Mañjuśrī's Sword

Mañjuśrī is an archetypal Bodhisattva associated with Prajñāpāramitā or the Perfection of Wisdom. Recently I became interested in his sword because it doesn't quite seem right for a Mahāyāna figure, nor for a peaceful deity, to be holding an implement that is more typical of wrathful figures.

Bodhisattvas as objects of separate cults emerge relatively late in comparison to their appearances in texts. So for instance Mañjuśrī appears in early texts like the Viṃalakirtinirdeśa Sūtra (1st or 2nd century CE) but there are no representations of Mañjuśrī in Indian Buddhist art until the 6th century. Although I can't confirm this, it seems to me that the appearance of (large scale) iconographic representations of Bodhisattvas other than Maitreya appear to coincide with the early period of Tantric Buddhism. It also seems likely to me that individual Bodhisattvas were not worshipped widely in India until that time. In China a cult of Mañjuśrī appears a century or two earlier, but it takes a different form to that in India and is centred around Mount Wu Tai.

The earliest representations of Mañjuśrī, whether Indian or Chinese, do not show him with a sword. The earliest Indian iconography shows him with right hand in the varada mūdra, left hand holding an utpala lotus; his hair is braided, and he wears a tiger's class necklace. (see image left) The last item is a protective amulet worn by children. In early Chinese images however he is shown teaching and holding an iron staff. This staff, which broadens at the top, is a Confucian implement symbolising religious discourse. The Viṃalakirtinirdeśa, which features Mañjuśrī in a discussion with Vimalakirti, was a key influence on Chinese iconography.

Rob Linrothe's study of wrathful images, Ruthless Compassion, provides a clue to what might have happened. Although Mañjuśrī himself is not shown with a sword, he and other Bodhisattvas such as Vajrapaṇi are frequently accompanied a smaller companion figure who does. The dwarf-like figures seem to derive from Śaiva images of the dwarf Vamana. In particular Mañjuśrī is accompanied by a figure called Yamāntaka. Yamāntaka, of course, goes on to become a distinct figure and plays a very important role in Tibetan Buddhism. However at first he is very much linked to the peaceful form of the Bodhisattva and seems to represent the "power" of the Bodhisattva. Importantly Yamāntaka is depicted as wielding a sword in these images.

In Linrothe's account of the development of Tantric iconography, this kind of Bodhisattva plus attendant image persisted even when new developments occurred, so that the various layers all co-existed. This mirrors the situation for the development of texts which Buddhists were loath to repudiate completely even when a new text proclaimed, as they inevitably do, that what has come before was merely provisional or meant for people of lesser ability. The next phase after the Bodhisattva/Dwarf companions is that the wrathful figures become independent. So for instance in the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra (ca mid 7th century) Trailokyavijaya, Acala, and Hayagrīva are independent wrathful figures whose function is the protection of sacred spaces (i.e. mandalas) and the destruction of obstacles. Images of Yamāntaka

In the case of Mañjuśrī I suggest that he got his sword from Yamāntaka, but only after they had gone their separate ways which was evident by about the 10th century. But why would a peaceful Bodhisattva take up a sword, even a so-called sword of wisdom? The sword culturally speaking represents the polar opposite of Buddhist values - it is an implement of killing, designed in fact for the single purpose of killing humans.

A possible answer is provided by Adalbert Gail in his paper "Mañjuśrī and his sword" (see below). He suggests that the cult of Mañjuśrī began in China, which explains why images of Mañjuśrī appeared there centuries before they did in India. We know that in some cases, the Heart Sūtra being a classic example, that Chinese Buddhism had an influence on Indian Buddhism. In ths case Gail surmises that the iron discussion staff was an implement unfamiliar to Indian Buddhists, and so when they met it, probably via Chinese pilgrims in India, they may have assumed that it was a sword. By this time wrathful images, such as Yamāntaka had already appeared so a Buddhist figure holding a sword may not have seemed so unusual. Later images of Mañjuśrī holding a sword were taken to China where they became popular.

Much of this argument is speculative and will likely remain so, but it seems a plausible account given what we do know. The story of Mañjuśrī's sword is a good example of how iconographic, non-textual information, all too often overlooked by Buddhists and Buddhologists, contributes to our understanding of Buddhist history.


Bibliography

• Gail, Adalbert. "Mañjuśrī and his sword," in Kooij, K.R. Van and Veere, H. van der (eds.) Function and meaning in Buddhist art : proceedings of a seminar held at Leiden University 21-24 October 1991. Groningen: Egbert Forstan, 1995
• Linrothe, Rob. Ruthless compassion : wrathful deities in early Indo-Tibetan Esoteric Buddhist art. London : Serindia Publications, 1996.

image: Mañjuśrī accompanied by Yamāntaka (with sword), ca 8th century, Nalanda in Linrothe, p.68.


16 June 2008
NOTE: In writing this essay I missed an obvious reference to Mañjuśrī's sword in a Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra called the Suṣṭhitamati-paripṛcchā. A little more research would be required to see if the date of the text has been established - the Ratnakūṭa (or Jewel Heap) texts are a collection which span a period time but begin to be translated into Chinese about the 2nd century. In this text Mañjuśrī moves as if to kill the Buddha with his sword! He is stopped by a discourse on the emptiness of beings.

If I were to rewrite this essay in light of that passage it would probably look entirely different. I wonder why neither Linrothe nor Gail mention it as it has direct bearing on what they write about, perhaps like me they simply over looked it?

A translation of the passage can be found in Chang, G. C. C. 1983. A treasury of Mahāyāna Sūtras : selections from the Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtras. Pennsylvania : Buddhist Association of the US, p.68. See Also Sangharakshita. 1985. The Eternal Legacy : an introduction to the Canonical Literature of Buddhism. London : Tharpa. p.186.

The Mad Monk and the Process of Making the Vinaya

Rasputin, the "mad monk".

About 10 years ago I read Peter Harvey's article on Culpability in the Vinaya, and was taken by the story of the Mad Monk. His name is.... wait for it.... Gagga. I immediately went looking for some etymological link between the name and our English word for someone who is mad, and found that the two are, sadly, totally unrelated. The English "gaga" - meaning mad - comes from French and is thought to be imitative; while the name from the Pāli means "swift flowing" and probably relates to the name of a river.

The case of Gagga provides a very interesting window into the process of making Vinaya rules. Gagga is intermittently mad and unreliable. We know little more than this about him. Due to his bouts of madness he frequently did not answer the summons to the convocation of bhikkhus. Also Gagga was prone to breaking the vinaya rules and not remembering what he did. This lead to the development of two rules.

I should point out that the understanding of madness at this point is relatively sophisticated, and is clearly distinguished from possession by an evil spirit for instance. Madness is characterised in much the same way that we would now - a mad person comes to the wrong conclusions about their experience - confusing the subjective and objective. I'm not going to say any more about definitions of madness because they are so contested and conflicting that no precise definition is satisfactory. There is a tendency in the West to both romanticise madness on the one hand, and to demonize it on the other. We may associate madness with spiritual visions (I'm thinking for instance of William Blake), or with high spirits. Those who have recovered from Madness and written about it, however, talk about it as nightmarish. On the other hand we may think of all mad people as homicidal psychopaths, whereas in fact most mad people are a danger only to themselves.

Also note that the figure of Gagga may not have existed, but may be a cipher for any bhikkhu with madness - he may simply be a story telling device. I discuss him as a person, but keep in mind that there is no other evidence that he lived.

