Philological Odd & Ends V

MANY WORDS HAVE INTERESTING STORIES associated with them. This is a fifth set of terms which have caught my eye as having some interest, but which did not rate a whole post on their own. There is a list of other terms I've written about at the bottom of this page.

On this page: megha, mañju, saṅgha

megha

Megha is straightforward enough in use: it means "cloud". It's a common element in Buddhist names, and titles of texts. However the etymology is interesting. The Proto-Indo-European root is *√meigh 'to urinate'. The root appears in a number of IE languages: in Greek (with a prefix) omichlē 'vapour'; Latin micturīre, mingere 'to urinate'; Middle Dutch mist 'mist'; Old Saxon mistil 'mistletoe'; English mist, mizzle (like drizzle), mistletoe, (and from Latin) micturate. Note that down the Greek and Germanic lines it is also associated with weather phenomena, whereas in Latin it sticks to urination.

In Sanskrit the root becomes √mih (3rd person singular: mehati) - PIE 'gha' sounds regularly become 'ha' in Sanskrit (see saṅgha below). In Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.1 the sacrificial horse (aśva-medhya) is related to the entire world and one aspect of this is: yad mehati tad varṣati '[the horse] urinates, it rains'. There is a present-participle meghamāna 'urinating; sprinkling' which has a vestigial gha, and I suspect that the word for cloud may be a contraction from this that became lexicalised (i.e. became a word in it's own right). Perhaps we should not be surprised at this connection as it is common, and not even very vulgar, to refer to rain as "pissing down".

PED seems confused when it says that megha is not from Sanskrit √mih but from PIE *√meigh, since √mih derives from *√meigh according to every other authority. In an amusing example of Victorian squeamishness Whitney can't bring himself to use the word 'urinate' and glosses √mih with the Latin mingere 'urinate' in his book of Sanskrit roots and forms.

mañju

Here is an example of how difficult it can be to sort out the etymology of a word. It's not until we consult a very wide range of sources that we can triangulate something sensible. (I consulted 9 dictionaries in 6 languages).

In Sanskrit and Pāli the word means 'beautiful, lovely, charming, pleasant, sweet.' Apparently related to S. & P. maṅgala 'lucky, auspicious, prosperous.' Explained by traditional lexicons as deriving from √mang (not included in Whitney though). The Indo-European root appears to be *√meng. The various sources explain this different ways. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture (J. P. Mallory, Douglas Q. Adams) [EIEC] suggests a root *meng meaning 'charm, deceive' but only tentatively groups the listed cognates together. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (Calvert Watkins) [AHD] define *meng 'to furbish'. The Online Indo-European Lexicon (Jonathan Slocum) [OIEL] has 'to make pretty, beautify' but offers no further information.

PED and EIEC link the root to Greek mágganon 'to charms; play tricks' (though OED defines this word as 'engine of war, axis of pulley'. None of the Greek dictionaries I consulted confirm this! In fact the words related to mágganon look suspiciously related to mageuō 'magic' (they mostly have a single 'g')

AHD further links *√meng 'furbish' with Latin mangō 'furbisher, gem polisher, swindler' > English monger (as in fish-monger). In Greek AHD links to manganon 'magic charm, contrivance, engine of war' > mangonel. The Online Etymology Dictionary links monger to Gk. manganon 'contrivance, means of enchantment,' from PIE base *√mang- 'to embellish, dress, trim.' I can't find either manganon or *√mang in my Greek Dictionaries (is it a derived form?), though Eric Partridge Origins agrees and adds 'to deceive by means of beauty' to the list of meanings of the root.

Meanwhile mañju is also said to mean 'gentle, soft' in Buddhist names. This is due to the influence of Tibetan. The Tibetans render manñju as 'jam (འཇམ). So S. Mañjughoṣa becomes Tibetan Jamyang ('jam dbyangs/འཇམ་དབྱངས) 'gentle voiced'. [thanks to Maitiu O'Ceileachair for the correct Tibetan spelling.]

Saṅgha

Here is a word very commonly used in Buddhism, but with a rather confused etymology. Even the spelling is confused. MW and Apte spell it saṃgha, whereas PED spells it saṅgha. All authorities agree that the word is prefixed with sam– and under most circumstances a nasal followed by gha would change to ṅ, i.e saṅgha. I think I know why it might not in this case, but we need to look more closely at the etymology before attempting to explain it.

MW seems hardly plausible in deriving saṃgha from sam– + √han. That root means ‘to kill, to strike’ and is clearly inappropriate here. PED derives saṅgha from sam– + √hṛ; where √hṛ means ‘to take, bear, carry’ and the combination means ‘to bring together, unite, collect’. MW also has an entry for saṃ√hṛ with more or less the same meaning. At first glance sam√hṛ works semantically but leaves us with the morphological problem of deriving gha from hṛ.

MW compares √hṛ to Greek kheir (χείρ) ‘the hand’ but, again, he may have this wrong. Gk. kheir gives us the English chiromancy ‘divination by examining the hand’, and surgeon. It stems from a PIE root *√ghesr ‘hand’. It is more likely √hṛ (harati ‘to carry, to take) is from PIE *√gher ‘grab, grip, seize’. This then gives us a Greek cognate khortos 'enclosed space'; from which comes the Latin hortos and E. horticulture (c.f. Welsh garth ‘fold, enclosure’; Irish gort ‘crop, field’); and Gk. khoros > E. choir, chorus. In addition the Germanic cognate *gurdjan > E. girdle, yard, orchard. Interestingly there is a L. parallel from PIE *ko(m)-ghṛ (= S. sam√hṛ) > L. cohors > E. cohort, court. This suggests √hṛ is the correct root, and that the gha is archaic. This happens in other words, for instance √han, mentioned above. The 3rd person singular 'he kills' is hanati, but the plural 'thy kill' is ghnanti, the perfect form is jaghāna; and aorist aghāni. This may explain why Sanskrit dictionaries insist on the spelling saṃgha, because the root is hṛ and sam–hṛ > saṃharati; though my understanding is that the sandhi should apply and saṅgha is the more correct spelling.

So we might speculate an archaic (and unattested) Sanskrit form *ghṛ, or perhaps *ghar. There is a Sanskrit root √ghṛ with a causative in √ghar, but with a different meaning. Then just as √gaṃ can form a suffix -ga with the meaning 'going' (a kvi suffix, often adjectival in sense); ghṛ/ghar must at one time have formed a suffix -gha.

We know that √han forms a kvi suffix -gha (with the sense of an action noun 'killing'), and it may have been this that MW was thinking of. Perhaps he saw possible relationship to PIE *√gwhen: 1. to hit, to strike; 2. to swell. As an aside the first sense has an Old Norse derivative gandálfr lit. 'staff-elf', i.e 'a wizard', source for Tolkien's Gandalf. It may be that MW had the second in mind. However the form is poorly attested in practice - only a few words survive from this root. It is thought to be related to the Greek euthenos (εὐθηνέω) 'to flourish'. OIEL also relates it to āhanaḥ, but MW defines this in line with √han 'to strike'. I think two Pāli words may be related to gwhen(2): ghaṭa can have the sense of 'multitude' as well as 'vessel'; similarly ghaṭṭan covers both 'strike' and 'combination'. In Sanskrit MW has ghaṭana 'connection, union with'; Macdonell has ghaṭā 'multitude, host, troop'. These point to the root √ghaṭ which Whitney glosses as 'strive', which MW expands with 'to be in connection with, or united with'. I've already mentioned that √han has a kvi suffix form -gha. This would give saṃgha 'united, striving together'. This is all quite speculative, and since we don't have MW we can't know what his (and his subsequent editors) thinking was.

