Virtual Community?

Over the past year or so I have been reflecting quite a bit on the Internet as a medium of communication and more recently have been pondering the phrase "virtual reality" and it's derivatives. I'm not sure when I first heard this term, but I recall reading William Gibson's Neuromancer in 1991. It was on the reading list for my post graduate librarianship course at Victoria University, NZ. I think it was recommended by Alastair Smith who I see is still on the staff there. Gibson played a big part in helping us to visualise what a virtual reality might look like, kind of like Arthur C. Clarke and satellites.

Virtual is an interesting word. It has been traced back to an Indo-European root *viltro meaning "freeman" (reconstructed roots are prefixed with an asterisk in linguistic circles). This manifests in Sanskrit and Avestan as the word vīra: "manly, mighty, heroic". And in the Buddhist technical term virya: "vigour, energy, effort, exertion". It comes into English via the Latin word vir: "man, hero". Along one branch it gives us the word "virtue" via the Old French vertu. And by another route we get "virtual" via Latin virtus, Medieveal Latin virtuosus, Middle English virtualis.

According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary "virtual" means:

adj. 1 that is such for practical purposes though not in name or according to strict definition. 2 Optics. relating to the points at which rays would meet if produced backwards. 3. Mech. relating to an infinitesimal displacement of a point in a system. 4. Computing. not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so.

Reality is of course a very difficult thing to define especially if we are using a Buddhist frame of reference. I'll leave it a bit vague for now. It seems to me that two meanings of the term "virtual reality" are intended. The first is that it is a computing term and suggests a reality which is not physical but is made to appear so. The second is more implied which is that virtual reality is a reality that is like reality for practical purposes.

Virtual reality is technically limited to total immersion environments that are designed to stimulate more than one sense simultaneously - usually sight, sound, and touch as a minimum - and give the sense of being in another reality, or something that is like a reality for practical purposes. These attempts to create a sense of being in a different reality are successful to some extent. However with the growth of the world wide web the idea of virtual reality is being applied to more and more situations. In particular I am interested in the notions of virtual community, and more specifically virtual sangha.

A virtual community is ostensibly a community which does not exist physically, but which is like a community for practical purposes. The connections between people are electronic often with an emphasis on plain text forms of communication. "Community" previously refer to a group of people who lived in close proximity and were connected through a variety of personal relationships. In the modern west this idea of community began to break down during the industrial revolution when communities were broken up by people moving away to cities for work. In the present a minority of people still live where they grew up and have maintained the relationships of their early life. We frequently live amongst strangers, don't know or speak to our neighbours, and live a days travel or more from our family. Families themselves used to encompass many layers of relatives, but increasingly have become nuclear - parents and children living in relative isolation. And of course nowadays many parents find living together intolerable and split up. Increasingly people are becoming isolated and cut off from each other - the basic unit of society is the individual. This is still not entirely true in more traditional societies. It's clear from talking to Indian friends for instance that the family is still the basic unit of society there. Community is also used in the sense of people with, for example, a common demographic (the Black community in the UK), or interest (the sporting community). The idea here being that relationships based on something other than geographical proximity constitute a community.

The idea of a virtual community can be seen as a response to the breakdown of actual community. Marshall McLuhan's famous statement that "the medium is the message" is meant to suggest that what humans value is a sense of connection and that electronic media represent a manifestation of this desire. By providing a series of electronic communication channels linking people they are provided with a sense of being a member of a community. I argued this in 2005 with respect to cell phones for instance: one's cellphone contacts are one's community. Social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook tap into the same desire to feel connected (incidentally I've abandoned using MySpace due to inappropriate ads appearing on my page).

Online forums and bulletin-boards and such like are another manifestation of this. These allow disparate people to exchange public text based messages. There is a peculiar feature of online forums, even or perhaps especially Buddhist forums: they frequently descend into acrimony and bickering. Why they do this is still a moot point, but after 12 years or more of participating I've found the pattern repeats itself. Despite the obvious potential of these media they appear to bring out the worst in many people. My thinking on this is that computer mediated communication is inherently unsatisfying, especially in comparison to face to face communication. And in computing terms I think the problem is partly to do with bandwidth, and partly to the relationship we have with writing.

Bandwidth is a term which is used to refer to the capacity of a channel to carry information - it originated in radio I believe. Plain text is a very narrow medium. For instance let's say that my Facebook friend changes there main image and I write "I like your new haircut". If I am talking to a person face to face I can make these same words for instance a compliment or an insult with a flick of my eyebrows, or an inflection in my voice. I can imply many things through tone of voice, timing, facial expression, and body language while using an identical phrase. This suggests that words are less important than we usually think in communication.

The second point is that spoken language is a natural thing for most of us. Most humans learn to speak their mother toungue with almost no effort. We learn language naturally. A man of my acquaintance has deaf parents and his first language is sign-language! Writing however does not come naturally. Learning to write is difficult and laborious. Expressing ourselves in writing is not natural, and so there is a much wider range of ability than with spoken language. In fact I'd say that most people are not that good at written communication, even when they are good at oral communication. It's not that there is no skill in oratory, but that it is more natural and therefore we all acquire some skill in it.

So here we have a medium with limited expressive possibilities and which most people actually find unnatural to some extent. This is not a good starting point. And in fact I think what happens when we try to rely on internet as a substitute for face to face communication we start to feel a sense of alienation. I suspect that this is why forums are often fractious. I'm extremely doubtful as to whether the current generation of internet can provide any real sense of community. Such a community is ersatz at best. It cannot satisfy the longing for a sense of connection and belonging. This is because relationships can't be built on words.

There are some benefits to the medium. The ubiquity of internet access amongst my existing friends has meant that it is easier to keep in touch with them. It makes it easier to publish my thoughts - although this is a two edged sword as the bandwidth is now flooded with trivia and pornography making information more difficult to find. I have one or two relationships which are purely online which approximate something like friendship, but on the whole without the personal contact the relationships don't provide much in the way of satisfaction.

So I'm not very enthusiastic about the possibilities of virtual communities or even virtual sanghas as a substitute for the real thing. There is no substitute for personal contact. I would argue that virtual community is not like community for practical purposes: "virtual community" is an oxymoron. There's nothing like the real thing...


___________________
29 Sept 2010

See also this article by Malcom Gladwell: Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted.

image: cover of Cybersociology Magazine : issue 2, 1997.

Language and Discrimination.

Benjamin Lee Whorf

In this short essay I want to draw attention to some features of the Buddhist attitude to language as they appear in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, and draw some parallels with the writings of the early 20th century linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf.

The Laṅka is an important text in East Asia, especially in the Zen schools. It is an unsystematic collection of teachings which draws on Yogacāra and Tathāgatagarbha streams of thought, and contains some very interesting passages on the subject of language and how it functions. Much of the material focusses on the process of (false) discrimination (vikalpa or parikalpa) which is a function of the discriminating consciousness (vijñāna) and results in erroneous conclusions about the world.

In the Laṅka the Buddha tells Mahāmati that words are neither the same nor different from discrimination "because words arise with discrimination as their cause". (XXXIII, p.76)(1) He goes on to confirm that words do not, indeed cannot, express the highest reality (paramārtha) since they are dependently arisen, and they are subject to decay and death. The Laṅka strikes a distinctively "Mind Only" note by adding:

Further, Mahāmati, word-discrimination cannot express the highest reality, for external objects with their multitudinous individual marks are non-existent, and only appear before us as something revealed out of mind itself." (XXXIII, p.77)

A few sections later the Laṅka comes back to this theme. Mahāmati enquires as to whether reality is a function of words. But the Buddha points out that some things which are not real are also denoted by words for example such as "hare's horns" or "tortoise hair" for instance. (XLII, p.91) This ability to name fantastic entities reinforces the notion that words do not express reality.

