A Parody of Vedic Belief

Professor Richard Gombrich has been at the fore-front of pointing out that late Vedic beliefs are parodied in the Buddhist scriptures. [1] He has demonstrated in a series of erudite articles that the Buddha must have known the body of teachings that underlie the early Upaniṣads - especially the Bṛhadāranyka (BU) and Chāndogya (CU). This is not to say that these actual texts would have been known to him, because most scholars believe them to be later distillations anyway (rather like the Buddhist texts), but that the beliefs we read in them were known. What kinds of evidence do we have for this thesis? I've been researching what kinds of views we find in the mouths of Brahmins in the Pāli texts and hope at some point to publish the results. My finding so far is that no Brahmin appears to espouse the kinds of views about ātman/brahman that we would associate with the Upaniṣads. However we do find something like those views being put into the words of Brahmā (i.e. God) himself for instance in the Kevaddha Sutta. [2]

In the BU 1.4.10 we find this passage (Olivelle's translation)

In the beginning this world was only brahman, and it knew only itself (ātman), thinking: "I am brahman." As a result it became the whole. Among the gods, likewise, whosoever realized this, only they became the Whole. It was the same also among the seers and among the humans. Upon seeing this very point, the seer Vāmadeva proclaimed: "I was Manu, and I was the sun." This is true even now. If a man knows "I am Brahman" in this way, he becomes this whole world.

Anyone interested in the Sabba Sutta should pay close attention to this verse as this is also the context for that sutta - Olivelle's 'Whole' is a translation of Sanskrit sarvaṃ = Pāli sabbaṃ - but for this essay I want to draw attention to the phrase "I am brahman": ahaṃ brahmāsmi. This is seen by Vedic believers as a kind of credo. It sums up the path according to the sages of the Upaniṣads which is that the realisation that you are brahman is the highest realisation. In this realisation one becomes this whole world (sa idaṃ sarvaṃ bhavati).

In the Pāli Kevaddha Sutta the householder Kevaddha approaches the Buddha to encourage him to perform some miracles and thereby attract followers. The Buddha says that not how he operates. How he does operate is spelled out in the long passage that is repeated in all 13 of the first of the Dīgha Nikāya suttas, but this segues into a story of a monk who, desiring to know where the elements cease without remainder. In order to answer the question he attains super human states of consciousness in meditation and visits the realms of the various devas, moving up the scale until me meets Brahmā himself. Posed the question Brahma can only reply:

"ahamasmi, bhikkhu, brahmā mahābrahmā abhibhū anabhibhūto aññadatthudaso vasavattī issaro kattā nimmātā seṭṭho sajitā vasī pitā bhūtabhabyānan" ti.

"I am, bhikkhu, Brahmā, Great Brahmā, unconquered conqueror, omnipotent, Lord over all, maker and creator, the highest, controller of the cosmic order, and father of all beings past, present and future."

Note that Brahmā doesn't answer the question. It turns out that he doesn't know the answer, but has to keep up appearances because the other gods believe it is true that Brahmā is the omnipotent creator. He takes the monk to one side to explain this and point him back in the direction of the Buddha.

But notice how he starts his answer. If we leave out the 'bhikkhu' he says: ahamasmi brahmā. Compare this to the Sanskrit: ahaṃ brahmāsmi. That the Pāli is a reference to the BU, or at least to the body of teaching recorded in that text, is clear. Although the BU was not written down for many years after the Buddhist texts, the scholarly consensus is that BU represents a body of teachings that predate the Buddha by several centuries. Given the flexibility of syntax in the two languages we are looking at the same statement. Exactly the same except that the Sanskrit has an ambiguity - brahmāsmi can be read as brahma asmi or brahmā asmi i.e. as the neuter or masculine. The first is the abstract universal essence of the cosmos that manifests as ātman in the individual; the second is the masculine creator god. The first usage in BĀU 1.4.10 is the context of a neuter pronoun 'it' (tad), while the second is in the context of a masculine pronoun 'him' (sa), so both senses could be being used here! Gombrich observes that the Buddha has selected the less abstract, and therefore less sophisticated, of the two, i.e. Brahmā as creator god, and that this helps to contribute to the overall sense of this being not just a polemic, but a parody. Johannes Bronkhorst has been very critical of Gombrich's interpretation of this kind of reference as evidence of the Buddha's sense of humour, [3] but personally I think this example is funny. On the one hand the realisation "I am Brahmā" encapsulates the highest goals of religion; and on the other the statement is just an egotistical and deluded claim with no basis.

The ideal of union with Brahmā (brahmasahavyatā) is also found in the Tevijja Sutta (DN 13) where we find the Buddha informing some hapless Brahmins Vāseṭṭha and Bhāradvaja [4] that though there own teachers are ignorant of the way leading to this goal, that:

brahmānaṃ cāhaṃ, vāseṭṭha, pajānāmi brahmalokañca brahmalokagāminiñca paṭipadaṃ
I know Brahmā, Vāseṭṭha, and Brahmā's domain, and the way leading to Brahmā's domain.

The Buddha then teaches the meditations we have come to know as the brahmavihāra 'dwelling with Brahmā', though the name is not used here. Brahmavihāra is actually a synonym of brahmasahavyatā. It would be like walking into a Christian church and asking "How many of your priests have been face to face with God? None? I have, and I can tell you how to be in His presence. You don't have to die and go to heaven, you can dwell in heaven right now!" - and teaching the mettābhāvanā! I've often wondered what would happen if we took the Buddha's approach to theistic religion. Forget about opposition and proving that God exists, but just roll with it and teach Buddhism in Christian terms. I think most of us are too afraid of losing our religion, and perhaps lack confidence in our methods, to even try this. And, of course, it would require one to be truthfully in that state of dwelling with God (brahmavihāra). But it is what the Buddha appears to have done.

To those people who claim that Buddhism is a religion which tolerates all views this must come as a shock. Not only did the Buddha not tolerate wrong views, he actively went about subverting them and making fun of people who held them. There are times when the Buddha of the Pāli Canon makes Richard Dawkins seem like an appeaser.


Notes

1. Professor Gombrich's contribution is summed up in his book What the Buddha Thought. References to his individual papers can be found there. The observations I make here has been observed by him previously, but I'm putting them in my own words.
   
2. also Kevaṭṭa Sutta. Dīgha Nikāya 11. PTS D i.211. Translation that follows is mine. Pāli text from CST.
3. Especially in his book Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India.
4. These two show up in various retellings of this story at e.g. DN 13, MN 98, and Sn 3.9. I haven't yet done a detailed comparison, but I'm working on it.

image: Brahmā from adishakti.org

A Pāli Verse

I've been working on Pāli texts a lot lately. Every now and then I throw caution to the wind and try something from the Sutta-nipāta - the oldest part of the canon, but also some of the most difficult grammar and syntax, and mostly in verse. After quite a bit of work, consulting first the commentaries and then K.R Norman's translation notes I managed to sort out Sn 876 which is the second to last verse of the Kalahavivāda (Quarrels & Disputes) Sutta (Sutta-nipāta iv.11). Since this was quite involved I thought my notes might give some insights into some of the difficulties one finds in translating. The Pāli is:

a|Ettāvataggampi vadanti heke,
b|yakkhassa suddhiṃ idha paṇḍitāse;
c|Tesaṃ paneke samayaṃ vadanti,
d|anupādisese kusalā vadānā.

The verse is in reply to a question from what seems to be an anonymous group of people. These 'suttas' are not introduced by Ānanda saying 'evaṃ me sutaṃ', nor do they set the scene, so the context is obscure. However the earlier part of the sutta is questions about dependent arising and desire. All of the questions on this subject are answered, then the interrogators say they have one more question. Since the answer is phrased in terms of the question, it should become clear what the question was as we proceed.

