Gesundheit! Making Accommodations with Custom.

One of the main critiques of traditional Buddhism put forward by Western Buddhists is against superstition. Western Buddhists promote such ideas as: Buddhism is a rational religion; there is coherence between science and Buddhism; Buddhists are naturally atheist; and Buddhism does not require blind faith. That is we say that Buddhism doesn't have the same problems with science that Christianity does, but still offers a solution to the question of 'what is a good life?', and an alternative approach to death which is not nihilistic.

The rebranding of Buddhism in the English speaking world began in Britain in the 1830s. It was helped along by the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859. Edwin Arnold's best selling humanist retelling of the Buddha's life, The Light of Asia, was published in 1879. [1] It's no coincidence that bodhi (literally 'understanding, awakening') is translated as Enlightenment (upper-case E), since the Victorian translators of Buddhism were the intellectual descendants of the European Enlightenment and wanted to explicitly align the two movements. Of course we also have a fair number of Romantics who were appalled at the idea of explaining everything (or anything), and took flight into the realms of the sentiment and imagination where science could not, and would not, then follow. (It can now, but that is another story!)

One consequence of this has been a certain amount of confusion when confronted by traditional Buddhism which appears to be a lot more superstitious and, frankly, theistic than one has been lead to believe it ought to be. Some of us Westerners have been prompted to wonder out loud, with no apparent irony, how traditional Buddhists could be getting Buddhism so wrong. There has been a tendency to see any cultural form which is less than austerely rational as a 'corruption' of the original supremely rational Buddhism. For some reason Theravāda scholastic orthodoxy became the poster child for this rationality, despite a pre-scientific worldview, and well into the 20th century the entire edifice of Mahāyāna and Tantric Buddhism was seen as a 'later corruption'. The irony is that while we are contemptuous of Asians who have allowed Buddhism to change to meet their changing needs, we are engaged in exactly the same project.

This attitude is a complex stew including ingredients such as Imperialist and Colonialist superiority delusions (aka orientalism; or racism); generalisations from the Protestant critiques of the Roman Catholic Church (and in particular Protestant historical narratives based on the rise, corruption and fall of the Roman Empire); and the fear that with the death of God (pronounced by Nietzsche in 1882) that everything would be permitted, and morality would collapse. Most of these Victorian themes are still unresolved and active, often unconsciously, in British public discourse about religion. Again, there is also an important and influential Romantic trend in Western Buddhism which positively glories in the irrational and superstition, but I won't deal with that now.

A passage from the Vinaya (Vin ii.139) shows that this confrontation with superstition is not a new concern for Buddhists. However the Vinaya seems to have allowed quite a lot of latitude to bhikkhus when dealing with ordinary people. The passage involves "the group of six bhikkhus", a gang of miscreants whose (mis)behaviour leads to many new rules being laid down. At the time they were apparently learning and teaching metaphysics (lokāyata) and worldly knowledge (tiracchānavijjā). The PED suggests that lokāyata means: "what pertains to the ordinary view (of the world), common or popular philosophy", or as Rhys Davids puts it elsewhere: "name of a branch of Brahman learning, probably nature-lore'; later worked into a quasi system of casuistry, sophistry." [2] The word also occurs in Sanskrit and Monier-Williams defines it as 'materialism'. Tiracchānavijjā is literally 'animal knowledge', a tiracchāna is something which 'goes horizontally' i.e. an animal; but the dictionary suggests that tiracchānavijjā means "a low art, a pseudo-science". I take the general drift of the passage to be saying that the 'group of six' monks had become interested in the popular beliefs and practices of the local people, or perhaps had not abandoned their ancestral religion.

The important event in this text comes when the Buddha sneezes while delivering a discourse, and is then loudly interrupted by a number of monks calling out:

jīvatu, bhante, bhagavā; jīvatu sugato

May the Bhagavan live, Sir; may the Sugata live!

This - jīvatu: the verb √jīv 'to live' in the third person imperative - is the Pāli equivalent of saying bless you or gesundheit (= good health). The Buddha asks the bhikkhus: "When 'life' (jīva) is said to one who has sneezed, is that a this reason he might live or die?" They answer "no". He then forbids the monks from saying jīvatu. However this causes the bhikkhus problems because the householders continue saying jīvatu when the bhikkhus sneeze, and are angry when the bhikkhus do not respond in the traditional way. So the Buddha tells them:

Gihī, bhikkhave, maṅgalikā. Anujānāmi, bhikkhave, gihīnaṃ ‘jīvatha bhante’ti vuccamānena ‘ciraṃ jīvā’ti vattu’nti

Monks, householders are superstitious. When a householder says 'live Sir' (jivatha bhante) to you, I allow you to respond with 'long life' (ciraṃ jīvā). [3]

Here the Pāli word maṅgalika means 'superstitious, looking out for lucky signs', from maṅgala 'lucky, auspicious, prosperous' (c.f. the word omen). The text seems to suggest that lokāyata and tiracchānavijja are synonymous with maṅgalika. Also in this vein is a short sutta in the Aṅguttara-nikāya where the Buddha makes a distinction between householders generally, and lay disciples (upasaka/uapsikā), saying that an exemplary lay disciple "is not eager for protective charms & ceremonies". [4] We see here the concern, visible throughout the Vinaya, to keep the behaviour of the bhikkhus distinct from householders (gihī).

This superstitious attitude also seems to be addressed by the Buddha in the Mahāmaṅgala Sutta, a very well known text from the Sutta-nipāta collection. Although this sutta is spoken to a deva, it includes supporting one's parents, cherishing one's wife and children, and having a peaceful occupation as examples of mahāmaṅgalaṃ (literally 'big luck') 'the highest blessings' or perhaps 'highest performance, great happiness or blessing' (following Saddhatissa's translation notes). Clearly the concerns of the text are those of householders. In the light of Vinaya reading above, we might see the Mahāmaṅgala Sutta as saying these things are 'good luck' rather than 'highest blessing', i.e as a re-contextualisation of the idea of what constitutes luck.

I think this demonstrates one way that the Buddha, or at least the early Buddhists, handled superstition. Direct opposition was unlikely to be very effective, since it was deeply embedded in the culture. For those of us who commit ourselves to Buddhism, it is vital that we examine our beliefs; the conditioning that we have received from family, peers and society, and begin to unravel it in order to free our minds from those limitations. But there's not much mileage in demanding this from people who do not share our commitment. We could rail against superstition, and where we see it as definitely harmful we probably should speak out against it, but on the whole the main thing for Buddhists is dealing with our own belief structures. Buddhism is something we take on for ourselves - e.g. upasampadā the word often translated as 'higher ordination' really just means 'undertaken, taken on'.

Sometimes it's more important to be polite than to be right.

