Experience and Free Will in Early Buddhism

The Four Humours
image via Musings on the 18th C

In a recent exchange in comments on Dhīvan's blog, Two Meanings of Karma, he drew my attention to the Sīvaka Sutta. This sutta says that kamma is only one of eight causes of experience and introduces the term pubbe-kata-hetu "caused by former actions", which is discussed below. Related suttas help to flesh out what is meant by the term and place important limits on the doctrine of karma.

The early Buddhists were critical of the view that everything we experience is a result of past actions because it is a form of determinism that eliminates meaningful moral choices. As such this teaching touches on the subject so dear to Western moral philosophers, i.e. free will. I begin with my translation of the Sīvaka Sutta and a discussion of the main terms and ideas and then contrast it with the Titthāyatanādi Sutta (AN 3.61) with passing reference to the Devadaha Sutta (MN 101).


Sīvaka Sutta SN 36.21 (iv.230)

One time the Bhagavan was staying in Rajgir in the Squirrel Sanctuary Bamboo Grove. Then the ascetic Moḷiya-Sīvako approached the Bhagavan and greeted him. When they have exchanged pleasentaries he sat to one side. And sitting on one side he asked:

Mr Gotama, what would you say to the toilers and priests whose ideology is "whatever a person experiences (paṭisamvedeti), whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neither, is all caused by past actions (pubbekatahetu)"?

[The Bhagavan replied], Sīvaka, some experiences arise from the rising of bile (pitta); [this fact] one can personally know and [it] is considered true by [people in] the world. In this case, Sīvaka, those toilers and priests who claim that "whatever a person experiences is all caused by past actions" are wrong (micchā). They overshoot what is personally known and what is considered true by [people in] the world.

Sīvaka, some experiences arise from the rising of phlegm (semha)...

Sīvaka, some experiences arise from the rising of winds (vāta)...

Sīvaka, some experiences arise from interactions of the humours (sannipātika)...

Sīvaka, some experiences are produced by changes in the season (utu-pariṇāma)...

Sīvaka, some experiences are produced by adverse circumstances (visama-parihāra)...

Sīvaka, some experiences arise from physical injury (opakkamikānipi)...  

Sīvaka, some experiences are also produced by the ripening of actions (kammavipāka); [this fact] one can personally know and [it] is considered true by [people in] the world. In this case, Sīvaka, those toilers and priests who claim that "whatever a person experiences is all caused by past actions" are wrong (micchā). They overshoot what is personally known and what is considered true by [people in] the world.

That said, Moḷiya Sāika said this to the Bhagavan: "Awesome, Mr Gotama, that's awesome. Please remember me as an upāsaka who has gone for refuge for life. 

Bile, phlegm, and wind.
The humours, and the seasons,
Adversity, injury,
And ripening of actions as eighth.

.~o~. 

Comments on Sīvaka Sutta

Firstly for enthusiasts of the punctuation problem related to the standard Buddhist sutta opening "evaṃ mayā sutaṃ..." note the opening of this sutta "One time the Bhagavan was staying in Rajgir" (Ekaṃ samayaṃ bhagavā rājagahe viharati). If we care about such things this shows that "evaṃ mayā sutam" is one syntactic unit and "ekaṃ samayam... viharati" is another. In fact to my mind this is the obvious way to read the Pāḷi. A qualifier like ekaṃ samayaṃ is far more likely to appear before a verb or participle than after it. Reading ekaṃ samayaṃ as going with sutaṃ looks like special pleading. If we were going to punctuate evaṃ mayā sutaṃ ekaṃ samayaṃ... we'd mark a new clause with a punctuation mark after sutaṃ. Which is to say that it is not:

"Thus I heard at one time, the Buddha was staying in Rajgir";

but

"Thus I heard, at one the Buddha was staying in Rajgir".

Secondly the name Moḷiya-Sīvaka is quite interesting. In How Buddhism Began (p.135-164; esp. 151-4) Richard Gombrich proposed that we take Aṅgulimala to be a Śaiva doing extreme antinomian practices. Now the name Sīvaka is probably from siva 'auspicious, fortunate' with the suffix -ka (causing the lengthening of the initial vowel) and thus on face value means 'one who is auspicious'. In which case the name would be synonymous with svāstika. The Pāli is equivalent to Sanskrit śiva, which is also the name of a god: Śiva. Pāli sīvaka might well be Sanskrit śaivaka, "one who belongs to Śiva". Thus we might read Moḷiya-Sīvaka as 'a top-knotted Śiva devotee'. The Dictionary of Pāli Names has nothing to settle it either way, though the name is not common: in addition to our Sīvaka we find just one yakkha (DN iii.205; SN i.211); one physician who was Ānanda in a previous life (J iv.412); and two theras (Thag vs.14 & vss.183-4), one of whom lives in Rajgir. 

