than 2000 years later! Although sometimes Brahmins are clearly just straw-men and present an inauthentic façade to be knocked down, there are many texts were Brahmins are recognisable even if not labelled as such. What's more the texts themselves record that many Brahmins of various kinds became converts (including prominent disciples like Sāriputta and Moggallana!) so the compilers of the texts had plenty of opportunity to mix with actual Brahmins. We have evidence of increasing Brahmin participation and influence in the Buddhist Sangha - some of which I discussed in A Pāli Pun. The text which most often seems to referenced is the Bṛhadāranyka Upaniṣad (BU). Those scholars who have tried to determine the geographical locations of the various texts (primarily Michael Witzel) place the BU in the eastern areas of North India in the Kingdoms of Kosala and Vidheha - precisely where the Buddha was active.

A conflicting picture emerges for which I have as yet no explanation. Brahmins in the Pāli texts are either old school Brahmins focussed on the sacrifice, or they are outright monotheists which is usually considered to be a late development - associated with later Upaniṣads or even the Puraṇas. A possibility is that the jaṭila or dreadlocked ascetics (especially Uruvela Kassapa) were ascetic Brahmins - the commentarial tradition certainly considers them Brahmins, though the nikāyas are more ambiguous. They are fire worshippers, some of them show allegiance to Brahmins (c.f. Sela Sutta) and have Brahmin surnames like Kassapa. But what beliefs they espoused is not revealed to us.

The Pāli texts appear conversant with aspects of the Upaniṣads, especially those related to cosmogony; and to Brahmin culture more generally, particularly concern for social class and stratification; and ritual purity. Certainly the subjects of atta and anatta get considerable attention, but they are never linked to the source i.e. the Brahmins themselves. Although we can easily make the cognitive link between a teaching against ātman and a group which we know espoused views on ātman, in practice the Pāli texts never seem to make this link! Indeed the important point about ātman from the Brahmanical point of view is not its eternal nature, i.e. not the fact that it participates unchanged in rebirth per se which is the focus for Buddhists, but its identity with brahman, since it is this identity that allows one to escape saṃsara (with more space I would discuss the proposition that this was by no means universally accepted by Brahmins in the Buddha's day). In short early Buddhists, perhaps the Buddha, but certainly the Early Buddhist texts, seem to have missed the main point of the Upaniṣads. The apparent fact of increasing Brahmanical influence in Buddhism makes this even more difficult to understand. Ironically centuries later they adopted more or less the same idea in the form of the Tathāgatagarbha for precisely the same reasons the Brahmins adopted it - it explains how liberation is possible for someone mired in saṃsara. There are also echoes in such ideas as absolute and relative bodhicitta.

Contra my previous enthusiasm for this idea, I think, therefore, that we must be cautious in accepting the conjecture that Early Buddhists were conversant with the traditions represented by the Upaniṣads. My suspicion is that the teachings on anātman/anatta do not relate directly to the ideas on ātman found in the Upaniṣads; that this is simply a coincidence of terminology, rather than a coincidence of ideology, however this would require a major rethink about the relationship between Buddhism and Vedism. Another possibility is that Buddhists only came into contact with Brahmins at a much later date than we usually allow for. Alternatively the Brahmins in the Canon, especially those who joined the bhikkhu saṅgha, might not have accepted the Upaniṣads - perhaps they moved eastwards for the same reasons that people fled Europe for America in the 17th century.

We must do more work to establish the extent of that Buddhist conversance with Brahmanical thought. Ideally we would go back over the research on ātman in Buddhist texts to date, and try to determine if it does in fact relate to Brahmanical views at all, or whether we need to look to another source.