~~oOo~~

Notes

1. On this subject see: Almond, Philip C. (1988) The British Discovery of Buddhism. Cambridge University Press.
2. Dialogues of the Buddha, p.166f. Online: www.sacred-texts.com
   
3. Vin ii.139. ('Live long and prosper' would be ciraṃ jivatu vaḍḍhatu ca)
   
4. AN 5.175. See also Thanissaro Access to Insight.

Since writing this I discovered the following in The Making of Buddhist Modernism by David L. McMahan:

"Buddhist studies pioneer Thomas W. Rhys Davids (1834-1922) first translated bodhi as "Enlightenment" and explicitly compared the Buddha with the philosophers of the European Enlightenment" (1882. Lectures of the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by some Points in the History of Buddhism. Hibbert Lectures. New York: Putnam. p.30)

Explanation vs Interpretation

IN THE INTRODUCTION to their book Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture, the authors Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley admit they intend to cause trouble. The audience for the book is probably involved on one side or the other of the sometimes bitter scholarly conflict they are writing about. The combination of jargon and assumed common political and intellectual background make it a bit daunting for the general reader. However in Chapter One Lawson and McCauley make some interesting observations about the social sciences generally and the study of religion in particular that I want to pick up on.

They note a dichotomy between those who seek knowledge through explanation and those who seek it through interpretation, but make the point that the dichotomy is in many ways a false one.

In its extreme form the explanation camp says that all interpretation is irrelevant. The stereotype here is the materialist scientist, the logical empiricist who is only concerned with the observation of facts. Knowledge is the discovery of causal laws, and interpretive efforts simply get in the way. The approach to knowledge puts strict limits on acceptable subject matters and methods. The important thing about science - which distinguishes it from common sense - is that scientific explanations form general systems of abstract principles. These principles can be applied beyond the domain in which they were discovered. It is the inter-connectedness of scientific theories, the way they work together to support each other, that contributes to their success. Common sense knowledge, by contrast, is typically restricted to a particular domain, and it isn't related strongly to other knowledge. Explanations lead to consensus, but only on the subset of all possible knowledge amenable to empirical observations.

We can safely let Richard Dawkins stand as a good example of the scientist explanationist camp. He is known for his impatience with superstition and ignorance of facts, and for his public attacks on religious beliefs. Interestingly Richard Dawkins evinces surprise that people should see him as 'cold' and 'nihilistic' on reading The Selfish Gene, and attempts to alter that impression with his next book, Unweaving the Rainbow. But for all that he shows that he is familiar with poetry and deft at manipulating metaphors in his factual explanations, he also seems to misunderstand something fundamental about human cognition and decision making - the role of emotion in our lives. 

Dawkins appears to explain his failure to communicate himself as laziness or stupidity on the part of his audience. He is openly contemptuous of people who are not persuaded by his explanations, but makes no attempt to connect with the values of the audience, which means that he presumes that everyone prioritises cold hard facts as he does. Note that his sub-title for Unweaving the Rainbow contrasts science with delusion as though these are the only two possible positions. His contumely is reminiscent of legacy attitudes of the British upper-classes to the common people. 

Similarly, in his recent book The Grand Design Stephen Hawking declares "philosophy is dead", and that scientific determinism is simply how things are - he goes as far as denying the possibility of free will, but allows that despite the lack of true agency that behaviour is so complex that it remains unpredictable. The Grand Design trumpets itself as offering "new answers to life's ultimate questions" - and the selection of the questions is telling. First and foremost Hawking seeks to answer: 'why is there something rather than nothing?'. Socrates question 'how should we live?' is not only not addressed, is it not even asked! Scientific determinism creates a sterile vacuum by placing many aspects of human life - especially all the creative and imaginative arts, and the human emotions and values - outside the sphere of knowledge seeking and making.

On the other hand is the interpretationist who says that all inquiry about human life and thought occurs in irreducible frameworks of values and subjectivity. Human beings are subjects not objects. The search for knowledge about human beings - and therefore about religion - is the search for reasons (hermeneutics) and meaning (semiotics). Explanation is not only unnecessary it is at best undesirable, and at worst not possible. Since interpretation allows no common (objective) standard and there is much less interactivity amongst knowledge found in this way, there is a tendency to splinter into factions e.g. Freudian, Foucauldian, Feminist, Marxist, Christian, Buddhist, etc. Each group comes up with a plausible story about what things mean, and criticises the other groups with no possibility of consensus. 

The interpretationist account of humanity is overly fecund, and reaches an apotheosis in the Post-Modernists who reject all explanation and all objectivity, and disclaim all possibility of wider consensus since there is only personal interpretation. However interpretation allows us to structure and understand those areas of life which science cannot touch - particularly human experience. Although laws may not be possible, there are certainly patterns. Identifying and discussing problems such as universal human rights rely on interpretation rather than explanation.

I'm not familiar with any of the examples of interpretationist type given in the book, but it strikes me that Joseph Campbell fits the profile. He interprets myths and legends, seeking reasons for human behaviour and sources of meaning relating to it. He is not concerned with what causes us to behave, in the way that a scientist is, only in what it means that we do behave the way we do. Campbell on the other hand accepts everything as part of life's rich tapestry without judgement. So when discussing the theme of rebirth (in his interviews with Bill Moyers published as The Power of Myth he sees the images of the Buddha peacefully meditating beneath the bodhi tree, and Jesus brutally nailed to a cross as being the same story without any qualification (I disagree). Equally he discusses ritual murder in the same context without any sense of moral judgement - every expression of human behaviour is valid to him because it is simply an expression of the myth. The term for this kind of view is monist - expressed sometimes as "all is one". There is no way to prove what Campbell says - it is simply one interpretation of a range of observations. Campbell's position is not easily reducible, but he is broadly speaking a Jungian, I think. If he were a Marxist his reading of the myths would no doubt be different. However Campbell creates extremely plausible narratives in many cases and he seems to shed light on the content and importantly the function of myths. Since the Enlightenment myth has become a byword for something which is not true. Campbell shows how myths have value because they symbolically communicate meanings and purposes, and has to some extent rehabilitated the word myth.

Lawson and McCauley outline some intermediate positions, but these require some familiarity with the literature and are therefore harder to explain. Overall when there are concessions made by 'social scientists', the authors say, they inevitably privilege interpretation and subordinate explanation. Some see the methods of social science as yet inadequate to the task of an empirical approach, leaving interpretation as the only way forward. A second group acknowledge that explanation has a role, but see human actions as guided by reasons and not by causes, so it seems natural to focus on interpretation while not actually discounting explanation (I think the problem here is free will). A third intermediate position sees all knowledge seeking - including the natural sciences - as fundamentally interpretive, and in particular argue for the importance of subjectivity in the construction of scientific knowledge systems. For this last group interpretation sets the agenda for explanation. In studying humans they prioritise the concrete contents of human experience over the abstract theories about them.