"Experiences" (present participle, not nominal plural) translates paṭisaṃvedeti. Here what one experiences is obviously vedanā and is characterised (as vedanā always is) as sukha, dukkha, or adukkhamasukha. Both paṭisaṃvedeti and vedanā come from the root √vid 'to know'. From this root we also get veda 'the knowledge'; vedanā 'the known', i.e. what becomes known to us, what we actually experience. Also in this passage: vedayita 'felt, experienced'; in the plural 'experiences'; such events are veditabba is 'to be known; knowable'. This cluster of terms is part of what makes "feelings" an unsatisfactory translation of vedanā. What we are talking about is that which we become aware of due to the activity of all our senses, including the mind. "Feelings" is far too narrow. 

Pubbekatahetu is a three-part compound: hetu = cause, kata = past participle of √kṛ 'to do, to make' and pubbe 'before, formerly'. The compound is a bahuvrīhi meaning 'whose cause is what was done before'. There is a related term pubbekatakāraṇa which we find in a commentarial passage on AN 3.61 where it is also glossed as "Experiencing with actions formerly performed as the only condition" (pubbekatakammapaccayeneva paṭisaṃvedeti). 

Visama-parihāra is an odd word. Bodhi translates 'careless behaviour', Thanissaro "adverse behavior", though PED suggests 'being attacked by adversities'. Parihāra is from pari√hṛ 'to attend, shelter, protect; carry about; move around; conceal; set out, take up, propose'. PED takes it to mean 'surrounding' in the figurative sense. Visama is literally 'uneven, unequal, unharmonious'. Figuratively in a moral sense, 'lawless, wrong'; and 'odd, peculiar.' Buddhaghosa glosses: "Produced by adverse circumstances" means carrying a heavy load, pounding cement etc, or snakes, mosquitoes or falling in a pit, etc for one wandering at the wrong time. "Visamaparihārajānīti mahābhāravahanasudhākoṭṭanādito vā avelāya carantassa sappaḍaṃsakūpapātādito vā visamaparihārato jātāni." (SA iii.81) Thanks to Dhīvan for helping me with this passage. I think his translation of visama-parihāra as 'adverse circumstances' is better than either Bodhi or Thanissaro and I have adopted it.

The main point is that the view that everything we experience is a result of past karma is in fact wrong (micchā). I've pointed this out before and drawn attention to the Devadaha Sutta (MN 101) as another text which refutes this view. There it is attributed to Nigaṇṭhas who we usually take to be the Jains.


Titthāyatanādi Sutta

The idea of pubbekatahetu is also criticised in the Titthāyatanādi Sutta AN 3.61 (i.173) where it is one of three sectarian heresies (tīṇimāni titthāyatanāni). Faced with such a claim as "everything that one experiences is due to past actions" the Buddha questions his opponent about the reasons for unethical behaviour (the dasa kusala-kammapatha; known in the Triratna Order as that "the ten precepts").

In some sense this is a question of free will. The idea that everything we experience is due to past action is a form of determinism. The Buddha's critique points out that if we accept a form of determinism then we have no motivation in regard to moral moral choices in the present, and thus the possibility of liberation is lost.

Pubbekataṃ kho pana, bhikkhave, sārato paccāgacchataṃ na hoti chando vā vāyāmo vā idaṃ vā karaṇīyaṃ idaṃ vā akaraṇīyanti. Iti karaṇīyākaraṇīye kho pana saccato thetato anupalabbhiyamāne muṭṭhassatīnaṃ anārakkhānaṃ viharataṃ na hoti paccattaṃ sahadhammiko samaṇavādo. 

However, bhikkus, for those falling back on former action (pubbekata) as the essence it is not a motivation for, not an effort towards, distinguishing between right and wrong. As a result of right and wrong not being truly and reliably ascertained, there is  dwelling forgetfully and vulnerably. [Former action] is not, on its own, the doctrine of the samaṇa who is Buddhist.

