Ātman, Ego, and Rebirth

medieval peasants thresh
a sheaf of barley with flails

WHAT FOLLOWS IS my translation of the Sheaf of Barley Simile (Yavakalāpi Sutta S 34.248), along with some threads which I draw from it. The simile relates to my research into papañca: the past participle papañcita is used in a context that helps us to understand that word. Here I will be focussing on some other implications.

I have restructured the text so that the last part condenses several pages into a couple of paragraphs - without losing anything of importance. The central metaphor of the Yavakalāpi Sutta is that how we think about our existence determines whether we bound or free.

Sheaf of Barley Simile

Suppose that a sheaf of barley were laid at a crossroad. And six men might come bearing flails, and those six men might thresh that sheaf of barley. That sheaf of barley would be well threshed by those six flails threshing. Then a seventh man might come bearing a flail, and he might also thresh the sheaf of barley. So that sheaf of barley would be more well-threshed by that seventh flail threshing.

Just so the uneducated hoi polloi [1] are struck in the eye by pleasant and unpleasant forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles, and mental objects. If an uneducated hoi polus[2] strives after future rebirth, that foolish person is more well-battered, just as the sheaf is more well threshed by the seventh flail.

Once upon a time the devas and asuras were massed for battle. The Asura Lord Vepacitti addressed the asuras: "If, sirs, in the midst of the battle the asuras are victorious and the devas are defeated, then binding Sakka, Lord of the Devas, with bindings, with his neck as the fifth[3], then lead him to me at Asurapura (the City of the Asuras). Sakka also addressed the devas: "If, sirs, in the midst of the battle the devas are victorious and the asuras are defeated, then, binding Asura Lord Vepacitti with bindings, with his neck as the fifth, then lead him to me at Sudhamma, the Hall of the Devas. In that battle the devas were victorious and the asuras were defeated. Then the thirty three devas, binding Asura Lord Vepacitti with bindings, with his neck as the fifth, lead him to Sakka, Lord of the Devas, at Sudhamma, the Hall of the Devas. There Asura Lord Vepacitti is bound with bindings, with his neck as the fifth.

When Asura Lord Vepacitti thought "the devas as just (dhammika) and the asuras are unjust (adhammika) now here I am going to the city of the devas”, then he perceived himself released from his binding with the neck as fifth, and possessing and endowed with the five divine cords of pleasure enjoying himself. When, however, Asura Lord Vepacitti, thought "the asuras are just and the devas are unjust, now I will just go to the asura city”, then he perceived himself as bound by bindings with the neck as fifth. And the five divine cords of pleasure faded away. So subtle were the bonds of Vepacitti, but more subtle are the bonds of Māra. Thinking (maññamāno)[4] is the binding of Māra, not thinking is release from the Evil One.

'I am…'
'I am this…'
'I will become…'
'I will not become…'
'I will be beautiful…'
'I will be ugly…'
'I will be aware…'[5]
'I will be unaware…'
'I will be neither aware nor unaware…'

…is an opinion (maññita), an anxiety (iñjita), a writhing (phandita), a proliferation (papañcita), [6] a state of conceit (mānagata)…

Opinions, anxieties, writhings, obsessions and states of mind are a disease, a boil, an arrow. 'We will dwell without the conceit of opinions, without the conceit of anxieties, without the conceit of writhing, without the conceit of obsessions, having destroyed conceit' this is how you should train.

~.o.~

The first point to make is that opinions etc, including papañca, are something that we add to the perceptual process, they are the seventh flail. We're already battered by the experience of our six senses, and then we add to the battering. This is consistent with texts such as the Salla Sutta which make a similar distinction between the pain from the senses, and the suffering of our reactions to pain. However the specific thing that we add in this case is striving after future rebirth (āyatiṃ punabhavāya ceteti).

However what got me thinking about this text today was that I was reconsidering my blog post Early Buddhists and Ātman/Brahman. It is here that I note my discovery, I think for the first time, that no Brahmin ever talks about ātman in the Pāli Canon, and that the Buddha never debates the subject with a Brahmin. This strongly suggests that, at the very least, we have to re-assess the idea that the Buddha was familiar with the Upaniṣads, or the extent to which the Buddha (i.e. early Buddhists) might have been familiar with Upaniṣadic themes.

In Yavakalāpi Sutta the Buddha takes an approach to self that, as far as I know, is not one that is found in the Upaniṣads. The statements above--the 9 statements starting with 'I am' (asmīti)--are not about an essential or eternal self; much less the merging of the self into brahman for the attainment of immortality. Where the Upaniṣadic ātman is trans-personal and identified with creation or creator, these statements are very much concerned with personal identity and personal continuity. So in reading this text we are not talking about the Upaniṣadic ātman, we are talking about the simple sense of being a self and having a first-person perspective.