Gaga, then, does not show up for meetings. [Vin. i.123] All fully ordained bhikkhus were (and still are) required to come together regularly to recite the patimokkha and to formally discipline any bhikkhu has broken any of the Vinaya rules. By not turning up when called Gagga was disrupting the life of the Sangha. In this case the Buddha allows the bhikkhus to decide that someone is mad, and to carry on without him.

Gagga also breaks the rules. [Vin II.82] Peter Harvey discusses this aspect in his article. In the first place Gagga is accused of an offence but denies it. The bhikkhus do not accept his denial and go to the Buddha, but the Buddha says they must accept that if he says he cannot remember, that he is telling the truth. This ad-hoc decision is also later codified so that in many places madness is cited as a reason that a bhikkhu is not culpable for his actions. Here we see the movement from ad-hoc to general rule.

I have not followed this up, but the two examples of rule making which centre around Gagga make me think that this process must have been influential in the development of the vinaya. It was not the only process though, for example rules are often made because laypeople complain directly to the Buddha about the behaviour of the bhikkhus.

Apart from the insight that this gives us into how the vinaya developed, I want to note one very interesting point about Gagga. Despite being rather troublesome, as mad people can be, the response in the vinaya is not to expel him. There is no suggestion that Gagga's affliction put him outside the Sangha, even when he has consistently broken the rules. Madness is deemed to be an affliction rather than a moral failing. Someone who is mad, according to the vinaya, cannot be held responsible for their actions while mad. 

At some point I'd like to do a comparison of this attitude to the changing Western attitudes to madness collated by Michel Foucault in his book Madness and Civilisation. I can briefly say that the attitude in the vinaya appears to be different from Western attitudes at any point in our history. In Europe mad people were initially tolerated unless they became disruptive when they might be driven out of town. With the valorisation of reason in the Renaissance, madness was seen as moral failure. Lazar houses standing empty with the drastic reduction in leprosy began to be filled with the mad. Freud led a change in attitude to madness - from a moral failure to medical condition. These days the "chemical imbalance" theory is beginning to give way to a genetic paradigm. In other words, and this is what seemed to attract Foucault to the subject, the way we understand madness and treat the mad reflects the currents in wider society. The attitude to madness in the Pāli canon may well afford us insights into early Buddhist society - at least the idealised form of it that is represented in canonical texts.

~~oOo~~

Playing with Fire

I've made several references over the last year and a half to the Numata lectures by Professor Richard Gombrich in 2006. These are in the process of being published as a book. I have been re-reading the notes from those lectures and wanted to highlight lecture seven which discussed the use of fire as a metaphor by the Buddha.

Anyone familiar with the discourses of the Buddha will most likely have clocked that the Buddha uses fire as a metaphor in several different ways. Most notably there is the fire sermon (Āditta-pariyāya, Vin i.34-5) in which the Buddha tells the monks that "everything is on fire". What the Buddha means by "everything" is the five sense faculties and the mind, the objects of our senses, and the whole psychological process of experience. What he means by "on fire" is that we our experience is burning with desire, with hatred, and with spiritual ignorance. The goal of the Buddhist path is nibbāna (Sanskrit nirvāṇa) which means quite literally the blowing out of a flame, or ceasing to burn.

This much is consonant with the received tradition. However Prof. Gombrich has investigated other aspects of this fire metaphor. One of the most interesting related to the nidāna chain - the 12 membered list of factors which condition each other and are said to describe the process of repeated becoming in saṃsara. As part of this list we find that desire (taṇhā) gives rise to "clinging" (upādāna), which in turn is what gives rise to becoming (bhavanā). Gombrich suggests that the word upādāna might well have originally been used in it's more concrete sense of "fuel". In this view clinging would be fuel for becoming, and in my opinion this works much better as an explanation of process. Thus the nidāna chain is a continuation of the fire metaphor into the process of dependent arising.

Upādāna is also used in describing the whole of our psycho-physical experience. The khandhas (Sanskrit skandha) are referred to at times as the five aggregates of clinging (pañca-upādāna-kkhandhā). This is an awkward phrase. It makes no more sense, apparently, in Pāli than the translation does in English. Gombrich notes that there is a common Pāli expression for a blazing fire: aggi-khandha. He suggests that upādāna-kkhandha should be read as a contraction of upādāna-aggi-kkhandha and be translated as blazing masses of fuel. The khandas in other words are an extension of the Buddha's use of the fire metaphor. They are the fuel for the burning desire that prolongs our existence.

The Vedic religion was one in which fire played a central role. There is evidence that fire worship goes back well beyond the entry of the Vedic speaking peoples into India. Fire was very much part of the religious imagination of India by the time of the Buddha, and Gombrich argues that it is from this source that the Buddha draws for his fire metaphor. The key evidence here is a difficult paper by Polish academic Joanna Jurewicz which draws parallels between the terms used in the nidāna chain and certain concepts central to the Vedic religion. Professor Jurewicz argues that the Pāli nidāna model can be seen as a polemic against the Vedic cosmogony. The paper is a not easy to follow: ideally one would be well versed in Vedic language and religion as well as Pāli, but it is very interesting, and Professor Gombrich considers the case to have been demonstrated for some kind of influence.

The primary metaphor for consciousness in the Vedic tradition is fire, hence the Buddha framed his understanding of consciousness in similar terms. But whereas the late Vedic tradition contained a notion of absolute consciousness, the Buddha claimed that there is only consciousness of something: like fire consciousness requires fuel to continue, but also crucially despite being a non-random process (i.e. without fuel there can be no fire) fire operates with no guiding "person" behind it.

This is a brief overview of a more technical and thorough discussion by Professor Gombrich. It continues the theme of looking at the way the Buddha drew on the traditions surrounding him, especially the Vedic tradition, of images and concepts with which to communicate his Insight. It also reassesses the way the received tradition explains some technical terms. What Professor Gombrich has shown on more than one occasion is that the received tradition is confused on some points of doctrine or linguistics. This is important for contemporary Buddhists. It emphasises that the Buddhist texts are not divine revelation, they are no infallible and we must be wary of an over literal interpretation of them. In particular where the Buddha used metaphors drawn from the Vedic traditions, there have often be misunderstood by later Buddhists, even in some cases before the canon was written down. Doctrines must be tested against experience.

~~oOo~~

Why did Kūkai sail in Summer?

Anyone familiar with the story of Kūkai will know that his journey to China in 804 began by sailing from Nagasaki out into the Sea of Japan. It is usual to comment on the relative lack of seaworthiness of the Japanese ships, and on the lack of nautical knowledge of the sailors since they sailed at a time when the winds were against them, meaning that the rudimentary sails could not be used; and when typhoons regularly swept in wrecking any ships daring to be out of harbour. This is a given in all the biographies in English.

However as long ago as 1995 TŌNO Haruyuki cast doubts on this way of telling the story, at the same time as questioning another long held belief: that the Japanese Emperors presented themselves as equals to the Chinese Emperor, and that the Chinese went along with this. This latter is interesting because it sheds light on the nature of the embassies sent from Japan.

Tōno shows that there is evidence to throw doubt on the supposed equality of the two emperors. It is true that as early as 607 a mission to the Sui dynasty emperor Yang-ti (隋煬帝 ) presented a letter which described the Japanese emperor as Son of Heaven, the title of the Chinese Emperor, however Yang-ti saw this as an affront.

Tōno's article concentrates on the embassies to T'ang China. In 632 a Chinese imperial envoy clashed with the Japanese court over protocol and did not read the letter from the Chinese Emperor. Tōno suspects that this was an attempt to subdue the Japanese. Note that this was a period of massive expansion westwards, with Chinese troops pushing on past the Tarim basin, where they were stopped by an Arab army also intent on expansion. It was the time of the greatest extent of the Chinese Empire.