In my experience most religious people are interpretationists of either the extreme kind who deny any possible explanation for human, especially religious, experience; or they tolerate a level of explanation but place certain types of experience forever beyond the reach of empiricism and factual knowledge (my Buddhist teacher Sangharakshita is overtly in this camp I would say). Religious people are wary of explanation which they see as 'cold', and as 'killing the magic'. They speak of scientists 'explaining away' their beliefs. The danger religious people see is that science, in explaining human religious behaviour, will destroy the things they value about their religious practices and communities. And on past evidence this is not an unreasonable fear as explanationists are often insensitive to values.

It's clear that the extreme approaches are not always helpful. Although both have had their successes, they have tended to polarise the discussion about religion and stymie communication and understanding. The point that Lawson and McCauley wish to make is that there is a way to combine both interpretation and explanation without privileging or banishing one or the other, and that in effect we all do it anyway. They point out that in fact explanation and interpretation are different cognitive tasks.

"When people seek better interpretations they attempt to employ the categories they have in better ways. By contrast, when people seek better explanations they go beyond the rearrangement of categories; the generate new theories which will, if successful, replace or even eliminate the conceptual scheme with which they presently operate." (p.29)

Interpretation presupposes a body of explanation (of facts and laws), and seeks to (re)organise empirical knowledge. Explanation always contains an element of interpretation, but successful explanations winnow and increase knowledge. The two processes are not mutually exclusive, but interrelated, and both are necessary.

In the process of attempting to integrate Buddhism and Western Culture (which includes science and technology as well as distinctive myths and ideas about what gives life meaning) we cannot afford to take an exclusively explanatory or interpretive approach. We are forced, by intellectual honesty, to accept the strong conclusions of science: the classical laws of physics and chemistry for instance are not really in doubt despite being dependent on a frame of reference - we do in fact live in that frame of reference. Some of the critique of each camp is useful - explanation helps to put useful limits on interpretation; while we are reminded that facts are not always hard (think of statistics and how vital they are in biology or quantum mechanics) and laws governing imagination and emotion are vague, though not without importance.

One of the big issues of religion in the modern world is the status of the supernatural. On the trivial level we have ghosts and 'energies' of various kinds, and on a more serious level we have a transcendental Buddha beyond any predication or description, let alone explanation. Nirvāṇa is taboo, and remains not just inaccessible but forbidden to scientists. Though one of the most interesting areas of neuroscience is the effects of meditation on the brain.

To even consider trying to explain the Buddha is seen as a kind of heresy. We Buddhists do maintain conceptions equivalent to both heresy and blasphemy - despite all protestations to the contrary - that emerge when we transgress. It can be heresy to deny some doctrines. To some denying rebirth is a heresy. More or less any doctrinal innovation in Buddhism leaves one open to the charge of heresy. If we go further and declare our belief that consciousness is entirely based in the brain (which I more or less accept) or that the Buddha was just a human being who was kind and not troubled by psychological suffering then we will find the charge of blasphemy being laid surreptitiously at our doorstep. We may find that someone will say that we are not in fact Buddhists if we don't accept a transcendental version of Buddhism; or we may be called a materialist. The label materialist has a powerfully pejorative sense in this context; and often comes with an offhand, sometimes contemptuous, dismissal of the so-called materialist's opinions. The form of the arguments is identical, I would say, to those we see in theistic milieus.

Buddhists like to emphasise true, original(in the temporal sense) and authentic teachings; genuine masters, living Buddhas; unbroken lineages; and fully ordained individuals. We are a bit obsessed with appealing to external authorities to bolster our internal authority. Why do I constantly refer to the Pāli Canon for instance when I have my personal experience? Could it be from lack of experience?

We have some way to go as most of these issues are not even conscious. As someone with a science education and a leaning towards explanation, I regularly find myself in conflict with those who embrace interpretation - often having to point out that my disinclination to supernatural interpretations of experience does not amount to materialism (see Am I a Materialist?). The important thing about Lawson and McCauley's analysis is that it clarifies what issues and values are at stake so that we can bring them to awareness, and have the discussion in the open. Facts are important, and we should not be denying facts in promoting Buddhism. One fact is that human values are not easily objectified, and another is that experience doesn't necessarily conform to mathematical laws.

~~oOo~~

Lawson, E. T. and McCauley, R. N. (1990). Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter One Reprinted as Lawson, E. T. and McCauley, R. N. (2006). "Interpretation and Explanation: Problems and Promise in the Study of Religion." J. Slone (ed.). Religion and Cognition: A Reader, London: Equinox.

See also:

Oliver Sacks on Why the brain creates myths on bigthink.com: "Jerome Bruner, a great psychologist, has spoken of two modes of thinking. One is to create narratives, one is to create paradigms or explanations or models."

Happiness and Unhappiness

Timbaruka Sutta
S 12.18, PTS ii.22 [1]

STAYING AT SĀVATTHĪ. Then the wanderer Timbaruka approached the Bhagavan, and having exchanged pleasantries, he sat to one side and asked a question.

Are happiness and unhappiness (sukhadukkha) made by one's-self (sayaṃ-kata)?

No, Timbaruko, that's not it, replied the Bhagavan.

Are happiness and unhappiness made by another (paraṃ-kata)?

No, that's not it.

Are happiness and unhappiness made by one's-self and others?

No, that's not it.

Do happiness and unhappiness appear without any reason?

No, that's not it.

Is there no such thing as happiness and unhappiness?

It's not that there is no happiness and unhappiness. Clearly there is happiness and unhappiness.

Is it that you don't know or see happiness and unhappiness?

It's not that I don't know or see happiness and unhappiness. I do know them, and see them.

Gotama, you've answered 'no' to all my questions. Please explain to me what you mean. Explain happiness and unhappiness to me.

Well Timbaruka, I do not say "happiness and unhappiness are caused by one's-self" because underlying that statement is the eternalist view that the experience (vedanā) and the one experiencing (so vedayati) are the same.

I do not say "happiness and unhappiness are caused by another" because underlying that is the view of one overcome by sensations, [i.e.] that the experience and the one experiencing are different.

Avoiding both of these positions I point to a foundation (dhamma) in the middle. With ignorance (avijjā) as condition there are volitions (saṅkhārā), and with volitions as condition there is consciousness etc... [i.e the nidāna chain] and thus the whole mass of disappointment comes about. With the complete cessation ignorance, volitions cease, with the cessation of volitions, ignorance ceases, etc... thus the whole mass of disappointment ceases.

When this was said the wanderer Timbaruka said Gotama I go for refuge to the Bhagavan Gotama, to the Dhamma and the community of Bhikkhus. Please remember me as a non-monastic disciple from this day forward.

~:o:~

Comments

I've translated sukha and dukkha as happiness and unhappiness here which is fairly conventional. On this level they represent the positive and negative aspects of experience, the things we find pleasing and displeasing, the aspects of experience on which we base our notions of happiness and unhappiness. However the words are used in a variety of ways, and there may be other interpretations. I've noted in my comments on Dhammapada v.1-2 that sukha/dukkha can represent nibbāna and saṃsāra for instance.