Just to reiterate I think we can best understand saṅgha as deriving from sam- + √hṛ, with gha being kvi suffix, the 'g' being a legacy from the PIE root *√gher. The correct spelling, taking into account Sanskrit sandhi rules, is saṅgha; though I think we are stuck with saṃgha as well.

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See also

• Philological Odds and Ends I: tathāgata, sūtra, śramaṇa, loka, gahapati/gṛhapati.
• Philological Odds and Ends II: cakravartin, cintāmaṇi, yoniso manasikara, pāramitā, etymology.
• Philological Odds and Ends III: bodhisattva, anagārikā, samyak/mithyā.
• Philological Odds and Ends IV: vrata, mitra, kavi.

Action and Intention

IN THIS POST I'M REVISITING an old favourite of mine. I mention one of the phrases in this sutta - cetanāhaṃ, bhikkhave, kammaṃ vadāmi - on a regular basis. I've even done a commentary on it. Here I translate the section of the Discourse on Piercing - Nibbedhika Sutta (AN 6.63 PTS A iii.414) - that contains the phrase and this sheds further light on the idea it is expressing. It came up recently on Elisa Freschi's blog sanscrite cogitare, sanscrite loqui in the comments on a post called 'Desire, cognition and action', looking at the role of intention and cognition in actions. The role of intention in actions naturally brought to mind the Buddha's equation of cetanā and kamma.

The Nibbedhika Sutta consists of an introduction and then several sections with the same form. It concerns correctly identifying certain things, their cause, their distinctiveness, their result, their cessation, and the way to make them cease. Clearly this format is an expansion on that used in the ariyasacca or truths of the nobles ones (dukkha, samudaya, nirodha, magga). The 'things' are: sensuous pleasure (kāma), sensations (vedanā), apperceptions (saññā), influxes (āsavā), action (kamma), disappointment (dukkha).

Translation [1]

Action should be known, the basis (nidāna-sambhava) for action should be known, the distinctiveness (vemattatā) of action should be known, the result (vipāka) of actions should be known, the cessation (nirodha) of action should be known, the way to bring about cessation of action (kamma-nirodha-gāminī paṭipada) should be understood. This was said, but why? I call action ‘intention’. Having thought/intended one acts, with body, speech, or mind.

And what is the basis for actions? Contact [between sense faculty and sense object] is the basis for actions.

And what is the distinctiveness of actions? There is the action to be experienced (vedanīyaṃ) in hell (niraya); the action to be experienced as an animal (tiracchānayoni); the action to be experienced in the domain of hungry ghosts (pettivisaya); the action to be experienced in the human realm (manussaloka); and the action to be experienced in the god realm (devaloka).

And what is the result of action? I say there are three kinds of result: to be experienced in this world (diṭṭhe-dhamme); in the next rebirth (upapajje); or in subsequent rebirths (aparāpariya). [2]

And how does action cease? It ceases with the cessation of contact. With the noble Eightfold-path (ariyo aṭṭḥaṅgiko maggo) being the way to bring about the cessation of action: perfect-vision, perfect intention, perfect speech, perfect action [3], perfect livelihood, perfect effort, perfect mindfulness, perfect concentration. [4]

Because of this a Noble Disciple knows action, its basis, its distinctiveness, its result, its cessation, and the way to bring about that cessation. He knows this piercing spiritual path for the cessation of action.

This is what was said, and why it was said.

A few comments. Firstly we have the sequence: contact > intention > action. This is descriptive not prescriptive; an outline of the process, rather than concrete definition. It highlights the aspects of our responses to the world which are important for the Buddhist project/object. [5] The important thing is that action is a response. As I said in my earlier commentary the underlying root of cetanā:

"...concerns what catches our attention on the one hand, and what we move towards on the other; or, what is on our minds, and what motivates us (emotions are what 'set us in motion')" - Ethics and Intention.

As humans we are flooded with sensory impressions, some of which gain our attention, some of which we respond to unconsciously. Broadly speaking we are either drawn towards or away from stimulus, and actions are how these tendencies play out in the mind, speech and body. The text presents the outcomes of actions in terms of various realms of rebirth: hell, animal, hungry-ghost, human, god. If we are uncomfortable with these as literal destinations - and let's face it, most of us Westerners are - we can perhaps see these as metaphors for moods in which our mental life takes place. [6] Either way the result is general, not specific - this important point is often lost sight of in discussion of karma, especially when people are looking for reasons that specific bad things happen to people. All you can really say is that kamma has meant a human rebirth - the details are not covered, though of course any rebirth in saṃsāra is by definition disappointing. There is no answer to the question "why me?"; one can only think in terms of "now what?"

The text's answer to "now what?" is to invoke the eight-fold path, i.e. having defined the problem in general terms it offers a generic solution. Still, the specific insight contained in the equation of kamma and cetanā is an interesting one to reflect on.

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Notes

1. Pāli text from CST.
   
2. c.f. Vism xix.14: "Thus there are four kinds of kamma: to be experienced in this world, to be experience on rebirth, to be experienced in some subsequent rebirth, and kamma which doesn’t ripen [because it is inhibited by a more potent kamma]." Tattha catubbidhaṃ kammaṃ – diṭṭhadhammavedanīyaṃ, upapajjavedanīyaṃ, aparāpariyavedanīyaṃ, ahosikammanti. See also PED s.v. ahosi-kamma.
3. i.e. action (kamma) ceases through acting perfectly (sammākammanta) - this kind of tautology does not seem to bother the author of the Pāli.
   
4. sammādiṭṭhi, sammāsaṅkappa, sammāvācā, sammākammanta, sammājīva, sammāvāyāma, sammāsati, sammāsamādhi. I follow Sangharakshita in translating the word samma (S. saṃyak) as perfect. I think 'right' reflects a bygone era, and if it ever conveyed the right impression it now seems a bit bloodless. I wrote about this word in Philological Odds and Ends III.
5. Project/Object was a term coined by Frank Zappa for his oeuvre when considering all it's various manifestations (including recording, live performances, interviews, writing, and film) considered as a whole. From our point of view it includes all the positive things that Buddhists do.
6. C.f. Trungpa and Freemantle. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Shambala, 1975. (esp. p.5-10); and Sangharakshita. A Guide to the Buddhist Path. Windhorse, 1990. (esp. 'The Six Realms." p.81 ff.).
   

Pāli Texts as Historical Sources

TRYING TO USE THE PĀLI CANON as an historical source presents many challenges. An important thread that I'd like to mention, but not go into this time, is the existence and understanding of physical - archaeological and epigraphical - evidence. Greg Schopen in particular has pointed to the discrepancies in the stories told by physical and textual evidence; and the incompleteness of any historical account which ignores the physical evidence (which at last count includes about 95% of Buddhist historiography). That said I want to look at a particular problem related to early Buddhist texts.

I have been researching the way that Brahmins are characterised in the suttas because I think recent discoveries make it worth looking at them again. It is interesting for instance to find that no Brahmin ever mentions ātman, nor equates ātman and brahman; and no belief in ātman is ever credited to a Brahmin; though lots of them seem to follow a cult of Brahmā. This is surprising given the received teaching that the Buddha taught anatta as a direct response to Brahmanical religious ideas. Here I want to show that the way that Brahmins are presented in the canon is more complex than Buddhists usually allow.

Esukārā Sutta (MN 96, M ii.180)

Tatridaṃ, bho gotama, brāhmaṇā brāhmaṇassa sandhanaṃ paññapenti bhikkhācariyaṃ; bhikkhācariyañca pana brāhmaṇo sandhanaṃ atimaññamāno akiccakārī hoti gopova adinnaṃ ādiyamāno'ti

Here, Mr Gotama, the Brahmins declare that the wealth (sandha) of the Brahmin, is wandering for alms (bhikkhācariyaṃ); and a Brahmin who neglects wandering for alms, is not doing their duty: they are [like] a guard taking the not given.