Until 663 the Japanese were influential in the Korean peninsular. However in that year the Paekche (from whence Buddhism was introduced into Japan in 552) were defeated by a coalition of the T'ang and Silla, despite being shored up with Japanese forces. In 668 the alliance defeated the Koguryo thus unifying Korea. Although the Japanese continued to see Po-Hai (in present day Manchuria) as a tributary state, Tōno points out, from this time onwards it would not have been possible for the Japanese to insist on equal status. Indeed the embassy of 671 can be seen, according to Tōno, as a declaration of surrender!

After a break of 30 years another embassy was sent to the T'ang court in 702. It was at this time that the Japanese concede to paying tribute every twenty years. This was a pragmatic move on the the part of the Japanese in the face of a rampant T'ang state in the process of crushing opposition in other quarters. Evidence of this promise, more or less hushed up at home, is seen in a letter from a monk on Mt T'ien T'ai who is asking for permission to pass on information to the Japanese monk Ensai in 840 where he mentions that "... and they [the Japanese] have promised to pay tribute once in twenty years" (p.45). This would not have been common knowledge in Japan, and though careful records of many other occasions were kept, letters from the Chinese Emperor were mostly lost. In one letter from the Chinese Emperor 735 begins by writing "I order the king of Japan..." (p.52).

It obvious that in the Japanese mind Japan was the centre of civilisation. The ritsuryō code for instance, despite being modelled on a T'ang Chinese legal code, refers to other nations including the Chinese as barbarians. Tōno cites the fact that no one of the royal family ever went to China as this would have admitted to the Japanese people that they were subordinate.

Although Tōno does not mention it, we could also comment on the relative weakness of the Japanese nation until the reforms of Kanmu began to take effect. Japan had been essentially bankrupted by a succession of natural disasters and the flurry of temple building that ensued as a remedy, and by a number of expensive and sometimes disastrous military campaigns against the Ainu. In Kūkai's day there was forced labour and military service. Many people were homeless, and farming so difficult that many left the land to become beggars. In the face of a strong and dynamic T'ang Japan would have looked weak, and perhaps it is only the long sea distance that prevented them from being assimilated along with other neighbours.

Tōno's conclusion is that the embassies to the T'ang court were to offer tribute as agreed in order to keep the Chinese Emperor from casting a military eye eastwards. It is this fact which gives us the clue to why the embassies were sent when they were. As I mentioned it is common knowledge that Summer is a bad time to sail to China; and it is assumed that the Japanese were simply ignorant of the seasonal winds. However Tōno reminds us that emissaries from the Po-hai state regularly visited Japan at the time, and judging by their arrival and departure dates they were adept at using seasonal winds. (p.58) Tōno also argues that the Japanese ships were more sophisticated than has previously been thought, that they used cloth sails in addition to bamboo matting. However they did lack keels which meant they could not use the sails unless the wind was behind them.

The offering up of tribute to the Chinese court was ideally done at the New Year celebrations - the Chinese year beginning on the second full-moon after the winder solstice, usually sometime in February. The average travelling time to China for all of the missions, which can be worked out from a chart in Tōno's article, was six months. This meant leaving in the 6th month, or late summer (July or August) in order to arrive in time for the ceremony in January or February. Far from being ignorant of nautical and seasonal knowledge the Japanese probably knew exactly what to expect, but were forced for political reasons to attempt the crossing at this time. The knowledge of what to expect was probably what accounted for the reluctance of Japanese officials to go on such trips.

After Kūkai's trip in 804-6 only one more Embassy was sent to the T'ang court. Perhaps this was because it was clear, even in 806, that the T'ang dynasty was falling apart. It staggered on until 906 but was racked by civil strife and war. In other words there was no longer any threat to induce a offering of tribute, and Japan had gotten onto a firmer footing as well. Thanks to Kūkai the Heian period was one of a flowering of Japanese culture as distinct from imported Chinese culture.

TŌNO, Haruyuki. "Japanese Embassies to T'ang China and their Ships," Acta Asiatica. 1995 v.69: 39-62.

image: Illustration of a Chinese ship of the type that would have visited Japan during the Edo period (from Tōno article).

Mitigating Karma

As part of my research into confession in early Buddhism I have been interested in the idea that it might be possible to escape the consequences of one's actions. Can confession of a transgression, for instance, help one to avoid the consequences of an action? Although there is a commentarial tradition of counteracting-karma (upapīḷlaka-kamma) which can counteract or suppress the effects of karma, I have not found much in the Canon itself on ways to mitigate karma. Recall that shortly after becoming an Arahant, Angulimāla is pelted with missiles and returns from his alms round cut and bleeding. This, the Buddha tells him, is the result of his previous actions. If that karma did not ripen in the present then he would spend 100's or 1000's of years in hell. There is it seems, in the Nikāya's anyway, no escaping the fruits of one's actions. Richard Gombrich confirms this when he says: “Theravāda Buddhism knows no penances. If you have done, said or thought a wrong, doctrine says, nothing can simply cancel that out”. (Gombrich 1988, 108)

However there are some ways in which the effects of karma may be off-set or mitigated. Chiefly this is achieved through reflection, experiencing remorse, and abstaining from harmful actions in future. Although this cannot affect the consequences of actions already undertaken, it does mean that one can be free of suffering at some point if one refrains from unskilful action in the present.

However a couple of texts suggest that it is possible to "dilute" the effects of karma through spiritual practice. The Lonaphala Sutta (AN 3.99) begins by pointing out that the same trifling fault may send one person to hell, and yet another may only experience a fleeting trifling pain in the here and now. Why is that? It is because the former person has made no effort to develop themselves, which the latter has. There follow three images the most interesting one involving a salt crystal.

If a salt crystal is dropped into a small amount of water, that water is rendered undrinkable. However if you drop a single salt crystal into the Ganges River it will make very little difference (presumably the Ganges was a lot cleaner in the Buddha's day because drinking it now could be fatal!). Spiritual practice in this sutta means "development of the body (kāya), virtue (sīla), the mind (citta) and understanding (pañña); and dwelling in the unrestricted, large-hearted, immeasurable [state]". The last seems to be a reference to the Brahmavihara meditations. This list is a variation on the threefold path of ethics, meditation, and wisdom; it also resembles the foundations of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna).

Such spiritual practice makes one 'bigger' and so the effects of karma are diluted. One of my teachers has suggested that we could think of merit (puñña) in terms of emotional robustness. Through practice we become more emotionally robust, less pushed around by the vicissitudes of life. We are more able to maintain equanimity in the face of provocation.

A related notion can be found in the Devadaha Sutta (MN 101) . In this sutta a man is suffering from jealousy. He is made angry by the sight of his lover laughing and joking with another man. but the sutta points out that his suffering may cease if he is able to unhook himself from the attachment to his lover. This need not mean letting go of love itself, but specifically letting go of attachment and clinging - remove the cause and the effect is removed. One can mitigate the effects of jealousy by removing the cause for the arising of a painful mental state. One sees this also in the Buddha's response to painful physical sensations - in a sutta called The Dart (SN 36.6). The Bhagavan's foot is pierced by a sliver of stone, but he does not respond with aversion to painful sensations which cannot be avoided, and so does not suffer. Morphine apparently works in this way: taking morphine does not block painful sensations from reaching the brain the way some other pain killers do, but it changes the perceptual relationship to the pain, with the result that one relaxes and is not distressed by it.