Of the three other translations I consulted (Bodhi, Thanissaro, and Piya Tan) I disagree with all of them as to how to render the last sentence. All translate samaṇavādo in the sense of 'call oneself a samaṇa'.

Samaṇa-vāda is a nominal compound in the nominative. PED sv. vāda has "2. what is said, reputation, attribute, characteristic." PED cites Sn 859 for this reading, and one Jātaka reference. The final pāda of Sn 859 reads tasmā vādesu nejati. The Niddesa glosses vādesu here as ‘criticisms, blame, reproaches, not getting any renown, not being praised’. Though the SnA has "On that account he is not cowed because of criticisms" (taṃ kāraṇā nindāvacanesu na kampati) and K R Norman seems to follow this interpretation in his translation : "therefore he is not agitated in [the midst of] their accusations". (p 107 & 338-9). But the this also fits with the context. It seems to me that PED is probably correct to include this second sense of vāda in SnA, since that is how the commentator understood it, but wrong to attribute it to Sn. It's a commentarial usage not a sutta usage. As far as I can see there is no parallel usage in Sanskrit.

I had some discussion with Dhīvan on this and he pointed out: "Looking at the comm., it’s clear that the translators are following what it says but putting it into clearer English.

na hoti paccattaṃ sahadhammiko samaṇavādo: for you beings or other beings thinking, ‘I am an ascetic’, individually the reasonable characteristic of an ascetic isn’t, doesn’t succeed. For though there are ascetics whose reason is only past action, also there are non-ascetics whose reason is only past action. ‘Reasonable’ (sakāraṇa) means having a reason. (AA ii.272)

So Buddhaghosa’s argument is that the ascetics who claim that what is experienced is caused by past action are not really ascetics because non-ascetics also believe this, it’s not a right view that will get you anywhere, so it’s hardly a good view for a so-called ascetic.

Thus we can see where the other translations are coming from. My feeling, however, is that we should always make a strenuous effort to translate the text and at the very least include it as a footnote, before adopting the commentarial gloss. Buddhaghosa's view is not that of early Buddhism, but that of 5th century Theravāda scholasticism. Sometimes it's helpful and sometimes not. Here I disagree with him. His reading is one that requires us to treat rather too many words as meaning something other than their obvious meaning.

Na hoti samaṇavādo would be an entirely straight forward sentence meaning, 'It is not the doctrine of a samaṇa' [with an emphasis by putting the verb first]. Sahadhammiko is in the same case as, and thus goes with, samaṇavādo. Piya Tan says it is an adverb 'with justice' and Bodhi also translates as an adverb, 'legitimately'. This appears to be based on the commentarial gloss: sakāraṇa (above). However as an adverb it ought to be in the accusative, not the nominative. By contrast paccattaṃ is a neuter accusative used adverbially (individually). So, sahadhammiko simply cannot be an adverb, it can only be in apposition with samaṇavādo. The commentarial gloss is mistaken and misleads those who follow it. Here I take sahadhammiko in the obvious (and dictionary) meaning of 'one who shares a dhamma' or a 'co-religionist', i.e. from our point of view, another Buddhist. And the idea that everything we experience is due to past action is a not the doctrine of a samaṇa who is Buddhist. Indeed, as above, it is the doctrine of a samaṇa who is a follower of Nigaṇṭha Nāgaputta, which is to say, a Jain. So sahadhammiko samaṇavādo must mean 'the samaṇa doctrine which is co-religionist' (as I understand it sahadhammiko specifically qualifies vādo). In more elegant English, "the doctrine of the samaṇa who is Buddhist."

One of the problems here is the switch from plural to singular. Bodhi, for example, translates as though the whole as plural. But I think in "na hoti paccattaṃ sahadhammiko samaṇavādo" we have a completely separate sentence in the singular with an implied 'it' as agent. And the obvious candidate for 'it' is pubbekata 'former action'. Thus the sentence means "[Former action] is not, on its own, the doctrine of the samaṇa who is Buddhist."

The problem here then, is saying, as the Jains do, that experience is based on former actions alone. Notwithstanding this, as I pointed out in my 2009 essay, many Tibetans insist on a pubbekatahetu doctrine. For example Tai Situpa has said :

"Now, this way, everything is karma. Only one thing that is not karma that is the Buddha nature and the enlightenment."

Or Ringu Tulku Rinpoche cited on the Rigpa Wiki:

Strictly speaking, therefore, from a Buddhist point of view, you cannot say that there is anything in our ordinary experience that is not somehow a result of our karma.