Timbaruka seeks to understand the problem of suffering in terms of self and/or other. The Buddha lets Timbaruka exhaust all the possible options within that paradigm without committing himself. It seems that some of the wanderers were a bit like the sophists in ancient Athens and some people these days, who go around just arguing with everything. One gets the sense that Timbaruka was ready to argue whatever the Buddha might agree with or disagree with. The fact that the Buddha does not take a stand on any of the views presented is a strategy Timbaruka has apparently not anticipated. The Buddha uses this strategy fairly often. The approach the Buddha takes is distinctly different to this one which proposes a dichotomy and then finds fault with all possible alternatives.

Having rejected the Timbaruka's terms the Buddha gives an explanation of why he is not interested in that particular argument, and then gives his alternative way of looking at things. There are two basic positions: the experience is either the same as the experiencer, or different. From the fact that the Buddha doesn't bother to answer the other variations proposed by Timbaruka, we might conclude that he does not take them seriously. His answer though partial from Timbaruka's point of view, covers the only sensible points.

We see that the rejection is in terms of Buddhist technical terminology, which reminds us that the story is told specifically for a Buddhist audience. Eternalism and nihilism as critical terms are distinctively Buddhist.

The first view - that suffering is caused by self - is that of the eternalist. The problem here is that we identify ourselves with experience, and see our self as continuous and lasting. This is almost the default setting for humanity: in effect we are our thoughts and emotions. By this I mean we don't consciously make this decision, it's just how things seem to us. As Thomas Metzinger says we are all 'naive realists'. However this leaves us with no real choice in how we respond to situations and causes us problems. [2] Elsewhere the Buddha uses the metaphor of intoxication (pamāda) to describe this condition.

The second view - that suffering is caused by other - is the view, not of the nihilist, but of someone overwhelmed by sensations [vedanābhitunna]. In this we aren't identified with the sensations, but feel compelled by them as when we are "overcome with grief", or we "see red". Again we often imagine that we have no choice about responding to powerful desires and aversions. Falling in love is such a powerful sensation, and chaos if not mayhem often ensues. The nihilist would presumably argue that ultimately there is no suffering (something I've heard Buddhists argue, to my consternation!)

To reiterate an important point: these 'views' are not conscious ideologies, not philosophies that we take on willingly. They are the default settings for human beings, a mixture of evolution and early conditioning; nature and nuture. Buddhists, like other religieux, tend to express a tinge of blame when describing the human condition. Although we reject the explicit notion of original sin, we smuggle through an implicit one. We often describe people as basically greedy and hateful for instance. I find this both philosophically problematic, and unhelpful. The Buddha here is arguing for a much less personal view of the problem of suffering. Suffering is not caused by oneself! At least in this text.

The kind of dichotomy that Timbaruka proposes doesn't apply in the Buddha's frame of reference. And note that what is being rejected is not the self/other dichotomy per se, but the idea that suffering comes from either. This is not advaita (non-dualist) philosophy, it is pragmatism aimed at relieving suffering. The kind of view which is engendered by mystical experiences such as oceanic-boundary-loss - i.e. all is one - is being criticised here, and throughout the Pāli canon.

In his explanation the Buddha focusses on how dukkha arises and ceases as an impersonal process. Understanding that experience is impermanent we see that there is nothing to identify with. Identity is just another experience - impermanent, disappointing, and impersonal. Experiences constantly arise and cease, meaning that there is nothing to hang on to, nothing to let go of even. Seeing experience as an impersonal process, in which the first-person perspective is a just another conditioned experience, means we don't blame anyone. If there is a painful state we see it has arisen dependently, and often we do have some influence on the conditions that contribute to suffering. Dependency does not do away with agency, at least not completely.

The more subtle point is that our own relationship to experience is the primary condition to think about. By dis-identifying with experience we make it less likely that we are either caught up in, or overwhelmed by experience, and we have a choice about being happy or unhappy that is not related to (not conditioned by) the particular experience we are having now. I have a growing suspicion that this is what asaṅkhata [unconditioned] means.

In a sense Timbaruka is right. Any view about happiness or unhappiness based on self and/or other leads to contradictions and argumentation. Human intercourse in any age has shown this to be true, and such tensions and disagreements continue to play out in human civilisations, even nominally Buddhist ones (2500 years, and we still can't agree on some things!). The problem is not this or that strategy for achieving happiness, but a fundamental mistake about the nature of happiness. What we naively pursue is not happiness, but following our evolutionary heritage and conditioning we pursue pleasant sensations. So we are not happy, and our conditioning says that someone must be to blame - if not me, then you, or him, or perhaps God or the Universe! In order to change this we need to step outside that frame of reference and see our experience in a completely new light - as impermanent and impersonal. Then a kind of happiness not conditioned by pleasant or unpleasant experiences can and does arise.

~~oOo~~

Notes

1. main points identical to S 12.17. My translation.
   
2. There is a distant echo here of the Brahmanical view that one achieves liberation through a comprehensive identification with the world, probably associated with the mystical experience sometimes described as oceanic boundary loss. The feeling of breaking down the subject/object distinction and identification with everything. Jill Bolte Taylor's description of this experience during a major stroke is instructive because she articulates the relevant aspects of it, even if a stroke is not attractive as a way to have that experience [See her TED presentation; and my response An Experience of Awakening?]. I say the echo is distant because I don't think that Brahmins are the target here. The target is everyday naive realism, the identification with experience as real.

Action and Intention III

REGULAR READERS WILL KNOW that I harp on about the Buddha's equation of intention and action - cetanā and kamma. More than one person has noted that this equation only occurs once in the Canon. This uniqueness makes us uneasy about putting so much weight on the phrase - surely if an idea was centrally important then it would be mentioned more frequently? I agree with this, and I have been on the look out for more references which discuss kamma and cetanā. I found an interesting passage in the Cetanā Sutta (SN 12.38, S ii.65-66). The first paragraph of the sutta translates as:

At Sāvatthī. What you think about (ceteti), monks, what you plan for (pakappeti), and what obsesses (anuseti) is the condition (ārammaṇa) of the persistence (ṭhiti) of cognition (viññāṇa). When there is a basis, there will be cognition. With persistence and growth of conscious there will future rebirth in a new existence. With future rebirth there will be future birth, old-age and death, grief, lamenting, misery, dejection, and trouble. Thus is the origin of the whole mass of disappointment.

The other paragraphs deal with a partial and complete cessation of disappointment, as simple negatives, so I'll just focus on this paragraph. Here the verb ceteti is the origin of the action noun cetanā. I said in my first post on ethics and intention:

Cetanā derives from the root √cit which also gives us the words citta 'mind' and cetas 'thought'... The root √cit is defined in the dictionary as "knowing; thought , intellect , spirit , soul", but also "to perceive , fix the mind upon , attend to , be attentive , observe , take notice of"; and "to aim at , intend , design; to be anxious about , care for; to resolve". So √cit 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').