Whatever developments came afterwards, the message of the Pāli Canon seems reasonably clear. Having acted one will inevitably experience the consequences of that action. However the consequences may be mitigated to some extent through spiritual practices. The basic approach is simply to reflect on previous actions and consequences so that one learns not to create more difficulties. But a benefit from doing this, and of spiritual practice generally, is that when painful consequences do happen, we are able to be more robust, more equanimous, and so we suffer less.

We become like a great river that can absorb a little salt crystal without being rendered unfit to drink. However I suppose that the state of the Ganges in the present is something of a warning against complacency. Even a great river may become disastrously polluted if we are not careful. I take this to be an image for guarding the gates of the senses - just because we become more robust does not mean that we can more freely indulge our bad habits.


Reference.

• Gombrich, Richard. Theravāda Buddhism : a Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 1998.

Suttas on Access to Insight.

• Devadaha Sutta. MN 101
  
• Lonaphala Sutta. AN 3.99
• Sallatha Sutta. SN 36.6
  

image: ℓ u m i è r e

Karma and Rebirth

The idea that we are reborn again and again in a world where suffering is ubiquitous, until through our practice of the Dharma, we are liberated, is fundamental to traditional Buddhism. Liberation is fundamentally liberation from the "rounds of rebirth". And yet for many Westerners the idea of rebirth is not one they believe in. The arguments over rebirth sound to my ears very much like the argument over creation vs evolution. Neither side is able to conclusively prove their assertions, since both are by definition beyond proof. And yet one must admit that every received tradition of Buddhism explicitly accepts rebirth on the one hand; and that any solid scientific evidence for it is entirely lacking on the other. Where does this leave us?

If we leave aside the aberrant versions of rebirth which assume any kind of continuity for the personality, we are still left with something of a quandary in how we explain why the Buddha might have taught (much less believed in) rebirth, and how it is possible to have continuity between lives. What must be posited is some aspect of the individual - entirely beyond the scope of measurement - which survives the death of the body, and becomes incorporated into a new being at some point giving them the experience of the results of the actions of the previously dead person. As someone with scientific training I feel this is well into the territory of superstition and irrational belief.

However I would argue that there is a useful Buddhist approach to this issue, that is doctrinally valid and methodologically useful. It stems from my growing belief that the Buddha was not offering an ontology, not offering us definite statements on "how things are", but only ways in which we could experience for ourselves the way things are. Yes, the Buddha, did give a series of metaphors for this experience, and did talk about having had that experience, but I am more and more convinced that his message was about how to reproduce that experience without making any definite statements about the content of it. After all the experience is repeatedly said to be beyond words. Words about the Awakening experience, then, I take to form part of the recipe, or even the exhortation to bake, but are not the cake itself.

What happens if we apply this hermeneutic to the teachings about karma and rebirth?

The fact that actions have consequences is not in dispute. This much is obvious to even the least gifted observer of human life. How we go about our lives, how we behave, has a strong determining effect on our experience of life. The Buddha famously equated karma with cetanā or intention. Our attitudes, our mental landscape, is the most powerful determinant of our experience of the world. What we can know is limited by our senses and our mind. My understanding of the Buddha's message is that we are so caught up in the wash of sensory input and mental activity that we make categorical errors in interpreting our experience. As a result the Buddha describes the senses, and the processes which make up our being, as being on fire. Being (or bhava, becoming) is like fire, and the fuel is greed for pleasure, aversion to hatred, and the categorical delusions we have towards experience. Professor Gombrich has gone into this use of the fire metaphor in some detail. He further points out that in the Nidana chain the word usually translated as "clinging" or "grasping" is more straight-forwardly simply fuel. Desire (taṇhā) is the fuel (upādāna), which sustains becoming (bhava). The Buddha, according to the professor, describes being as "a blazing mass of fuel" (upādānakkhandha). The goal of the Buddhist is to blow out that fire - nibbāna.

The way to put out the fire is to deprive it of fuel - to cut off the greed and hatred which keep bhava burning. There is nothing here which requires this process to operate over more than one life. We keep the fire burning in the moment, and can blow it out through insight into the process which creates a decisive reorientation to the experience of the senses. Although the insight is said to come from meditation, the background to meditation is ethics. How we act is important because, positively, it creates the conditions for our sustained reflection on the nature of experience.

Now suppose that we believe that when we die that we personally simply cease to exist. That we personally will never experience the consequences of our actions if they have not already manifested. This would be a major flaw in the program to restrain unethical behaviour. Ethical behaviour, let me repeat, is not an end in itself, but a necessary pre-requisite for bringing about the conditions (calm and concentration) where insight can arise. It would make more sense to inculcate a belief that there was no escape from the consequences of one's actions, not even death, because that would make for a more effective training program in ethics.

Generally speaking we only act unethically if we feel forced to by the circumstances (and therefore fully expect unpleasant consequences but accept them), or if we think we can get away with it! Surely we have all done things when we thought we could get away with it, that under public scrutiny we would not endorse - trifling infringements on the whole. As Buddhists we try to keep the bigger picture in mind, but until we have a substantial experience of insight (and even to some extent afterwards) there is always this delusion that "it won't matter". We think we can "get away with it". A most graphic example of this is found in the Vinaya considered as a whole. If we accept that a rule banning a behaviour would only have been instituted if that behaviour was found in the Sangha, then the early Sangha were a deviant bunch! Many times, of course, a rule is made simply because the local villagers complain that monastics are acting like lay people. But this refrain is so constant in the Vinaya that one suspects that very few of the disciples were serious about spiritual practice.

The Buddha is in effect acting like a parent or guardian in providing behavioural limits for a child. He does this because he knows that freedom from remorse is a necessary condition for a calm body and concentrated mind, which are in turn necessary for achieving insight into the nature of experience. (see for instance the first two suttas in the AN chapter on 10's). While we continue to make the categorical errors we are like drunks or madmen who are a danger to ourselves and others. I don't think I need to stress that we are not talking about psychopaths, incapable of experiencing remorse, here, but the "average" person.

To me it suggests that from a Buddhist perspective is it practically advantageous to believe that I personally will experience the consequences of my actions, death notwithstanding. This is not to say anything about whether such a belief is true or not true, in either a relative or ultimate sense. It may even be untrue, and yet we are better off believing it because it will help us achieve lack of remorse. It is a provisional belief that can be abandoned on the attainment of insight, because it will then no longer be necessary. This is not the same as agnosticism. It requires a commitment to taking responsibility for one's actions now, in the past, and in whatever future may come. What is true in this case is that unless we can make some kind of imaginative leap which allows us to see the consequences of our actions coming home to us, we will continue to think that some actions (of body, speech or mind) do not matter. Everything we do, say, and think matters.

This approach to belief, allowing for provisional belief in something which may not be ultimately valid but which has advantages, is foreign to Western thinking as far as I know. The "debate" between creationists (or their bastard offspring the "intelligent design" lobby) and the people advocating scientific rational humanism both seem to adopt positions which assume that belief is an absolute - you either believe in X or not (and you are either enlightened or a fool as a result). In fact I think a lot of people are better off for believing in a loving and merciful god, if only because existence might be unbearable without that belief. "Love thy neighbour" is in line with my highest aspirations.