Coming back to future rebirth, we see that seven of the nine statements use the future form of the verb, i.e. bhavissāmīti--'I will be', or 'I will become'--and therefore concern people's anxieties about a future life. It is entirely natural in a culture with a rebirth eschatology to be anxious about future lives, indeed as a moral technology this belief system actually depends on people having these anxieties to motivate their compliance with moral norms.

But this text is saying, quite distinctly, that opinions or anxieties about a future life are sources of suffering over and above the suffering induced by the senses. The ideal disciple does not indulge in opinions and anxieties about future lives. We might say that this is because they train for release from saṃsāra. However consider the simile involving Vepacitti which seems to be an allegory with the message that how we think about our sense experience, or (perhaps) what we make of our sense experience, is precisely what binds us to saṃsāra.

There's a interesting feature of the text. For humans being bound by the five cords of sensual pleasure (pañca kāmaguṇa) is synonymous with being caught in saṃsāra. The devas and asuras however operate in a different way. When Vepacitti perceives things correctly--perceives the devas as lawful or just (dhammika)--he is endowed with the divine version of the five cords. When his perception is distorted, the cords fade away. And note that the text speaks of seven flails related to the five physical senses, the mental sense, and then striving after rebirth as the seventh; while there are only five cords of sensual pleasure, and thinking. Indeed the problem for humans is precisely thinking (maññamāno), which is the verb usually associated with activity of mind (manas).

In any case the message is quite clear: even if you do believe in rebirth, it only causes unhappiness to think about rebirth; it only causes unhappiness to wish for a better rebirth; it only causes unhappiness to speculate about the nature of rebirth; in short: thinking in terms of being reborn is generally quite unhelpful. The whole point of Buddhism is to be liberated from rebirth, to not be reborn, to escape from the cycle. What the allegory of Vepacitti suggests is that if you even think in terms of rebirth, then you are caught in Māra's bonds. So the disciple should not be thinking in terms of rebirth at all, not having opinions or anxieties or conceits with respect to rebirth.

Therefore, even if you do believe in rebirth, there is no advantage in thinking about it or talking about it, and considerable disadvantage in doing so. It is best not to think about rebirth at all, since thinking in those terms binds you to Māra's realm. Belief in rebirth only leads to speculation, worry, proliferation and conceit which poison our minds.

~~oOo~~

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Notes

[1] assutavā puthujjana: suta 'heard' sutavant 'possessing the heard' i.e. educated; puthu (many) jana (people). Greek hoi polloi 'the many'.

[2] pollus is the singular of polloi.

[3] This appears to mean bind his four limbs plus his neck.

[4] The word refers to all kinds of mental activity: thinking, imagining, having opinions; being convinced, being sure. The context suggests that here it refers to having opinions.

[5] saññin – possessing perception or recognition, a perceiver.

[6] The word iñjita is a past-participle (used as substantive here) from iñjati 'to shake, turn about, move, or vacillate'. In Pāli trembling is often associated with fear. The Pali Commentary says: "the reason for the meaning of 'iñjitaṃ' etc., is that through the vices (kilesa: lobha, dosa, moha, i.e. greed, aversion, and confusion ) beings shake (iñjita) and writhe (phandita), and are obsessed (papañcita) because they are afflicted by states of carelessness."

Papañca 2: Understanding Papañca

LAST WEEK WE SETTLED on a serviceable translation of the term papañca, but it's clear that in a Buddhist context simple translation is far from the whole story. Papañca is clearly a negative term in Buddhist texts, in contrast to the usually positive sense more generally. We have to keep in mind that, in the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta, papañca-saññā-saṅkhā (whatever they are) are said to assail, beset, or befall (samudāsarati) a man.[1] The word papañca shares this negative connotation with words that also draw on the metaphor of separating out: e.g., vikappa (Skt. vikalpa) where the vi– suffix indicates separation and it means to mentally separate things out, to discriminate, or distinguish. In general this process is seen as having a negative impact on us.