Notes

1. DN13 records various types of Brahmins: addhariya, tittiriya, chandoka, chandāva and bavhārijjhā or brahmacāriya (the ms. disagree on the last, but there is a lost Brāhmaṇa text called Bahvṛca which would coincide with Pāli bavhārijjha). The chandāva brāhmaṇas are left out of some mss. and the connections are uncertain. Tittiriya and Chandoka correspond to Sanskrit Taittirīya and Chāndogya and to the Brāhmaṇa and Upaniṣad textual traditions of the same name. Although the Bahvṛca Brāhmaṇa is lost it is linked to the Aitareya Upaniṣad. Lastly addhariya corresponds to Sanskrit adhvaryu and is associated with the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and the Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad. These correspondences are discussed in the notes to Rhys Davids translation of the Dīgha Nikāya (p.303, n.2) and in Jayatilleke Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, p.479f.
2. Cohen, Signe. Text and Authority in The Older Upaniṣads. Leiden: Brill, 2008. p.39.
3. A cursory look at the Mahāvastu suggests that it also only uses brahmā and not brahman, or uses brahma- as the first part of a karmadhāraya compound (i.e. as an adjective). The vast majority of uses are in the compounds brahmacariya and brahmacārin. Along with the name King Brahmadatta these account for perhaps 90% of occurrences in the Sanskrit text.
4. The Pāli treatment of Sanskrit nouns ending in consonants is inconsistent. Our word brahmā sometimes follows the masculine -a declension, sometimes the -u declension; with other minor variations such as a vocative singular brahme and plural brahmāno perhaps drawing on the feminine -ā declension. Other -n nouns such as rājan, and attan show similar variability.
5. I have sought to identify all nikāya texts where a Brahmin makes a profession of belief. They are:
   • DN 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 27.
     
   • MN 49, 50, 84, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 108.
   • SN 6.3, 4; 7.1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22; 35.132, 146, 151; 42.6; 45.38; 55.12.
     
   • AN 3.54, 56, 58, 59, 60; 4.23, 185; 5.191, 192, 193; 6.38; 7.62; 10.119, 167, 168, 176, 177.
     
   • Sn 1.7, 8; 2.7; 3.4, 6, 7, 9.
     
   In each case I have studied the text and translated relevant portions of it to be sure I understand it. Interestingly many of the narratives in these texts are repeated two or three times. For instance the story of Vāseṭṭha and Bharadvaja gets three closely related, but not identical tellings at DN 13, MN 98, and Sn 3.9. I think this tells us that at least three narrative lineages are preserved in the Pāli texts. It may be possible with close study to identify stylistic features in common and tease out other related texts that have multiple recensions within the Canon.
   

Some Thoughts on Colonialism

I was born in a small town in the central North Island of New Zealand, child of 3rd and 4th generation settlers. About half my neighbourhood were Māori. New Zealand is a relatively young country, having been formally recognised as such in 1840 with the signing of a treaty between Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, and several influential Māori chiefs (this is symbolised on our coat of arms, left). The Māori themselves are one arm of a vast colonising movement that settled most of the habitable islands of the Pacific Ocean, arriving in New Zealand around 1000 years ago. People in the UK like to joke about the Antipodes being populated by criminals - this is not in particularly good taste. We don't laugh about concentration camps or slavery, and the British transportation of convicts to Australia was hardly any more humane. But as any New Zealander will be quick to tell you our country was not populated convicts. However our country was founded by white-collar criminals.

At the heart of the original fraud were the two versions of the Treaty of Waitangi. In the Māori language version the locals ceded kawanatanga 'governorship' to the British, but crucially maintained tino rangatiratanga 'full chieftainship' over their people, lands and possessions. In return the British would establish a government to help protect everyone from the rapacious and violent foreign visitors who had begun arriving in the late 1700's, and to act as an intermediary in land sales. Māori gained all the rights of British subjects. The chiefs had been prompted, partly by the arrival of a French Catholic mission and a significant American presence in the form of whalers, to chose the English as the lesser of three evils. In the English version of the Treaty the chiefs ceded sovereignty to the Queen. This opened the door for exploitation because although they gained rights and protections as British subjects, the chief's right to rule their own people was effectively removed. And in any case the British were loath to treat the Māori as British subjects on a par with themselves, because they had brown skin and a non-European culture. While some attempt was made to take copies of the Treaty around the country, not all of the chiefs would sign, and not everyone had an opportunity.