In Sanskrit the two roots √cit 'to perceive' and √cint 'to think' are different enough to be thought of as distinct, though Whitney does acknowledge that √cint appears to derive from √cit. PED draws out the difference by seeing √cint as an active voice (parasmaipāda) form with a nasal infix (like for example √muc 'to free' > muñcati 'he releases'); and √cit as a medial or reflexive form (ātmanepāda). Originally the reflexive form was for verbs affecting oneself, while the active form was for verbs affecting others - like, for instance the difference between 'I go' and 'he goes' (the word is the same but the form is different) - though this semantic distinction is largely lost in both Classical Sanskrit and Pāli even when the form persists.

Pāli citta is further confused with Sanskrit citra 'to shine'. So when the Buddha says Pabhassaramidaṃ, bhikkhave, cittaṃ (AN 1.51) what most people miss is the pun. Citta means both 'thought' and 'shine' and the phrase could equally be read - 'this thought is radiant', or 'this shiny-thing is radiant'. The context does incline towards reading 'mind', but the ambiguity and pun are obvious to a Pāli speaker.

cetanā is an abstract noun from active form (cinteti 'to think') and PED defines: 'the state of ceto [mind] in action, thinking as active thought'.

Now in the passage quoted above Bhikkhu Bodhi, very much the Buddhaghosa of our time, draws attention to the relationship of ceteti with cetanā by translating it as 'what one intends'. (Connected Discourses p.576). Bhikkhu Thanissaro (on Access to Insight) follows suit, and and Maurice Walsh opts for 'what one wills'. Why? First there is the title of the sutta - cetanāsuttaṃ - though, as I understand it, most of the titles in SN were added later. Secondly ceteti is paired with two other verbs pakappeti 'to plan' and anuseti 'to obsess over' and in Pāli these kinds of appositions are usually synonyms reinforcing each other. PED specifically mentions this group of three 'to intend, to start to perform, to carry out' (s.v. cinteti meaning b.)

Buddhaghosa's commentary glosses

Ettha ca 'cetetī'ti tebhūmakakusalākusalacetanā gahitā

And here ceteti refers to having grasped the good and evil intentions of the three levels of being (i.e. kāmaloka, rūpaloka, arūpaloka). [1]

I'm slightly wary here. My argument would be supported by simply agreeing with Buddhaghosa and the modern translators who have clearly followed him. But my understanding of the philology and the context makes me want to translate ceteti as 'thinks about', with the understanding that we are drawn to or away from objects as we find them pleasant or unpleasant only as an implication. I don't like 'intends' as a translation here, even though it would suit my rhetorical purposes better. There is a third possibility in PED which is that under some circumstances ceteti can mean 'to desire' though this requires the object of desire to be in the dative case. Our situation the object is abstract 'what' (yaṃ) but not in the dative.

In any case ceteti is one of three activities, three mental activities, which provide a basis (ārammaṇa) of the persistence (ṭhiti) of cognition (viññāṇa) and therefore for rebirth in the future (āyatiṃ punabbhavābhinibbatti). This is interesting because we're not talking about a condition for the arising of cognition here, but for its persistence. Once cognition is arisen it is sustained by what we think about, plan for, and obsess over - which is to say that once a cognition arises in our minds (through contact between our sense faculties and sense objects) it is we who sustain them through actively keeping them in mind. Seeing things this way I struggle to see how cognition generally can be said to arise from ignorance (avijjā) in a single step, and it makes those versions of the nidāna chain which leave out this connection (especially the Mahānidāna Sutta) even more attractive.

The connection with kamma is that the persistence of viññāṇa, through ceteti is what makes rebirth possible. For early Buddhism viññāṇa provides the continuity from life to life. Through our ceteti we ensure rebirth; so here ceteti is kamma, is the kind of action that results in rebirth. The confirmation is rather indirect, and not unambiguous, but it is there.

~~oOo~~

Notes

1. For those interested in such things the analysis of this compound - tebhūmakakusalākusalacetanā - is interesting. Firstly I take kusalākusala as a dvandva compound - kusala-akusala 'good and bad'. Then I take kusalākusala to form a karmadhāraya compound with cetanā (i.e good and bad intentions). Bhūmaka is a tadhitha compound or secondary derivation from bhūma (=bhūmi) + -ka (an adjectival suffix); and tebhūmaka is a dvigu form of karmadhāraya compound - 'having three grounds or levels'. Then finally kusalākusalacetanā forms a tatpuruṣa compound with tebbhūmaka 'the good and evil intentions of the three levels'. One can see that compounds like this are a very succinct way of writing as they convey a lot of grammar implicitly, but you wouldn't expect them in an oral literature because it's more difficult to parse such long compounds orally. It also assumes that we know what 'the three levels' refers to.

image: Clipart ETC

Love and the Ordered Universe

The idea that the universe is non-random, above all that the universe follows rules analogous to human social rules that we can understand and follow in order to get along, is one of the most pervasive human myths and an important idea in most religions. Indeed we could define myth in this sense as a story or narrative which conveys the sense of an ordered universe, and in what way the universe is ordered (i.e. myth is descriptive); and religion as attempts to ensure we follow the laws implied by an ordered universe (i.e. religion is prescriptive). In ancient India this order was called first ṛta and then dharma.. In some tellings of Greek myth first there was khaos - an unordered, unstructured void - and then the ordered universe, the kosmos, was brought into being.

Since the European Enlightenment it has been discovered that mathematical models can describe aspects of the world very accurately. Simple equations such as F=ma or E=mc² tell us a great deal about how matter behaves, and what to expect from it in the future - matter appears to 'obey' these 'Laws'. In the course of my education I studied these physical laws in great detail, and personally demonstrated many of them. But along the way I began to see that my education in science consisted in being presented with a series of increasingly sophisticated models, none of which was true in any absolute sense, and none of which did much for my angst. The Laws of physics are useful and accurate descriptions of matter under most circumstances, but they do not meet every need.

Just because we perceive order, does not mean that there is order. Hopefully readers will recall the movie A Beautiful Mind. It no doubt romanticised the experience of madness, and yet it highlighted something about the human mind. Our mind sees patterns - we are pattern recognition sensors of the highest sensitivity. In fact we tend to see order where there is none. Give a human being a random array of points of light (like, say, the stars) and we fill it with a bestiary and a pantheon that reflects everything that we care about. Given random events we will see connections. In the movie John Nash becomes obsesses with and delusional about patterns, but this was a natural faculty gone haywire, not simply a product of madness.