To sum up then, I think that a Buddhist approach to belief is fundamentally different to the prevailing Western notions. Instead of asking whether a belief is true or not, and arguing from that basis, we Buddhists ask ourselves "is it helpful"? Helpful is anything in the ethical sphere which helps us achieve calm and concentration. It is axiomatic for Buddhists that anything which is harmful to others cannot afford us calm and concentration - something which is borne out by experience. "True" and "false" matter far less than kusala (helpful) and akusala (unhelpful). So any argument over whether karma and rebirth are "true" in the Western sense are kind of missing the point. It is better, ie more helpful, to believe that you cannot escape the consequences of your actions because that will make you more sensitive to how you act in the present. This approach frees us from having to explain every detail of the doctrine in rational terms, a task which I think is impossible in any case. It also means that we are not so likely to want to fight over the "truth".

image: from Sonofwalrus on Flickr

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

Suffering, Nihilism, and the Buddha

A quick search on Google is sure to reveal that the idea that "everything is suffering" persists amongst Buddhists. This misunderstanding of the Four Truths of the Noble Ones* has been particularly tenacious and pernicious. It has lead some people to label Buddhism as nihilistic, though such an idea is clearly bonkers. However the fact that the misunderstanding persists amongst Buddhists does not help. The arguments usually goes that because every thing (thing in the sense of an object of the senses) is impermanent and insubstantial (anicca and anatta in Pāli) that we suffer. All conditioned things are impermanent, therefore all conditioned things are suffering.

In his Survey of Buddhism (p.142ff) Sangharakshita makes an important contribution to understanding the truths of the Noble Ones. He points out that the Buddha made a distinction between doctrine and method. The charge of nihilism is a categorical mistake: the truths of the Noble Ones are methodological rather than doctrinal. This is evidenced in Sariputta's discourse, the Sammadiṭṭhi Sutta. In this sutta the content of the first Truth is shown to be unfixed. Suffering can be replaced by food, birth and death, name and form, or ignorance. The doctrinal principle is dependent arising. The truths of the Noble Ones are an application of that doctrine to the problem of suffering. Suffering is a good starting place, Sangharakshita tells us, because as an experience it is ubiquitous. Also being a experience it is not so susceptible to being intellectualised. Meditating on a concept is far less efficacious than meditating on an experience.

The matter is made quite clear in the saṃyutta nikāya in a sutta addressed to a layman called Mahāli (S 22.60 = S iii.68ff). Mahāli has been talking with another spiritual teacher who claims that there is no cause and effect, no reason for "defilement" (saṃkilesa), and therefore, by implication, no reason for the problem of suffering. Shit happens. The Buddha tells Mahāli that there is indeed a cause for suffering.

Forms are neither exclusively unpleasant (dukkha) nor are they exclusive pleasurable (sukha). The same is true of feelings, perceptions, volitions and consciousness - ie the five khandhas (Sanskrit skandha). If everything was suffering then beings would not become attracted to anything. But because experience has a pleasurable aspect we do become attracted to it; and being attracted we do become captivated by pleasure; and being captivated by pleasure we are defiled, which is it say we suffer. There is good sense here. If everything was suffering then how would be become trapped in desire for experience since no one, ultimately not even the masochist, desires suffering? The charge of nihilism was never sensible, but it should obvious from this sutta that the claim that "everything is suffering" is also not sensible.

The Buddha tells Mahāli that the converse is also important. Because if everything was pleasurable then there would be no way for us to become disillusioned with experience, and to seek a way beyond birth and death. It is only by withdrawing from obsession with sensual experience that liberation becomes possible.

It's all too easy to get caught up in various kinds of literalism. This is an aspect of what the Buddha is telling Mahāli. Ideas are attractive, we become captivated by them, and we start thinking that ideas, or opinions about things are real, or true (the same word, sacca, is used for both in Pāli). Any kind of absolutism is likely to be a fallacy. In fact any kind of strongly held opinion is likely to be a fallacy, or based on one. This is why focusing on experience, as the Buddha so frequently does, is so useful. Suffering is not generally a matter of opinion. It would be nice to think that having pointed out an error, the error will be eliminated, but this is all too unlikely given our intoxication and obsession with sensual experience. Hopefully the Mahāli Sutta will at least stimulate some reflection.


There is a translation of the Mahāli Sutta on Access to Insight. In Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation: p.903f (single vol. ed.)


* The great philologist K.R. Norman has shown that "Noble Truths" is unlikely to be the correct translation of ariyasacca, and that truths of the Noble Ones is far more likely. I have therefore adopted this as my standard translation.

You say you want a revolution?

The environment is going belly up. Wars, violent insurgencies, armed conflicts are the norm; kids with guns turn up at school and shoot their classmates, or shoot each other in the streets. The list goes on. What the world needs now, more than anything, a Buddhist might say, is the Dharma, even a Dharma Revolution.

Buddhism has always been, along with Islam and Christianity, a missionary religion. Right from the beginning the Buddha set out to convince people that his Awakening was accessible to all, to convert them. In the past Buddhism has been a great force for good in Asia - spreading education, literacy, and positive values, promoting stable societies. Buddhist states, contrary to popular opinion, have not always been at peace with themselves, or with the neighbours. But I do see Buddhist teachings and practices as a practical solution to life's problems, large and small. There's a vocal minority who are antithetical to spreading the Dharma. In the UK, for instance, those organisations which have been most active in going out to people with the Dharma, that have spread the Buddhavācā most effectively are frequently attacked for "empire building" - almost as though spreading the Dharma was a bad thing! The more people who take on Buddhist precepts the better as far as I'm concerned.

In the 1960's and 70's the hippies took to the Dharma like ducks to water. They were ready willing and able to start practising and to take it all seriously enough to be transformed by it. Many of the current leaders of various Western Buddhist movements came out of that counter-cultural undercurrent. However the 1980's followed: I could sum the the Zeitgeist of my era as "a loss of idealism". The result was nihilism and hedonism. The hippies were hopelessly naive, and the X generation knew it. The result is that Western Buddhism is largely still drawing converts from the hippy generation. Sanghas across all divides are getting older on average. We are not attracting young people to Buddhism.

Creating a "Dhamma revolution" will not be easy in the West. I actually see more potential in India with its massive under-classes who are enthusiastically embracing Buddhism. If we are going to do it, then I believe that Malcolm Gladwell has much to tell us on the subject of spreading our message. Its a while since I read his book "The Tipping Point" so this isn't a formal review, but a paraphrasing based on memory. I do think that any revolutionary manifesto must take into account what Gladwell says - he draws his examples from the most successful revolutions, mega-trends, and plagues in history.

The successful revolutionary committee comprises three basic skills: the Maven, the Networker, and the Persuader. The Maven knows stuff. It is the Maven who will see what needs to happen, what people really need or want. They see the trends in society - in which case Gladwell himself is a Maven. In a Buddhist context we don't need to worry too much about this. The Buddha was our Maven. He discovered what we should do about suffering.

However knowing what to do is not enough. One has to get other people on board. Other people must be persuaded that what the Maven says is correct. Ironically, perhaps, the Maven is often not a good persuader. Persuaders are able to get the message across. Someone has to sell the message. I think the Dalai Lama is probably the best example of this. Bookshops are full of his books - they have crowded other authors out in many cases. He gets amazing press coverage as well, and is as far as I know, always portrayed positively in the West. It's not enough to have the Dharma for ourselves. I would count us as having been successful, for instance, when the whole creation/evolution debate broadens out to include a Buddhist perspective.

However even the ability to know what to say, and how to say it, is insufficient. One must know who to say it to. And this is the skill brought to the mix by the networker. They know everyone, and they know who does what. They know who, if persuaded, will make all the difference. For instance the Dalai Lama meeting George Bush is not going to create a Dhamma Revolution because Bush is on his way out, he a fundamentalist Christian. Those meetings may well help to secure the safety of the Tibetan refugees in exile - an admirable goal - but they won't make much difference on a larger scale. Elected leaders have a problem that the emperors of China and Japan did not have - they were not subject to the will of the people. In Asia it was often the adoption of Buddhism by the aristocracy that made the difference in its survival - just as the adoption of Christianity by Roman Emperors resulted in a Christian Europe. And yet its clear that royal patronage is fickle. The question then is who do we reach in order to make a difference? I'm not sure that we know the answer to that yet, but I suspect that "ageing hippies" is not going to be it.