In the texts and commentaries there seem to be four distinct ways of talking about papañca:

1. papañca as result, perhaps the sum total, of the perceptual process: e.g. in M 18, S 35.94 A 3.294, Sn 4.11, Sn 3.6.
2. papañca as metaphysical speculation: e.g. in A 4.173
3. papañca in relation to 'I am': e.g. in S 35.248, Sn 4.14.
4. papañca = kilesas e.g. S 35.248, SA 2.381 (commenting on S 35.94). UdA (commenting on Ud 7.7)

The Perceptual Process

These texts are variations on the process by which contact with sensory perceptions is the basis for the process of perception and leads to cognition of the attractiveness or repulsiveness of sensations, and behaviour in response to this cognition. Here papañca can be the end product of the perceptual process (M 18) arising particularly from thinking (vitakka), or it can more general apply to the whole perceptual process (Sn 3.6, 4.11, S 35.94). Some of the references in which it's not clear what papañca refers to (M 11, Ud 7.7, Dhp v.195, 254) seem to draw on this sense. This approach seems to have the most weight in the suttas because it is the most common, and these references are relatively clear and unequivocal.

However, there is a serious problem with these texts as they flatly contradict each other as to the order of the process, particularly M 18, Sn 4.11, and D 21. M 18 has become the standard Theravāda model of perception, and perhaps the best organised of the three. Sn 4.11, by contrast, is poorly organised, and uses terminology which becomes superseded (such as sāta/asāta instead of sukha/dukkha). Sn 4.11 also places saññā at the root of the perceptual process, preceding phassa; whereas, M 18 has the more familiar sequence phassa > vedanā/vedeti > sañjānāti. D 21 appears to reverse the order of parts of M 18 so that we have these three sequences:

Sn 4.11
saññā > nāma & rūpa > phassa > sāta & asāta > canda > piya > macchara etc.
M 18
rūpa + cakkhu + cakkhu-viññāna > phassa > vedanā/vedeti > sañjānāti > vitakka > papañca.

D 21
papañcasaññāsaṅkhā > vitakka > chanda > piyāppiya > issā-macchariya > verā etc.

There is no easy way to reconcile these different models. If one is right, then the other two are wrong, and no two agree on all particulars. Is phassa the condition for saññā, or vice versa? Similarly with papañca and vitakka. However, both the commentary and sub-commentary on D 21 ignore the reversed order and treat the subject as vitakka being the basis of papañca as in M 18. So perhaps it is no surprise that only one of these models survived to become orthodox: M 18. However, in terms of a model it is very much overshadowed by the twelve nidānas, which became the standard way of describing how dukkha arises.

In any case, the meaning here seems to be that the complexity of our human responses arises from sense experience. The role played by vitakka (Skt. vitarka) in the M 18 model might help to elucidate this process. The word literally means to 'twist apart'; takka is cognate with English torque, turn and distort; from PIE *terk or *tork, 'to turn, twist'. Figuratively applied to the actions of the mind, it comes to mean 'thought' itself in Pāli, though MW definition of the Sanskrit vitarka gives a broader sense in that it specifies: 'conjecture, suppositions, imagination, opinion; reasoning, deliberation; and doubt, uncertainty.' Pāli gives vitakka a special sense as one of the factors of absorption (jhānaṅga), that of mental attention which is directed towards its object. In this sense vitakka is a positive factor in our awareness. In the production of papañca one applies vitakka to the products of sensing (vedeti) and perception (sañjānāti). Since those products are already distinguished according to their desirability and identity, perhaps vitakka here means that we apply our attention to what is desirable and thereby sustain the production of dukkha? In the long run, we can see that papañca and dukkha must be closely related, if not synonymous.

Metaphysical Speculation

A 4.173 = 4.174 seems to stand alone in defining papañca in terms of speculation. Here the term is used to refer to the asking of questions which speculate on what happens after the "remainderless cessation and fading away of the six spheres of contact." Since contact and proliferation operate in the same domain—i.e. are aspects of the perceptual process—then answering a question about what happens after contact ceases is proliferating the unproliferated. Clearly this application depends on the notion that papañca refers to the perceptual process, but the phrase "proliferating the unproliferated" suggests that speculation about the afterlife might be intended as a specific application.

Ego

This is the aspect of papañca which seems to fascinate modern Theravādin commentators, and yet it rests on a less sure foundation than the first, and one of the two key texts also seems to rely, in part, on papañca as the perceptual process.

Much is made of the somewhat cryptic passage in Sn 4.14 which appears to say that 'I am' (asmi) is the root of papañca. Modern commentators, especially Bhikkhu Thanissaro, have taken this to mean that the 'I am' conceit is, in fact, the cause of papañca. However, this not the conclusion of the traditional commentators, nor the obvious conclusion to draw from those texts, which happen to be in a majority, that see proliferation in terms of the perceptual process, either as a product or a general description. Indeed, it would be more conventional, and more in keeping with the majority of texts, to see 'I am' as a result of the perceptual process, and therefore as a result, rather than a cause, of papañca. This is supported by S 35.248, which labels asmīti as papañcita 'proliferated' (past tense) and also an opinion 'maññita' which has the added implication of being the product of mental activity.