Laṅka also dwells in several places on the relationship of words and meaning (for instance in XLVI, LXI, LXV). There is a distinction here between relative and absolute similar to that in the Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna. Words can express a relative meaning, but not the absolute. Words illuminate meaning as a lamp reveals things in the dark. (LXV, p.134) However the Buddha warns: "do not fall into the secret error of getting attached to the meaning as expressed in words". (p.160) This is because the process which produces words, ie discrimination, is the same as that which gives rise to attachments and to false speculations about the nature of experience.(2) "As varieties of objects are seen in Māyā [ie illusion] and are discriminated [as real], statements are erroneously made, discriminations erroneously go on",(LXV, p.134) and later "That the unintelligent declare words to be identical with meaning, is due to their ignorance as to the self-nature of words... words are dependent on letters, but meaning is not" (LXXVI, 166-7). And again "words are bound up with discrimination and are the carrier of transmigration". (LXXVI, p.169)

The Laṅka appears to be the source of the now famous aphorism about the finger and the moon: "For instance, Mahāmati, when a man with his finger-tip points at something to somebody, the finger-tip may be taken wrongly for the thing pointed at". (LXXVI, p.169).

The overall impression is that because of the process of discrimination, i.e. of dividing the world up into nameable entities, we make a categorical error and assume that because we can identify something and name it, that it must be real in some sense (and specifically we are thinking in Buddhist terms here of something lasting, substantial and not disappointing - c.f. my earlier essay The Apparatus of Experience). It is this categorical error that keeps us ignorant and prolongs our suffering. Language therefore is problematic because it is a product of the system of error. It is semiotic in that we are able to communicate and make some sense of things, but it is also asemiotic because it hides the ultimate meaning from us if we use it naively - and everyone one except a Buddha does this. So now let us look at some ideas from Benjamin Lee Whorf.

Whorf has been somewhat eclipsed by contemporary linguists such as Noam Chomsky. However for Buddhists I think his thought has many interesting features. In one his discussions of grammar whorf says:

We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organise it in this way. [Whorf : 213]

By which he means we conceptualise nature in the way we do because of the grammar we have inherited as part of our culture. This operation is unconscious to the extent that we do not even perceive that we are doing anything of the sort: the way we think of the world, the way we divide it up, is completely natural and logical to us. Whorf's comparisons with North American Aboriginal languages, especially Hopi, show that this is far from the case. Whorf called this difference, which is so obvious between English and Hopi, Linguistic Relativism. This theory holds, he says:

that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated. [Whorf : 214]

It is difficult to summarise the evidence for Whorf's conclusion - it rests in analysing Hopi and other languages in terms of their relationship to English,(3) and all of this has to be expressed in English which can only express things in its own terms. As an example Whorf tells us that the Hopi language has no words that map onto the Indo-European concept of time. They do not express multiples of units of time, and indeed do not appear to have units of time at all. Day for instance, is not a unit of time but a state. You can't have more than one day, day is simply day, more like our "daytime". Day is when the sun is out. It's hard to get across because time, and units of time, are built into the grammar of English and it's almost impossible to think outside that frame work.

One of the most fundamental grammatically based distinctions we make is dividing the world into objects and processes - nouns and verbs. Another American Indian language has no words which we would think of as nouns. Everything is a process. And how often do we Buddhists say this: "everything is a process"? But the word "everything" is a noun. It makes the statement false in a sense. Things are not processes in our grammar and therefore, according to Whorf, we cannot help but conceive of them as things. We also make statements like "it is raining" grammatically implying an agent which is doing the raining. The agent is fictional, we know this, but it is there in our grammar and it affects our world view. Our world appears to be made up of agents and actions. Whorf shows that in cultures where the grammar is radically different this need not be the way the world is made up.

So it seems to me that the dilemma which is being spelt out in the Laṅka is quite similar in many ways to Whorf's account of grammar and its effect on our views. We might say that the process of making sense of our world is underpinned by the grammar of our language: we cannot help but see things in terms of nouns and verbs, agents and actions, because that grammar has become integral to our thinking. The Laṅka highlights the dilemma that this creates in terms of epistemology - we make categorical errors when deciding what our experience of the world is telling us. We evaluate the data of our sense and minds, in terms of agents and actions - we come to feel that agents in particular, are real. Not real in a thought-out philosophical sense, but in a more gut level way - to most of us it only becomes apparent that we think of "things" as real when we are confronted with a text like the Laṅka which says things are not real, and we rebel against the idea.

Whorf's account of the influence of grammar on world view is interesting because it is a confirmation of the Buddhist approach, and it is logical and presented in rationalistic terms. It should therefore appeal to a Western Buddhist audience. He confirms Buddhist observations of how the mind makes sense of its input from the senses. There are also parallels with contemporary neuroscience that others have already begun to explore - I find the work of Antonio Damasio illuminating for instance, but that is a subject for another essay.

As Buddhists we recognise a central problem: how to correctly understand our experience of the world. We tend to project onto experience qualities which are the opposite of what it is really like. And this leads to constant disappointment. Both Whorf and the Laṅka show that the problem is not a trivial one. Our world view, the way we interpret our experience, is determined by deep grammatical structures (according to Whorf), but even more fundamentally by the very cognitive processes which give rise to language (according to the Laṅka). Making a change at this level of our psyche is never going to be easy. Even knowledge of the nature of the problem is conceived of within the system which is problematic, and this knowledge of itself cannot be enough to effect the major change required. This change is referred to as parāvṛitti and translated by Suzuki as "revulsion". However I think Sangharakshita comes closer to the spirit of the word when he renders it as "a turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness". (Sangharakshita 1994)


Notes.

1. In citing the Laṅka I will give the section no. assigned by Suzuki, and the page number in his translation. I have consulted the Sanskrit text to some extent mainly establishing key words as I don't know much Sanskrit. Suzuki for instance translates vāc as "words" throughout these passages. It would more usually mean "speech", and while there may be a reason for selecting "words" Suzuki doesn't give it. Return to text.

2. For those familiar with Ruichi Abe's The Weaving of Mantra, this is where I find his argument comes unstuck. He seems to be mapping the contemporary Western notion of the distinction between things as what makes them meaningful onto the Buddhist notion of discrimination. He wants this to be a "semiosis" or meaning making process, and for Kūkai in particular to have adopted this kind of view. However discrimination, while it does produce the identification of separateness and words to name things, is in Buddhism a source of illusion and falsification! We know that Kūkai was familiar with this kind of argument, and with the Laṅka in particular since he quotes from it. Abe seems not to take this into account in his argument and it is a fatal flaw. He further errs, in my opinion, by not taking into account the ancient episteme which must still have been functioning in Kūkai's time. And this says that for there to be knowledge there must be sameness, rather than difference. Indeed section LX (p.122 f.) of the Laṅka dwells on the importance of sameness in the Enlightened consciousness. I am currently also exploring the idea that some of these Laṅkāvatāra passages form part of the background for Kūkai's linguistic work: Shōji jissō gi. Return to text

3. Whorf reminds us that all Indo-European languages, the family of languages which includes both English and Sanskrit, are quite closely related when it comes to world view. Return to text


Bibliography

• Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1956. Language, thought, and reality : selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. (John B. Carroll. ed.) Cambridge Massachusetts : The MIT Press. See especially Science and linguistics (p.207-219)
• Sangharakshita. The meaning of conversion in Buddhism. Birmingham : Windhorse Publications, 1994.
  
• Suzuki, D. T.
  • The Lankavatara sutra : a Mahayana text. London : G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1932.
  • Studies in the Lankavatara sutra, one of the most important texts of Mahayana Buddhism. London : G. Routledge, 1930.
  
  

image: Benjamin Lee Whorf. This image appears on more than a dozen websites and appears to be public domain.

Reading Buddhist texts

The average Buddhist reader has a naive approach to Buddhist texts. At worst we take them at face value as being what the texts themselves say they are: the actual words of the Buddha. At best we are slightly suspicious about translations, and might compare more than one when studying a text.

We all interpret texts. The study of the methods we employ when we read a text, the presuppositions and assumptions we bring to text, and the ideas that underlie how we understand a text, is known as Hermeneutics. The hermeneutic we employ in reading a text, or what we believe the text to represent even, determines to a large extent what we understand a text to be saying. As an exercise in this post I'm going to write about some of my working assumptions in reading a Buddhist text.

I am strongly influenced by contemporary Buddhology. For instance on the basis of scholarship - linguistic, historical, and text critical - I do not believe that the words preserved in Buddhist texts can have been literally spoken by the historical Buddha. The evidence is overwhelmingly that the Buddha did not speak Pāli or Sanskrit or any of the other languages in which texts are preserved. Therefore the texts have been translated at least once. Equally I do not accept that all of the teachings literally came out of the mouth of one person. The Buddhist doctrine evolved over time and new ideas and practices were added at each step along the way. Clearly some texts were written after the lifetime of the Buddha (I do accept the high likelihood of there having been a historical Buddha).