One could also say that religion is simply our collective hopes and fears writ large and projected out onto the universe: our worst fear is that the universe is devoid of rules, or else utterly determined by rules; the hope is that there are enough rules to make life predictable, not too many as to make it stultifying. We want to be free to act, to choose, to experience novelty; but not too much. We want to know that the sun will rise each day, that the seasons will appear in due course, that the crops will grow and ripen; that we will have enough food and water, that predators will not carry us or our loved ones away etc. Most of these are not very sophisticated and reflect our evolved biological needs rather than our intellectual longings. Our societies overlay this with a veneer of sophistication, but our actual needs haven't changed in millennia, just the strategies for meeting those needs. As social primates it's important for us to establish social rules and hierarchies and for everyone to keep to them in order to fulfil our social needs. Hence we see the personified forces of nature as a celestial society, or as in ancient China as a celestial empire. The gods of course are not observed to obey the same social rules as humans, but never the less we discern order amongst them and do what we can to facilitate that order through sacrifice and prayer (all gods are similar in needing to be propitiated in order to behave - rather like over-sized toddlers). Many gods are effectively alpha-male primates in the sky - demanding submission and the best food. It seems irrational until you look at, say, chimp behaviour (I highly recommend reading Jane Goodall's In the Shadow of Man for instance). Part of the reason that apparently irrational religion is so very popular is that it speaks directly to deep human needs.

I wonder if this mismatch between our basic biology and intellect may be behind the mismatch between ordinary people and intellectuals? Recently I watched TED video of Richard Dawkins exhorting his audience to militant atheism. One of the points he makes is that amongst members of the American Academy of Science less that 10% believe in a god. When you compare that to members of the public it's more like 75% of people believe in a god. Dawkins quotes (ex)president Bush as saying an atheist could not be a patriot. Atheism is, however, the largest category of religious belief in the USA after Christianity - outnumbering Judaism, Hinduism and all other religions put together. But atheists have no political voice in the USA. I thought that was a very interesting point.

Intellectuals can generally see that the idea of a creator god is not credible, and it is interesting that Christian intellectuals back off from anthropomorphic versions of god even when they cannot give up the idea altogether. Ordinary people are harder to convince because they still project their hopes and fears onto the universe. And they want the universe to care. A caring universe is often personified as a loving mother or father (I don't recall any culture describing the universe/nature as a favourite aunt or uncle for instance).

The universe described by scientists seems not to care about us. I had an important realisation about this some years back when I used to surf on the rugged West Coast beaches near Auckland, New Zealand (especially Piha). These beaches are potentially dangerous and every year several people drown there, though with care they provide excellent surfing and swimming. The waves just roll in to their own rhythm, and they do not hesitate to drown the incautious. The sea does not glory in killing people, or regret one getting away. The sea is completely and utterly indifferent to us. When you float around on it for hours at a time, several days a week for a couple of years this becomes apparent. The ocean is magnificent, beautiful, fascinating, and thrilling, but it is not alive, not sentient. The ocean does not care, because it cannot. Caring is something that humans do.

I believe the universe is like this also. The universe does not care about us. It is not an ethical universe (i.e. it has no bias towards 'good') but one which is not aware at all, let alone aware of us and our needs: the universe is largely inanimate and driven by physics and chemistry. This might sound bleak or hard, scientists are often accused of being cold, but I'm not finished. Because the wonder is that self-aware beings can and do care. Sure, other animals experience consciousness and emotions so some extent. I don't deny that. But humans have this ability to rise above circumstances that no other animal possesses. We have an ability to be altruistic not possessed by other beings - for instance we help strangers, and can turn enemies into friends. In effect it is humans that provide the love, the caring, and the emotional warmth in the universe because they are products of consciousness, especially self-consciousness.

In response to one group of Brahmins who were concerned about the afterlife (Tevijja Sutta DN 13), the Buddha described a series of meditations in which one radiates positive emotions for all beings. One first of all radiates general goodwill, friendliness, love. One makes no distinctions between any beings, but imagines all beings everywhere being happy and well. Then we imagine that all people in need getting what they need, all the ill and unhappy beings becoming well and happy. Then we imagine ourselves celebrating along with everyone who has good fortune. And finally we radiate equanimity - a pure positivity not dependent on circumstances, but which arises out of our identification with all beings everywhere. What finer use of the imagination is there? It is no coincidence that the Buddha named this group of practices brahmavihāra (dwelling with god) and said of them that dwelling on the meditations was like dwelling with, or perhaps as, Brahmā (the creator god - usually depicted with four faces looking in the cardinal directions). The name was probably aimed at Brahmanical theists whose religious goal was brahmasahavyata 'companionship with Brahmā'. In response to concerns about the afterlife the Buddha simply teaches us to love without bounds in the here and now (as the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta says).

The Buddha's point is much the same as I have been saying. The universe, god if you will, is not the source of friendliness, love, caring, compassion. We are. Love is a human quality that emerges from our consciousness. It is up to us to provide this quality. It's a big job, and so we must set about it systematically, and collectively. Else we may fail, and we all know what that failure looks like. Fortunately we have ways of developing these qualities, and we have exemplars to inspire us. All we need do really is allow ourselves to be inspired, and have a go at the practices.

Philogical Odds & Ends VI - Meditation Words

MANY WORDS HAVE INTERESTING STORIES associated with them. This is a sixth 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 post.

In this post I cover words related to meditation: dhyāna, anusmṛti, bhāvanā, yoga, samādhi, sādhana, and meditation.


Dhyāna

Most of us will be familiar, I think, with the notion that the Japanese word Zen is in fact the Japanese pronunciation of a Chinese pronunciation of the Sanskrit word dhyāna, most often translated as 'meditation'. Here I will go over that ground but in some detail, then go one step further and look at the Proto-Indo-European origins, before considering the translation as 'meditation'. Beginning with East Asia we find the following:

禪 or 禪 chán - traditional Chinese.
禅 chán - simplified Chinese.
禅 zen, ぜん - Japanese.
禪 sŏn, 선 - Korean
thiền - Vietnamese.

I'm using the Pinyin transliteration system for Chinese where diacritics indicate tone. In the other most common system - Wade-Giles - 禪 is spelled ch'an. These forms all stem from an original Chinese 禪那 (chán nā), which is a transliteration, not a translation - i.e. it is an attempt to capture the sound, not the meaning - of the Sanskrit word dhyāna. It was probably pronounced something like /ʥanːa/ (using the International Phonetic Alphabet). My friend Maitiu tells me:

"this character 禪 has the phonetic element dān 單 which has two small boxes at the top and wherever this character is used with simplified characters in Chinese these two boxes are are replaced with two strokes 单. In the Japanese version of this character the boxes are replaced with three strokes 単. The radical can also be written two ways - 礻and 示 - hence the two different characters 禪 and 禪. Of these 示 is the older form, and also an independent character meaning 'to show or instruct'. Originally 示 was a pictograph of a sacrificial altar and it's used as the radical in lots of characters with meanings associated with sacrifice, ritual and religion. Originally 禪 meant a sacrifice to the earth made by the the King or the ritual of abdication, though in these meanings it has the alternate reading shàn."