These same teachers argue that their view is not deterministic and that a particular calamity cannot be viewed as a punishment for some particular act. However, the Dalai Lama, for example (and I have heard Robina Courtin of the FPMT say the same), believes that the Chinese invasion of Tibet was because the present occupants of Tibet had accumulated bad karma in past lives (See this personal account of a discussion the DL for example).

I happen to think that the early Buddhist view is more coherent and less a result of blind faith in a supernatural force, but the really interesting thing is that once again we see that the metaphysics of a basic Buddhist doctrine changed. I say once again because I have already written about another way that karma changes from being inevitable, if mitigable, to being entirely avoidable through the use of mantras. Over the centuries the doctrine of karma has been modified to suit the needs of Buddhists. Perhaps the two changes are related. After all a hardening of views towards everything being a result of karma would probably make the ability to avoid the consequences of karma seem more attractive. Perhaps the change to everything being the result of karma required a let out so that it was not absolutely deterministic?


Niyama & Naturalism.

The commentarial teaching of the "fivefold restriction" (pañcavidha niyama) is sometimes cited as another example of how karma is not the only type of causation in our lives. This is mainly due to a modernist interpretation promulgated by Ledi Sayadaw and Mrs Rhys Davids in the 1930s, and Sangharakshita's development of their ideas in the 1960s and 2010s. (For the history of the idea see Dhīvan's essays and published article).

In Pāli, we don't have "five niyamas" but one fivefold niyama which is five applications of one principle of conditionality. The doctrine seems to aim at naturalising Buddhists ideas about three subjective or supernatural processes: cognition (citta); the functioning of karma; and the miracles associated with a buddha (dhamma-niyama). This done by likening them to observable processes in nature. So we have bījaniyama which describes rice seeds becoming rice plants and producing rice grains; and utuniyama, the fact that trees flower and fruit together in the appropriate season. These are limitations or restrictions (niyama) on how natural events unfold that can be observed by everyone in nature and they form the model of understanding unseen processes.

To some extent the Buddhist model of cognition is a result of introspection by yogis, but we can only ever observe our own cognitive process and never someone else's (at least this limitation clearly applies in Iron Age India). However Buddhists felt confident in providing a generalised description of cognition all the same. Similarly the process of karma is unseen and supernatural - it operates behind the scenes and cannot be understood in it's specifics. Karma, the idea that good and evil deeds have appropriate consequences for the appropriate person, is an article of faith. The various miracles accompanying the life history of a Buddha are also supernatural and by the time the niyama doctrine is composed they occurred centuries in the past.

The argument is that the limitations on the natural, seen processes of seeds and seasons, apply also to the unseen and supernatural. Clearly the analogy of karma with the process of planting seeds and reaping grain was one that appealed to the Indian mind, because a more literal version of this same analogy became the main Mahāyāna view of karma. The seeds were even provided with a storage pit in the from of the alayavijñāna.

The point about karma here is not that it is only one of many types of conditionality, but another example of the one type. It is a "natural" process characterised by inevitability, by results which are appropriate to the cause, and by ripening in due season.The idea that not everything is a result of karma is fine. As above it is definitely part of the early Buddhist view on karma. It's just that this is not the point of the niyama.


Conclusion

So the basic Buddhist teaching is that experiences are not all dictated by karma. A variety of causes and conditions including health, seasonal changes, and just plain luck can be invoked. The view that everything we experience being the result of karma is specifically criticised as deterministic. Such a view leaves us unable to make moral choices which is why early Buddhism rejects it. Buddhist soteriology requires that we have a measure of freedom to choose between right and wrong. However, according to this basic teaching, karma does determine which realm we will be born in. And one of the characteristics of the manussaloka or human realm, is that humans have sense objects, sense organs, and the potential for sense consciousness. Thus as human beings we experience vedanā every moment of our waking lives. And how we respond to vedanā is karma.

~~oOo~~

See also previous essays:

• Is Karma responsible for Everything? (23.1.2009)
• Karma and Rebirth. (25.4.2008)
• Beliefs can be Heaven or Hell (18.4.2008)

See also 'Recent Buddhist Theories of Free Will.' Journal of Buddhist Ethics. [This article, along with its predecessors, explores various attempts to define Buddhist morality as in/compatible with Western ideas of free will. On the whole I think the attempt tells us much more about Western Philosophy and its preoccupations that it does about Buddhism.]