Firstly some Pāli lexiography/morphology needs to be explained

• ettāvataggampi is most likely ettāvata aggaṃ api
• heke is an Eastern, or Māgadhan, form of eke 'some' (nominative plural). [1] This form is not in PED.
  
• paṇḍitāse is according to Norman a nominative plural "there can be no doubt that -āse is derived from the Vedic -āsas ... and -e < -as is an Eastern form, sometimes called a Māgadhism". (note 7, p.150; note 876 p.362)
• paneke had me foxed for a while until I saw the sandhi. It is pan' eke or pana eke.
• vadānā is a form which is in PED. It derives either from the ātmanepāda or the passive form of √vad (PED sv vadati towards the bottom of the entry). It is a present participle with the meaning 'being called, so-called). Ireland mistakes it for vadana 'says'. And Norman and Thanissaro translate 'who say they are' rather than 'are called', i.e. they give it a clearly active reflective sense of 'call themselves'. Norman references the Critical Pāli Dictionary entry on anupādisesa which says "i. e. those who pretend to be 'an-upādi-sesa' kusalavādā samānā, Pj = Nidd-a;". [2]
  

So note the predominance here of 'Eastern' forms which do not become standard Pāli, but fade out of use. These are not the kind of differences that would make Eastern and Western dialects mutually incomprehensible. Just minor differences like a Londoners dropping their h's (ironically pronounced haitch) or making the 'd' in London a glottal stop: Lon'on.

From here working out the cases and conjugations is relatively straight forward. However this is verse and so the syntax is more difficult to work out. I like to look for words in the same case, as these words usually go together. So clearly heke and paṇḍitāse go together: 'some of the wise'.

Putting it altogether took quite a lot of thought. In pada's a & b clearly heke paṇḍitāse vadanti is a unit 'some of the wise say'. If we ignore for the minute the indeclinables we find yakkhassa suddhiṃ aggaṃ. This could be 'the highest purity of the yakkha'. However we now bring in ettāvatta 'so far, to this extent', we find other possibilities. The sentence could be 'the highest purity of the yakkha is to this extent' (Norman adds ...[only] to this extent). The English is not very good, but the sense would seem to be that the highest purity of the yakkha only goes so far.

Perhaps it would help us to know who or what the yakkha is? Thanissaro and Ireland (see below) translate this as 'the spirit', which seems to me to give entirely the wrong connotation in English. It allows the reader to think in terms of their own 'spirit' (in a New Age sense), or in terms of 'spirits'. Yakkha could at the outside be 'a spirit' but not 'the spirit'. I think yakkha here is the Buddha, spoken of in the abstract - i.e. the ideal person. [3] In the sutta immediately previous to this (Purābheda Sutta: Sn iv.10) the subject is the uttamaṃ naraṃ 'supreme man', another synonym for the religious ideal. The one before that (Māgandiya Sutta iv.9) discusses purity and characterises the ideal man as a 'nāga'. In the Pasūra Sutta (iv.8) the ideal is dhona - a word of doubtful etymology, but meaning 'purified'. The Buddha is also called ādiccabandhu 'kinsman of the Sun' (surely a Vedic term!) and mahesi (i.e. mahā-ṛṣi) 'great seer'. The context here is people from various religious backgrounds asking the Buddha questions about religious ideals. Some of the pre-, or non-, Buddhist terminology they use is carrying over, though not all of it is retained by Buddhists. [4]

So the question could be about the extent to which purification is possible, and the Buddha in his reply is saying "yes, some people think purity is limited", i.e. that no escape from saṃsāra is possible (this was the view of some Brahmins for instance). Another way to view the phrase is to see it as being about the extent of purification of the Buddha himself. Norman translates "...that the supreme purity of the yakkha is to this extent [only]..." (p.115) So if the yakkha is the Buddha then the question might not be abstract, but concrete. They might be asking about the Buddha's own state. However the following verse is very much phrased in abstract terms. Where to slot the idha 'here' is a minor problem, though as perplexing as all the rest. I put it where it seems to make most sense in English, but this is probably the foible of an amateur!

If you look at the accompanying image you will see that I've mapped out the flow of the sentence as I understand it (I had to do this to understand it!). I think pada a& b say:

some here who are wise say that,
the purity of the yakkha is highest to this extent [only].

Pada's c & d are hardly less puzzling. But if we work through it, order emerges. We have a pronoun in the nominative plural (eke) along with a verb in the 3rd person plural (vadanti) so this means 'some say'. The pronoun tesaṃ (plural dative or genitive) seems to fit: 'some of them'. Also in the nominative plural we have kusalā vadānā giving us 'some who call themselves experts say'. Now anupādisese looks like an accusative plural and samayaṃ looks like an accusative singular, though Norman says "there is no reason we should not take [anupādisese] with samayaṃ".

I haven't mentioned these last two words before so let's do it now. Anupādisesa is a compound of a + upādi + sesa: and means not (a) having fuel (upādi) remaining (sesa). This references the fire metaphor and suggests someone who has not only extinguished the fires of greed, hatred and delusion, but who has no more fuel on which they might be reignited. Much was later made of this distinction by Theravāda exegetes, but I think it simply makes a distinction between a living Arahant (who still has the fuel of his senses, which could potentially fuel a fire) and the state of an Arahant after death when no more fire is possible. The -e ending is not explained by Norman or other authorities (so perhaps it was obvious to them, and not to me). Other translators seem in fact to take it as an accusative singular.

Samayaṃ can mean 'time' or 'condition'; or sometimes 'congregation'. Now, the commentator in the Sutta-nipāta-aṭṭhakatha (aka Paramattha-jotikā II) glosses samayaṃ by ucchedaṃ - ie. reads it as a statement of nihilism. Not even the redoubtable Mr Norman can make sense of this! It more obviously suggests that the so-called experts say there is a 'time for' or 'condition of' anupādisese, i.e. of no-fuel-remaining, or complete liberation from greed, hatred, and delusion.

The next verse is an elaboration of the Buddha's view in terms of understanding that experience is dependent on contact etc. It expands on the theme of anupādisese rather than introducing a whole new topic.

So my whole translation then is:

Some here who are wise say that:
The purity of the yakkha is the best to this extent [only].
However, some of them who call themselves experts reply
It is the condition of no-fuel-remaining.

By way of contrast here are some other translations.

Norman:

"Some wise men here do say that the supreme purity of the yakkha is to this extent [only], but some of them, who say they are experts, preach that there is a time for [quenching] with no grasping remaining." [5]

John Ireland

"Some of the learned do declare purification of the spirit as the highest. But contrary to them some teach a doctrine of annihilation. Those clever ones declare this to be (final liberation) without basis of life's fuel remaining" [6]

Bhikkhu Thanissaro

"Some of the wise
say that just this much is the utmost,
the purity of the spirit is here.
But some of them,
who say they are skilled,
say it's the moment
with no clinging remaining." [7]

Dhīvan

This is what some clever people say about it,
that the purity of the individual is best to this extent.
But some of them, who call themselves experts,
teach that there comes a time when there is no grasping left. [8]

~~||~~

Notes

1. I think this is with reference to forms that appears in Aśokan and later inscriptions. These showed dialectical variations like heke/eke.
2. Cf Sn 888: Yeneva bāloti paraṃ dahāti, tenātumānaṃ kusaloti cāha; Sayamattanā so kusalo vadāno, aññaṃ vimāneti tadeva pāva. Norman: "on account of what he considers his opponent to be a fool, on that account he calls himself a expert. Calling himself an expert, he despises the other, [and yet] he speaks in that very same way." (pg.116)
   
3. Norman tacitly acknowledges that yakkha refers to the Buddha (just as Nāga often does) in his note to verse 478 (p.260) and says he prefers to leave it untranslated, though without saying why (which is a rare omission for him). An interesting question is in what culture was a Yakkha (S. Yakṣa) seen as a high status being? Certainly not in Vedic culture, and not in later Buddhist culture.
   