The Buddhist texts were preserved as an oral tradition for several centuries, and there is little or no evidence for the use of sophisticated mnemonic techniques as used by the Brahmins to preserve the integrity of the text. Also as you read the texts it's clear that some passages have been inserted rather crudely by some later editor. Presumably other more skilled editors were at work. Then there are differences between the Pāli texts and surviving parallels in other languages. Comparing the Pāli and Gāndhārī Dhammapadas for instance one can immediately see that they are far from identical. Some doctrines have been played down by some schools -0 such as the practice of mettā in Theravada. So Buddhist texts can not have the status of divine revelation.

One problem that emerges out of assuming that all the teachings came at once is that there are contradictions. In attempts to resolve these difficulties Buddhists have historically had to make some teachings provisional, and others ultimate. But this is problematic because each text proclaims itself to be the ultimate and final teaching of the Buddha, only to be superseded as something new emerges. The centuries have left us with many unstable towers of texts each one claiming to be the final teaching. Sangharakshita has said that there are no higher teachings, only deeper realisations. Following Sangharakshita I think it is time to dismantle the hierarchies of value and accept that texts emerged over time. If a text is profound, then it is profound. The fact that some later disciple wrote it on the basis of their own experience should not lessen it's value. in other words are we interested in truth or lineage?

Another important aspect of my hermeneutic is that I see texts as idealised. Texts are unreliable guides to history because they are what some people thought the ideal was at some point in time. We need an historical perspective which is not available from the texts themselves in order to fully appreciate that this is so. Greg Schopen for instance, in a long career of iconoclastic debunking of sacred cows, has emphasised the point that epigraphical and archaeological evidence often provides flat contradictions to the texts. Monks not only frequently handled money, for instance, but in at least one case actually printed it! Generally speaking we could say that a text represents the social and spiritual ideal as it was conceived by a particular community at the time it was written. The Pāli commentaries to the Suttas for instance tell us more about Buddhism in 5th century CE Sri Lanka, than they do about 5th century BCE India. They are still useful for understanding the texts they comment on, especially in terms of philology, but must be read cautiously for historical value. In fact some scholars have concluded that Buddhist texts have nothing useful to say about the history of Buddhism. This is going too far I think, but highlights the dilemma.

Many scholars now point to influences in the Buddhadharma. It seems pretty clear that many early Buddhist teachings are in response to Brahminical and Jain religious discourse for instance, and that Tantric Buddhism was in dialogue with Śaivism. I have found one or two examples of this myself, but Prof. Richard Gombrich has lead the scholarly investigation of the sources of the Buddha's ideas. Some concepts can't really be understood without reference to Vedic or Vedantic doctrine. The clearest example of this ātman (Pāli attā) which has it's roots in the general religious discourse of the day, a discourse which is seldom if ever replicated in the modern West. This should not be confused with the early 20th century idea, also popular with Hindu scholars, that Buddhism is a kind of reformed or even unreformed Hinduism. The point is that the Buddha responded to his audience which was frequently deeply versed in Vedic lore. He had to communicate in terms which would be understood by his audience - though he frequently redefines words as he goes. But there are also examples of Buddhist and Hindu texts (for example the Dhammapada and the Mahābharata) which draw on a common pool of religious or moral stories. Aspects of the Pāli canon, the obvious worship of yakṣas for instance do not seem especially Buddhist, but relate to what the people around the Buddhists believed.

We must also remember that Indian religious traditions interacted in a way that it quite foreign to the West. In an earlier post [Religion in India and the West] I compared the Indian religious attitude to the Microsoft business model. Each Indian tradition has adopted and adapted ideas from the others. Where one tradition begins to dominate, the minority religions will borrow their ideas, symbols, and practices. During the time when the Tantra emerged amongst the ruins of the Gupta Empire in the 6th century, many different traditions were synthesised into a grand new pattern incorporating various strands of Buddhism, Vedic ritual, Śaiva ritual and iconography, Vaiṣṇava devotional practices and so on. Westerners have tended to characterise this as a degeneration. Contemporary scholarship has exposed the origins of this attitude in Protestant criticisms on the Catholic church based on the model of the Roman Empire. In fact Tantric Buddhism was a much needed revitalisation of Buddhism, but one which may have had too little influence on mainstream Buddhism to save it from collapse. The decline of Buddhism is often attributed to the invasion of Islamic forces from Persia, but they were only the final nail in the coffin of a moribund institution. The vigour of Tantric Buddhism is obvious in Tibet. In Japan Tantric Buddhism dominated for 400 years, but was eclipsed to some extent by indigenous forms such as Zen and Jodo Shin Shu - although not many people know that Shingon is still the largest Buddhist sect in Japan.

Finally I would say that over recent times I have become increasingly suspicious of translations. Translations often hide a multitude of sins. There are huge problems with representing the intellectual content of Buddhism in English. English language and culture is vastly different from Indian. Often the connotations of an English word used as a translation of a Buddhist technical term are entirely unhelpful. For instance it is quite misleading to translated Dharma as "Law", but this frequently happens. The translator must make a large number of discriminations and decisions in translating a text. Just as in English a word in Pāli or Sanskrit may have a range of meanings (polysemic). Some words are highly polysemic and deciding which of sometimes a dozen or more potential senses are indicate depends on how well the translator knows the language (and English), how deeply they understand the Dharma, and

We need also to be aware that what is available in English translation is not the entire corpus of Buddhist texts. While the Pāli canon has been translated more or less entirely, the older translations are unreliable. In the case of Māhayāna Sūtras we have only a small proportion in English. It is most likely that this has skewed our understanding of the development and emphases of the Mahāyāna. [see also Which Mahāyāna Texts?] Many scholars think for instance that the influence of the White Lotus Sūtra in India was negligible, and that it is a rather idiosyncratic text.

I hope that all of this skepticism does not add up to cynicism. But it's clear that I express a lot more doubt about the provenance of texts and the uses that they are put to, than most of my peers and colleagues. I find that I continue to be fascinated by Buddhist texts and textual studies. I have also found that my studies inform and enrich my practice of Buddhism. I suppose I want to call for an intelligent and informed approach to texts. I am far more intellectual than most of my peers and don't expect them to adopt my rather intellectual approach, but I do hope that if you've read this then you might spend a bit of time examining your beliefs about the texts. Where do your beliefs come from, and on what are they based? Are their elements of blind faith in there for instance? It's good to be aware of biases, of likes and dislikes, and to see how they operate to shape your experience of the world.

Often we are looking for certainty and there is a lingering desire for the texts to be the Absolute Truth (paramartha satya). This is both generally true of humans, but especially true in the post-christian west where ideas of absolutes, and concrete answers remain in our psyches. Since Absolute Truth cannot be summed up or put into words we should be at least a bit suspcious of texts. What words are good for is giving us the recipe. They cannot give us the experience of eating the cake.


image: Sinhalese Buddhist text. Jayarava on Flickr.

Dhammapada 5 - 6

na hi verena verāni, sammantīdha kudācanaṃ
averena ca sammanti, esa dhammo sanantano

pere ca na vijānanti, mayamettha yamāmase
ye ca tattha tato sammanti medhagā

Not by hatred are hatreds calmed at any time
By non-hatred they cease, this teaching is primeval

And others don't realise that we should be restrained.
But if they do realise this, then they will settle quarrels.

Verse 5 is one of the most famous Buddhist aphorisms. Hatred is like fuel on the fire, it only leads to more hatred. These two verse continue the theme established in verses 3 and 4: that we are never justified in holding a grudge. Vera, translated here as hatred can also mean "revenge, hostile action." It's actually related to the term vīra which usually translates as "hero" but can also mean something like "mighty". Avera then is the absence of hatred: "friendliness, friendly, peaceable".

The verses tell us that this idea is sanantano or "primeval, or "of old, for ever, eternal", the word being related to the Latin senex, and the English senile. So it could mean that the teaching is old, or that it will always apply.