Subha Sutta (MN 99, M ii.197)

brāhmaṇā, bho gotama, evamāhaṃsu: gahaṭṭho ārādhako hoti ñāyaṃ dhammaṃ kusalaṃ, na pabbajito ārādhako hoti ñāyaṃ dhammaṃ kusalan'ti.

Brahmins speak thus Mr Gotama: "the householder is accomplished in the correct manner, the dhamma which is wholesome. The gone-forth (pabbajito) is not accomplished in the correct manner, in the dhamma which is wholesome".

These two passages characterise Brahmins in diametrically opposed terms. The context for both of these statements is a conversation between a Brahmin and the Buddha on the appropriateness of traditional Brahmin values: brahmaṇa here is not being used as a metaphor for the ideal Buddhist. Both discussions occur in Anāthapiṇḍika's park. Esukārī is concerned with class and status, while Subha is concerned with the best lifestyle for a Brahmin. Esukārī uses a term which I had not encountered before: bhikkhācariya. Clearly this is related to the familiar term bhikkhu. Bhikkhā means 'to beg, or to make one's living by begging'; and cariya literally means 'walking', or figuratively 'behaving or to make one's way'. This is the lifestyle the original Buddhist monks adopted before settling into monasteries. But, according to Subha, it is precisely the wrong way to be a good Brahmin.

Subha expands his description of a good Brahmin with a list of five qualities (dhamme): truth, asceticism, celibacy, study, and generosity (sacca, tapa, brahmacariya, ajjhena, cāga). The Buddha's subsequent critique of him is one that is used frequently, which is that no Brahmin living or dead has ever known for themselves the truth of their pronouncements. They are just words; the blind leading the blind. This approach is epitomised by the Tevijja Sutta (DN 13). I wonder how many Buddhists look at this text and have secret doubts about the path they extol, but have never personally witnessed? How can I authentically stand up declare nibbāṇa as the goal, when I have no experience of it?

There are a number of ways to look at this text-historical problem. Firstly we must consider the possibility that the Pāli texts contain no useful historical information, that they are just stories made up once Buddhism became established (which may not have been until much later than we usually think). In this view contradictions are meaningless or at best represent confusion on the part of the authors. This approach gets us nowhere. We know that not long after the time period the texts purport to be from there is definite physical evidence of a thriving Buddhist community. There is a history of Buddhism, and clearly Buddhist culture evolved over time. Being unprepared to simply give up, I think we must reject this position and proceed, though with caution.

We might take the less extreme position that the Pāli canon only tells us about the prejudices of the early Buddhists. This we must take more seriously. Clearly there is no attempt to be fair in portraying rival religious practitioners in Buddhist texts. There is quite a lot of invective against people who are ito bahiddhā 'outside the teaching'; just as other the texts of other religions seldom mention Buddhists in a positive light, and parody our beliefs. But amongst the early texts are insults directed at Buddhists by others. Unflattering descriptions of Buddhists are quite unlikely to have been made up ex-nihilo by Buddhists, and likely reflect actual criticisms, actual dialogues. But how far does the Buddhist distortion of what they write about extend? Are lay villagers or kings, for instance, portrayed equally poorly by Buddhist monks?

With these last questions in mind I think we can take one more step and say that the texts, while largely filled with Buddhist rhetoric, do give us glimpses of history. There is a big problem in deciding what time period the texts represent. Until we get more evidence this is an insurmountable problem. I do not agree with those who only accept the physical evidence, which suggests that the Canon may date from the 4th century AD, because I do accept that the texts themselves can tell us things. Surely for instance King Asoka would have been mentioned if he pre-dated the texts; though some use the same argument to say that if the Pāli canon existed that Asoka would surely have mentioned it. My view is that the Pāli texts were probably composed and developed over several centuries starting during the Buddha's lifetime which was in the 5th or 4th century BCE. They were probably collated at some later, as yet undetermined date, mostly like in stages so that the nikāyas represent originally distinct collections. The existence of three and four different versions of some stories, distributed through the nikāyas, with major and minor differences, suggests to me a number of parallel lineages which persisted separately for some time before being collected together.

There is no need to give a straw man such complexity, so it seems to me plausible that Brahmins did indeed experience the kinds of conflict I have highlighted above. On the one hand there was a conventional, conservative streak to Brahmin society which saw duty and family as central; while on the other there were those who saw leaving home as necessary. On the whole the Buddha clearly considered the latter a better option - he was in the jargon of our time 'anti-family' [1]. However in this discussion with Subha he makes it clear that the lifestyle is less important than the practice of the Dhamma - echoing Sangharakshita's oft quoted (and oft misunderstood) aphorism:

Commitment is primary; lifestyle is secondary.

Commitment is more important than lifestyle, but lifestyle is not unimportant. In any case this conflict between conservative and progressive forces amongst Brahmins may come as no surprise. We have evidence from Vedic sources of these changes. Some scholars have spoken of the internalisation or interiorisation of the sacrifice, that is the move to perform the sacrifice in imagination or as a meditation. Some of these ideas are expressed in the so-called āranyka or forest texts. These texts post-date the Vedas by some centuries, but predate Buddhism by a similar time span. Some parts of the Brahmin community embraced this change, while others resisted. Although there seems to be some ambiguity, it is likely that the jaṭila or 'matted hair' practitioners were Brahmins. I haven't yet found a Canonical text which makes this explicit, though in one the jaṭila is the follower of a Brahmin. The name often occurs in lists: ājivikā nigaṇṭha jaṭilā paribbājakā (c.f PED s.v. jaṭila; e.g. S i.77; see: How to Spot an Arahant) so we know they were not Jain, or Ājivika. The word jaṭila doesn't seem to appear in the Ṛgveda or the Atharvaveda, but does occur in the Mahābhārata.

Signe Cohen has suggested that the Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad (BĀU) reflects a conflict between sages associated with the Yajurveda, in particular Yajñavalkya, and sages from other lineages particularly those associated with the Ṛgveda, from the point of view of YV sages.[2] Johannes Bronkhorst has argued that BĀU (along with other early Upaniṣads) shows Brahmins in the process of adopting ideas which originate amongst the samaṇa communities of North-Eastern India, the area he calls Greater Magadha. [3] Note that though we have some evidence of familiarity with Vedic ideas in Buddhist texts, that the important figure of Yajñavalkya is entirely absent. This evidence from non-Buddhist sources reinforces the view that the Pāli texts do record an historical conflict, though perhaps from some distance.

Brahmins themselves make up a large number of converts - both Esukārī and Subha make a formal conversion, though this could be a rhetorical device (one that was to become increasingly popular in Buddhist texts). We would expect some familiarity with Brahmanical culture and religion from a community with a substantial Brahmin membership. The fact that only more peripheral themes of the Upaniṣads and not the central themes are found in the Pāli texts is all the more difficult to understand in this light. Perhaps it suggests that converts came from the conservative rather than the progressive faction?

My view is that with many caveats, we can look at history through the lens of the Pāli texts, and that to some extent they tell us about the time of the Buddha, or at least that time and some centuries afterwards. In a short essay there is not time to deal adequately with the caveats, but I have at least made mention of the main ones. My conclusion is no doubt influenced by being Buddhist, and therefore being drawn to see the Buddha as an historical figure, rather than a legend. Though of course many legendary figures are based on real people. However it is important to note that any historical conclusions are by nature provisional and tentative. As a Buddhist I consciously (and happily) act as though the Buddha lived and taught; as a scholar I am required to be more cautious and doubtful. There is a definite tension.