Propagating the ideas of Buddhism - such as personal responsibility for actions, and the revolutionary transformative power of kindness and generosity - in the West will be difficult. People are on the whole wealthy, governments are popularist, personal responsibility is no valued, individualism is the rule. But if we are going to do it then I think Gladwell is offering us a blueprint. Working out the details will be interesting.

image: Malcolm Gladwell, from PomeRantz

An Experience of Awakening?

A friend sent me this today, and I was so struck by it that I thought I'd make it the basis of my rave today. It's billed as "what it feels like to have a stroke", which it does describe. Because of her ability to observe and articulate her observations (the benefits of a scientific training!) we get an incredibly detailed account of the progress of Jill's stroke. She notices a lot more than the average person might, and her neuroscience training gives her a vocabulary and a conceptual framework to understand and communicate her experience. However it goes well beyond the what happens when parts of her brain start shutting down. Perhaps it is best to watch the video clip and then read my comments.

I'll just summarise what Jill says about the hemispheres.

Left: linear/methodical, interested in past and future, interested in details. The left hemisphere categorises, associates, and makes projections and predictions about the future. It thinks in language and is responsible for our internal chatter. Source of the though "I am" - separate individual.

Right: interested in here and now. Thinks in pictures and kinesthetics. Information as a flow of energy, experiences as a collage. Interested in how here and now looks, sounds, smells etc. Knows that we are all one, perfect, whole and beautiful.

Once Jill's stroke is underway it suppresses the activity in her left hemisphere. She describes the experience in terms of losing a sense of the distinction between the atoms of her arm and the atoms of the wall, and not being able to define the boundaries of her body. There is just energy and she is captivated by this. At the same time her "internal brain chatter" falls silent. She has an expansive feeling, and feels "at one with all the energy" and "it's beautiful there". When her recollection of her past falls away it is a profound relief - imagine losing 37 years of emotional baggage! It was euphoric. All job stress was gone, all stress of any kind was gone, and there was an experience of profound peacefulness.

What Jill is using a language that anyone familiar with Buddhism should be acquainted with. She talks about losing a sense of being a limited and isolated self, of losing the "I am" (ahaṇkāra). The immersion in right-brain consciousness gave her a sense of unboundedness (aparimāna) associated with euphoria (sukha, pamojja, piti), and sense of unbounded love for and solidarity with everyone (mettañca sabbalokasmiṃ mānasam bhāvaye aparimānaṃ - Metta Sutta). She repeats the word "peace" (śanti). She gestures and describes a sense of liberation (vimutti). The falling silent of internal chatter sounds very much like entering the second dhyana. However she does not describe things in terms of dependent arising, and I can't help wondering what she would make of the teaching on this.

Jill is describing a classic mystical experience which is familiar to those described in many religious traditions. What is interesting is how closely her explanation follows the conceptual landscape of Buddhism. She doesn't say whether she follows any particular tradition.There ar of course resonances with other traditions. At times she appears to be describing the insight that is summarised as "I am brahman" in the Upaniṣads, for instance. Interestingly Jill does not meet God, or interpret her experience in theistic terms. What makes Jills story profound is that she retains the ability to experience that kind of consciousness, more or less at will (is what she implies anyway). This resonates very powerfully with my own spiritual aspirations.

It seems very likely that Jill's stroke affected that part of her brain that has been dubbed the "God Spot". More recent research has shown that it is more of a network of a dozen or so regions than a spot, but the name is evocative. Stimulation of the brain, whether by epileptic seizure or electrodes applied to the scalp, has been able to reproduce the kinds of feelings that mystics and Jill are talking about. Atheists have taken this as proof of the non-existence of God, but that is to suggest that they understand the effect which is claiming too much. How could, for instance mediation - intense samādhi - produce a vision or an experience of unboundedness? No one knows. No one really understands the relationship between the brain and consciousness except to say that we do know there is one.

Of course what is missing from Jill's presentation is any kind of method. Jill says that anyone can choose what kind of consciousness they dwell in from moment to moment. But we can't follow Jill because she achieved this Awakening via a life threatening (random?) blood clot. And actually although it sounds it, in practice changing our level of consciousness is not that easy. Fortunately the Buddha has described a method which is reported to produce just these kinds of experiences, especially the experience of blissful unbounded consciousness which sees things in terms of energy (ie process) and which makes no distinction between self and other.

Dr Jill Bolte Taylor also has a book out called My Stroke of Insight, and an interesting website.

Unicode : its time has come.

Downloads from visiblemantra.org

Times Ext Roman
Self installing Windows font, just double click.

Jayarava's Indic Keyboard Map
zipped archive with map files, and some documentation on installation.

I'm fairly sure that these files are virus free but do your own scan.

They work for me but may not work for you

I've started to use Unicode a lot more in this and other places. In fact you will need to use Unicode to read this post. What is it, and why use it? Unicode is a standard for the encoding of letters and other written characters. In the old days the Americans (bless 'em) created a standard way of encoding English which is known by it's acronym: ASCII. Each letter was a assigned a number and this made encoding text much easier for computers. ASCII used one byte (8 bits) which gave it a limit of 256 characters. This just about does it for English, but of course many other languages are in use in the world, and some of them don't stick to the plain Roman characters familiar to English language speakers. Unicode solves this problem by using two bytes giving 256 x 256 = 65536 possibilities. Even this places limits, but it does mean that encoding non-Roman scripts is a possibility, and it also allows us to use a full range of diacritic marks - which is where it gets interesting for me.

I falteringly read Pāli, and I use a lot of Pāli and Sanskrit terms in my writing. Diacritics do matter in the writing of Indic languages. For instance the retroflex unvoiced stop ( ṭ ) is different from the dental unvoiced stop ( t ). Compare them in Devanāgarī for instance: ट and त are not at all alike, and are clearly distinguished in pronunciation. However in the early days of popular writing about Buddhism, publishers, who did not have readily available fonts to cope with the diacritics, nor proof readers who knew what they meant, just decided to do without them. Unfortunately this became the fashion. Scholars used them of course and this became a bit of a dividing line - serious Buddhist writing uses diacritics, but popular Buddhism does not. There is no good reason to continue this, but it's become a habit.

Until quite recently the internet reinforced this bad habit. HTML simply could not cope with anything other than ASCII (and it's one byte descendants). Several ASCII based encoding systems were invented. Let's say I want to write paṭicca-samuppāda. Two of the common methods of doing it in text look like this:

velthuis: pa.ticca-samuppaada
ITRANS: paTicca-samuppAda

Neither is very easy to read compared to properly printed text. Real problems emerge for nasals ṅ, ñ, and ṇ, and the sibilants ṣ and ś. One way around the problem was to create a special font that had to be installed before pages could be read. This works OK, but these home-made fonts use parts of the ascii scheme that are seldom used in English, and they do it idiosyncratically so that they are not interchangeable. If I use the Vipassana Research Institute font that comes with their CD of the Pāli Canon I get this if I change fonts:

VriRoman Pali: paµicca-samupp±da

Unicode solves this problem, and it is getting easier to use. On my visiblemantra.org website I used to hand code all of the extra characters. So for example ṭ = &#7789 and ā = &#257. This is time consuming, taxes the memory, and makes the source code difficult to read, but it results in a full set of Indic letters. And what's more the will display correctly in any Unicode font.