4. I note in passing that none of these discussions are in terms of ātman or brahman. I have been wondering lately whether there are any discussions in the Pāli which directly reflect these concerns.
5. Norman reads upādi as 'grasping', but cf PED sv upādi "= upādāna, but in more concrete meaning of "stuff of life", substratum of being, khandha; only in combn. with ˚sesa (adj.) having some fuel of life (= khandhas or substratum) left, i. e. still dependent (on existence), not free, materially determined". By contrast CPD merely has: 'attachment'.
   
6. Ireland's notes point out that "The term 'spirit' (yakkha) is equivalent here to 'being' or 'man." I don't think translating "the spirit" conveys this. (see also note8) Note also that Ireland follows the commentary in taking samayaṃ as 'nihilism'.
   
7. Thanissaro also opts to translate yakkha as 'the spirit' (see comments in note 6 and 8 and in the text) and upādi as 'clinging'.
8. Dhīvan's rendering of yakkha as 'individual' is interesting here - it universalises the statement without creating the kinds of problems introduced by terms such as 'spirit'. This is supported by PED sv yakkha (7): "Exceptionally the term 'yakkha' is used as a philosophical term denoting 'individual soul'... "ettāvatā yakkhassa suddhi (purification of the heart)".
   

References

Pāli texts
All from Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana Tipitaka Version 4.0 (CST4).

• Kalahavādasuttaṃ. Sutta-nipāta (PTS Sn 876).
  
• Kalahavivādasuttavaṇṇanā, Suttanipāta-aṭṭhakathā (PTS Pj ii.550f)
  
• Kalahavivādasuttaniddeso, Mahāniddesapāḷi (PTS Nidd I i.254f)

Translations

• Dhīvan. Kalahavivādasutta Discourse on Quarrels and Disputes (triṣṭubh). Unpublished translation.
• Ireland, John D. (trans) "Kalaha-vivada Sutta: Further Questions"(Snp 4.11). Access to Insight, June 14, 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.11.irel.html.
• Norman, K.R. (trans) The Group of Discourses (Sutta-Nipāta). 2nd ed. Pali Text Society, 2001. [Norman's notes supply relevant sections from the commentaries in the Mahāniddesa (Nidd I) and the aka Paramattha-jotikā II (Pj II).]
  
• Thanissaro. (trans) 'Kalaha-vivada Sutta: Quarrels & Disputes' (Snp 4.11). Access to Insight, June 8, 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.11.than.html.

What Did the Buddha Mean by 'World'?

I have been working on a commentary to the Kaccānagotta Sutta (SN 12.15, PTS Sii.16.) and considering the term loka, usually translated as 'world', and how the Buddha used it; especially in the context of the compound lokasamdaya 'origin of the world'. In my research I found a trail already followed by Bhikkhu Bodhi in the notes to his Saṃyutta Nikāya translation. I will work through these texts myself, offer my own translations and observations, but leave Bhikkhu Bodhi the last word, since he got there before me.

Our first text is the Discourse of Going to the End of the World. [1] Here an odd question is raised:

kena cāvuso lokasmiṃ lokasaññī hoti lokamānī?
And by what, friend, in the world is one a perceiver and cogniser of the world?

The answer is that one is a perceiver and cogniser of the world by the six sense organs in the world. On one hand this is obvious - one perceives 'the world' through the senses - however the senses themselves are in the world (lokasmiṃ). Bhikkhu Bodhi points to SN 2.26 for an explanation. This is the Rohitassa Sutta. [2] Here the young deva, Rohitassa, asks the Buddha:

yatha nu kho bhante na jāyati na jīyati na mīyati na cavati na upapajjati, sakkā nu kho so, bhante, gamanena lokassa anto ñātuṃ vā daṭṭhum vā pāpuṇituṃ vā ti?

Is there a way by travelling to know, or see, or to reach, the end of the world where one is not born, grow old, die; where is is no death and rebirth?

The answer is no. One cannot reach the goal by actually travelling. I take this to mean that the Buddha is not talking about a place, that the language of the 'path' is only a metaphor. So the world being talked about is not the physical world, not the external objective world. He then makes a statement which might be familiar:

Na kho panāhaṃ, āvuso, appatvā lokassa antaṃ dukkhassa antakiriyaṃ vadāmi. Api ca khvāhaṃ, āvuso, imasmiṃyeva byāmamatte kaḷevare sasaññimhi samanake lokañca paññapemi lokasamudayañca lokanirodhañca lokanirodhagāminiñca paṭipadanti.

However, I, friend, there is no making an end of disappointment, without reaching the end of the world. And, friend, it is right here in this 'fathom long' [3] body endowed with perception and cognition that I declare the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way leading to the cessation of the world.

So this reinforces the idea that 'the world' is not 'the world' as we usually think about it, but the kind of world we refer to when we refer to some who "lives in a world of their own" - a subjective world. If we turn to Buddhaghosa's commentary [4] at this point (as Bhikkhu Bodhi does in his notes) we find that he links loka with dukka and associates the four truths of the noble ones with the world, the origin and cessation of the world and the way to the cessation of the world. Buddhaghosa then says:

Iti – ‘‘nāhaṃ, āvuso, imāni cattāri saccāni tiṇakaṭṭhādīsu paññapemi, imasmiṃ pana cātumahābhūtike kāyasmiṃ yeva paññapemī’’ti dasseti.

Thus he should see: ' I do not, friend, declare these four truths in grass and wood, but I declare them only in this body of the four great elements'.

Now this is presented as a quote from the Buddha, but modern databases make it easy to show that it does not occur in the Pāli texts that have come down to us. So we must be cautious in how we use it. With this caveat I may say that this the most unequivocal statement that the Buddha is unconcerned with the objective world, but only with the subjective world, that I know of. What in effect Buddhaghosa, at least, is saying is that paṭicca-sammupāda is not intended to apply to the external world, but to one's world of experience - to the processes of perception (the senses) and cognition (the mind) located within the body.

In the World Sutta [5] the Buddha asks the rhetorical question: "what is the origin of the world". His answer is a well known formula:

Cakkhuñca paṭicca rūpe ca uppajjati cakkhuviññāṇaṃ. Tiṇṇaṃ saṅgati phasso. Phassapaccayā vedanā; vedanāpaccayā taṇhā; taṇhāpaccayā upādānaṃ; upādānapaccayā bhavo; bhavapaccayā jāti; jātipaccayā jarāmaraṇaṃ sokaparideva-dukkhadomanassupāyāsā sambhavanti. Ayaṃ kho, bhikkhave, lokassa samudayo.

With the eye and forms as condition, eye-consciousness arises. The coincidence of the three is contact. On the basis of contact there are sensations, which give rise to desires. Desires are fuel which supports becoming. [6] With becoming there is birth, and from birth old-age, and death, grief, lamenting, misery, dejection, and trouble are produced. This, monks, is the origin of the world.

This is a portion of the nidāna chain (the most useful and relevant part) which we normally associate with the arising of dukkha. Here the world is more or less equivalent to dukkha. Note that 'the world' comes into being on the basis of contact between sense organ and sense object - forms. Here forms are not part of 'the world', they are part of the conditions which give rise to the world - this is a very important distinction. The nidānas do not give rise to forms, they give rise to the experience, the world of suffering.