Thanissaro, as he often does, comes out of left-field with his rendering of papañca as 'objectification', but he highlights an important facet of papañca. From his notes on the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta his translation seems to be strongly influenced by his reading of the Tuvaṭaka Sutta (Sn 4.14; Sn 915ff). There is some merit in his approach. He translates Sn 916 as:

"He should put an entire stop
to the root of objectification-classifications:
'I am the thinker.'
He should train, always mindful,
to subdue any craving inside him."[2]

Compare Norman's translation:

"Being a thinker, he would put a stop to the whole root of what is called "diversification" (i.e. the thought) 'I am'," said the Blessed One. "Whatever internal cravings there are, he would train himself to dispel them, always being mindful." (p. 151)

Despite the differences of interpretation, it is apparent that Sn 916 takes "I am" (asmi) as the root (mūla) of papañca, and Thanissaro sees "I am" as an objectification of experience. Clearly, "objectification" is a way of conveying how Thanissaro sees the psychological process under consideration; it is not a translation of the word papañca. It is quite legitimate to approach a text in this way, especially if the individual words do not directly communicate the sense of the text, but to my mind it obscures too much when we merge the two stage process I'm describing in this post and the last one.

Piya Tan attempts to take the equation of papañca and asmi further by drawing attention to the Yakalāpi Sutta (S 35.248) which lists a series of propositions regarding selfhood, beginning with the statement amsīti 'I am' or 'I exist', followed by variations on asmi 'I am' or bhavissāmi 'I will be'. Each statement is to be understood as is an opinion (maññita), an anxiety (iñjita), a writhing (phandita), a proliferation (papañcita),[3] a state of conceit (mānagata and all of these are to be regarded as "a disease, a boil, an arrow".

The explanation rests on the past participle papañcita. The commentary at this point relates these qualities to the presence of the kilesas (i.e., lobha, dosa, moha). But it does not define papañca and, in fact, if we did not already have an opinion about papañca it would be very difficult to form it from this text. Of the qualities, maññita and mānagata are obviously mental activity, and iñjita and phandita are, on face value at least, bodily (though they probably refer to states of anxiety). It's not very clear how papañcita fits into this list of terms. The text clearly says that asmi is an example of papañcita, and undesirable. The formula is: asmīti papañcitametaṃ; i.e. ,"'I am:' this is proliferated." or perhaps "this is a proliferation", since the participle can act as a substantive. Perhaps the sense of this text is how concerns about 'I' proliferate once the thought 'I am' occurs. If we hypostasize our first person perspective then it generates a great deal of 'I' centred thoughts and anxieties.

Does 'I am' constitute objectification in the sense that Thanissaro suggests? Can we objectify ourselves? When we think 'I am' do we really convert ourselves into a thing? Self-objectification seems typically to refer to seeing oneself from another's point of view as an object. It is implicated in body dysmorphic disorder and eating disorders for instance – and therefore is concerned more with the identification of the self with the body. I can't really make an object of my self; the thought 'I am' does not make me an object, it makes me a subject. I think what Thanissaro means when he treats proliferation as objectification is the split into subject ('I am') and object ('that is'). The Kaccānagotta Sutta (S 12.15) points out that is usual for people to think of the world (loka) in terms of 'it is' (atthi) and 'it is not' (natthi)--the fact of arising and passing away of experience shows that neither of these concepts apply. On the other hand, the Buddhist model of cognition depends on objects of perception as its foundation: As the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta itself says: on the basis of form and eye, eye-consciousness arises and the three together constitute contact.

Thanissaro notes that M18 uses verbs which may indicate an agent. The key phrase being:

Cakkhuñcāvuso, paṭicca rūpe ca uppajjati cakkhuviññāṇaṃ, tiṇṇaṃ saṅgati phasso, phassapaccayā vedanā, yaṃ vedeti taṃ sañjānāti, yaṃ sañjānāti taṃ vitakketi, yaṃ vitakketi taṃ papañceti, yaṃ papañceti

"Eye-consciousness arises on the basis (paccaya) of the eye and form, and the three together constitute contact (phassa); from the condition of contact there is a sensation of experience (vedanā). Where there is experiencing (vedeti) there is awareness (sañjānāti); with awareness there is thinking (vitakka); where there is thinking there is proliferation (papañceti).