Dhīvan's Essays on Karma

• Two Meanings of Karma. (5.2.2014)
• Karma and Buddhist Ethics. (30.3.2014)

Norman, K R. (2006) The Group of Discourses (Sutta-Nipāta). PTS.

Extending the River Metaphor for Evolution

The case for abandoning the tree metaphor for evolution is one that has support from the field of evolution itself. In previous essays, I've proposed the braided river model as providing a richer picture and vocabulary for evolution, both in species and in ideas and cultural functions like religion. In this essay, I want to look at the actual features of the River Ganges along its path and see how these might enrich metaphors for evolution. 

The imagery of rivers features strongly in the history of Indo-European languages. And Indian literature is full of references to and metaphors drawn from rivers. I've argued, for example, that the important contrast between samyañc and mithyā make most sense in relation to a river bed very like the ones seen in the images below. One follows the stream, bending with it (sam-y-añc) or one tries to cut across and fight one's way forward (mith-yā).

If we look at the image above, it shows only the major rivers associated with the Ganges Basin. The hydrological cycle has a number of main features in this view. Firstly, the catchment area extends both north (into the Himalayas) and south (the Vindhya Range). The Ganges accepts tributaries along almost its entire length. Catchment basins give rise to numerous small streams. These streams combine into larger streams, and these into rivers and larger rivers (and this fact is used metaphorically the Pāli Canon: e.g. AN i.243. ii.140, v.114; SN v.396; and also in the Chinese Madhyāgama 43-54). 

If we stand on the Maṇikarṇikā Ghāṭ in Varanasi and look out on the Ganges River we see a classic large river contained by two banks though, of course, during the monsoons it often breaks its banks. Most of us have probably seen it in tourist season after the temperatures have dropped a bit, the rains have stopped and the river is well behaved. And, seeing this clearly defined waterway, we think "Ganges River". Even an entity defined by change and process can still have a valid identity, if that change takes placed within well-defined boundaries.

What we don't see at that point are the numerous tributaries which combine (braid) together to form this river. And, in particular, we don't see that, where the Ganges meets the Yamuna River near Allahabad, the Yamuna is the larger of the two. It's quite visibly larger on satellite photos (below):

In fact, the Yamuna contributes nearly 60% of the flow at the confluence (that's a ratio of 3:2). Thus, the resulting river ought to be called the Yamuna. However, for historical reasons, it is called the Ganges. This point of confluence used to define the eastern edge of the āryavarta or the homeland of the Brahmins. Up until just before the time of the Buddha, anywhere east of this point was considered barbaric and foreign by the mainstream Brahmins. The early Upaniṣads document the tensions between āryavarta and eastern Brahmins (Signe Cohen), and there are scattered references to distinctive "western Brahmins" in the Pāli Canon (e.g., S iv.312). Indeed, the distinction appears to be current during the period the Pāli Canon was composed, since there are scattered references to Western Brahmins who have distinctive habits.

Another feature we see is that the Ganges has wandered around the plain, leaving behind distinctive oxbow lakes and sinusoidal shaped dry river beds which are clearly seen in satellite photos (below).

We know that some developments in Buddhism simply dried up, and some continued to exist cut off from the mainstream. Similarly with human evolution - Homo habilis, for example, did not survive into the present.  At times small pockets of human species survived for a time in isolation, e.g., H. floresiensis, which predates modern humans, but whose remains have been found with stone tools dated to only 13,000 years ago, which is well into the era of H. sapiens. H. neanderthalensis had significant periods of cross-over with H. sapiens in Europe and Asia, where they appear to have shared genes (hybridised), though this did not happen in Africa. And so on.

The feature I have already highlighted is the braided stream typical of the mature plains river. We can see this on the Ganges as it passes Patna (below). The river is still accepting tributaries, but it is also diverging into separate (major) streams and re-converging. In the image below, the large Son River enters from below left, with the city of Patna mainly to the left of the confluence. The Gandak River converges from above left.

The final stretch of the Ganges sees it combine with the Brahmaputra River (marked with a circle) but then fan out into a massive delta as it reaches the Bay of Bengal.

The combined rivers continue to flow past the ocean-land boundary, depositing banks of sediment that are coloured light blue in this image because they represent shallow water. In the map, one can also see the ancient course of the combined river carved into what is now the continental shelf, from when sea levels were very much lower (when, for example, our ancestors were on their way from Africa to Australia ca. 65 kya to 45 kya).