Unicode has not completely superseded the old style ASCII fonts. Since the sequence that contains the numbers and upper and lower case Roman letters are the same, for most people there is no incentive to change. We have our favourite fonts and we don't want to change. And actually there are still not many Unicode fonts to choose from. Windows and Mac both ship with a couple of Unicode fonts (For Windows Arial Unicode MS and Lucinda Sans Unicode) but not a version of Times Roman. Some fonts only implement a subset of the Unicode character set - so Times New Roman does have some extra characters, but not all the ones we need for Sanskrit.

When I set up visiblemantra.org I made the decision to use diacritics throughout the site. I believe that it is important to accurately represent the mantras. So you can't really read the site without setting a Unicode font in your browser options. I'm an early adopter and this will mean that some of the 200 or so visitors each day cannot read some of the text, but I hope I am making it more sensible for everyone to start using Unicode. Its a bit like DVDs or any of those new technologies. Some people hold out for as long as they can, but there comes a time when it just makes more sense to go with the new. I believe the time has come. I have used the occasion diacritic on this site before, but fudged it at times by leaving them off. From now on I plan to use diacritics all the time - which is to say that I intend to spell Sanskrit and Pāli words as they should be (taking into account my appalling spelling of course).

Two things have made the difference for me. Firstly I managed to get hold of a copy of the Windows Unicode font Times Ext Roman which has all the diacritics I need, and looks good both on screen and printed. Secondly I discovered how easy it is to make a keyboard map so I can type them whatever application I am using. I'm making both the font and the keyboard map available on visiblemantra.org, and I'd encourage everyone who reads this to go ahead and make the jump. I also have both a rough, and a detailed, guide to how to pronounce the letters of Sanskrit on visiblemantra.org.

Here's the Sanskrit alphabet in all its glory:

a ā i ī u ū e ai o au aṃ aḥ ṛ ṝ ḷ ḹ ka kha ga gha ṅa ca cha ja jha ña ṭa ṭha ḍa ḍha ṇa ta tha da dha na pa pha ba bha ma ya ra la va śa ṣa sa ha kṣa

See what you've been missing? (Hint: if not set your browser font to Unicode!)

A selection of fabulous Resources which rely on Unicode can be found at the following locations:

• Visible Mantra
  
• Tipiṭaka (Burmese Ed.)
• Pāli Canon Online Database (Thai Ed.)
• PTS Pāli English Dictionary
• Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon
• Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages

Violence and the Media

Memory Alpha

I've always loved reading science fiction, and enjoy science fiction movies and TV shows. My friends and I club together to buy seasons of Star Trek. Lately I've also seen some of the remade Battlestar Galactica and a new series called Heros. In these more recent shows there has definitely been a change in the way violence is depicted. It is more graphic, the obvious intent is to make it seem more real. It is more frequent. It is also more violent. Season three of Star Trek Next Generation, which I am watching at present, seems quite innocent by comparison.

Since my ordination retreat I have become a lot more sensitised to violence in the media. I find now that I cannot bear to watch much on the screen. The emotional response is too strong. I've also become aware of how violence is hyped in other media. Even the much vaunted BBC news focusses in on the most violent and shocking news. Perhaps their coverage is a little more sophisticated than a tabloid, but the tendency is to highlight stories which are violent - wars, disasters with many dead, mass murder, violent crime. These stories get the lead, and they are lingered over.

It is my firm conviction that the purpose of the media is to entertain. Fullstop. I no longer believe that "the news" is an exception to this. Stories are chosen on their potential for stimulating an emotional response, and written in such a way as to get the maximum emotion response from the target audience. It's all about creatingwhat physiologists call "arousal" . Violent images, whether intended as entertainment, or as "news", do have an affect on us even if the effect is below the threshold of consciousness.

Constant stimulation is not good for us. One only has to consider that in the UK mental health problems have replaced back-pain as the the no.1 cause of time off work sick, and of people on incapacity benefits. The thing about a fast pace of life is that our bodies cannot get back to their optimum resting state. My current understanding of depression is that it results from over-stimulation and an inability to process the physical effects of that stimulation. I recall an experiment we did in the 6th form on earthworms. Poke a worm and it writhes about vigorously in something analogous to our fight or flight response - it is making itself difficult to catch and eat. Wait till it stops and poke it again and it will respond with less vigour. Repeat this and the worm gives less response until after only 3 or 4 times it is unable to response to being poked. The lesson here is that constantly provoking a fight or flight response wears you out. I believe this is why depressed people avoid contact and anything stimulating - at worst they lie in bed in darkened rooms not moving.

Whether you realise it or not seeing violent images produces arousal in the body. This is generally short of the fully fledged fight or flight response. It can be sustained over longer periods and with more repetition. But it's clear that for many people it is happening too much, too often.

The knee jerk Buddhist reaction is to say that violence is a breach of the first precept, and violent images are in the same category. I think there is some truth to this, but it seems to me that it is more helpful to take a different tack. The Buddha liked to point out that the unenlightened are obsessed with, intoxicated by, totally caught up in sensual experiences - including the mind-sense. The Enlightened still have sensory experiences, but they have unhooked themselves emotionally from these. They are no longer caught up in the show, they no longer suspend disbelief. If everyday experience is intoxicating, then the media is like amphetamines, and media violence like crack cocaine.

Like any addict we do get a "hit", some kind of pay off, from the drug. Thanks to Will Buckingham of thinkbuddha.org I recently read Cordelia Fine's little book A Mind of it's Own. In it she makes the point that physiologically speaking it virtually impossible to tell the difference between emotions: her example focuses on fear and anger which are physically indistinguishable. The only difference is in your thoughts apparently. Emotion, she says, is arousal + emotional thoughts. What seems to be happening in the West is that we are seeking out more and more stimulating experiences, at the same time as substituting virtual contact via the internet, email, and virtual reality games, for real human contact. The media reflects this desire for more intense and more frequent stimulation. However this is a characteristic of addictive substances also - the addict needs more frequent, and higher strength doses, in order to get the same effect. Overdose is not uncommon because of this.

The Buddha's advice for those unable to disentangle themselves from sensory experience was to apply appamāda (vigilance*), and guard the gates of the sense; or as my teacher Sangharakshita says: reduce input. I decline to watch violence violent images in the media these days as I can tell that they have a lasting deleterious effect on my mental health.

Live long, and prosper.

~~oOo~~

* appamāda can be translated more literally as not blind drunk on the objects of the senses. I expand on this a bit in my essay on the Buddha's last words.

More on Confession

I've been following up my research into confession in Early Buddhism. It is clear from the Pali texts that no one short of Awakening is expected to be able to act ethically at all times. So there are procedures for monastics which deal with confession in quit some detail. As I mentioned in my earlier blog post on the confession of Ajatasattu, there are also some paradigms for confession which are not specifically for monastics. A model is put forward in a sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya (A i.103).

The first step is to realises that you have done something wrong. Often Buddhists will insist that there is no right and wrong, that actions are skilful or unskilful. Right and wrong create a too rigid dichotomy. The texts do however talk about "faults" and "transgressions". Transgression is quite a good word because it reminds us that we measure our behaviour against the scale of the ethical precepts that we take on as Buddhists. The Pali word is accayo which literally means "going on, or beyond". There are boundaries to behaviour. Until we have Awakened it may no come naturally to act in ways that cause no harm, either to ourselves or others. The metaphor in Pali, as it is in English, is that we "see" that we have transgressed. We see it for ourselves through reflection and introspection. We may not always be very good at recognising transgressions, but practising awareness heightens ethical sensitivity as well. Often it is a matter of, as Sangharakshita says, an imaginative identification with the other person.