The conclusion of this exploration is, I hope, clear and I will leave it to Bhikkhu Bodhi to articulate it:

"The world with which the Buddha's teaching is principally concerned is 'the world of experience,' and even the objective world is of interest only to the extent that it serves as that necessary external condition for experience" [7]

~~||~~

Notes

1. Lokantagamana Sutta (SN 35.116, PTS S iv.93)
2. Rohitassa Sutta (SN 2.26, PTS S i.61; also AN 4.45, PTS A ii.47)
3. 'fathom long carcass' is (I think) Mrs Rhys David's translation of byāmamatte kalebara which has a great ring to it: but byāma refers to 'an arm-span' which is typically somewhat less than a fathom or six feet. Kaḷevara (or kaḷebara) is 'the body'. It also means 'a corpse or carcass', but a dead body is seldom "endowed with perception and cognition"
4. Rohitassa Sutta Vaṇṇanā (SA i.116)
5. Loka Sutta (SN 12.43, PTS S ii.73)
6. upādāna is typically translated as 'clinging'. This is neither bad doctrine, nor bad philology. However Richard Gombrich has shown how the word more literally means 'the thing which supports a active process' i.e. fuel. The equation that "desire fuels becoming" is part of the metaphor of fire, which characterises becoming (bhava) as like a fire which can only continue when there is fuel. In my opinion it makes more sense. I've written more on the use of the metaphor of fire in these essays: Everything is on fire! and Playing with Fire.
7. Bodhi. Connected Discourses p. 394, n.182.

image: earth in hands from Worthington Libraries.

Some Additional Notes

Here are two follow up notes to previous essays, one on the -e ending in mantras, another on the name Gotama; and lastly a brief note on dating the Canon.


1. The -e Ending in Mantras.

In March 2009 I wrote Words in Mantras That End in -e. In that essay I revisited some of the ideas about what the -e ending might signify, especially with respect to the Heart Sūtra mantra. Kern, Conze and other Sanskritists have seen it as a feminine vocative singular, though of course there are other grammatical possibilities. [1] I speculated that the -e ending was simply a masculine nominative singular, and that the mantras were composed in a region of India which employed that ending as opposed to Classical Sanskrit -as/-aḥ or Pāli -o. Recently I stumbled on an article by Signe Cohen which adds something to the picture. I know Cohen from her excellent linguistic analysis of the Upaniṣads: Text and Authority in the Older Upaniṣads. This book is particularly important for the understanding it brings of the internal struggles apparent especially in the Bṛhadāranyka Upaniṣad which has Yajurveda sages in direct competition and victorious over Ṛgveda sages. However in 2002 Cohen published a short article on the -e ending:

On the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit/Middle Indic Ending "-e" as a 'Magadhism', Acta Orientalia Vol. 63 (2002), p.67-9.

This article points out that although the -e form for the masculine nominative singular does indeed occur in the North East of India, it is in fact far more widespread. This has partly been obscured as editors of Sanskrit texts have 'corrected' the text for critical editions. Patrick Olivelle complains of the same problem with the Upaniṣads in his article:

'Unfaithful transmitters: philological criticism and critical editions of the Upaniṣads,' in Language Texts and Society, Firenze University Press, 2005. (p. 285f) [originally published in Journal of Indian Philosophy 26, 1998: 173f.]

Western Editors, believing Indian pandits to be incompetent, silently emended unusual spellings. However as Olivelle points out, those pandits were far from incompetent, likely to be well versed in Pāṇini, and to know a 'wrong' form when they saw one. Indian scholars tended to preserve dialectical and archaic variants, being inherently more conservative in relation to texts they saw as sacred. To the European scholar of a certain era nothing but their own objectivity was sacred. While we may not accept the pandits explanations of such variant forms (which are frequently ascribed to the peculiarities of Vedic or given mystical significance) they were at least not so over-confident as to 'correct' them. As such, modern critical and printed editions of the Upaniṣads often obscure the history of the text by removing evidence, and reproducing previously corrected texts without question.

Cohen notes that in fact the -e form is found all over North India, and especially in Sanskrit loan words in Tocharian. She concludes:

"The common assumption that the -e ending is an Eastern Dialect form must be seriously questioned. Rather than being a specifically Eastern Dialectical feature found sporadically in other parts of India due to eastern influence, it appears that the -e ending was widespread, especially in Buddhist Sanskrit, that it must be considered a standard form, next to the -o ending." [p. 68; my italics]

My conjecture is that Buddhist mantras were composed in Prakrit or Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit rather than Classical Sanskrit, and that words ending in -e in mantras are simply nominative singular forms, the gender of the words in the mantra having no relationship to the gender of the deity - and in the case of the Heart Sūtra there is no deity anyway.

~~~~

2. The Name Gautama

In my essay What Was the Buddha's Name? I drew attention to the quirk of history which left the Buddha, a kṣatriya by tradition but possibly a non-āryan, with an ostentatiously Brahmin gotra-, or clan-name: Gautama (meaning 'descended from Gotama, the one with the most cows go'). However more than half a century ago D.D. Kosambi offered a different take on this subject in a review published in 1953:

D.D. Kosambi. 'Brahmin Clans'. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1953), pp. 202-208.

He points to two brief Pāli passages which suggest that Gautama (Pāli: Gotama) is not the Buddha's gotra name. The first is from the Therīgāthā verses of the Buddha's maternal aunt and foster mother. She says (Th 2 162)

Bahūnaṃ vata atthāya, māyā janayi gotamaṃ;

Truly for the many, Māyā gave birth to Gotama

Kosambi's point here is that the names Māyā and Gotama are on the same level - i.e. they are both first names. This is to read the text quite literally, and I'm a bit doubtful about doing that. Compare for instance the case of the Brahmin boy Uppatissa, son of Rūpasārī, better known as Sāriputta 'son of (Rūpa)sārī'.[2] However Kosambi points out that neither does the Buddha's wife become known as Gotamī in any tradition. The fact that Mahāpajāpati, his mother's sister, is called Gotamī also suggests that it is not the Buddha's clan-name since the names pass pass down patrilineally (though I think Kosambi here is thinking in terms of Brahminical social rules which required Brahmins to marry outside their gotra). Kosambi also notes that bhikkhus are sakiyaputta not gotamaputta. He does not attempt to explain why the future Buddha might be named after Vedic sages however, which still strikes me as odd.

Kosambi's other text is the Pabbajjā Sutta [Sn 3.1] in which King Bimbisāra asks the Buddha where he is from. The Buddha replies that he comes from the country of Kosala, and:

Ādiccā nāma gottena, sākiyā nāma jātiyā;
Tamhā kulā pabbajitomhi, na kāme abhipatthayaṃ.

Called Ādiccā by clan, called Sākiya by caste [jāti]
I went forth from that family, not longing for pleasures.

The phrase only occurs once in the canon, but elsewhere the Buddha says that the Sākiya consider rājā okkāka their ancestor [Ambaṭṭha Sutta, DN 3, PTS D i.92-3] and Pāli okkāka is Sanskrit ikṣvāku a king of the ādityā [P. ādiccā] gotra. The suggestion then is that the Buddha's name was in Sanskrit Gautama Ādityā; and Pāli Gotama Ādiccā. The Buddha is also sometimes called Āṅgirasa which according to the Dictionary of Pāli Names was a tribe which included the Gautama gotra. My reading of some of the DOPN references suggests that āṅgirasa was being used as an adjective (e.g. 'shiny like the sun') rather than a name. Against the passage above Kosambi also cites the Mahāpadāna Sutta [Dn 14, PTS ii.3]

Ahaṃ, bhikkhave, etarahi arahaṃ sammāsambuddho gotamo gottena ahosiṃ.

I bhikkhus, now worthy, fully awakened, was of the Gotama gotra. [3]

This phrase occurs 3 times in the suttas, all in the Mahapadāna. Kosambi refers to this as "the first interpretation of Gotama as the Buddha's gotra name... obviously a late formation under Brahmin influence". Indeed it is so obvious that Kosambi provides no evidence for his conjecture, nor does he consider the possibility that both statements about gotra are "late formations". Contrarily we find the name Gotama being used in the last two chapters of the Sutta-nipāta which are generally considered to be the oldest layers of the Pāli Canon.

It is still a puzzle as to why the Buddha even has a gotra name, let alone a Brahmin one (which both Gautama and Ādityā are). He was not a Brahmin. I don't think Kosambi solved the mystery, but he provided an interesting additional view point. One last observation of my own is that though the Buddha meets Brahmins from many other gotra lineages, he never seems to meet a Gautama Brahmin. This is despite the fact that the two ancestors Gotama and Bharadvāja are mentioned together in Bṛhadāranyka Upaniṣad 2.2.4, and Gautama the Buddha meets more than a dozen Brahmins from the Bhāradvāja lineage, who mostly seem to live in Kosala (see e.g. DN 3, 13, 27, 32, but throughout the nikāyas).

18 Aug 2011

I've been looking at Brahmins in the Canon and thinking about the Buddha's Brahmin surname. No other males with the gotra name "Gautama" are found in the Pāli Canon, though there are several women. I think the facts we have might be explained if the Buddha's mother and her sister were of the Gautama clan, and married Sudhodana who was a Śākya. Gautama in other words is actually Gautamaputra, Son of Gautamī; on the same model as Śāriputra is the Son of (his mother) Śārī.

6 Sept. Extra note

Snodgrass, vol.2 p. 471

In the Garbhadhātu Maṇḍala of the Shingon school, associated with the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra (MAT), there is a figure called Gautama (or Gotama; Japanese: Kudonsen 瞿曇仙). This is the Vedic Gautama and he attends on the god Agni. Adrian Snodgrass suggests that he is the subject of many hymns in the Ṛgveda, though this is not correct as far as I know. He is, however, credited as the author of some of them. Snodgrass translates from Dainichikyōsho (Śubhakarasiṃha's commentary on the MAT):

"The hermit-ascetic Gotama [sic], flying in the sky at well, let fall two drops of sweat upon the earth, and the earth gave birth to sugar cane. Warmed by the sun, the sugar cane gave birth to two children, who became Śākya kings"*

These two are the progenitors of the clan which 'Siddhartha' was born into. Gautama has a consort called Gautamī. I have not yet found the connection between the 'sugar cane' clan (Kansho) and the Śākya clan, though it may rest on a Chinese (mis)translation. In any case it that MAT includes the Vedic Gautama alongside the many other Vedic gods and important figures. Note that this story glosses over the fact that Gautama is a brahmaṇa, while the Buddha is usually referred to as a kṣatriya.

* see Snodgrass, Adrian. The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism, vol. 2, p. 470.