The present mainstream view sees evolution as being much like the delta region - a single source fans out into multiple streams producing present day variety. The present tree model has no roots, but it also over-simplifies the trunk. The trouble is that this is how history looks when viewed from any point and one is focussed on a single issue. The complexity of the Iron Age, for example, might be traced back to the discovery of Iron. But then iron working extended previous metalworking techniques, and had to be accompanied by advances in kiln technology (since iron requires much higher temperatures) which, most likely, affected the production of pottery and created an industry for coke making. At best, historians of various kinds (and I include evolutionary theorists in this rubric for this purpose) might see several contributing factors to any particular event or phenomenon when, in fact, everything is deeply and multiply interconnected.  

What symbiogenesis and hybridisation tell us about evolution is that it is not a simple system of linear development with binary divergence, but a complex dynamic system including convergence, with symbiosis and hybridisation as the norm rather than the exception. Almost every tree has an associated mycorrhizal fungus symbiont that keeps it alive; without their symbiotic gut bacteria, larger animals could not survive. The individual is simply a community seen from sufficient distance to blur the details. 

It's long been a given in academia that Buddhism, as far as we know it, is the product of a community of people or, indeed, the products of interacting communities more or less members under the Buddhist umbrella. I've tried to extend this by arguing that the community in question has roots in Iran, and has interacted with local communities of a wide variety of types - speaking languages from at least four major groups: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, and Tibeto-Burman. Despite differences, these communities probably shared regional cultural traits such as a belief in a rebirth eschatology, and regional linguistic traits such as retroflex consonants. 

In the history of Buddhism one convergence event stands out almost more than any other. This was the 6th century synthesis we call Tantra. In this renewal of Indian religion the various streams of Indian thought and practice were combined, probably at least partly in response to the socio-political chaos of the collapse of the Gupta Empire (Ronald Davidson). In Tantra we find much of Buddhism at the time synthesised with Vedic theory and ritual, shamanistic practices, and yoga, etc., to create an entirely new approach to life and liberation. 

~~oOo~~

Ethics and Nonself in relation to the Khandhas.

image via theconsciousprocess

Back in January 2014 I wrote an essay exploring the idea that there were irreconcilable pluralities in Buddhist metaphysics. In that essay I focussed on the poor fit between Buddhist ethics and the doctrine of pratītya-samutpāda. And I said that "On the face of it this problem ought to have produced a crisis in Buddhist philosophy, though to the best of my knowledge it never has." I no longer believe that it did not create a crisis in Buddhist philosophy, in fact on further reflection we can see a number of high profile responses to just this problem.

One example is found in Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakā Kārikā where he has noticed the problem of what I call "action at a temporal distance".

tiṣṭhaty ā pākakālāc cet karma tan nityatām iyāt /
niruddhaṃ cen niruddhaṃ sat kiṃ phalaṃ janayiṣyati // MMK 17.6 //

If the action remains until the time of maturation, then it would be eternal
If it ceases, being ceased, how does it produce a fruit?

Nagarjuna's answer insists on the metaphysics of emptiness which has the same disconnect from moral imperatives that I've already described.

Having finished my essay on the disconnect between ethics and dependent arising I serendipitously found a passage in the Majjhima Nikāya which asks almost the same question as I had been asking. In the Mahāpuṇṇama Sutta (The Great Discourse on a Fullmoon) a certain monk asks a serious of question about the pañc'upānānakhandha or five masses of fuel (aka the five aggregates of clinging).

The answers add up to an exposition on how to meditate on the khandhas. We learn that the khandhas are rooted in desire. And that the desires take many forms related to how the khandhas might be arranged in the future. The khandhas are defined in a circularity: any kind of form is rūpakhandha, etc. Then we discover that the four elements (mahābhūta) are the condition for rūpakhandha; that contact is the condition for vedanākhandha, saññākhandha and saṅkhārākhandha; and that nāmarūpa is the condition for viññānakhandha.