It is important to recall here that what the Buddha meant by kamma was cetana - intention or volition (A vi.13). Karma was originally the ritual actions carried out by Brahmins to restore them to ritual purity. The Buddha turned the notion of "purity" on its head and said that it consisted in pure conduct - not breaking the ethical precepts. The vinaya talks quite explicitly about the purity/impurity of monastics in these terms (Vin i.124). Confession, in this way of thinking consists in two aspects. Firstly having seen one's transgression as a transgression, one reveals this to another person. Secondly one resolves to be restrained in the future.

The Ratana Sutta emphasise that one should waste no time in confessing (Sn 232 and SnA i.278). One should not conceal a transgression for even a moment. I think the reason for this relates back to the idea equating action with intention. The intention to hide a transgression is not a skilful intention. As I said in my earlier blog post it can be difficult to feel motivated to reveal a transgression with the threat of punishment hanging over you. However it is better to get it out! The Vinaya says that having transgressed and wishing to be pure again, should confess because revealing makes him comfortable (Vin i.103). With regards to who we should confess to, the Ratana commentary suggests a teacher; a wise person; or a fellow practitioner. The point of confession in very many of the passages I have been studying is "restraint in the future". Confession - experiencing remorse, revealing a transgression, and making a resolution not to transgress again, helps us to keep the precepts in future. In case it is not clear we do this in order to minimise harmful effects on ourselves and others.

Having returned ourself to purity we are in a position to hear, to accept in the Pali terminology, the confessions of others. This necessity for prior purity is emphaised in the Vinaya which sets out procedures for monastics to follow if, for instance, everyone in a particular monastery has "fallen into a fault". One monk must go and seek out others to whom he can confess and return to accept the confessions of their fellows (Vin i.126). This quid pro quo is quite important for the functioning of a spiritual community, although I do not think that strict ritual purity is necessary for non-monastics (see my rant on superstition and ritual purity). If we have taken on precepts, however, then we do need to have someone sympathetic with whom to talk over our practice of them. Accepting a confession need not be an empty ritual. In the Majjhima Nikaya 140 the Buddha does not immediately accept Bhaddhali's confession. It is clear that the Buddha knows Bhaddali quite well, and knows that he is a bit half-hearted and inattentive at times. Bhaddali must request acceptance three times and endure quite a severe reprimand in order to convince the Buddha of his contrition: at one point the Buddha says to him "weren't you, Bhaddali, at that time an empty, vain, failure?" (M i.440). Ouch!

One last thing which caught my eye this week is that the Vinaya does not allow for collective confession. Over the years I have seen a number of discussions of so-called "collective karma" - does it exist or not. In one story in the Vinaya however a monk who mentions that he is not the only one to have fallen into a particular fault, but that everyone in the monastery has also. But the message is clear: it is no business of yours whether another has or has not fallen into a fault: take care of your own faults! (Vin i.127) So, even if there is such a thing as collective karma, you are still responsible for your own actions.


image: www.ordinarymind.net

Recollecting the Buddha

I have been doing a lot of reading around the practice of recollecting the Buddha and making the links between this practice and the development of Buddhist mantra. The practice generally revolves around the Buddha Vandana - the list of epithets for the Buddha - which occurs in many places throughout the Pali Canon and is explained in detail by Buddhaghosa in his Visuddhimagga. The verses containing the epithets are also known as the "iti pi so gatha". My usual experience with the Visuddhimagga is that I find it turgid and confusing, however in summing up the benefits of practising the recollection of the Buddha, Buddhaghosa says:

And his body [sarīrampi], when the recollection of the Buddha’s special qualities [Buddhaguṇānussatiyā] dwells in it [ajjhāvutthañcassa], becomes [hoti] worthy of veneration [pūjārahaṃ] as a shrine room [cetiyagharamiva] - Vism VII,67.

I've been reading the scholarly literature on this subject and surprisingly none of the writers have made much of this passage. It is only one sentence but this seems to have enormous ramifications. It seems a rather remarkable thing for the usually dusty Commentator to say.

By cetiyaghara, translated as “shrine room” by Ñanamoli, we should probably understand a meditation hall with a stupa at one end, rather like the Caitya-hall at the Bhājā caves in Maharasthra. Although the dictionary definition of cetiya (Sanskrit: caitya) is "a sacred mound, cairn or monument", the term is virtuously synonymous with stupa. Allow me to labour the point here: the body of the one who is recollecting the Buddha can be treated as though it were stupa, or monument worthy of worship. The subjective imagined presence of the Buddha is worthy of the respect which was traditionally paid to stupas and relics of the Buddha. The stupa cult continues to this day and has even been transplanted in the West. It relies on the ability to imaginatively connect with the Buddha - to see the abstract shape of the monument in stone or concrete as something more than it's material form.

Even before the death of the Buddha his presence was invoked. The classic description of this comes at the end of the Sutta Nipatta where the new disciple Pingiya sings the Buddha's praises. He says:

“You see, Sir, said Pingiya, with constant and careful vigilance it is possible for me to see him with my mind as clearly as with my eyes, in night as well as day. And since I spend my nights revering him, there is not, to my mind, a single moment spent away from him" - Suttanipātta 1142

The practice of recollecting the Buddha must have been formalised quite quickly as it's representation in the Canon is rather formulaic, ie it always uses the verses from the Buddha Vandana. But in "Pingiya praises" we get a sense of the spirit behind the formulas. Once the Buddha died these kinds of practices would have taken on a new significance, the more so when everyone who had met him has also died. Within 50 or 60 years probably there would have been no one alive who had met the Buddha in person. So the person who could maintain the kind of imaginative contact with the Buddha that Pingiya could may well have been considered worthy of veneration. Some have argued that without direct contact with a Buddha that no Awakening would have been possible, but the canon itself shows that many people were liberated without having met the Blessed One. The texts I've been looking at show why this is so - given the inspiration and the method anyone can make progress in the Dhamma and be freed. Pingiya is freed by faith (saddha-vimutta) as are several of his companions.

We clearly see here the roots of the Pure Land traditions, and of Buddhist visualisation meditations. In Mahayana texts recollection of the Buddha continues to be important - Śantideva devotes a chapter of his Compendium or Śikṣasamuccaya to it. However the hearing or recollection of the name of the Buddha (or a Buddha) starts to emerge - in the Sukhavativyūha Sūtras for instance. A key moment in the history of mantra comes in the Saddharmapuṇḍarikā Sūtra or White Lotus Sutra (the earliest reference I have found) when the practice of recollecting the name of the Buddha, is supplemented by calling the name (of Avalokiteśvara in this case). Of course the easiest way to hear a name is to say it yourself. Then a few centuries later in the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra the chanting of the mantra of Avalokiteśvara is equated with recollection of his name, thus setting the scene for the Tantric revolution.

If we want to experience the presence of the Buddha in these difficult and testing times, we can. Like Pingiya there is no need for you to ever feel out of contact with the Buddha - simply bring him (or even her) to mind. There is a whole vast corpus of Buddhist art which has the precise function of helping us to make imaginative contact with the Buddha. In doing so you find your meeting, and according to Buddhaghosa you become like a holy shrine in the process and perhaps will inspire other people.

References:

Ñaṇamoli. 1997. The path of purification. Visuddhimagga. (Singapore Buddhist Meditation Centre) p.230. (=Vism VII,67.). The Pali reads: Buddhaguṇānussatiyā ajjhāvutthañcassa sarīrampi cetiyagharamiva pūjārahaṃ hoti

Suttanipātta 1142. trans. Saddhatissa 1985. The Sutta-Nipāta. (Surrey : Curzon Press), p.132.

image: votive stupa in the windhorse : evolution warehouse.