~~~~

3. Dating the Canon.

The Assalāyana (MN 93) is a lengthy discussion between the eponymous Brahmin and the Buddha about the claim by Brahmins to be the best class (brāhmaṇo'va seṭṭho vaṇṇo). [4] Amongst the various arguments the Buddha puts forward is the relativist argument that some countries only have two classes, viz. ayyo and dāsa, i.e. noble and slave. [MN 93.5] These two countries (janapada) referred to are Yona and Kamboja. Various maps put Kamboja in different places, but it was supposedly north and west of Gandhāra. Shrimali centres it on the Kabul River (which flows through the Hindu Kush mountains from what is now Afghanistan to join the Indus) [5] Yona is thought to refer to Bactrian Greeks even further west. As the DOPN says:

The name is probably the Pāli equivalent for Ionians, the Baktrian Greeks. The Yonas are mentioned with the Kambojas in Rock Edicts v. and xii of Asoka, as a subject people, forming a frontier district of his empire.

These Greeks are thought to have been descendants of garrisons left by Alexander of Macedon. And this gives us our date. [6] At the time of the Buddha the Persian Achaemanids ruled as far east as the Indus River - i.e. including Gandhāra. We can confidently date Alexander's Indian campaign as part of his assault on and destruction of the Achaemanid Empire, to 327-326 BCE. If yona means 'Greek', then MN 93.6 cannot have been written before this date. Dates of the Buddha are less certain but the most recent research points to his death being circa 400 BCE, some 70 odd years before Alexander. Greek cultural influence remained for some time with post-Mauryan Dynasty Gandhāra being ruled by what is termed an 'Indo-Greek' dynasty from ca. 180 BCE - 10 CE. Greek aesthetic ideals heavily influenced Gandhāra art for some centuries, so that the first anthropomorphic images of the Buddha, produced in that region during the Kushan period (ca. 75-241 CE) showing obvious Hellenistic features.

Note 7 May 2017 - to the best of my knowledge the Greeks never used Ionian as a general label. It was always a specific reference to Greeks who lived in Ionia - modern day Turkey. Moreover, the Greeks in question were Macedonians from Macedonia and that is probably how they referred to themselves. However, the Persians may have used Ionian as a general term for Greeks. If the Pāḷi Canon is using a Persian term for Greeks then this suggests that it was incorporated before Alexander. In which case the date goes back to being very vague indeed. 

~~||~~

Notes

1. for instance -e can signify a masculine or neuter locative singular of a noun or past-participle in -a, such as gata (past-participle of gacchati).
2. I don't want to multiply examples needlessly but Moggallana's given name was Kotila (after his village, just as Upatissa was called after his village). Kassapa (tortoise) is a very common name in Pāli perhaps because it was a gotra name as well. It seems that calling people by clan or family names, or epithets was a common practice.
3. Note that Walsh translates this as a present (I am) when the verb is clearly past-tense; the Buddha left his clan, class, and caste behind when he went forth.
4. D ii.148. Note that he continues "the other class is defective" (sometimes in this pericope the plural is used 'the other classes'). The Pāli being: hīno añño vaṇṇo. Here the term hīna is clearly being used pejoratively in a caste context. See also my Hīnayāna Reprise.
5. Shrimali, Krishna Mohan. The Age of Iron and the Religious Revolution : c.700-c.350 BC. (A People's History of India: 3A). New Dehli, Tulika Books. 2007. Map p.85.
6. I haven't found any reference to this fact, but I presume someone else has already noticed this.

The Buddha's Refuge

A lot of the Buddha's biography seems to be in the form of psycho-drama. His internal processes get acted out, and the 'players' are a variety of archetypal characters including Māra ['the killer'] and Brahma-sahampati [God] and the Earth Goddess [Pṛthvī]. Often the Buddha is shown as considering a dead end before coming up with a brilliant but previously unforeseen solution. In a brief episode found in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, the Gārava Sutta, [1] the Buddha is faced with a dilemma in the aftermath of his breakthrough to awakening:

dukkhaṃ kho agāravo viharati appatisso, kaṃ nu khvāhaṃ samaṇaṃ vā brāhmaṇaṃ vā sakkatvā garuṃ katvā upanissāya vihareyyanti?

Miserable indeed the disrespectful and rebellious dwell. Which ascetic or priest should I reverence, respect, and dwell in subordination to?

The Buddha then considers whether there is anyone more developed than himself to which he could subordinate himself to. But he sees no-one more accomplished than himself in virtue, meditation, wisdom (i.e. the three-fold path); nor in liberation or the knowledge and vision of liberation. In short he sees no one in any realm to whom he could be a subordinate - not even amongst the gods. Then he decides:

Yaṃnūnāhaṃ yvāyaṃ dhammo mayā abhisambuddho tameva dhammaṃ sakkatvā garuṃ katvā upanissāya vihareyyanti.

I will reverence, pay my respects, and dwell in subordination to that very thing to which I have fully-awakened.

At this point Brahma-sahampati turns up to praise the Buddha for his decision. He reveals that this is what all the Buddhas of the past have done, and all the Buddhas of the future will do.