Crucially sakkāyadiṭṭhi, literally the view that there is a true (sat) substance (kāya), though more often translated as 'personality view', comes about when we relate to the khandhas in terms of attā or 'myself'. With respect to each of the khandhas we may experience pleasure and joy; but we must remember that each khandhas is impermanent, unsatisfactory and insubstantial; and "escaping" from each comes about when we do not feel desire in relation to it, which in this context seems to relate to anxieties about future existence. In order to remove all tendencies towards thinking in terms of a substantial self, including "I making" (ahaṃkāra), "mine making" (mamaṃkāra) and "the tendency to opinions" (mānānusayā), one must not relate to the khandha in terms of etaṃ mama, esohamasmi, eso me attā 'this is mine, I am this, this is my self'.

Although the order does not match up we can deduce that the two sets of three are related:

• ahaṁkāra leads to the thought eso ahaṃ asmi 'I am this'.
• mamaṁkāra leads to the thought etaṁ mama 'this is mine'.
• mānānusayā leads to the thought eso me attā 'this is my self'.

Now having heard this it occurs to a certain monk (presumably the same certain monk though the pronouns are unclear) who says:

iti kira, bho, rūpaṃ anattā, vedanā anattā, saññā anattā, saṅkhārā anattā, viññāṇaṃ anattā; anattakatāni kammāni katham attānaṃ phusissantī'ti? (MN iii.19 = SN iii.82)

It has been said, Sir, that form is without self, sensation is without self, apperception is without self, volition is without self, discernment is without self: which self will be affected by actions performed by a non-self?

We don't know the background of this monk, but we do know that he can't be a Brahmin, because it is explicit in Brahmanical beliefs about the ātman that it is not affected in any way by worldly actions and such a question would not occur to a Brahmin. More likely he is a Jain. In any case this question is similar to the one I raised about morality. If there is no self, then who is affected by actions? Although it breaks protocol to ask this, it's important to see that it rests on an understanding of moral imperatives. The question suggests that the whole system is too abstract to be a motivation to good behaviour.

Unfortunately the answer supplied in the text does not address the question directly, though it does give us an indirect hint about the author of the text. The Buddha is (apparently) concerned that some idiot (or perhaps the monk himself; again the pronouns here are quite confusing) might see the question as a conceited attempt by a contemptible man to usurp his place as teacher (the terms are quite gross). It seems to me that such a paranoid response is far from characteristic of Gotama in the Pāli literature. He is usually supremely confident of his place in the world. Next he has the monks rehearse the same teaching in a slightly different way. It is simply emphasised that what is impermanent, unsatisfactory and insubstantial cannot be one's self, and that the khandhas are all characterised by impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and insubstantiality.

There is a tautology involved in the last of these because although I'm translating it as "insubstantial" the word is anattā. Of course what is anattā is not attā, this is simply what the word anattā means. The Buddha simply says that what is not the self cannot be the self. Which is clumsy of the author.

While the bhikkhus were delighted and satisfied by these words, we have reason for dissatisfaction. It's clear enough what is intended here. We have the the outline of a meditation practice involving reflection on the khandhas. If one is thinking in terms of khandhas, then this is how one ought to think about them. But how does this translate into other areas of Buddhist thought? Particularly ethics? And why is ethics so often taught in terms of a sense of self that is substantial and stable over lifetimes (as in Jātaka stories)? Even if it is a metaphor, why is it a helpful metaphor? Why is there no answer?

What our interlocutor was doing was trying to shift the discussion. He was saying that if this is what the sense of self is about, then how does karma work? If there is no self then who experiences the consequences of actions? We've already see that the question of "who suffers" (ko vediyati) is an "unsuitable" or even "unhealthy" question (no kallo pañho SN ii.13). The Buddha simply emphasises phassapaccayā vedanā, vedanāpaccayā taṇhā 'sensations arise from the condition of contact; contact from the condition of greed.' This is how we teach metaphysics, but it's not how we teach ethics. 

The Buddha's answer suggests that whoever composed this discourse felt quite uncomfortable about the shift and was unable to answer it. He could only repeat himself. In the Pali texts people who ask the kinds of question I'm asking here are given a hard time. They are rebuked and chided. So far I've found no patient explanation of how everything fits together, just the answer that it's an unsuitable question. This appears to be the approach of modern writers on Buddhism as well. But if we are at all interested in the notion of Buddhism as a single system of thought stemming from a single mind then a major disconnect like this ought to be important and interesting.