For a more in-depth look at historical issues in texts this article is very illuminating:

Walters, Jonathan S. "Suttas as history: four approaches to the sermon on the noble quest (ariyapariyesana-sutta)." History of Religions 38(3) Feb 1999: p.247-284.

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Notes

1. Jesus was also quite anti-family. He is reported as saying, for example: "For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law" (Matt. 10:35); and "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26)
2. Cohen, Signe. Text and Authority in The Older Upaniṣads. Leiden: Brill, 2008.
3. Bronkhorst, Johannes. 2007. Greater Magadha : studies in the culture of early India. Leiden : Brill.

image: wikimedia.

Erwin Schrödinger Didn't Have a Cat

image: Erwin Schrödinger

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
Richard Feynman. "What is Science?"
The Physics Teacher Vol. 7, issue 6 (1969)

"I think I can safely say that
nobody understands quantum mechanics."
Richard Feynman. The Character of Physical Law (1965)

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SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT is one of the most famous thought experiments in the history of science. Erwin Schrödinger (left) used it to try to argue against adopting one approach Quantum Mechanics. Most people seem unaware that he was trying to highlight a problem with what was, in 1935, a controversial theory, but which has become the orthodoxy: namely the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics . These days when we say Quantum Mechanics we usually mean the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (hereafter QM). Many people who know next to nothing about science, or about Schrödinger, have tried to co-opt Schrödinger's cat to show how there is a relationship between physics and Buddhism. Let me say at the beginning that I don't believe that there is any significant cross-over between physics and Buddhism, and that I hope to explain why in the rest of this post. Granted my degree is in chemistry and it was a long time ago; but I also studied physics, and I'm an ordained Buddhist, so I feel at least not-overly-unqualified to comment.

To begin with we need to be clear on scale. An atom is between 32 picometres and 225 picometres in diameter. A picometer is 1×10⁻¹² m, i.e. a trillionth of a metre, or 0.000000000001 m. By contrast a human hair is around 50 µm or 0.000005 m. So a single hair is about about 1.5 million helium atoms in diameter. Basically this scale is unimaginable, so let's put it another way: if the diameter an atom was the thickness of a single sheet of copier paper (0.08mm) then a human hair would be 120 metres in diameter. Amedeo Avogadro showed that 12g of carbon contains approximately 6 x 10²³ atoms of carbon. That is 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (600 sextillion) atoms. If each carbon atom was 1 mm³ then the 12g of carbon would fill the Western Mediterranean Ocean (from Gibraltar to Sicily), with plenty to spare. In fact 12g of carbon (in the form of powdered soot) is about 2 teaspoons. In QM we're dealing with the subatomic world, with the protons, neutrons and elections, and the weirder particles which make up atoms. A proton is about 1/50th of the diameter of the smallest atom; while an electron is thought to be in the region of 10⁻²²m, which is one 10-billionth the diameter of a proton. Don't be fooled by our ability to write these properties down in numbers: they are highly abstract, unimaginable, incomprehensible, and none of us can draw on experience to get a sense of them. If you are still confident that any of this is relevant to human existence then read on.

Those with an interest in this subject will know that QM conceives of subatomic particles as waves (which can behave like particles under some conditions) that are described not in terms of physical properties, but in mathematical formulas. QM is the first theory of science to not be based on observations of physical properties, but to emerge from abstract mathematical speculation. [ 1 ] Though of course QM makes testable predictions about the behaviour of matter on the picometer scale. This description of sub-atomic particles as waves has some interesting consequences. One is that the particle is not a point in space, but is smeared out over space. Another is that all we can know about the particles in atoms are the odds of the particle being in any one place in space at any given time. What's more, as Heisenberg showed, if we know precisely where a particle is, then we can't simultaneously know how fast it is going - this is called the Uncertainty Principle.

Schrödinger's thought experiment related to a curious prediction arising out of the mathematics of waves (subsequently experimentally confirmed). Under certain circumstances two wavy particles can become 'entangled' which means that their waves combine into a single system, though they retain their identities. (Don't worry if you don't quite understand how this works - Feynman was not being ironic when he said that no one understands QM.) Schrödinger's problem was that this meant that observing some of the properties of one of the particles, meant having certain knowledge about the other particle because the two must be in opposition. The main property we are concerned with is called 'spin' - which relates to the magnetic properties of charged particles.

The two entangled particles can be in one of two spin states, but cannot both occupy the same state. With regard to the spin state of any single particle we can only talk about the probability that they will be in a given state at any time until we observe it. However, observing the spin of one entangled particle, determines which state the other will be in with 100% certainty without observing it, no matter where it is in the universe. This appears to contradict the limit introduced by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (1905) that nothing, not even information, can travel faster than the speed of light. But also, and even more weirdly, before an observation we can only think about spin states in terms of probabilities and the the maths tells us that the combined probabilities of the two particles being in any given state always equals one. The Copenhagen Interpretation says that this effectively means that the two entangled particles are both in both states simultaneously - the two states are superimposed as the jargon goes.

This is quite counter-intuitive, but it has been a boon for science-fiction because the spin states of the entangled particles are linked no matter how far apart they are - "spooky action at a distance" as Einstein facetiously referred to it - which if you aren't too fussy about details gives you an excellent medium for instantaneous communications across the vastness of space.

However, it begs the question: how can something be in two states at once until observed? It was in order to highlight these paradoxical aspects of QM that Schrödinger put his imaginary cat in the imaginary box. With it he placed a mechanism which would release cyanide gas, with a switch triggered by the decay of an atom of Uranium, the timing of which we cannot predict from theory. Close the lid of the box, prime the switch and think: is the cat alive at this moment, or is it dead? If the atom has not decayed the cat will be alive, and if it has decayed the cat will be dead. We can't know until we open the box and observe. Schrödinger invited us to think of the cat as a metaphor for the infinitesimal sub-atomic particle, whose wave was metaphorically entangled with the Uranium atom. If the cat truly was like a sub-atomic particle, then it was both alive and dead until the box was opened, and it was observed to be one or the other. He was trying to show that this is a ridiculous conclusion, and that therefore the Copenhagen Interpretation must be flawed. He lost that particular argument.

A lot of people jump from the picometre scale to the metre scale without any thought for the consequences of a trillion-fold change in scale - even though we know, for example, that our bath water doesn't really behave like an ocean! Or though we know that those pre-CGI movie special effects with models are totally unconvincing. The problem is that in a real cat there are several thousand sextillions of atoms, made up of many particles. Although each infinitesimal particle is a wave and subject to QM effects, these are averaged out over some tens or hundreds of thousands of sextillions of particles. The behaviour of any one particle, or even any million or billion particles, is not going to change the average properties of the cat. Unlike sub-atomic particles, cats simply do not wink in and out of existence; they are not smeared out over space (except perhaps when run over); and we can in fact know quite precisely (compared to the size of the cat) where a cat is and how fast it is moving at the same time. The Uncertainty Principle doesn't apply on the macro level. QM has almost no relevance to the macro world, to a world where objects are made up of septillions of atoms because of the averaging effect of so many particles - if weird stuff was happening we'd never know because a human hair is millions of atoms in diameter. And this is partly why Schrödinger was unable to undermine the Copenhagen Interpretation with this thought experiment, and why it has been co-opted by the targets of his critique, not to mention Buddhists! Actually sub-atomic particles are not alive and it is not ridiculous to argue that they can be in two superimposed states at once, even though it is ridiculous to argue it for a cat. In effect, Schrödinger's Cat proved nothing.