Either way it is an important principle. And those who know this principle restrain their hatred (line 6a). Actually the first line of verse 6 is difficult to translate because the word yamāmase seems only to occur once (a hapax legomenon), and is of unclear etymology. I have followed K.R. Norman in reading it as an optative of √yam a verbal root meaning 'restraint'. Others relate it to the god of death Yama, and make the line say something like: Others do not know that we must all face death. There is good and useful Dharma in this approach. It reminds us that our future destination depends on our conduct in this life. If we indulge in hatred the traditions suggests that we are destined for the hell-realms. I would say that being angry has a hellish quality anyway. [see also Jayarava Rave. 08-02-2008: The Anger Eating Yakkha] That said however, the idea of restraint seems to fit the context a little better I think.

Although it is clear that the text is saying not to hold grudges, and that when one feels anger one should restrain oneself, it's not entirely clear how one might do that from these verses. There is such a plan in the Aṅguttara Nikāya however (sutta V.161). Here we find five methods for dealing with grudges:

• Practice the brahma-vihāra meditations. If you feel hatred towards someone then try to cultivate the opposite: ie love, compassion, equanimity. (the text suggests mettā, karuṇā, and upekkhā but leaves out muditā and so counts this as three methods). We could call this 'cultivating the opposite'.
  
• Pay the person no attention, give no thought to them. This is sometimes called the "blue sky mind" approach - don't feed the feelings and they will subside.
  
• Reflect on the consequences. Particularly reflect that whatever bad thing that person has done to you, they will have to experience the fruit of that action which will be painful for them!
  

There is an obvious link between non-hatred (avera) and loving-kindness (mettā), so cultivating mettā could well have been what the Buddha meant in this case. When we cultivate love, the opposite of hate, then hate cannot find a purchase in our hearts. I suspect that muditā or sympathetic joy was left off the list because it would be difficult to cultivate towards someone to whom you grudge happiness. Best to start with simply not hating them, build towards love, and then perhaps we can take joy in their joys.

A more active form of the blue sky approach which I find quite useful is to think about something else. Many of my raves for this blog have resulted from me taking up a subject to reflect on precisely to stop my attention wandering onto less helpful subjects.

Reflecting on the consequences is also, effectively, reflecting on the Dharma. This is inherently positive. In Dhammapada 3-4 we saw that hatred is never a good thing - that the effects on us of entertaining anger are always negative. So reflect on the consequences of that person shouting at you, or bashing you. As I noted last week, our culture is one in which we seek to punish (ie inflict harm upon) anyone who breaks the law. But since some one who abuses us will suffer anyway, is there really a need to inflict more suffering on them. The question is: "would seeing another person suffer make us happy?" If we see that other person as a human being, then we will not feel joy at their suffering. We know what suffering feels like. We know how unbearable it can be. We know that if we inflict pain because we are angry, that person will become angry and inflict pain also. This has to stop. We must try to stop the cycle of anger and harming. Really reflecting on the causes and consequences of anger and hatred is quite sobering. If we reflect on what might have led a person to want to harm us, we will find fear and anger at the root of it. If we wonder why are they experiencing fear and anger, then we will see that they too have been victims of other people's fear and anger. They have learned this wrong lesson that we seem to teach everyone - that despite what we may say, anger and lashing out are legitimate responses some times.

I recall in Michael Moore's film, Bowling for Columbine, Mike was interviewing a PR man at Lockheed-Martin the massive weapons manufacturing business. They were standing in front of a very large missile, one that could only be used to strike at many people a very long way away (i.e. a weapon of mass destruction). He held his arms wide and his hands open, in the classic gesture of honesty, and said that he did not understand why these boys, who had gunned down many of their school mates, would resort to violence to resolve their problems. Why indeed? A very large missile, designed to deliver weapons of mass destruction is just the result of coordinated hatred, and of course our leaders do often resort to violence to solve their problems with the help of weapons manufacturers like Lockheed-Martin. And we often allow the emotions like hatred to persist in our minds. Of course we might take our revenge by something as simple as withdrawing our affection, or by doing something we know to be annoying. We might not be using a missile to kill thousands of people, or a handgun to kill our classmates. But it is only the scale that is different. If we were angry enough, and someone put a gun in our hand... well sometimes perhaps it doesn't pay to dwell on the consequences for too long. Just enough get the message and move on.

There is a definite sense in these early texts of working to eliminate negative or harmful mental states. There is none of the psycho-babble about allowing your anger to have expression or find an outlet. This is because from the Buddhist point of view the angry thought harms you, and any action undertaken with anger in mind will cause harm (viz my post on Dhammapada 1 - 2). Hatred is harmful so do what you can, whatever you have to, in order for it to subside. There is also no sense in early Buddhist texts of just thinking of anger as 'energy' as some Tantric traditions might do. Sure, there is energy: but are we alert enough, aware enough, Awake enough to refrain from hurting when we are angry? Not in most cases I think. Not without a great deal of training, and a great deal of mettā. Better to err on the side of caution with anger. It can be insidious. We can find ourselves justifying little cruelties to ourselves and others on the basis that "it's just energy", or "it's for their own good". Better to just nip it in the bud.

Bearing grudges only makes you miserable, and you are probably holding onto the possibility of harming someone in return for the harm they caused you. Hatred is never pacified by hatred - it never has been and it never will be. It is only by the opposite, by avera - non-hatred, that hatred is pacified. The good news is that by not bearing grudges, by not holding out for revenge, the hate will subside in you. When hate subsides it makes room for other more positive emotions. Dwelling in mettā all the time is equated with nibbāna in many texts.


See also my commentary on Dhammapada v.1-2, and v.3-4

Dhammapada verses 3 - 4

akkocchi maṃ avadhi maṃ ajinji maṃ ahāsi me
ye ca taṃ upanayhanti veraṃ tesaṃ na sammati

akkocchi maṃ avadhi maṃ ajinji maṃ ahāsi me
ye ca taṃ n'upanayhanti veraṃ tesaūpasammati

"He abused me, he beat me, he overpowered me, he took from me."
In those who bear these grudges hatred is not stilled

"He abused me, he beat me, he overpowered me, he took from me."
In those who don't bear these grudges hatred settles and ceases.

akkocchi is verbal abuse, while avadhi is physical abuse. ajini comes from the root ji which means "to have power" or "to conquer" and so can mean overpowered, conquered, vanquished. Āhara is the past tense of hara "to take" and me is probably the genitive, so āhara me literally means "he took mine" - it is most often translated as "robbed me" or "stole from me". Sangharakshita has pointed out that the second precept against "taking the not given" has a broader frame of reference - it is not just stealing material things, but taking from someone anything which they have not willingly given you - their time or energy for instance.

These verses are said to have been spoken by the Buddha approximately 25 centuries ago. What this immediately tells us is that some things have not changed. Back then people shouted abuse at each other, they physically attacked each other. Some people tried to dominate their fellows. Some people took things that weren't theirs or that they were not entitled to. I find this quite a thing to reflect on. In 2500 years the human species as a whole has not evolved at all in the ethical sphere. So much for progress. Fortunately some individuals have evolved, and as individuals we all have the potential to evolve ethically and spiritually.

These two verses are only the bear bones of a manifesto for an ethical evolution, even perhaps a revolution. What they are fundamentally saying is that bearing hatred (vera) towards someone is never justified, no matter what they have done to you. This is not what we have learnt in our lives, not what we do on the whole, and seems almost shocking on first contact. Hatred in all it's manifestations is never justified. There is no righteous anger in Buddhism, no room for righteous indignation. Both terms are oxymoronic according to the Buddha. Most of us feel justified in being angry about something or someone, and about cultivating that anger, keeping it alive, feeding it, allowing it to fester. But the Buddha says no to all of this. Never allow anger to persist.

Because we are human our first response to being shouted at, or hit, or if someone tries to overpower us, or take our stuff, may be fear; but anger is usually not far behind. This is understandable. We can see anger is helpful for survival: it marshals our energy reserves (by preparing the body for action) and moves us away from danger, or prepares us to fight for survival. Most often there is nothing we can do about our physiological response to a threat - the reaction is instinctive, and most of us might not be alive today if that response had not kicked in at some appropriate moment in the past.

It is important not to beat yourself up for getting angry. Angry is instinctual. The verb in the second line of each verse is upanayhati which means: 1. to come into touch with; 2. to bear enmity towards, grudge, scorn. I've translated as "bear a grudge" because this seems the most useful way to approach it. For most of us it's not the initial reaction that is problematic, it is the ongoing anger, the grudge, the holding onto hurt, the contemplation or seeking of revenge.