One solution I proposed was that the attempts to see or outline unity in these teachings might be a cultural artefact for us. We have a predisposition to see everything in big bang terms, i.e. in terms of a singularity from which all the diversity we currently see must have developed from zero diversity in the past. It's a kind of parallax error, like the illusion of train-tracks converging in the distance. We have embodied this conceptual error in the tree metaphor which depicts evolution as a linear process with binary branches that always diverge and never converge. Except that everywhere we look at evolution we do see convergences. Our very cells are the result of the convergence of at least three kinds of bacteria that all contributed to the structure of eukaryote cells in varying ways and some of which, like mitochondria, retain their identity billions of years later. This process is now known as Symbiogenesis and was established by Lynn Margulis.

Similarly there is clear evidence that Buddhism is not the result of a single man having thoughts over the course of his lifetime, but is instead the result of a culture or even a complex of interrelated cultures imperfectly assimilating and syncretising a variety of elements. This does not rule out an historical Buddha, but it does mean that we must attempt to see him in context. 

In discussing this disconnection between theory and practice with my friend Śākyakumāra he came up with an interesting analogy. We might think about the distinction between describing what someone does when they drive a car, and the idealised instruction we give to new drivers. There is a single goal, a single activity, but two view points. What we are describing above is the practice one does after cultivating samādhi or at least samatha, while the basic teaching on ethics focusses on mechanics. When we are driving and turn a corner, we do not think, now I'm turning the steering wheel which transmits a rotary action through a rack & pinion and causes the wheels to turn in a different plane (rolling the steering wheel causes the vehicle to yaw), or about braking and shifting gears and the other mechanical tasks involved. One simply does the action, and very often one's attention is elsewhere watching the road, ensuring we are on the correct route, scanning for dangers, etc. But when learning to drive one's attention is divided between coordinating limbs, consciously working the machinery, and scanning the environment (which is why most of us first drive a car in an empty car-park). It is essential to be clear which is the brake and which the accelerator and when to use each, and at first this must be done consciously.

In this view the teaching on ethics is purely pragmatic. It need not be perfectly philosophically integrated with other aspects of the Buddhist worldview because the intention is merely to get a practitioner up to speed on how to approach practice. Once they are practising effectively the question of how to behave is less of an issue since mindfulness and empathy become the best guides to how we treat other people. Unfortunately we have a tendency to mystify these qualities and put them on a pedestal where they seem out of reach. But every human being has mindfulness and empathy in abundance. Being social animals we are evolved to treat our peers and colleagues well under most circumstances. One of the main reasons we might not is that we are brutalised by living unnatural lifestyles in large, over-crowded, industrialised, urban societies. Evolution works over 10,000s of generations, whereas we have utterly changed our living environments in a matter of 10,000 years resulting in a certain amount of confusion.

We are usually taught that Buddhism is a smoothly integrated whole, but that is an illusion created by pedagogues. Once one moves out of the spotlight of ideas that teachers wish to highlight (for whatever reason) one almost immediately encounters matter which does not fit whatever paradigm one is working with. I suggest that ethics remained a separate department that was never fully integrated into Buddhism. This statement may elicit surprise from many who see ethics as central to Buddhism, but in Unresolvable Plurality in Buddhist Metaphysics I tried to show why this might be so. In that essay I concluded:

"In the face of the plurality of doctrine, usually the best we can do is select a subset of the teachings that hang together and gloss over the discontinuities. A dense and complex jargon combined with an anti-intellectual discourse helps us to obfuscate such problems. Even those who study the texts more directly are doing so through cultural and historical lens that predispose them to see unity and continuity and to gloss over evidence of the opposite."

I find it difficult to take in the vast sweep of Buddhist ideas across time and space. It's a vast and complex field of study. Most of us can only take in a small part of it. Most Buddhists are probably happy with their little subset of comfort and/or inspiration. Exploration is within strict limits defined by confirmation bias (which recall is a feature of reason and not a bug). Texts are authoritative to the extent they confirm our views and are myth/legend/metaphor/interpolations to the extent that they disconfirm our views. We're easily disconcerted, much like the author of the Mahāpuṇṇama Sutta and all too willing to plaster over any cracks that appear. But to me the cracks are the interesting part.

One of the advantages of study is that it helps to identify where we are comfortable and where we are uncomfortable. It can help identify assumptions and presumptions. The kinds of disconnects I'm identifying are hard to see because they are cracks that previous generations have plastered over. They're mostly unwelcome because they force us to consider that our religion is less than perfect and that is an uncomfortable feeling. But the truth is important if sometimes unpalatable and discomfort is the starting point of the Buddhist religion.

~~oOo~~