One of the unfinished tasks of modern physics is finding some way to marry QM with Relativity (E=mc² yadda yadda again we don't really understand this). This has proved elusive, though work is going on at both the empirical and the theoretical ends of the problem. So far no one has unequivocal evidence for, say, quantum gravity; and no one has been able to make the maths add up. It may in fact turn out that the two theories are not adequate to the task and that both will be subsumed into some larger construct (some people claim that String Theory will do it, if anyone can ever solve the equations; Stephen Hawking barracks for M-Theory if anyone can both figure out what equations are and how to solve them). Certainly dark matter and dark energy are causing a scramble to rework the Standard Model of Cosmology to account for the observations that gave rise to those terms. Often theories don't survive being scaled up by a dozen orders of magnitude, and this is the case for QM (so far).

It's pretty clear that QM, a mathematical abstraction, doesn't apply to our macro world. However it does have indirect consequences for us as QM issues have to be taken into account in designing new micro-processors which pack millions of transistors into square millimetres; and in nascent nano-technology. But in terms of our daily lives none of the observations of sub-atomic particles apply. None. The similarity of vocabulary is superficial and coincidental, just as the similarity of ethical jargon in various religions is largely superficial and coincidental! well, perhaps not entirely coincidental because like Schopenhauer, both Schrödinger and Niels Bohr were interested in so-called 'Eastern philosophy' and built some of it into the narrative.

Some weeks ago now, in the comments to my post on Rebirth and the Scientific Method Elisa and Krishna were asking: "why do Buddhists feel the need to justify their beliefs by appealing to science?" Part of my answer related to the way the scientific paradigm has dominated our lives for roughly 150 years. Science is incredibly successful in describing the physical world, and predicting new observations and properties of matter. Just look at the recent crop of Nobel Prizes to see the contribution that science makes. In a way it's obvious that we'd want to participate in that. It is a bit ironic that so few Buddhists are educated in the sciences, and tend to approach science with a mixture of abhorrence for perceived materialism, and credulous wonder at its success and authoritativeness.

I don't see much advantage in invoking the talisman of science in defence of religion, especially when on the whole we religieux are so ignorant of science (one of my teachers recently mentioned the way "larger bodies attract smaller ones" in a public talk. He's not an idiot, nor spiritually shallow, but he is clearly, painfully ignorant of science!). It so happens that Buddhists avoid some of the pitfalls of the modern world view (we don't have creation stories for instance), but though monotheism more obviously runs foul of science, I don't think we can sustain our traditional eschatologies, nor claims of ESP powers, nor to know the nature of 'reality', if we are working in a scientific paradigm. It's a minefield.

I don't think Buddhism on its own terms needs any scientific apologetic. Buddhism is originally the product of Iron Age India, and has adapted to many different cultural environments and world-views because, in my opinion, it is not so concerned with the realm of physics, it is concerned with the realm of the mind. Physics provides us with a far superior description of the physical world; but equally in the domain of the mind, and especially the problem of suffering, that Buddhism is far superior descriptively and practically (in terms of practices for working on the mind). This superiority in its own field is not a consequence of levels of technology or an understanding of physics. It's to do with observing our own minds. We don't need a Large Hadron Collider for this. We just need to sit quietly and observe our minds. It is a kind of empiricism, but we don't need to get caught up in making a 'science' out of it.

~~ oOo ~~

Notes

1. This feature of QM not deriving from observations of physical properties was recently the subject of an article in the New Scientist: Webb, Richard. 'Reality Gap' 21 August 2010, p.32-6. NS apparently subscribes to another uncertainty principle as the article title is quite changeable:
   • on the cover - The Ultimate Quantum Paradox
   • contents page - The Ultimate Paradox
   • printed article - Reality Gap
   • online article - Is quantum theory weird enough for the real world? [login required]
   • ScienceDirect article database - Quantum Mechanics: The Reality Gap [login required].
   (return to article)

(Note: Though I gather that Schrödinger loved women and a good party, I confess I'm not really sure whether he owned a cat. Some people claim that Schrödinger was a cat lover, and some that he was a cat hater, but I thought my title was catchy and ran with it. I hope my readers will allow me some poetic licence.)

image: Erwin Schrödinger (internet endemic, i.e. copied so many times that there is no longer a discernible source).

Feynman quotes from Wikiquote.

If you want to learn about Quantum Theory from one of the men who helped to develop it, then I can recommend these three lectures by Hans Bethe: Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple. As the site says, the Prof is 93 years old and lecturing to the other residents at his retirement home.


Updates to this post

Am I a materialist?

Recently on the Buddhist Geeks website my enthusiastic endorsement of the scientific method was referred to as "dry", "reductionist", and (shock horror) "materialistic". I thought the terms of the discussion were a bit limited. I'm not really much of a philosopher, and have not studied much Western philosophy, but I don't think of myself as a materialist. I understand my philosophical position to be this:

I'm a sceptical epistemological realist; and more vaguely, a transcendental idealist. Though I'm also a pragmatic Popperian empiricist.

The basic position of an epistemological realist is that objects exist independently of your mind. Many Buddhists take the position that objects do not exist independently of your mind, but only exist in conjunction with your mind, or indeed only in your mind. I think this takes the Buddhist argument on the nature of experience too far. I go back to the basic Buddhist teachings and base myself on the idea that consciousness is always specific to the sense associated with it, and arises in dependence on contact between sense equipment, and sense object.

Since all the information we have about objects comes through the senses there are limitations on what we can say about them. But certain consistencies occur. For instance objects are recognisable, and memorable. With reference to any particular object, people agree (more often than not) that there is an object, and also agree on its general characteristics, even though specifics may be disputed. If you could see me writing this you'd probably agree that I'm sitting at a desk, in a room, in a house, in a town, etc; or you'd be open to the charge of madness. If someone else sees an object and communicates to me about it in a way that suggests that they see the same object as I see, then I take that as evidence pointing towards the independence of the object from either of our minds. When everyone laughs at the same time in a movie then it suggests the movie is external to all of us. Explaining observations like these becomes very difficult if objects only exist in our minds.

The view that objects only exist when I observe them at best is egocentric. But consider - when I leave my room and go downstairs to make a cup of coffee, it seems nonsensical to me that my room and all of the hundreds of objects which fill it cease to be because I'm not there to see them. And what about when I blink? In that fraction of a second when I do not see the things, do they disappear? And do they then reappear when my eyes are open again? What happens to them during my blink? Trying to explain this is much more difficult, much more cumbersome, than assuming than that the objects simply exist. However I don't think we can say much about that existence, which is why I am a sceptical empirical realist.

It is my view that the Buddha was unconcerned with the nature of existence, or reality. That is to say he was not concerned with the nature of the objective pole of experience. This lack of concern with existence (and non-existence) is clear in, for instance, the Kaccānagotta Sutta, and strongly re-emphasised in Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. The duality between subject and object is uncontentious in the Pāli Canon, it is simply a given. The conceptualisation of the problem of suffering, all of the analysis, and all of the practices, focus on the subjective side of experience. The nature of the object is simply irrelevant, it has to be there of course, but the arising of suffering is to do with our internal relationship to our perceptions, not with the objects of perception.

I've also said that I'm a transcendental realist, which in a way flows out of the previous paragraph. I must say I'm not a very sophisticated transcendental realist, and not very well versed in Kant or other philosophers of that ilk. Kant began with a problem. Hume had showed that a purely empirical approach to knowledge denied the possibility of metaphysical concepts like causality, time, and space. On the other hand empirical scientists, exemplified by Newton, had shown that we can say very definite things about causality, time, and space. Newton's well-known laws of motion are example. Kant's solution to this was to propose that the human mind interpreted sense experience in terms of inbuilt, or a-priori, categories of knowledge. The very usefulness of Newton's laws showed that a-priori categories had, to some extent, to reflect reality. Kant showed that the subject was involved in the creation of all knowledge, but that knowledge thereby created was valid. We can know useful things about the universe and how it works. Things are more or less as they appear to us.

