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~~