When we hold on to hateful thoughts what happens? One thing is that while we replay the images or the conversation in our head we continue to re-experience the physical responses associated with the event. Say someone shouts at us, and there is an altercation. Our body prepares for action: the adrenal glands release adrenaline into our blood; our heart rate jumps and blood pressure rises; muscles tense ready for action. This can all happen in a moment, and yet it takes quite a few minutes to allow everything to settle back to a resting state. If we constantly replay the events in our minds, then we stir our bodies up, we may even vividly re-experience the the upset or even trauma of an event. Our bodies may continue to maintain a state of alertness for danger, of readiness for action, without ever fully relaxing. Over a long period of time this can be quite damaging to our body and our mind: one thinks of heart problems for instance, or of clinical depression. So holding onto hateful thoughts might be bad for our health in the long term.

Another possibility is that we become "an angry person". When we are constantly stimulating anger in ourselves, we feel angry, and we look angry: we scowl, we frown and grimace. We SOUND angry! Our body language communicates anger as well. Other people will be aware of this incipient hatred and experience it as a threat. It is quite clear to us when someone is angry, and we all know from experience that angry people are the ones who shout and hit, who try to overpower us, and so what do we do? We avoid them. It's only logical to avoid angry people - it is self preservation. Compare for instance the Rev. Iain Paisley with the Dalai Lama. Who would you rather spend time with? One very angry man (though admittedly much less so these days) and one who despite provocation does not express anger (in public at least). What's more people who are angry find it hard to communicate: even if you have something reasonable to say, you'll find that people are much less willing to listen if you are angry (unless perhaps they are angry about the same thing). So if you're angry a lot you're likely also to be lonely.

Holding grudges and exacting revenge prolongs conflicts and creates the conditions for more and more people to be harmed. We've all of us been harmed by someone, and probably all done harm even if only inadvertently. As the proverb goes: if an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth were really the rule; we would all be blind and toothless. The cycle has to stop somewhere. Why not with you, in you, right now?

On a deeper level there is the underlying tendency to refuse painful experiences. We can't avoid some unpleasant sensations. It makes sense to avoid pain if it is avoidable, but sometimes we must simply have a painful experience. At the very least we are all going to die, and then we must be prepared to hold that pain in our awareness just as we would a pleasurable sensation. Holding of grudges suggests that somewhere in our being we are saying "it's not fair", and we are holding back from experiencing the pain of that injustice. This is a wrong view of the world. Such a view causes us constant disappointment. Of course it isn't fair if someone shouts at us or bashes us. But life isn't fair. Experiences arise in dependence on causes, and we must constantly be trying to see this process in action whether we enjoy the experience or not.

So I think it's clear that bearing grudges is counter-productive by any rational criteria - whether or not you believe in rebirth, or Awakening, or other traditional Buddhist beliefs. What these verses do not tell us is the "how". How can we possibly not hate the person who has inflicted harm on us? The next two verses go into this little, and I'll deal with them in my next post along with some help from another text.

See also my commentary on Dhammapada v.1-2.

Dhammapada verses 1 - 2

mano pubbaṅgamā dhammā manoseṭṭhā manomayā
manasa ce paduṭṭhena bhāsati vā karoti vā
tato naṃ dukkham anveti cakkaṃ va vahato padam

mano pubbaṅgamā dhammā mansoeṭṭhā manomayā
manasa ce pasannena bhāsati vā karoti vā
tato naṃ sukham anveti chāyā va anapāyinī

Mind precedes experience, mind is foremost, [experience is] mind-made.
If, with a corrupt mind one speaks or acts:
From this disappointment and suffering follow as the wheel, the foot of the ox.

Mind precedes experience, mind is foremost, [experience is] mind-made.
If, with a clear mind one speaks or acts:
From this happiness and well-being follow like an inseparable shadow.

This is a fairly literal translation which largely retains the structure of the Pāli. Two interesting philological features are pointed out by K.R. Norman and John Brough with regard to these verses. Firstly the word anveti appears to be a Sanskritisation. Norman suggests that Pāli would usually resolve the consonant cluster nv to nuv, but here it doesn't. Secondly Brough (p.243) points out in his notes to the Gāndārī Dhammapada that vahatu (vahato being the genitive case) is an archaic word not in the Pali Text Society's Pali-English Dictionary. The word means ox, and vahato padam is “foot of the ox”, where pada is also used in it’s archaic sense of "foot", as opposed to it's later more abstract meaning "word" as in the title of the Dhammapada: "the word of the doctrine".

The archaic forms suggest age, but the Sanskritisation may also indicate later editing or composition. Perhaps an old image re-used? Interestingly the Pāli commentators (Sri Lanka, ca 5th century) seem to have understood the sense of “vahato padam” but not the words, so come to the right conclusion by some tortuous arguments. This is evident in many Dhammapada translations which treat vahato as a present-participle meaning something like "bearer".

In these verses the terms mano and dhammā (nominative plural) are twinned, as are sukha and dukkha, and paduṭṭha and pasanna. Mano and dhammā in this context are the mind which senses mental "objects", and those "objects" or dhammas. This is the more specific meaning of mano, which is sometimes also used synonymously with other words for "mind" such as citta and viññana. Dhamma has such a wide range of meanings that it can be misleading to settle on one in particular, but here does seem to indicate the mental phenomena which the mind senses - in these cases it is usually written in lower-case. Note also that mind here includes the emotions, and other subjective experiences. Mano also coordinates the mental responses to the information coming in from the five physical senses. I have chosen the word "experience" as a translation of dhamma in this case because it covers both the mental and physical aspects. I have justified using "experience" to translate dhamma in other contexts as well, particularly in my essay on the Buddha's Last Words.

Mano is that part of us that cognizes experience, that part of us that knows we are experiencing. And these verses are saying that mano comes first. But why? Other Buddhist models of the psyche suggest that mind, in the sense of citta, arises in dependence on contact of sense organ with sense object. It is important not to get caught up in the various models here. This is a pragmatic teaching. Mind comes first in these verses because mental states determine actions, and therefore consequences. The Buddha famously said: Cetanāhaṃ, bhikkhave, kammaṃ vadāmi - I say, monks, that intention is action [A vi.63]. This is why we must focus on the mind.

Actions arising from a mind which is paduṭṭha (spoiled, rotten, corrupt, literally "made bad") lead to dukkha - which I translate as "disappointment". However actions which are directed by a mind which is passana (clear, bright, good) result in sukha or bliss. The latter term is one which was in use before the Buddha. Brahman, the universal absolute has three characteristics: being, consciousness, and bliss (sukha). Brahman is also nitya (Pali nicca) or eternal. So in a Brahminical context sukha has a connotation of the goal of the spiritual life: union with Brahman. I think the Buddha may well have been employing sukha as a synonym for nibbāna - drawing on the Brahminical imagery as we know him to have done in many other cases. Despite this I have translated sukha as happiness and well-being. References to underlying Brahminical metaphors are often confusing to modern Buddhists who are frequently ignorant of the Brahminical context of some of the Buddha's sermons. Happiness here though does mean true happiness, the highest happiness, the bliss of nibbāna.

Dukkha, then, is the opposite of nibbāna. This gives it a much broader scope than is usually suggested by translations such as "suffering". When we read "suffering" we tend to think of physical pain or injury. But dukkha characterises all unenlightened experience. At this point you may be thinking "aha! Jayarava has fallen into that old trap of stating, contra the Dharma itself, that everything is suffering". However I am making a more subtle point. Not every experience is physically painful, but we the unenlightened have habitual tendencies which make even pleasure a disappointment. This operates at the level of immediate responses to vedana or sensations. Typically when we experience a pleasant sensation we want it to last, and when we have an unpleasant sensation we want it to stop now. We seek out pleasure, and avoid pain. I have argued at length in my essay on the Buddha's Last words that it is at this level of experience that dependent arising is really important. It is experiences (sensations including mental sensations and our responses to physical sensations) that are impermanent (anicca). The disappointment (dukkha) comes because we fail to grasp the nature of experience - we think of it as, or desire it to be, lasting (nicca). Because experiences (dhammā) are impermanent (anicca) they are disappointing (dukkha). The argument showing how this ties in with the doctrine of anattā would take a bit long to spell out, but it relates to the Brahminical idea about ātman being Brahman in the microcosm, and therefore necessarily having sukha as a characteristic - anything which has dukkha as a characteristic cannot be the ātman. A purely psychological understanding of ātman as simply 'ego' is, I think, a bit limited.