In terms of my approach to Buddhism what this comes down to is, again, a focus on understanding the subjective side of experience, trying to understand the a-priori, what we bring to our interpretations of experience. This comes out of a study and practice of Buddhism, but in terms of relating it to the categories of Western philosophy this is as close as I've come. The fundamental problem is that we interpret experience in ways that cause us misery. Experience arises out of contact between objects and our sensory apparatus - but it is not the experience per se that is problematic, not the raw experience anyway. It what we make of experience, and how we relate to experience, the stories we tell ourselves about experience that cause us suffering. In other words it is not pleasure per se that is evil, only the pursuit of pleasure with the thought that it will make us happy. Hence the knowledge we need is knowledge of our relationship to experience; knowledge of the way we process experience into views and reactions. It is this kind of knowledge that will be liberating.

The last label I referred to was "pragmatic Popperian empiricist". Karl Popper was to some extent reacting against a trend in European thought which sought to evaluate all knowledge by the criteria of 'verifiability'. That is to say some philosophers were not prepared to accept knowledge as valid unless it could be verified. Sadly, although this philosophical position has long been superseded, it is more or less the popular view that science operates along these lines. But any living scientist will acknowledge the contribution of Karl Popper. At one time it was axiomatic that all Swans were white, because no European had ever seen a Swan that was any other colour. The statement "all swans are white" had become a standard in textbooks of logic even. However when Europeans got to Australia they discovered black swans. One can never anticipate when one might find a black swan which falsifies the statement that all swans are white. And this is the essence of Karl Popper's theory of knowledge, which informs my own understanding, and all of modern science. Facts and laws are only ever provisional because at any time a counter-example may disprove them. Theories might prove to be useful, but they can never be proved once and for all.

I said I'm also a pragmatist and this is because though they cannot be falsified, let alone proved, some forms of knowledge and some forms of practice are useful, or better helpful (I'm not a utilitarian). Some forms of knowledge which have been falsified on one level, even retain their usefulness on another. It is a fact that Newton's Laws remain useful in some contexts - say landing a human on the moon, or designing an aeroplane - even though observations have shown them to be inaccurate, for instance, when considering objects moving close to the speed of light. Then there is the placebo effect, the phenomena that we heal better, if we believe that we have had an effective treatment - even though it may be false to state that we have actually had an effective treatment, still we fair better than if we had no treatment at all. I argued this in the case of karma, which cannot be either verified or disproved, but is still useful as a view in helping to determine how we should behave. That is, I believe the theory of karma is morally helpful, even though it has doubtful truth value, if only in a provisional sense. (see Hierarchies of Values). Despite my definite preference for the rational, factual truth is not the only criteria that I apply when assessing the value of an idea. I may also form an opinion on the basis of helpfulness, or more aesthetic qualities such as elegance or beauty.

I don't feel entirely comfortable with this kind of discussion, or with these kinds of labels, I'm all too aware of the extent of my ignorance of Western philosophy. But when someone calls me a materialist because I'm educated in, and enthusiastic about, the scientific method, I need a way to respond which doesn't buy in to the simplistic duality being proposed: either one is a materialist, or a non-materialist. This simple opposition is not very helpful. People don't really hold views that are either one or the other, but have a far more sophisticated relationship to the objective pole of experience. One simply cannot be a practising Buddhist, as I have been for 16 years, and maintain a purely materialist view of the world. Clearly I do have a view about the material world, and I do think science can tell us far more about the material world than can Buddhism, but my focus is very much on the subjective, on the relationship to perception, on the nature of experience. Traditional Buddhist approaches to knowledge are rooted in pre-technological world-views that are frequently little better than superstition - the Buddha has a magical ability to know ultimate reality through super-powers - which just doesn't chime with my own experience of Buddhists and Buddhism. I see the European Enlightenment as a good thing (unlike some of my colleagues).

The other aspect of the criticism was that scientific investigation is reductionist. Reductionism by definition is the attempt to "explain a complex set of facts, entities, phenomena, or structures by another, simpler set" (the free dictionary). Which means of course that Buddhist doctrine is on the whole reductionist, because at its heart are explanations of phenomena in terms of short lists of mental states and events; and simplified models of dependent arising. By contrast some people try to explain phenomena in terms of more complex, often metaphysical or even mystical, ideas; they go against Occam and invent new entities to explain what they experience. What to call this kind of approach? Inflationist? The inflationist critique of science is that it tries to explain the unknown in terms of the known; whereas inflationists try to explain things in terms of the unknown, and the more mysterious the better. Apparently no one likes to admit that they simply don't know the cause of some experiences, nor the nature of them. If someone claims to remember a past life and I express doubt then I am, apparently, a materialist. But I don't see why an experience should be interpreted in terms of mysterious entities and processes as opposed to known entities and processes, if the truth is that we just don't know.

The charge is that experience is reduced only to that which can be measured. I would turn this around: it seems to me that inflationistists tend to project their subjectivity onto the world, and assign it an objective status which it does not deserve. There are many examples of inflationism stemming from interpretations of Indian religious ideas. Despite all evidence to the contrary people treat cakras, for instance, as really existent rather than symbolic or at best subjective; similarly they insist that the mysterious 'third eye' has some physical manifestation in the body (a past acquaintance assured me that it was connected to the pineal gland!) . I know many people who have seen or felt ghosts, because the house up the road (which is occupied by members of my order and community) is haunted. In fact it is supposedly one of the most haunted houses in the UK. I do not doubt that people have had uncanny, strange, unnerving, and inexplicable experiences. However I also do not necessarily accept that ghosts are the best explanation for those experiences. Some experiences do not have external objects, as anyone who has ever meditated, dreamed, taken psychedelic drugs, or gone mad will confirm. Actually anyone who ever thought, or remembered, or imagined anything is not (necessarily) working with external objects. A ghost certainly has more mystique, than a hallucination, but is it more likely? I'd have to say no. Plus at least half of the weird experiences are obviously caused by sleep paralysis. [See also today's xkcd cartoon]

So, am I a materialist? No. I'm a sceptical epistemological realist, a transcendental idealist, and a pragmatic Popperian empiricist (or something like that - actually I usually just say Buddhist). As such I don't have much to say about the nature of existence or reality (or any of that material stuff). Although I really enjoyed those Brian Cox documentaries and read Stephen Hawking, these days I'm mostly interested in the nature of experience. I do see an empirical approach to investigating it as the most useful; though I'm prepared to be pragmatic about what is helpful for that investigation. The main point is that I reject the dumbing down of religious discussions, especially in the area of the interaction between religion and science. If anything is dry and reductionist, and frankly boring, it is the idea that everyone interested in science is necessarily a materialist.

Next week [22 Oct 2010] I attempt to demolish the idea that Buddhism and Quantum Mechanics have anything in common. See Erwin Schrödinger Didn't Have a Cat.

Rebirth Eschatologies

The word eschatology derives from the Greek eschato 'last' and refers to belief systems related to the destiny of individuals and groups, especially after death. Last week [see Brahmā the Cheat] I drew attention to Gananath Obeyesekere's fascinating book on rebirth eschatologies - Imagining Karma - published by the University of California Press (2002). This week I want to look more closely at his ideas. By comparing various belief systems around the world Obeyesekere teases out the essential features of belief in rebirth, and then looks at Buddhist, Amerindian, and Greek belief systems in light of these generalities.