Ingenious as Thanissaro's interpretation is, there is no reason to assume an agent here. The verbs indicate, as in my translation, that a process is occurring. In his translation choices Thanissaro emphasises the agent:

What one feels, one perceives (labels in the mind). What one perceives, one thinks about. What one thinks about, one "papañcizes."[4]

However, if we compare the same terms in the Mahā-Vedalla Sutta all of these terms, with the addition of vedanā, are defined in terms of verbs which undermines Thanissaro's conclusion because he specifically excludes vedanā from having an agent, whereas the Mahā-Vedalla Sutta suggests it, too, must have an agent if the others do.

In fact, there is no agent in Buddhist psychology. There is no "one" however much we feel as though we are an agent: "what one feels" assumes "I am". Thanissaro's interpretation is somewhat paradoxical: for if an agent is required for the process to continue, and there is no agent, then how does it continue? If we commit to the implications of the Buddhist model, we cannot posit an agent. No one perceives, there is just perceiving; no one thinks, there is only thinking; and no one papañcizes, there is just papañcizing. Each active process, as indicated by the locative absolute construction, forms the basis for the next active process. Perceiving is an emergent property experiencing sensations. Convention almost requires us to posit a metaphorical container for this process, for instance we might say that perception takes place in the mind. But in the Buddha's psychology there is no container for this process, because the container is, effective, a manifestation of the thought "I am".

The objectification that goes on is a mistaken perception: what Philosopher Thomas Metzinger has called naïve realism, or in colloquial terms: WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). That naïve realism is unjustified is neither intuitive nor easy to prove. It only becomes apparent with the highly detailed and focused study that characterises Buddhist meditation, and (just) in the last few decades through studying the way that our perceptual processes can go wrong and lead us astray.

If we go back to the Tuvaṭaka Sutta, we may need to reconsider the idea that the text is saying that "I am" is the root cause of all papañca, and see that "I am" is the root product of prapañca. In any case, Thanissaro has strained a little too hard to make papañca fit into his program, and the translation as 'objectification' is misleading and infelicitous

Taint or Obsession

The commentarial tradition, including texts attributed to both Buddhaghosa and Dhammapāla consider papañca to be synonymous with the kilesas. For instance, the commentary on S 35.248 says: "the reason for the meaning of 'iñjitaṃ', etc., is that through the vices (kilesa: lobha, dosa, moha, i.e. greed, aversion, and confusion ) beings shake (iñjita) and writhe (phandita), and are proliferate (papañcita) because they are afflicted by states of carelessness." Similarly, the commentary on Ud 7.7 says "Passion is a proliferation, aversion is a proliferation, confusion is a proliferation, craving is a proliferation, view is a proliferation, and conceit is a proliferation."

This is presumably the origin of the idea that papañca might be translated as hindrance or obstacle, since greed, aversion and confusion are the three main obstacles to progress on the Buddhist path. Early English translators followed the Pāli commentarial tradition in translating papañca as obstacle: c.f. Woodward, Buddharakkhita, Horner.

Conclusion

What my study seems to say is that the ambiguity of papañca allows it to be co-opted to suit the agenda of the commentator. Despite the relative importance of papañca in Buddhist doctrine, reconstructing it from the Pāli suttas is really very difficult because papañca and related terms are not used very often. On the face of it, I think the best explanation is still that papañca is primarily the perceptual process which gives rise to unskilful behaviour based on the pull and push of our affective reactions to pleasant and unpleasant sensory perceptions. As such, the traditional commentators are correct to relate papañca to the taints which underlie unskillfulness. We can also see that the modern Theravāda commentators, from Bhikkhu Ñāṇananda on, are not wrong about the role played in this by seeing oneself as a subject and objects of perception as real objects, because this is all part of the process of creating dukkha. However, Thanissaro, in particular, has over-emphasised the ego, and his translation of objectification is confusing since ‘I am’ represents a subject rather than an object.

It is puzzling, but perhaps not so unusual, to find so little foundation for such a well-known doctrinal category, and such poor recognition of the flimsiness of that foundation in modern writers. Papañca occurs so few times in the canon that it does not take very long to read and consider all occurrences. It once again reinforces the adage that any one commentary is never the whole story.

~~oOo~~

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Notes

[1] In the text the verb is in the plural so we must assume that papañca-saññā-saṅkhā is also plural.

[2] Sn 916 pada a & b: Mūlaṃ papañcasaṅkhāya, (iti bhagavā); Mantā asmīti abbamuparundhe

[3] The word iñjita is a past-participle (used as substantive here) from iñjati 'to shake, turn about, move, or vacillate'. In Pāli trembling is often associated with fear.

[4] However one feels about neologisms Thanissaro has highlighted an important point here which is that papañceti is a denominative verb; i.e., it is a verb derived from the noun papañca, and so literally does mean 'to papañcize".