Note: Some fonts seem to default older forms to newer ones and even traditional to simplified. Getting the various characters to display correctly is quite difficult - but at time of publishing I see them in the text.  

The Pāli spelling resolves the conjunct dhyā as jhā, i.e. jhāna, while Gāndārī is jaṇa. This made me wonder if the Chinese had decided on the sound chán because they were hearing a central Asian pronunciation with /j/ or /jh/ sound instead of Sanskrit /dhy/. Most of the early Buddhist contact with China was by Central Asians (from cities like Khotan on the Silk Road), or from Gandhāra and other western regions of India. I asked about this and Maitiu replied:

"禪那 is also used in the transcription of the place names Ujjayini and Nairañjanā which supports a reading of jana. Having a quick search the earliest uses of the transcription 禪那 seem to be by Kumārajīva [344 CE – 413 CE] and Dharmarakṣa [4^th century] who were both central Asian."

From China, most likely through Central Asia, we come back to India and Sanskrit. Authorities differ on the root of dhyāna. MW lists it under √dhyai. PED points to √dhī as the root. Whitney has √dhyā and distinguishes this from √dhī; he simplifies the meaning as 'think'. The word forms listed under each root are different: √dhī: 'dhīmahi, dīdhayas' vs √dhyā 'dhyāyati, dhyāti' (3rd person singular present indicative forms). However √dhyā and √dhī are evidently related.

The noun dhyāna is formed by adding the primary suffix (kṛt-pratyaya) -ana (known as lyuṬ in the Pāṇinian code) to the root. 

The PIE root is *dheiǝ 'to see, to look, to show', and according to AHD this has a variant *dhyā which is where our words come from. A suffixed form *dhyā-mṇ (where ṇ is called a 'sonant' form, a sort of nasal vowel) gives us the Greek sēmeion and sēma 'a sign' from which we get our words semantic, semiotic, semaphore, etc. The Indo-European Lexicon lists dhī as a variant form of dheiǝ. The word dhyāna then from it's etymology means something like 'to observe mentally'.

Rather than transliterate, the Tibetans translate dhyāna as bsam gtan (བསམ་གཏན), pronounced 'samten', meaning 'mental focus'. It is made up from bsam 'thought, intention'; and gtan, an intensifier, also meaning 'order, system'. Clearly there is only a semantic, and no etymological or phonological connection. Tibetan translations were standardised quite early one, meaning that one can almost always reconstruct the original Sanskrit terminology.

Anusmṛti

There are a series of meditation practices referred to as anusmṛti (Pāli anussati). The root is √smṛ 'to remember', and with the prefix anu- we get 'to recollect, or bring to mind' and anusmṛti is an action noun meaning "recollecting". These are practices therefore of recollection, remembrance and reflection. In Pāli there are six anussati meditations: recollections of the Three Jewels (buddhānussati, dhammānussati, and sanghānussati), reflection on ethics (sīlānusati), generosity (cāgānussati), and on [the merit of] the devas (devānussati); or ten with the addition of four (three with only sati instead of anussati) reflection on death (maraṇasati), on being embodied (kāyagatāsati), on the breath (ānāpānasati), and on peace (upasamānussati).

Bhāvanā

Bhāvanā is from the Sanskrit root √bhū 'to be' in the causative form (bhū and be are cognate). It therefore means 'development, cultivation'. This is the word most commonly translated as 'meditation' (see below). There are two types of bhāvanā: śamatha and vipaśyanā. The cultivation of śamatha 'calming, tranquillity' is more or less synonymous with dhyānabhāvanā in early Buddhism. Also mettābhāvanā - the development of loving kindness. The word vipaśyanā means 'seeing' (paśyanā) through (vi-). The anusmṛti meditations are vipaśyanā-bhāvanā. If we were to create a Latinate neologism to translate vipaśyanā it might be 'diavision'.

Yoga

Yoga means 'connection, joining; application, meditation, spiritual practice' from the root √yuj ‘to yoke’ originally the act of yoking animals esp horses together, or to a chariot or plough. PIE *√yeug ‘join’ > Greek. zygon > Eng. –zygous, syzygy; Latin jugum ‘yoke’ > Eng. jugular, conjugate, & Latin jungere > E. join, junction, junta, etc; cf Welsh iou ‘yoke’; Old English geoc ‘yoke’; also S. yuga ‘eon, era’. [definition from my book Nāmapada]. Buddhaghosa's usual term for a meditator is yogāvacara 'devoted to yoga', but this and the related term yogin 'one who practices yoga' do not occur in the Nikāyas.

Samādhi

This word means 'concentration, focus'. The Pāli commentators consider it to be synonymous with 'one-pointedness of mind' (cittass'ekagatā). The root is √dhā 'to place' with a double suffix sam- + ā; c.f. śraddhā 'to place the heart'. Samādhi is a morally neutral state - one can be focussed on good or evil. In the Abdhidhamma it is one of seven mental states which are always present - i.e. for their to be consciousness at all we must be focussed on something. Samyak-samādhi (Pāli sammāsamādhi) is the 8^th limb of the eight-fold path. With respect to meditation samādhi has three degrees (in Pāli) parikamma-samādhi 'preparation focus'; upacāra-samādhi 'access concentration'; and appanā-samādhi 'attainment concentration;, i.e. the dhyānas.

Sādhana

Sādhana is an action noun from the root √sādh ‘to succeed’, meaning 'leading to the goal, effective, efficient'. This word is not used in this sense in Pāli, and is more particularly associated with tantric practice. Someone who does spiritual practice is a sādhaka. √sādh is most likely related to the root √sidh which also means 'to succeed' and gives us the words siddha 'an adept, accomplished, one who has succeeded', and siddhi 'accomplishment, success'.

Meditation

By contrast the English word meditation comes from a PIE root meaning 'to measure': *med. Through Greek metron, we get the English cognates meter, measure, symmetry ('with measure'), and via Latin medērī 'to look after, to heal' (i.e. to take appropriate measures) words such as medical, medicine, remedy. Other words from Latin variants include modest, moderate; mode, model, modern. A Germanic compound *ē-mōt-ja is the source of the word empty. The word meditate, comes from L. meditārī 'to think about, consider, reflect'. I see a definite semantic cross-over with vipaśyanā-bhāvanā style meditations which generally do involve reflection, but not with śamatha-bhāvanā style meditations. Some people have opted to translate dhyāna as 'trance' but this seems to miss the point completely; 'absorption' will just about do; though I think now that 'concentration' is more common, though again I wonder whether concentration really capture the expansiveness and openness of the experience of dhyāna.