The simplest form of rebirth is a usually unending cycling between this world and another world. Richard Gombrich (who has collaborated with Obeyesekere in the past) has highlighted the work of Polish Sanskritist Joanna Jurewicz which shows that contrary to prevailing views there is evidence of just such a belief system in the Ṛgveda: the brahmin goes to the world of the fathers for a period after death and then returns to this world. Jurewicz identifies a single verse in a late hymn which appears to confirm a belief in this kind of rebirth. The late timing suggests that the idea comes not from the group who wrote the Ṛgveda, but rather than the they picked it up after they had been in India for some centuries. [1]

The simplest form of rebirth eschatology is not moral, rebirth is not dependent on behaviour and so the other world is not differentiated, and this kind of rebirth is the commonest around the world. As soon as morality is introduced into the picture the other world bifurcates into a place of reward, and a place of punishment. In this model good deeds cause one to be reborn in heaven for a period until the merit of the previous life is exhausted, when one returns to this world. This morality need not be ethical. For instance in the morality of brahmins one's destination after death was dependent on proper ritual behaviour, not on ethical behaviour. Just as for centuries Hindu morality focussed on doing one's duty, rather than on one's behaviour more generally (a central theme in the Bhagavadgīta).

A further development occurs when the rebirth destination in this world (as opposed to the other world) is determined by morality in the previous life. This is roughly the situation of the rebirth theories in the early Upaniṣads: Bṛhadāranyka (BU), Chāndogya (CU), and the Kausitaki (KauU). [2] The 'doctrine of the fires' maps out a relatively complex set of possibilities. On death the one who has understood the identity of ātman and brahman goes to the gods and then onto brahman and does not return [3]. The one who has carried out the sacrifices (i.e. a brahmin who follows the pre-Upaniṣadic religion) goes to the world of the fathers and is eventually reborn as a human (which is the old simple cycle). The third possibility is for everyone else and they are reborn as a śudra or an insect - they don't have an account for the other classes, or any women.

The ethicization of rebirth changes the model substantially into what Obeyesekere calls a karma eschatology - something which appears to be unique to India. This is where one's ethical actions (karma) determine one's next rebirth (though confusingly karma meant ritual action to the brahmins). Although there are hints at an ethical rebirth in BU, the idea is first found fully articulated amongst the śramaṇa groups. Some scholars have taken this to mean that the idea originated amongst śramaṇas and was only later adopted by brahmins, and argue that BU especially shows this absorption in process of happening since it presents different patterns of rebirth. The fact that the ideas about rebirth are presented by kṣatriyas in BU and CU helps to reinforce this interpretation.

In earlier models rebirth was an endless cycle, which came to be called saṃsāra - meaning 'continues to go on'. This idea must have persisted into the Buddhists period even though middle Vedic period texts like the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (ca 8th-6th century BCE) mention the possibility of escape from the cycle of 'redeath' as it is called there. We know this because many of the Buddha's teachings are given in terms of an escape from saṃsāra, where saṃsāra is precisely this beginningless, endless cycle of birth and death. Buddhists were not the only group teaching an escape from saṃsāra, and this seems to have been one of the most important religious paradigms both at the time, and subsequently. In the early Upaniṣads, as I have mentioned, escape from the cycle was conceived of in terms of 'going to brahman', or 'union with brahman': brahmasahavyata. I have discussed one of the Buddhist responses to this belief in the Kevaddha Sutta in an earlier post. Here we find the Buddha claiming:

I know Brahmā, and Brahmā's domain, and the way leading to Brahmā's domain.

The result was not to deny the escape from saṃsāra in terms of the path to brahman, but to adopt and adapt it. At present I do not think the very distinctive nature of the brahmavihāra meditations with respect to other styles of Buddhist meditation has received sufficient attention. This may be because later Buddhists lost sense of the metaphor and read brahmavihāra as literally being reborn in Brahmā's world, i.e. as not leading to freedom from liberation, despite the related description cettovimutti being applied to it. My reading of the texts, following Gombrich, is that the Buddha clearly used brahmavihāra as a synonym for nibbāṇa.

So the Buddhist idea of an escape from saṃsāra was not original. What was original was how the Buddha defined 'this world' and what escaping from it meant. I have explored the former in my post What the Buddha meant by World, and clearly his definition of 'the world' as the world of experience, has profound implications for eschatology. What we are escaping from is not necessarily birth and death in the sense of physical rebirth, and physical death. Indeed the Buddha often couched his eschatological teaching in terms of escape from the experience of disappointment (dukkha). It allowed the Buddha and other arahants to say they were liberated, that they had "done what needed to be done" in their own lifetimes, without the necessity to die first (an innovation on the Brahmin conception at least!). Heaven, dwelling with Brahmā (brahmavihāra), is available here and now, according to the Buddha.

Historically Buddhists seem to have taken on existing cosmologies with some adaptation, but with a tendency to reify them for rhetorical effect. Although the Buddha defined 'this world' in terms of experience, the 'other world' became a series of actual places where one could be reborn: the brahmaloka in particular was brought within saṃsāra. This seems to have been a wrong turn, and has left us with a confused picture of cosmology and rebirth. Tradition asks us to believe quite literally in rebirth and in the various realms. The spirit in which the Buddha claimed to know Brahmā and the way to companionship with Brahmā - as a metaphor for escaping saṃsāra - has been lost. One result has been the ongoing polarisation about whether or not we Western Buddhists should believe in rebirth. On the contrary Chögyam Trungpa has spoken of the six realms as psychological metaphors rather like the Jungian archetypes, and this sits better with the idea of 'world' as experience, than more traditional realms for actual rebirth. [4]

One of the weird things about rebirth and karma eschatologies has been the enthusiasm for them in the West. For the Indian repeated rebirth and redeath is a curse to be escaped from. In the popular imagination of Western culture, rebirth seems an attractive proposition. We actually want to be reborn. What this tells us is that westerners in general see rebirth in terms of personal continuity. This is what the Pāli texts call 'having a pernicious view' (pāpakaṃ diṭṭḥigataṃ). When nibbāṇa is presented in terms of the end of personal continuity, I think something baulks in the Western psyche. It suggests that despite living in hedonistic and nihilistic times, that underlying this is a frustrated eternalism. Having given up on the prospect of eternal life somewhat reluctantly because of the accompanying baggage, we are drowning our sorrows. Perhaps this is also why western culture is so obsessed with youth, so mired in the Peter Pan Syndrome.

It is unlikely that Obeyesekere's book will appeal to the mass market, or even to most Buddhists. The ideas are complex, even if well presented. Complex ideas are difficult to popularise, especially in our 'sound bite' culture. However the more that we understand about how the early Buddhist presentation of the Dharma was conditioned by the time and place of its articulation, the better we will understand how to adapt it to our own times. The aspects of the Dharma that are simply cultural will stand out better, allowing us to grasp more clearly the principles which are applicable in our own context.


Notes

1. Jurewicz's original paper was: Jurewicz, J. ‘Prajapati, the Fire and the pañcagnividya’. In: Balcerowicz, P., Mejor, M. (Eds.) Essays in Indian Philosophy, Religion and Literature. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass 2004, s.45-60. A revised version of her conference paper from the 14th World Sanskrit Conference, July 2006, on this subject is on the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies website: Jurewicz, J. The Rigveda, 'small scale' societies and rebirth eschatology. 2006.
2. KauU contains a later reworking of ideas found in BU and CU.
3. I have pointed out that this idea is missing from the Pāli texts. The omission is significant, but so far not much commented upon in the academic literature. One scholar who has also noticed this is Dr Brian Black of Lancaster University, watch for a series of forthcoming publications from him.
   