The verses are saying that we experience dukkha if our mind is corrupt. That is, if we fail to see and understand the nature of experience (yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana), then suffering follows, just as the wheel follows the ox which draws the cart - as the wheel follows the foot in the simile of the verses. The image for sukha is subtly different. If our mind is clear and bright (pasanna) then we see things as they are, and bliss cleaves to us. For dukkha the sense is that one thing follows another, and the two are distinct. A shadow however is simply an extension of our body - the shadow moves with us, moves as we move, instantaneously. Our shadow is inseparable (anapāyinī literally not-going-away). Apāyinī can also connote "a falling away (in conduct)" or "transient state of loss or woe after death" [PED sv apāya] so that anapāyinī (not-apāya), like sukha, suggests the goal of the Buddhist life: not falling away from good conduct, not falling into state of loss or woe.

So mind is first, mind is foremost, and things are said to be mind-made because mind determines the results of our actions. Those results are experienced as vedana (pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral sensations) and it is our response to vedana that determines whether we experience 'being' as dukkha or sukha, ie saṃsāra or nibbāna. If we fail to understand our existential situation we can expect only dukkha. Of course Buddhism offers us a plethora of tools for the job of waking up, and tells us that everyone can wake up. So while unawakened experience is disappointing, it is not the only possibility. There is every reason for optimism.

~~oOo~~

References

• Brough, John, ed. The Gandhari Dharmapada (London: Oxford University Press, 1962).
• Norman, K.R., trans. The Word of the Doctrine (Oxford: The Pali Text Society, 1997).

See also my commentary on Dhammapada v.3-4



Note: 26 Aug 2019

Agostini, Giulio. (2010). 'Preceded by Thought Are the Dhammas': The Ancient Exegesis on Dhp 1-2. Buddhist Asia 2. Papers from the Second Conference of Buddhist Studies Held in Naples in June 2004. Edited by Giacomella Orofino and Silvio Vita. Italian School of East Asian Studies, Kyoto 2010. https://www.academia.edu/4084875/Preceded_by_Thought_Are_the_Dhammas_The_Ancient_Exegesis_on_Dhp_1-2

The most ancient retrievable understanding of (DHp 1-2) is that 1. mental action precedes bodily and verbal actions (dharmā), 2. among them, mental action is the most important one, and 3. they are prompted by mental action. All Buddhists would accept these statements, and it will suffice to quote Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośa IV 1c-d: cetanā mānasaṃ karma tajjaṃ vākkāyakarmaṇī ‘mental action is volition, and what arises from it are verbal and bodily actions’. (24)

The Apparatus of Experience

Sue Hamilton's book Early Buddhism a New Approach is not an easy read, but it is very rewarding. I found in it a doctrinal confirmation and clarification of my intuitions about the Dharma. I had been asking myself - what is it that arises in dependence on causes? (Jayarava Rave 8 April 2008) My answer had shifted from "things" to "experiences". This is reflected also in my translation of the Buddha's last words: "all experiences are disappointing..."

Central to Hamilton's book, and building on her earlier published work is a re-examination of the canonical references to the khandhas (Sanskrit skandha). These are typically described as encompassing the whole human being - there is nothing outside of the khandhas. Hamilton demonstrates that actually the khandhas are not meant to literally encompass the whole being, but do make up the minimum required apparatus for experience: hence "apparatus of experience". I like this little phrase and its implications very much.

A quick digression here to a suggestion by Prof. Gombrich about the translation of khandha - again from the Numata Lectures and appearing in his forthcoming "What the Buddha Thought". Khandha is most often translated by words such as aggregate, group or category, or (by Conze) as 'heap'. Gombrich points to the Pāli term aggikhandha meaning "a blazing mass". Khandha often occurs in the compound upādānakhandha where it is frequently translated as "aggregates of clinging". Gombrich links it to the extended fire metaphor used by the Buddha and suggests "blazing mass of fuel" (upādāna meaning literally fuel.) The khandhas, then, are a mass of fuel which, as the Fire Sermon ( Ādittapariyāya Sutta literally: The way of putting things as being on fire) tells us are on fire with the fires of greed, hatred and delusion.

The khandhas then are part of the mechanism keeping us in saṃsara, they are the "mass of fuel" that burns, and Nibbāna is the extinguishing of that fire - though the fuel itself can remain at this point as the term upādi-sesa-nibbāna "extinguishing with a remainder" suggests. It is rather a squeeze to fit every facit of the human being into just these five categories, and Hamilton manages to make a lot more sense of them as a kind of minimal requirement for experience - she takes the idea of nothing existing outside the khandhas as a metaphorical reference to the fact of experience: that everything we can know comes to us through the senses.

To have experience at all we must have a living body (rūpa). This is the vehicle for consciousness and the locus of experience. Without a living sensing body we would not receive sensory data - recall that the sense organ must be involved for contact to take place.

Having met with sensory data (vedanā) we process it: we become aware of and identify the sensation (saññā), we categorise it and name it (viññāṇā), and we respond affectively to it (saṅhkāra). This is a very cut down psychology, a minimalist account of consciousness, but it contains all that is necessary for continued experience, that is to say for continuation in samsara. And this is the process, this continuation in samsara which the Buddha constantly tells people is the focus of his teachings. Asked about all manner of metaphysical and philosophical teachings, the Buddha replies that he only teaches about the process of experience and how to end it.

Hamilton is saying, in effect, that later Buddhist tradition have taken this teaching a little to literally when they say things like: "These are the five aspects in which the Buddha has summed up all the physical and mental phenomena of existence". [Nyanatiloka : 98] Everything is not literally summed up, it is just that this is the necessary apparatus (to use Hamilton's terms) for all experience. All of experience - of whatever kind - is sensed, processed and acted upon through the khandhas. It is in this sense that the set is a complete description of the human being, not literally. It makes the assumption that we are what we experience, and as I have discovered, any attempt to get behind experience to confirm it involves some other sensory experience. One image that occurs to me for this is that we cannot get behind the mirror to see if anything is there because we always see a new mirror.

All this is not to say that some kind of objective world does not exist. I think the level of consensus that is possible on what is being experienced suggests very strongly that there is some kind of objective world. However I would argue that since we must always rely on our senses in any attempt to establish the status of the objective world, that such attempts are meaningless - they cannot provide a definitive answer one way or the other. I've come to believe that it was this that the Buddha was trying to get people to understand. Take for example the short Sabbaṃ Sutta in the Saṃyutta Nikāya. In this text the Buddha says that "the all" (sabbaṃ) is the eye and forms, the ear and sounds, the nose and smells, the tongue and tastes, the body and the felt, the mind and dhammas. (SN 35.23 = Bodhi : 1140). There is nothing outside of this "all". This is an explicit confirmation of what I've been saying. To take this to be an ontological statement - that outside of this "all" there is nothing - is to miss the point. It does not make sense as ontology, but as an epistemology it is very useful. All that we can know are 'objects' of the senses (including the mental sense), that is to say all we can know is what we experience - and the khandhas are the apparatus of experience.

I think this has profound implications for how we practice and teach the Dharma. For one thing I think we should abandon talking about dependent arising in terms of "things arising in dependence on causes" - there are no things only experiences. It would be more accurate to say that "experiences of things arise in dependence on causes". This then allows us to focus on the experience of dependent arising, rather than trying to locate some object which is arising. So many of our metaphors for dependent arising involve "things". But because of the way we function - through and only through experience - there are in effect no things arising.


References

• Bodhi. 2000. The connected discourses of the Buddha : a translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Boston : Wisdom Publications.
  
• Hamilton, Sue. 2000. Early Buddhism : a new approach. The I of the beholder. Richmond, Surrey : Curzon.
• Nyanatiloka. 1980. Buddhist dictionary : manual of Buddhist terms and doctrines. (4th ed). Kandy, Sri Lanka : Buddhist Publication Society (2004 reprint).

image: JAKIMOWICZ Fabien - belfry clock mechanism

Which script?