This is a pretty literal account and partial translation of the text. I wanted to convey the raw experience of reading the text in Pāli. But in taking this approach I must then retrace my steps and say more about the context. Indian society, like most societies, was and is hierarchical. We are probably familiar with the ideas of class (varṇa) and caste (jāti). Each person was embedded in a web of social links and obligations. The Chinese called awareness of, and obedience to, this aspect of life: filial piety (孝; xiào). One had obligations to one's parents for instance, to one's spouse and children, and to the king. Another hierarchy existed in religious circles which may have been modelled on social norms. A student lived, as they say, at the feet of their teacher. In taking a teacher one became their disciple, their servant, and one obeyed without question every instruction. Compare this passage from the Visuddhimagga:

Ācariyassa niyyātentenāpi ‘‘imāhaṃ, bhante, attabhāvaṃ tumhākaṃ pariccajāmī’’ti vattabbaṃ.

Dedicating himself to a teacher he should say: "I give up this personality [attabhāva] to you, Sir." (Vism iii.126)

Regarding the word attabhāva PED says it can mean "one's own nature; person, personality, individuality... life, rebirth". So the interpretation could be "I give up my life to you". The point is that without a total commitment from the student, the teacher will not teach them. In the Gārava Sutta three words are used to express this teacher/pupil relationship: gārava, paṭissa, and upanissāya. These more or less correspond to the body, speech and mind aspects of the person.

The word gārava (Sanskrit gaurava) is related to 'guru'. The verbal root is not very clear in either Pāli or Sanskrit, but the Indo-European root appears to be *√g^u̯er-. The basic meaning is 'heavy', and cognate words in English are: from Latin 'gravis', gravity, grave; from Greek 'barus' baritone, barium. So the 'guru' is someone who is weighty, who has gravitas. The form of Sanskrit gaurava is a taddhita compound which lengthens the root vowel to au, and has the sense of 'related to or connected with what is weighty', which is to say that the student experiences the gravitas of the teacher, how they live their lives, and responds appropriately (gau devolves to gā in Pāli). The attitude of the disciple is 'gārava' respectful. [2]

The word paṭissa (also patissa) evokes another aspect of India spiritual life. The root here is √śru 'to listen, to hear'. It is one of the oldest spiritual traditions that the way to learn from a teacher is to pay attention to what they say. Older still is the belief that the sages who composed the Vedic hymns first 'heard' them in ecstatic trances brought on by the drug soma. [3] Truth/reality (both sat) and speech (vac) have always been very closely linked in India, even after the introduction of writing. Unlike contemporary Western society where, except in specialised situations, the word of any person counts for less than a published source, Indian spiritual tradition required personal communication, often under conditions of strict secrecy. The prefix paṭi- (Sk prati-) suggests 'towards'. So paṭissa means 'listening to', 'paying attention'. PED highlights the nature of the guru/disciple relationship when it defines this word as: "deference, obedience."

In the first passage of Pāli I quoted, the Buddha associated the lack of these qualities - appatisso and agārava - with dukkha 'misery, disappointment'. I think he must mean having no one to respect, no one to pay heed to, in other words having no teacher, is a miserable state to be because one cannot make further progress without a guide. So then he ponders under whom he might subordinate himself. Which brings us to the third word: upanissāya. This is a gerund from upanissayati 'to depend or rely on' (from the root śri 'resort'), and means 'in dependence on, protected by; near to'. In the ancient Indian religions, the religious student dwelt with their teacher, in their house, and learned everything at their feet. Of course once teachers started to become itinerant this lifestyle was modified, but the description stuck. It was rather like the old apprentice system in England. One of my Great-great-grandfathers was apprenticed for seven years. For the first 4 years he got no pay, but only board and lodgings (ie. food and a bed). Years 5 and 6 saw him receive a small allowance, and then in his 7th year he started to be paid for his work. He learnt his trade from his master, living and working under his roof and under his authority. In Sanskrit this relationship of subordination to the authority and will of the master is sometimes referred to as upaniṣad 'sitting down near' or 'sitting at the feet of the guru', though the word also came to mean 'a secret or esoteric teaching', or 'the mystery upon which something rests'; and it is the collective title of late Vedic esoteric books 'The Upaniṣads'. The Buddha is clearly concerned to find a teacher. He means to subordinate himself to a teacher, to sit at someone else's feet, as is the custom of his time and place.

So the proper attitude of the disciple, in this traditional view, is total commitment of body, speech and mind; characterised by respect for the teacher's gravitas, paying attention and obedience to the teacher's words, and subordination to the will of the teacher.

The Buddha is portrayed as being quite humble even in the face of his amazing breakthrough. However this humility is replaced by some other emotion (we're not quite sure what) when he realises that he is in no way inferior to any being in the universe (human or divine), and that it would not be right for him to subordinate himself to anyone under those conditions. This speaks to the ancient Indian feeling for order. The universe is an ordered and lawful (dhammatā, niyamatā, or even dhamma-niyamatā) place. The Buddha could not take a teacher of lesser virtue, or lesser wisdom. This would be unnatural. Lacking a being to pay his respects to, he realises that he can direct those emotions towards the dhamma itself. I think dhamma here is slightly ambiguous. I suspect it is deliberately so - the Buddha will respect the thing (dhamma) which he awakened to - whatever that might be! It could mean any or all of: 'thing, teaching, truth, nature, order'. There is an emphasis in the Pāli: tam'eva dhamma 'that very thing' or 'only that thing'. That thing, that very thing, is what we call "The Dhamma", i.e. the Dhamma as a refuge, or as one of the three precious gifts (aka the three jewels) which though singular has many aspects and facets.


Notes

1. Gārava Sutta. SN 6.2 PTS S i.139. My translations. Also translated in Bodhi The Connected Discourses, p.233-4; online translation by Thanissaro @ Access to Insight.
2. Various theories have been put forward regarding the identity of the original soma - since the contemporary soma is not a drug. Since the sages had visions it has often been assumed to be an hallucinogen. However a good case has been made for it be ephedra - If you watch Michael Wood's excellent documentary on Indian history you can see him procuring and taking ephedra in episode one. For more scholarly (less empirical) approaches see The Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies: especially Vol. 9 (2003), Issue 1 (May).
3. Those with some Sanskrit may enjoy this little exercise from Deshpande's Saṃkṛtasubohini textbook (chp 14, exercise १.५).
   

   गुरुः कथं गुरुर्भवति? यतो गुरोः ज्ञानं गुरु भवति । ततस्स गुरुर्भवतीति गुरवो वदन्ति । केषाञ्चित् तु लघु भवति । ततस्ते गुरवो एव न वर्तन्त इति सर्वे कुशलाश्सिष्या मन्यन्ते ॥
   

The Fifth Precept

surāmeraya-majja-pamādaṭṭḥānā
veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi

I undertake the training principle of abstaining from intoxicating drinks and negligent states of intoxication.

~~~~

Of all the precepts this one is probably the one most commonly fudged. I know a lot of Buddhists who like a drink, and a few who take recreational drugs. I'll try to avoid being moralistic, but I want to explore the fifth precept and its implications.

Let's start with the translation. Although the first three words (which I have joined with hyphens) are often seen written as separate, the first two don't have inflections, and therefore the three must a single compound: surāmerayamajjapamādaṭṭḥānā which will require some unpacking. The word surāmeraya is itself a compound: surā and meraya are synonyms for intoxicating drinks. Surā possibly comes from the root √su meaning to 'press out' (from which we get the Vedic soma, the drug used by the early Vedic poets). While some information has been lost on what exactly these words refer to, the dictionaries link surā to distillation. I'm not sure what the level of technology was in the the Buddha's day - perhaps they were making distilled liquors then? The Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary (MW) suggests that it originally referred to a kind of beer (remembering that the earliest Vedic texts predate the Iron Age by some centuries). Meraya seems to have more or less the same reference, and is found in combination with surā more often than not (even in Vedic texts). Majja (Sanskrit madya) is a third almost synonymous word, though in this case more clearly related to mada from √mad 'intoxication'. I suspect that at the time the distinctions might have been more meaningful, although it is a feature of Pāli literature to use synonyms for emphasis. The intention seems to be to cover all kinds of intoxicating drinks, and probably all forms of intoxication.

The same root √mad occurs in the next word - pamāda - which is often translated as 'negligence'. [1] Keep in mind that in Buddhist texts the opposite appamāda 'vigilance' is almost always associated with objects of the senses - and is akin to 'guarding the gates of the senses'. The word ṭhāna means 'a state', so pamādaṭṭhāna is a state of negligence, especially with respect to the senses.

So the compound surā-meraya-majja-pamāda-ṭṭhānā unpacks as: 'intoxicating drinks and negligent states of intoxication'.

The rest of the formula - veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi - is relatively straight forward. The verb is samādiyati 'to take upon oneself, to undertake' in the first person singular: 'I undertake'. Veramaṇī is 'abstaining'. Sikkhapāda is a compound with sikkhā meaning 'training, discipline, precept', while pada here is 'an item': so sikkhāpada is a training rule or training principle, i.e. a precept. Note that the precepts are not really 'given' or 'taken' from another person. The form is 'I undertake', it is an individual act of will, a personal undertaking, though making a public declaration of one's intention to undertake this training usually indicates a deeper commitment to the training.

It is worth making the point that in the Buddha's day the attitude to alcohol was very different to our Anglo-Saxon attitude. This is brought out in in stark terms in the Dhammika Sutta:

The householder who finds pleasure in this Dhamma,
Should not practice drinking alcohol;
Should not cause any other good person to drink,
Knowing it leads to madness.

Intoxicated, they foolishly do evil,
And cause other negligent people to do likewise.
This occasion for disgrace should be avoided,
This crazy, idiotic pleasure of fools. [2]

Although some 'sophisticated' urban Indians have started drinking like Westerners, amongst the poorer and rural Indians that I know, drinking is still seen as a great evil. Of course drinking patterns in Europe and its colonies have typically been different. This does not mean that drink is not a great social evil in West. As the UK Office of National Statistics says:

The number of alcohol-related deaths in the United Kingdom has consistently increased since the early 1990s, rising from the lowest figure of 4,023 (6.7 per 100,000) in 1992 to the highest of 9,031 (13.6 per 100,000) in 2008. [3]

That's about 25 people per day dying alcohol related deaths in 2008, and doubling in the last 18 years. [4] Those people have families and loved ones who are affected by their deaths; by their drinking habits; by their behaviour. In the UK alcohol deaths far outstrip all other drugs combined except tobacco which kills more than 80,000 people a year on its own (and for what one wonders?). Alcohol is responsible for thee times as many deaths as road accidents, although clearly alcohol is also a major factor in causing road accidents. There is no doubt that alcohol is a major problem in the UK. Imagine if, instead of reporting the names of the soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan each day, a list of people who died alcohol related deaths in the UK (or wherever you live) were read on the news each day? In the USA the situation is very similar:

via +Vox 

One of the arguments about unethical products is that by not participating in the process of production, distribution and consumption we make that product marginally less profitable. By not eating meat, for instance, we reduce the demand for meat generally and this has an effect on the industry, making it marginally less profitable. Collectively we can have a great effect. It's worth considering that while you personally might not have a problem with alcohol, that on balance society does. By consuming it you help to keep the product economically viable and contribute indirectly to all the problems that alcohol creates. Is your personal pleasure at drinking enough to justify participating in the production of a substance that kills so many people?

Of course the Buddhist drinker will usually argue that they do not drink very much, do not drink to excess, do not drink so that their "mindfulness is impaired" (as I have often heard). And perhaps this is true. Perhaps the are right to argue that it is the 'spirit' of the precept rather than the letter that should apply. However it's hard to tell how much alcohol it takes to affect your mind, partly because alcohol itself makes this kind of judgement more difficult - alcohol impairs judgement. I note for instance that over the years the acceptable level of alcohol when driving has consistently gone down, and that some authorities say that the limit should be zero. The argument on how much is too much is clearly not settled, but the cut-off has trended downward as investigations have intensified into the effects of alcohol on the brain.

Another 'let off clause' is that medical journalists have reported that drinking alcohol can actually be good for your health. Fully unpacking the problems with this would take an essay in its own right. The story on the health benefits from alcohol, and the type of alcohol involved, has changed regularly and considerably over the years. Some of the studies employed doubtful methods. Not every study has been able to confirm the health benefits found in the others, so there is no consensus. The issue is not clear, but journalists are not really interested in scientific process, and medical journalism is still about selling newspapers. If one is using popular press stories to justify stretching a precept that is shaky ground to take a stand on.

We often look for ways to rationalise our lax ethics. We cite the Aristotelian motto "moderation in all things" as a formulation of the middle way that allows for some moderate vices.[5] One needs to be clear about how the Buddha saw his middle way playing out in lifestyle terms. To the Buddha the idea lifestyle was to reject family, work, holidays, status, and possessions generally; to live simply, live on handouts, eat only once per day and then only enough to sustain your body; and importantly in this context he was insistent that the middle way did not include any intoxication at all. So if we want to cite the middle way as a guide for our lifestyle, then we need to be prepared to really take it on.

I take the spirit of the precept to extend beyond alcohol to include all sources of intoxication and intoxicated states (pamādaṭṭḥānā). It could conceivably also cover such things as television, films, and the internet as well (gulp!). Anything we turn to repeatedly in order to alter our perceptions to make our present experience more pleasurable has the potential to become intoxicating and addictive. And this is the heart of the problem with intoxicants - in taking them we are pursuing pleasure, or perhaps avoiding misery, in the mistaken view that by increasing the amount of pleasure we experience the happier we will be. This is the fundamental error of the unenlightened; this is how people get hooked. Not only does pursuing pleasure not lead to happiness, it actually has the opposite effect though we find it hard to see the cause and effect because we have a wrong view about it.

This is not to damn pleasure, only the unhealthy pursuit of it. Pleasure, in and of itself, is not the problem. Intoxication is. Hence the fifth precept is not simply tacked onto the end of a list of four important ethical training principles. It is not there to make Buddhists behave themselves; not a penitential after-thought; nor there simply to make up the numbers. It's not about being a 'good Buddhist'. The avoidance of intoxication is at the heart of the Buddha's transformative program; and if we take the Buddha seriously, we must also take the fifth precept seriously.

~~oOo~~

Notes

1. I've written before about my research into the words pamāda and appamāda and how in practice they relate to intoxication with the objects of the senses in my essay: The Buddha's Last Words, which is also summarised as a blog post: The Last Words of the Buddha.
2. Dhammika Sutta, Sutta-nipāta. Sn 398-9. My translation. Pāli text from tipitaka.org.
3. www.statistics.gov.uk
4. By contrast the UK recently made the drug Mephedrone illegal on the basis of reports of a possible 25 deaths since its introduction, though as I understand it none of these cases have been proven, and in at least two cases Mephedrone has subsequently been proved not to have been involved.