4. See Trungpa's commentary in Trungpa, Chogyam and Freemantle, Francesca (trans.). The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo. Shambala, 1975. (link is to the new edition)
   

image: Monks stand waiting for a confession as a martyr is tortured on the wheel. Taken from How Stuff Works, ultimately from Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Brahmā the Cheat

The Brahmanimantanika Sutta (MN 49) has a number of interesting features. The sutta opens with the news that Baka the Brahmā has taken on a wrong view. Baka means 'crane' or 'heron', but it has figurative meaning which is according to Monier-Williams: "hypocrite, cheat, rogue, the crane being regarded as a bird of great cunning and deceit as well as circumspection)". We should immediately be alert therefore that this is a polemic. The animal with the same characteristics in Anglo-European culture is the weasel - so the character's name might be rendered God the Weasel.

The view that Baka has taken up is this:

Idañhi, mārisa, niccaṃ, idaṃ dhuvaṃ, idaṃ sassataṃ, idaṃ kevalaṃ, idaṃ acavanadhammaṃ, idañhi na jāyati na jīyati na mīyati na cavati na upapajjatī’ti; santañca panaññaṃ uttari nissaraṇaṃ ‘natthaññaṃ uttari nissaraṇa’nti vakkhatīti.

This, sir, is permanent, this is enduring, this is eternal, this is everything, this is unending. This is not being born, is not aging, is not dying, is not falling, is not being reborn; and beyond this, there is no escaping.

Our first question is what does Baka mean by 'this', what is he referring to? And because the text moves swiftly on to another tack it is difficult to tell. However there is a clue in the passage I've cited, in the sequence: birth, aging, death, falling, rebirth. This is not a random sequence, nor are death (mīyati) and falling (cavati) simply synonyms as one might easily assume them to be, nor perhaps are birth (jāyati) and rebirth (upapajati).

I need to backtrack for a bit. In 2002 Gananath Obeyesekere published Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist and Greek Rebirth, which took a broad view of the idea of rebirth. It seems that many cultures develop a theory of rebirth and in its most basic form it involves circulating between this world and another world - usually some form of heaven, often inhabited by one's own ancestors. It has been asserted for a long time that in the early Vedic period there is no evidence of a belief in rebirth, but more recently Joanna Jurewicz showed that the Ṛgvedic mantra 10.16.5 can be interpreted as a request for Agni to send the dead person back again to his descendants (this is discussed in Richard Gombrich's 2010 book What the Buddha Thought). This suggests that early Vedic people had a standard rebirth theory in which the person (actually the man) cycled between this world and the other world.

The 'other world' for the Vedic Brahmin was the world of the fathers (pitaraḥ). This idea is expressed in greater detail in the Bṛhadāranyaka and Chāndogya Upaniṣads which both tell the story of how one precesses through the cycles. However the simple binary persisted for some time and it is referred to in the Pāli texts (in the phrase 'this world and the next world'). The simplest expression of this cycle does not allow for escape.

Let us now reconsider the Brahmanimantanika Sutta. The sequence, again, is: birth, aging, death, falling, rebirth. The cycle involves being born (jāyati) and living in this world (jīyati); dying (mīyati) and arising (upapajti) in the heavenly realms. Having lived a long time in the heavenly realms, one falls (cavati) back down to earth to be once again born (jāyati). And so the cycle goes round.

This cycle is called saṃsāra which is a noun from the the verb sam+√sṛ 'flow' - and means to move about continuously, to come again and again. It is this that Baka is saying is "permanent, enduring, eternal, everything, unending". This is his deceit: the view he adopts is that saṃsāra is forever, and inescapable, that we are doomed to go around and around endlessly. The ethicization of the universe that occurred amongst the samaṇa movements meant that the model had to become more sophisticated, but I will leave that thread for now. But the idea that one could escape from the rounds of rebirth (or redeath as it is sometimes called) must have seemed extremely radical. Indeed the Upaniṣads the idea is introduced to Brahmins by a King or Kṣatriya, and although there is much speculation about what this might mean, at the very least it shows that the idea was new and from outside fold.

Māra steps into the sutta at this point and his contribution at first sight is puzzling. However Māra is sometimes called Namuci, which is a contraction of na muñcati 'does not release'. His role often relates to keeping beings in saṃsāra. Māra as an archetypal figure is often associated with our own doubts, he is the inner voice of doubt. So whereas Baka seems to represent the social pressure exerted on us to doubt the possibility of liberation; Māra represents our own doubts.

One of his warnings to Buddha is:

so... mā tvaṃ brahmano vacanaṃ upātivattittho... evaṃ sampadamidam bhikkhu, tuyham bhavissati

He... do not overstep what Brahmā says... [or various evils] will befall you.

This is reminiscent of the debate scene in BU 3.6 where Gārgī is questioning Yajñavalkya on what the various aspects of the universe are made; and finally asks on what brahman is woven. Yajñavalkya replies

sa hovāca gargī mātiprākṣīḥ
mā te mūrdhā vyapaptat

Don't ask too many questions, Gārgī
your head will split apart.

Gārgī desists, but later in the text another questioner's head does split apart.

Of course Māra also plays the role of Lord of saṃsāra - he thinks of the kāmaloka as his realm, where we dwell at his mercy, which is to say we dwell suffering. Māra is afraid that if the Buddha teaches that beings will go beyond his realm (te me visayaṃ upātivattissanti).

Then the Buddha and Baka have a discussion about the elements. Baka says

Sace kho tvaṃ, bhikkhu, pathaviṃ ajjhosissasi, opasāyiko me bhavissasi vatthusāyiko, yathākāmakaraṇīyo bāhiteyyo

If indeed you, bhikkhu, will be attached to earth, you will be in my domain, in my reach, at my mercy.

This is repeated for a list of elements. Of course the Buddha is aware of this and says that he not attached to the elements. The list of elements is unusual: earth, water, fire, air, beings (bhūta), devas, Prajāpati and Brahmā. Once again I refer the reader to BU 3.6 and the discussion with Gārgī. It goes like this (I'll use Valerie Roebuck's translation, slightly modified)

"Yajñāvalkya, she said, since all this earth (idaṃ sarvaṃ pārthivaṃ) is woven on the waters, as warp and weft, on what are the waters woven?
On air.
On what is air woven?"

And so on. The list begins the same: earth, water, air. Then we get 'the middle realm' (antarikṣaloka) which may well correspond to bhūta in the Pāli list. Then in BU a list of various devalokas - gandharvaloka, adityaloka, candraloka, nakṣatraloka, devaloka, indraloka - then prajāpatiloka and finally brahmaloka. If we collapse the list from gandharva to indraloka into 'devaloka' (which they are all varieties of) then the list from Brahmanimantanika Sutta and BU are very similar indeed. What's more the list makes more sense in the context of BU than it does in a Pāli sutta, because the Buddha was hardly likely to be attached to Prajāpati or Brahmā.

There is one snafu here. And it is that one of the distinctive teachings of the BU, which we meet at the end of book 3 (3.9.28), is the idea of escape from rebirth:

jāta eva na jāyate ko nv enaṃ janayet punaḥ |
vijñānam ānandaṃ brahma rātir dātuḥ parāyaṇaṃ ||

Born, only, not born again; who could beget him?
Consciousness, bliss, Brahman, grace; the gift to the giver.

It seems that in all of these kinds of references to Vedic ideas in Pāli texts, there is always an element of over-simplification, of parody. One gets the sense that the last thing a Buddhist wanted to do was debate a Brahmin on their own terms - and yet again so many of the converts seem to have been, at least nominally Brahmin.

In Brahmanimantanika Sutta we seem to have some quite clear references to Upaniṣadic ideas. However as I noted in Early Buddhists and Ātman/Brahman the references are to cosmology rather than to the more central details of the Upaniṣadic thought. It seems as though the cosmologically notions had been popularised, or perhaps more likely that the cosmology recorded in the Upaniṣads represents a popular tradition rather than a specifically Upaniṣadic tradition - I would make the contrast with the identification of ātman and brahman, which is not found in the Pāli texts. 

 ~~oOo~~