Indian languages, and in particular Sanskrit, may be unique in that there is a distinct separation between the language and the scripts used to write it. Over the centuries a number of scripts and variation have been particularly important in preserving Buddhist texts. Buddhists were, like their Brahmin counterparts, initially reluctant to employ writing for the preservation of texts that were composed and transmitted orally. But eventually in several places, notably Sri Lanka and Gāndhāra, the sūtras were committed to writing. Here are the broad outlines of the development of Indian writing as it relates to Buddhist texts in roughly chronological order.


The first script to be used for writing Indian languages was Kharoṣṭhī beginning in the 3rd or 4th century BCE. It was used for several hundred years to write the local dialects, but also Sanskrit. Kharoṣṭhī was used in Gāndhāra in North West India (what is now the Pakistan shading into Afghanistan - i.e. Taliban country) and in central Asia. It shares many features with the Aramaic used by Persian administrators at the time when they were influential in that region, and most scholars accept that Aramaic was probably the model for Kharoṣṭhī. It was both carved in rock and written with pen and ink on birch bark. Quite a number of early Buddhist texts survive in Sanskrit and in the Gāndhārī Prakrit (roughly the vernacular dialect of Gāndhāra). A Gāndhārī version of the Dhammapada survives for instance, and several other texts which parallel the Pāli but with interesting mostly minor differences. These texts have helped to flesh out our knowledge of the different early schools of Buddhism.


Brahmī was the first truly indigenous Indian script. The name means simply "God" - Brahmā having been adopted as a creator god by this point. It was a definite improvement on Kharoṣṭhī in having individual signs for initial vowels, and greater variation between characters which made it more readable. My guess however is that it was designed for carving rather than writing per se. The signs are simple, geometric and quite linear. Aśoka (mid to late 3rd century BCE) used this script for most of his rock edicts - a few were in Kharoṣṭhī or Aramaic, and one was in Greek reflecting the local usage in the far West of his imperium. Probably most Buddhist texts were written in this script in Eastern and Central India until the 3rd century CE.

An early south Indian variety of Brahmī became very important. The Sinhala script emerges around the 2nd or 3rd centuries BCE and was used to commit the Pāli Canon to writing. It shows the rounded letter forms characteristic of writing designed for palm leaves with their pronounced grain that could be easily punctured.

In the North the Gupta script (so-called because it emerged during the Gupta Era, ca 3rd - 6th centuries) also derives from Brahmī. It shows the influence of pen and ink writing (probably still on birch bark). Versions of the Gupta script were used throughout North Indian and central Asia to transmit Buddhist texts. Many of the early Buddhist texts going to China would have used this script or one of its Central Asian variants. Some use of decorative writing - what we might call calligraphy - began to appear at this time.


Siddhaṃ was initially a word written in the top left hand corner of any piece of writing in the Gupta period, meaning perfection or accomplishment. However as the script changed and the letters became more elaborate Siddhaṃ (or more fully siddhamātṛka) began to be the name of the script. By the collapse of the Gupta Empire (under attack by Huns) in the 6th century the script had become distinct. However it continued to undergo development for several centuries. Two forms are commonly seen nowadays that I call "Chinese brush style", and "Japanese pen style". The latter appears to be a further refinement of the Indian script, while the former is influenced in it's form by the demands of writing with a brush. This script was important in the East as the medium of the early Tantric texts. What's more Tantric Buddhism initially inherited Vedic injunctions to preserved accurate pronunciation of letters and so the Indic script was preserved especially in the case of mantras - they can still be seen in the modern Taisho version of the Chinese Tripitaka for instance. Siddhaṃ calligraphy was elevated to a fine art by the Japanese. While Kūkai introduced Siddhaṃ to Japan and produced some fine works, the modern popularity derives from an 18th century revival. Siddhaṃ is mainly used for writing mantras and bījas these days, although shakyo or sutra copying has not completely died out - the Heart Sūtra being a favourite text.

An early variant of Siddhaṃ formed the model for the Tibetan Uchen (dbu-can) script which is now the main script used in printing Tibetan works. It further developed into many variants more suited to hand-writing for instance. We can deduce from it's description of the vowel 'e' (which is an inverted triangle representing the yoni) that the Hevajra Tantra still looked to the Siddhaṃ script as its model of writing.

The earliest appearance of Devanāgarī (देवनागरी literally "City of God") is about the 8th century but it did not supplant Siddhaṃ as the main script for writing Sanskrit in North India until about the 10th or 11th century. Many late Buddhist texts, such as later Tantras would have been written in Devanāgarī. Sadly the fluidity of the relationship is lost on most people and the Devanāgarī script is often referred to by the uninitiated as "Sanskrit" - as in "can you right this in Sanskrit for me". Devanāgarī has proved to be remarkably stable - with only minor changes occurring since it was adopted. It has been adapted for writing Hindi and as Hindi is the most prominent of the official languages of India, it is widely used through the sub-continent. Pakistan has adapted the Arabic script fro writing Urdu though it is very similar to Hindi.


Two other scripts which are frequently used in Buddhist contexts are the closely related Lantsa and Ranjana, from Tibet and Nepal respectively. These are often assumed to be identical but this is not true. They emerged in about the 11th century and are both are still in use for ceremonial or decorative purposes. Tibetan texts will often have the Sanskrit title in Lantsa as well as dbu-can at their head.

Although these scripts are all related and all descend from Brahmī originally, knowing one does not always afford insights into reading the others. Some letters such as ṭa stayed remarkably stable, whereas others such as ja changed quite radically over time. Tibetan Uchen retains an archaic form of na which disappeared from India, while other letters are similar to more modern forms, and some appear only loosely based on an Indian precursor. Since conjunct consonants (such as jña or ṣṭha) are written combined into a single glyph and each script does this in slightly different, and sometimes idiosyncratic ways (for instance in Devanāgarī श + री = श्री).

Writing was probably introduced to India by Persian invaders who had themselves absorbed the techniques from other conquered peoples, especially the Aramaeans who were a semitic race that has since disappeared but left a huge legacy. It is thought that parts of the Old Testament of the Bible were composed in Aramaic and that it may have been Jesus's mother tongue. The Aramaic roots of Indian writing are most clear in Kharoṣṭhī. However it was not long before Indians adapted the art of writing to their own languages, and subsequently Indian Buddhists helped to establish the written word in vast swathes of the East including Tibet, Burma, Sri Lanka, and most of South East Asia. Indian scripts influenced the development of the Kana scripts in Japan and the Hangul script of Korea.

Images from Visible Mantra scripts page.

Dating the Buddha

Almost two years ago now I attended a series of lectures by Prof. Richard Gombrich which I find still resonating around in my psyche. One of the things Prof. Gombrich talked about was his disappointment that his article in which he had discovered the 'true' dates of the Buddha had not attracted any attention from the scholarly community. That oversight has now been corrected in a recent article by Charles Prebish in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, which he co-founded with Damien Keown.

Prebish reviews the many contributions, including his own, over the years and spells out the conclusions to date which are not unanimous. In fact there are four chronologies:

The long chronology
This puts the death of the Buddha at 544/43 BCE and is accepted only by the Theravada tradition and not by scholars. The main reason for doubting it is that it gives dates for Aśoka that conflict with the evidence from his rock edicts - he was evidently crowned in 268 BCE give or take a year, and therefore a gap of 60 years remains unaccounted for.

The corrected long chronology
Prebish glosses over this date which appears to simply subtract the 60 years and give dates of 484/483 BCE. It seems as though this date became widely accepted

The short chronology
This date relies on texts which state that the coronation of Aśoka was exactly 100 years after the parinibbana, meaning that the Buddha died in 368 BCE. However the problem here is that all ancient texts are not in agreement over the elapsed time. One says 116 years, another 160 years. It is however supported by archaeological evidence and gained some heavy weight supporters.

The Dotted Chronology
The idea here is that when Upāli finished collected the Vinaya immediately after the Buddha's death he placed a dot on the manuscript. Each subsequent year a further dot was added to keep track of the years. The obvious flaw in this theory is that the vinaya was initially memorised and not written down until some centuries later. For at least 300 years there was no manuscript to place dots on.