The New Zealand Company, crucial to the early development of New Zealand as a colony, was the brainchild of the devious and unscrupulous Edwin Gibbon Wakefield, a convicted felon himself (having been found guilty of abduction). This company sold land to settlers before providing one-way transport out. The land they sold was not legally theirs, and indeed they sold more land than the whole surface area of the islands. Initially they could only buy land which had been purchased on their behalf by the Queen - through her representative in the form of a Governor. The first Governor, William Hobson, embezzled most of the money, then died. His temporary replacement Willoughby Shortland misappropriated the rest, leaving the fledgling country more or less bankrupt. This meant that very little land was being purchased while thousands of settlers were arriving each year. The settlers began to take land against the wishes of the Māori, which caused tension and bloodshed.

For a brief period the tragic figure of Robert Fitzroy (ex Captain of the famous HMS Beagle) became Governor and tried to be fair to both locals and settlers. But he was unpopular with the settlers because of this. The lack of income from selling land also prevented any kind of public works program. In addition New Zealand Company executives owned the local press and published stories which suited their purpose both in New Zealand and in London. Fitzroy was soon deposed and the land grab was prosecuted with increasing vigour under his replacement George Grey. By around 1860 the Māori had drawn a line in the sand and warned the settlers that no more land would be sold, or allowed to be taken. But thousands of settlers continued arrive, many of whom had already purchased land in the UK.

An excuse was invented and war was prosecuted during which some 4 million acres were seized, and many of the defenders killed, or imprisoned. Those fighting for their land were deemed by Act of Parliament to be rebels who could be detained indefinitely without trial. They were often shipped far to the south where the conditions were very poor and cold - our very own Guantánamo Bay. When I was young we called this period of conflict "the Land Wars" but the current PC term is "the New Zealand Wars". However the reason for, and the object of, the wars was taking land from Māori. Again it is possible to draw parallels with the war in Iraq and American and British concerns over the flow of oil. With the destruction of their civilisation and the introduction of European diseases, the Māori population plummeted and it was thought that they would quietly die out. Fortunately they did not.

During this period a number of great Māori leaders emerged, but one hero stands out for me. Te Whiti o Rongomai established a village called Parihaka in Taranaki. Here he preached the bible in the manner of an old testament prophet - for despite the capriciousness of the British, many Māori enthusiastically embraced Christianity. Indeed many of his followers saw Te Whiti as a prophet. After the war which saw all of the Māori land confiscated, he preached a course of non-violent resistance almost a century before Gandhi. They pulled up survey pegs and ploughed up roads to plant potatoes. When the army came for him they were met by women and children singing songs. Te Whiti was arrested and imprisoned for a year as a rebel in 1881. He never struck back. Probably because the news did not reach the rest of the world Te Whiti's struggle against injustice did not result in a loss of moral authority, as did Gandhi's.

But this is not what we learned as children. Our schooling painted the British as intrepid explorers and colonisers, heroic and noble; the Māori as backward, cowardly and savage. The truth is not quite diametrically opposed to this, but the portrayal is deeply wrong. The British were convinced of their racial and cultural superiority and determined to crush any resistance to their "civilising influence". They saw themselves as pre-ordained to rule over "the lower races", especially those who skin was not white. So while they were intrepid, their values were abhorrent by today's standards. The Māori were using stone age technology at the time of contact with Europeans. They could indeed be savage, but perhaps no more so than the British. Environmental pressures had forced them into a pattern of almost continuous small scale warfare as they competed for scarce resources. However they were quick to learn from Europeans, many converted to Christianity, and they initially prospered from their contact. But the settlers, lead by (and lead astray by) the New Zealand Company were greedy and would not settle for less than all of New Zealand. The Māori fought a successful guerrilla campaign against the invaders and usurpers. Although London had not sanctioned the war for land, and had asked the colonial government not to start it as they could ill afford to be involved in another foreign war, in the end they had to bail the colony out. Thousands of troops were sent, with the latest weaponry. The Māori were defeated by overwhelming force.