5. My, admittedly shallow, reading of Aristotle is that he thought it ethical to satisfy natural desires, such as thirst and hunger, but going beyond that was profligacy and therefore blameworthy. The question then is whether the desire for intoxication is 'natural'. The Buddha's position on this, as I understand it, is that it is not natural.

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25 Sept 2010. This post generated a lot of comments which explore the issue further. I did not at the time draw attention to the 17th of Dr Ambedkars 22 conversion vows:

"I shall not take intoxicants like liquor, drugs etc."

Note the unequivocal phrasing here!
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6 Feb 2017

See also: Alcohol in Pre-Modern South Asia. James McHugh

Confessions I

I've been reading an interesting paper by Eviatar Shulman on an interpretation of paṭicca-samuppāda. [1] We come to similar conclusions, but interestingly I disagree to some extent with how he gets to his conclusion. I'd like to write more about his thesis later, but today I am in a confessional mood. What I want to confess is that I simply do not understand paṭicca-samuppāda. The primary way that paṭicca-samuppāda is explained is through reference to the 12 nidānas. It's here that I want to focus, and I could begin by saying that other numbers of nidānas do not always number 12 - so is 12 the definitive number or just the most popular?

Some of the terminology is confusing: e.g. saṅkhārā, nāmarūpa, bhava. The confusion is only added to in the process of translation. Some of the explanations are confusing as well, but my focus here is on the canonical presentation. I should say upfront that although the idea that the 12 nidānas occur over three lifetimes is traditional, that idea is not explicit in any sutta. So I don't think this was the idea the Buddha had in mind, and I don't think we can use it to explain the scheme, though I will make some nods in that direction.

I think it's fair to say that saṅkhārā is the most confusing term in Buddhism. It literally means 'making together, or completing'. (Note the relationship to the name Sanskrit (saṃskṛta) which is often said to mean 'perfected' or 'polished'.) The most literal English translation would be confection: con = sam; khāra is from √kṛ 'to make or do', which is not cognate but coincides very closely to the Latin facere [2] and therefore to words such as affect, confect, defect, effect, faculty (etc there are many more examples). Saṅkhāra has several distinct senses but in this context is variously rendered "volitional tendencies, volitional formations (or just formations), mental dispositions, determinations". The idea that saṅkhāra is about volition or will I take to be related to the texts that explain it as cetanā, e.g. at S iii.60 saṅkhāra is explained as six kinds of cetanā: rūpasañcetanā, sadda-, gandha-, rasa-, phoṭṭabba- and dhammasañcetanā. Bhikkhu Bodhi renders them as 'volition regarding forms, -sounds, -odours, -tastes, -tactile objects, and -mental phenomena'. I'm still none the wiser - what is "volition regarding forms"? As I have often said: cetanā is how the Buddha defines kamma, but in this context it doesn't help.

Things get more complex when the texts say that saṅkhārā conditions viññāṇa - (typically translated as consciousness). The relationship is sometimes described as causal so formations (or whatever) cause consciousness, but the Pāli terminology suggests a conditional, rather than a causal relationship. [3] So volition precedes consciousness and is a (the?) condition for it to exist, and similarly when there is no volition there is no consciousness. The question then is how do volitions precede consciousness, in order to be a condition for it to arise? Are volitions not a product of consciousness rather than the other way around?

The situation gets substantially worse with nāmarūpa. Although the tradition is fairly unanimous that it means "mind and body" scholars are by no means agreed what the word means in a Buddhist context (or why it means that). Like saṅkhāra it is an old Vedic term and Joanna Jurewicz (a Sanskritist specialising in the Vedas) has used the Vedic origins of the names for the nidānas as a cipher to show that the Buddha intended them as a parody of the Vedas. However my friend Dhīvan examined this claim from the Buddhist point of view in his M.Phil thesis, and didn't find a great deal of evidence to support Jurewicz's conjecture. Let us leave aside the confusion amongst scholars and focus on the idea that nāma-rūpa means 'body and mind'. There are two conclusions from this. Firstly that body comes into being some time after consciousness has been operating - so volition precedes consciousness and body, and consciousness precedes body - this is somewhat counter-intuitive (backwards even). It gets worse if we follow some traditions and take form to be objects of consciousness - now consciousness is a condition for existence more generally (a variation on the strong Anthropic Principle?). Secondly we now effectively have the sequence: mind conditions mind, which conditions mind. Which is meaningless.

Having given rise to the body in this unusual fashion the sequence settles down and becomes conceptually easier - the senses are the condition for contact (phassa the meeting of sense organ and sense object) which is the condition for sensations (vedanā), which are the conditions desire (taṇha - literally 'thirst') which is the condition for grasping (upādāna). Grasping gives rise to being or becoming (bhava - although as previously stated we already 'are' by this time). I've discussed in the past that upādāna could mean 'fuel' and I would argue that desire fuelling the fire of becoming, makes marginally more sense than grasping as a condition for becoming. But what is bhava, what is becoming or being? Bhava means 'being' in quite a similar range of senses to the English word. It's an action noun from √bhū which is cognate with 'be'.

Perhaps at this point the early Buddhists realised that this is a bit circular - we've already come into being (in body and mind - mind three times even!), and now the nidānas are telling us about how being is conditioned. This short circuits the nidāna chain. But it leaves two links unaccounted for: birth (jati), old age and death (jarāmaraṇa). Sometimes all the various kinds of suffering are added onto jarāmaraṇa - especially the wonderfully miserable compound sokaparidevadukkhadomanassupāyāsā. The move from becoming to birth is fine, except that we already have both mind and body, etc. The death, which does follow naturally from birth, but then where do we go? In Indian thinking we go to birth. The traditional circle suggests that death is a condition for ignorance. But again this makes no sense, and in any case we do not find the Pāli phrase anywhere in the canon: jarāmaraṇapaccaya avijjā. Old age and death are not in fact a condition for anything!

One major problem with the idea that the nidānas occur over three lifetimes is that if each link can only cease by the ceasing of the previous one, then we need to tackle ignorance (avijjā) in a past life in order to be liberated in this or a future life. This necessity for retro-active action is probably the greatest flaw in that in approach and seems to be an insurmountable problem.

Far from being a straight forward chain or circle the nidāna sequence is like a game of snakes and ladders (one proceeds up, down, sideways, and often retraces one's steps). I've realised that in fact it does not make sense to me on it's own terms. I've always found the received explanations quite pleasing and even useful - and I've been hearing about it for more than 15 years. But when I look closely it's not quite that the emperor has no clothes, it's more like he got dressed in the wrong order and used a mix of styles. It's disconcerting to get this far and realise that I can't make head nor tale of the Buddha's most important teaching on its own terms!

One of the ways scholars have understood the nidāna chain is to chop it up: it is "clearly" made of at least two, if not three shorter sequences mashed together. I was not initially very happy with this approach, but it's grown on me. I can more or less make sense of the chain from the six senses up to becoming. I think we can hive off birth and death as explanatory of what is meant by becoming - becoming is the cycle of birth and death (and therefore only makes sense in the context of rebirth). In which case, contra the three lifetimes model, the last two links go nowhere, they just cycle from birth to death. The most worrisome part are the links from ignorance to name and form. My inclination is just to say they don't make sense, but I think it's important to say that they don't make sense to me. However we hardly need them because the process we are interested in does not require them. I think ignorance as a problem comes in later after we have contact, but as a cause it probably conditions all the other links directly.

Eviatar Shulman points out that at some points there really are ontological implications to the nidānas (if for instance viññāṇa gives rise to nāmarūpa (and rūpa is either 'the body' or 'forms'); or taṇha/upādāna give rise to bhava 'being': this is ontology), but I notice that the terms which appear to have ontological implications are also the ones involving most confusion and ambiguity. I'd like to focus on this in a future post.

So I can make sense of the teaching, but I have to do what other Buddhists have done and chop it about, make stuff up, and bluff to a certain extent. Which is hardly intellectually satisfying. It's all rather embarrassing.

Notes.

1. Shulman, Eviatar. 'Early Meanings of Dependent-Origination,' Journal of Indian Philosophy, 36(2) 2008: 297-317. http://www.springerlink.com/content/7656238535363p05/
2. A direct Sanskrit cognate to facere would be √dhā present dadhati, though the sense has drifted away from 'do' towards 'put'.
3. Contrarily as Krishna Del Toso makes clear in his blog post on cause/condition in early Buddhism the distinction between the two types of relationship (hetu vs paccaya) only solidified in later texts. In favour of my statement the imasmiṃ idaṃ hoti formula, which almost always appears in conjunction with the 12 nidana paṭicca-samuppāda formula and appears to be a comment on how the links are connected, implies a conditional rather than causal relationship; as does the word paṭicca itself.