Gombrich's answer to the problem of dating the Buddha came from a reassessment of the dates conveyed in records of Upāli successors as vinayadharas. The age at which each pupil was ordained, memorised the vinaya and died is recorded in a number of texts. Traditionally ages of monks are counted from their ordination, but Gombrich argues that in this case the ages where counted from birth. For one thing if the traditional chronology is used most of the monks would have lived into their 90's and one to 105. By counting the years from birth Gombrich is able to construct a plausible time frame for the lineage that does not contradict other known dates such as the coronation of Aśoka. This process yields a date of 404 BCE for the parinibbana with a margin of error of plus seven years or minus 5 years. Prebish seems happy to accept 404 BCE as the date.

Though Prebish accepts Gombrich's date for the parinibbana he believes that Gombirch was in error in his dating of the councils which rests on much shakier ground. In fact it involves making an assumption about the traditional date of 100 years between the first and second Buddhist councils that is not supported but only makes sense in the light of traditional historical narratives. After having dealt with the precise lifespans of the vinayadharas Gombrich makes the assumption that the 100 years is a round figure and suggests that it was in fact more like 60 years since that produces a better fit.

Prebish argues for letting the new chronology stand without altering the span between the councils. One of the consequences of this new chronology is that it places Aśoka front and centre in the first major split amongst the Sangha. The historical king is likely to have presided over the unofficial "non-canonical" council (recorded in some texts as occuring between the 2nd and 3rd councils) which resulted in the first Sanghabheda or schism. 18 years later Aśoka may well have convened the 3rd council at Pāṭaliputra (the Aśokan capital city) in order to try to "reaffirm Buddhist orthodoxy" in his new role as Dharmarājā.

An earlier article by Prebish and Jan Nattier makes it seem likely that it was the Sthaviravādins who split first, and the Mahāsaṃghikas who represented the conservative mainstream. The issue seems to have been the number of rules which the Sthaviravādins were seeking to increase. Evidence for this is the number of rules in the various surviving Pratimokṣa Sūtras with the Mahāsaṃghikas having the least.

This is a brief gloss of Prebish's article which is available on the internet (link below) and is recommended if you have an interest in Buddhist history. The original Gombrich article is less easy to get hold of - try an interlibrary loan if you don't have access to a major University library.


Bibliography

• Gombrich, Richard. 1992. "Dating the Buddha: A Red Herring Revealed." In Die Daiterung des Historischen Buddha Volume 2, edited by Heinz Bechert, Vanden-hoeck & Ruprecht, 237-259.
• Nattier, J and Prebish, C. "Mahāsāṃghika Origins: The Beginnings of Buddhist Sectarianism." History of Religions, 16, 3 (February, 1977), 237-272.
• Prebish, Charles. 2008. "Cooking the Buddhist Books: The Implications of the New Dating of the Buddha for the History of Early Indian Buddhism", Journal of Buddhist Ethics, vol.15,

Which Mahāyāna texts?

It is frequently observed that the proportion of Mahāyāna texts which have been translated into English even once is only small compared to the number in the Chinese Canon. Certain texts have received much greater attention than others, even amongst those available in translation, and are now taken as being normative - that is that our Western understanding of what the Mahāyāna as a whole was saying is based on a subset of those texts available to us in English.

In the introduction to her translation of the Ugraparipṛcchā Jan Nattier makes some observations about this which I would like to highlight. Her comments are in the context of noting that at one time the Ugraparipṛcchā was an important text. It has multiple translations into Chinese, and is cited extensively in anthologies such as Śantideva's Śikṣāsamuccaya. Some explanation of why such a central text has received so little attention in the West seemed to be required.

Nattier notes that texts are more likely to have been translated into English if they have two features: firstly if there is a extant Sanskrit text; and secondly if they have been influential in Japanese Buddhism. Here's a list which will be familiar to students of Mahāyāna.

• Saddharmapuṇḍarika
• Suvarṇabaṣottama
• Sukhāvatīvyūha (both long and short)
• Avataṃsaka
• Vimalakīrti
• Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras - especially Hṛdaya, Vajracchedika, Aṣṭāsahaśrika, and Pañcavimsatisahaśrika
• Laṅkāvatāra

Only a handful of Mahāyāna texts survive in Sanskrit including all (I think) of the above. Part of the reason for the interest in Sanskrit texts is the focus of Western scholars on "original Buddhism". Westerners, partly influenced by higher criticism of the Bible, are aware of layers in the Buddhist canon, and are motivated to find the "original" text. The idea is that anything from a later period is not authentic, but this is making many assumptions which are not sustainable, nor would they necessarily be accepted by Buddhists. We know that the Heart Sūtra, for instance, was most likely composed in China, but this does not make it any less profound, nor undermine its widespread influence across many Buddhist sects. Buddhists can be fundamentalist about texts, but on the whole it is contrary to the spirit of the religion to be so. The Dharma is anything which helps us realise the truth.

However we need to balance this against Nattier's own comments just a few pages later with reference to Chinese translations from Sanskrit:

In short, when reading any given line of a Chinese Buddhist sūtra - excepting perhaps those produced by someone like Hsuan-tsang, who is justifiably famous for his accuracy - we have a roughly equal chance of encountering an accurate reflection of the underlying Indian original or a catastrophic misunderstanding. (Nattier : 71)

We are a little better off with Tibetan texts because they started later and had better reference works but -

even here, however, we frequently encounter visual, grammatical, or (less commonly) aural misunderstandings (Nattier : 71 n.36)

The solution is to compare extant versions of a text, and a key task for the scholar is to construct an edited (i.e. corrected) text which is pressumed to accurately represent the "original". Unfortunately the extant Sanskrit manuscripts which are seldom much older than a few centuries, are prone to the same problems. Viz Conze's comments on the Nepalese manuscripts of the Large Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra which he describes as "execrable". Leaving aside scribal and translator errors we also know that Buddhist texts frequently changed over time, chapters and sometimes whole independent sūtras, were added or subtracted, chapters were rearranged, and interpolations of all kinds were made by well meaning editors. The fact is that whatever the language of the text it will be far removed in time from its author. So it is that we welcome the work of Jan Nattier and others like her who are translating a wider range of text and drawing attention to the issues of the history of our texts, and the problems of translating them.

The second factor in whether or not a text is popular in the West is whether it is influential in Japanese Buddhism. This is a result of collaborations between the West and Japan which commenced in 1868 (with the Meiji Restoration). Influential Western Scholars such as Max Muller, and Hendrik Kern began to take Japanese students: the former was responsible for many first translations of Mahāyāna Sūtras, while the latter produced the only translation of the Saddharmapuṇḍarika from Sanskrit.

However there is a third factor because it is obvious that amongst these few texts, some have greater prestige than others. Nattier cites the Laṅkāvatāra for instance, translated and promoted by no less an authority than D. T. Suzuki as one text which has not had the kind of influence that might have been expected - we still only have Suzuki's rather flawed translation in English for instance. Compare this with the influence of the Saddharmapuṇḍarika which has many English translations, as does the Vimalakīrti, and the Heart Sūtra. Nattier suggests that these texts, and perhaps the Sukhāvatīvyūha texts, have a greater prominence because they:

"portray the Buddhist messages in terms congruent with certain core western values such as egalitarianism (e.g. the universal potential for Buddhahood according to the Lotus), lay-centred religion (e.g., the ability of the lay Buddhist hero of the Vimalakīrti to confound highly educated clerics in debate), the simplicity and individuality of religious practice (e.g., the centrality of personal faith in Amitābha in the Sukhāvatīvyūha), and even anti-intellectualism (e.g., the apparent rejection of the usefulness of rational thought in the Heart Sūtra, the Diamond Sūtra, and other Perfection of Wisdom texts). (Nattier : 6)

To which list we might add the factor of an "other power" centred soteriology perhaps! In the case of what is in the West an influential sūtra, the Saddharmapuṇḍarika, it is in fact far from being representative or typical of the Mahāyāna - in fact the opposite it true. And yet it has had a huge role in defining the Mahāyāna as it is understood in the West.

Nattier sees her study and translation as an antidote to the prevailing parochialism of the West, and as an attempt to restore a once important sūtra back to its rightful place in the Buddhist canon. Reading it we have to acknowledge that our ideas about the development of the Mahāyāna have been based on too narrow a field of sources and the Ugra challenges our preconceptions.

Bibliography

• Nattier, Jan. 2003. A few good men : The Bodhisattva path according to the Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā). University of Hawai'i Press.

A selection of Mahāyāna sūtras translated in to English, including some lesser known texts is available at www4.bayarea.net/~mtlee/. Image from that page.