Although the first nation people dwindled they did not die out. Before my generation efforts were made to extinguish the Māori language - it was forbidden in schools for instance. By contrast I was able to formally study the language in secondary school. Now the Māori people and Māori language are having a renaissance. Children once again have Māori as a first language and receive primary and secondary education in Māori. Māori is an official language of New Zealand. In 1975 the Waitangi Tribunal was set up to begin to address grievances over land seizures and other breaches of the Treaty. This has helped to reaffirm the place of the Treaty in our legislature, though the two versions continue to cause distension. Reparation payments began to be made in the 1980's, and Māori have become more confident in pursuing claims through this court.

We are left with nation founded on deceit, which one side is only now owning up to. New Zealand is also home to other immigrants. Amongst the British (mostly English and Scots), were always a few Dutch and other Europeans. Former residents of Pacific Islands such as Samoa and Tonga are free to emigrate partly because New Zealand took over the British governance of them. More recently many East Asians have begun to arrive in substantial numbers. Multiculturalism is blooming even before we have come to terms with the history and consequences of colonialism. There is no question of returning New Zealand to the Māori, though no doubt they are still owed more in compensation than they have so far received. This is not a popular sentiment amongst many New Zealanders who cannot see why the grievances of a century ago continue to haunt us. Perhaps because we benefited so much from the cheating, and now have so much to lose. People of that view who visited England in 2010 might be surprised just how much feeling the invasion of 1066 can stir up amongst the English.

Until World War I (white) New Zealanders thought of themselves as British. The disastrous Gallipoli campaign began the process of separation, New Zealanders realised that the British didn't see us as British, but as 'colonials', and as such ideal as canon fodder. However it was the British themselves who effectively ended the connection between the two countries by joining the European Common Market in 1973. Until that time 80% of New Zealand exports were to Britain. After that the French blocked most of those exports, since New Zealand was in direct competition with France (and beat them on both quality and price), and today the figure is just 5%. These days the UK is looking to limit immigration from outside the European Union and this will certainly include former colonies. Although the Queen is still nominally the head of state, this seems less and less meaningful, and it seems only a matter of time before New Zealand becomes a republic - at which point the Treaty of Waitangi must be renegotiated which may prove interesting. Kiwis need to be clear that the British don't feel sentimental about New Zealand - it is a foreign country to them. During the 2007 rugby world cup I witnessed a pub full of English people cheering for France to beat New Zealand in the quarter-finals. They cheered for France!

For the children of settlers identity is a vexed issue. We are not tangata whenua or first nation people, and yet our home has cut us off and disowned us - so we are not people of the British Isles either. To make life more complicated many of us are adding a new religion to the mix. My friend Sally McAra has written about the issue of identity amongst New Zealand Buddhists in her book: Land of Beautiful Vision: Making a Buddhist Sacred Space in New Zealand (University of Hawai'i Press, 2007). Part of coming to terms with that identity must be reviewing the nature of our relationship with the Māori, who seem now to be stuck with us, and indeed very often share ancestors with us as well.

I suppose the stories of the many indigenous people who fell under the trampling boots of the Euro crowd as they swarmed across the globe gives us some insight into what a loss of culture and sense of identity looks like. People who do not know who they are, and do not belong anywhere seldom prosper. Having grown up amongst a dispossessed people I see that the Western Buddhist discourse on identity and belonging can be glib and superficial... we discount the notion that identity has any value. But it clearly does. Paraphrasing Sangharakshita I think we can say that before transcending one's identity, one must first have an identity.