~~oOo~~

See other Philological Odds & Ends posts:

• I: tathāgata, sūtra, śramaṇa, loka, gahapati/gṛhapati.
• II: cakravartin, cintāmaṇi, yoniso manasikara, pāramitā, etymology.
• III: bodhisattva, anagārikā, samyak/mithyā.
• IV: vrata, mitra, kavi.
• V: megha, mañju, saṅgha.

Buddhist Atheism and Darwin

Since being contacted by Ted Meissner of The Secular Buddhist podcast for an interview (an enjoyable experience), I've been taking more interest in the theme of non-religious Buddhism as an adaptation of Buddhism to Western Culture. I've watched a Stephen Batchelor video on YouTube, and read various articles. Batchelor is a voice of reason and I appreciate his contribution. At the same time I've discovered that I very much enjoy Richard Dawkins' polemical approach to religion.

Not long ago I changed my strap-line for this blog to "Western Buddhism... the Buddhist Enlightenment colliding with the European Enlightenment" which reflects my growing interest in how we adapt Buddhism to Western culture in a way that honours both. Though now a Buddhist and writer, I grew up secular and focussed by education on science. I have a B.Sc in chemistry from Waikato University, NZ. However, during my studies I realised that a detailed knowledge of the theory and practice of science was not enough. I was still largely unhappy, even depressed, most of the time, despite getting good grades in my chemistry classes. I did some shopping around before becoming a Buddhist and joining in with the Triratna Community. Buddhism seemed to offer what I was missing, and a large part of that was a community of people with coherent, well articulated, but also lived values. I found at the Auckland Buddhist Centre back in 1994.

In this post I want to look at one kind of rhetoric used by religions adapting to new cultural surroundings, and contrast that with how Charles Darwin changed the Christian Church forever. In the Hindu tradition there is a popular narrative about Gautama the Wake. He was in fact the ninth avatara of Viṣṇu, and he manifested in order to stop Hindu's from carrying out animal sacrifices, to reform the Hindu class system so as to allow the śudra class to be liberated. Hindu's therefore see Gautama the Wake as a reformer from within. I have met people, both in the West and in India, who hold this view in all seriousness and who tried to convince me of it. Of course no Buddhist takes this seriously. The lie is so great and so bold that we hardly know where to begin to refute it. However the avatara story is not rhetoric intended to convince Buddhists that really they are Hindus. No, the rhetoric has a primarily internal audience. This is a story that is mainly told by Hindus for Hindus.

Buddhists have used precisely this tactic. I've already pointed out that despite the efforts of many scholars (with K. R. Norman and Richard Gombrich at the forefront) to find parallels and echoes of the Upaniṣads in early Buddhist texts, that the early Buddhist portrayal of Brahmins suggests a slim and superficial knowledge - a second-hand caricature - rather than a true critique (See especially Early Buddhism and Ātman/Brahman). It might make sense to see the Buddhist critique of Brahmins as similarly intended for an internal audience, especially in light of the historical failure to convince many Brahmins. Later on we see other aspects of Indian religion being absorbed by Buddhists: Sarasvatī and Śrī in the Golden Light Sūtra; Śiva in the Karaṇḍavyūha Sūtra, and again in the Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha where Śiva is converted to Buddhism and becomes a dharmapāla (often the form of Mahākāla). Indeed if you look at the periphery of the early Tantric Buddhist maṇḍalas you will find all manner of deities from the Vedas and Pūraṇas, some of whom like the ḍākiṇī who go on to become quintessentially Buddhist! So Buddhists have long employed this same kind of rhetoric, critiquing other religions for an internal audience. I think it helps to strengthen group coherence, and faith in one's chosen path, especially perhaps under adverse circumstances.

I've noticed this same tactic on the Secular Buddhist Facebook page where there is a running critique of traditional Buddhism in terms of what it gets wrong: basically traditional Buddhism contains some superstition and some untestable metaphysical beliefs, such as, and perhaps especially, a belief in karma & rebirth. In my Secular Buddhist interview, Ted and I talked about rebirth & karma and the difficulties they pose for contemporary Buddhists. I am personally very sceptical about rebirth (see Rebirth and the Scientific Method), but I have argued that a belief in karma linked with rebirth might have pragmatic value when seen in the right light as a motivation to be ethical (see Hierarchies of Values). Mind you, I see beliefs per se as rather secondary to practical matters - what motivates someone to be ethical is less important than the fact that they are ethical. Motivations get refined by practice.

Buddhist Atheists, or secular Buddhists, or whatever we call them, have a problem not unlike the problem of 'Christian Atheists' (people whose belief system is defined by not believing in the Christian God). I suppose most Christian Atheists would claim that they don't believe in any god, but the fact is that the most of the public dialogue revolves around the existence or non-existence of the Christian God. Christians still set the agenda. One of the things I see as vitally important for modern discourse (over which I have almost no influence; but, hey, everyone has an opinion) is that we who are atheists need to find some positive content and start talking about incessantly. We need to stop defining ourselves in terms of what we do not believe, in terms of opposition to the mainstream. God is irrelevant.

One of the reasons that Charles Darwin has been so successful is that he did not set out to criticise the Church or its members. He set out to observe nature, and presented positive evidence of what he found. He did not invent the evolution meme, but he decisively showed that it was the über-meme of biology. Of course it had massive theological implications, but he more or less left it to the Church to work them out. Ironically the Darwin Correspondence Project draws out the fact that Darwin had not intended to attack church doctrine:

"But Darwin was very reticent about his personal beliefs, and reluctant to pronounce on matters of belief for others. His published writings are particularly reserved or altogether silent on religion." - What Did Darwin Believe?

Darwin is a model for anyone who thinks a paradigm needs overturning. He didn't, as far as I know, complain about the lack of a level playing field, or the lack of political influence amongst the intelligentsia (as Richard Dawkins does in his 2007 TED presentation); and he did not directly attack church doctrine - he didn't need to. Though we still argue about implications of his finding, we cannot ignore them. Darwin destroyed the church doctrine of creation by merely presenting his evidence to the Royal Society and the world.

In a sense I'm not interested in reading that traditional Buddhism is getting it all wrong. I agree that an Iron Age tradition, whose most recent innovations are medieval, is unlikely to sit well in our Information Age. It's a given that ancient traditions are failing to live up to the present situation, because we who live in these times, who invented these times, can barely understand and cope with them. On the other hand traditional Buddhism clearly helps many people to lead more meaningful and fulfilling and ethical lives - just as Christianity still appeals to many good people.

On the other hand the idea that Buddhism is inherently in tune with a scientific worldview is not true either - it is rooted in old-world ideas that no longer make sense. Many of those responsible for presenting Buddhism to the Western audience since the 19^th century have been passionate about the European Enlightenment rationalist legacy, and they have edited Buddhism to suit Western tastes. Aspects of Buddhism distasteful to the Western mind are often simply left out, glossed over, or explained away; and it's not until a closer association that we find that they are indubitably and perhaps indelibly present. It's not necessarily an intention to deceive, more like a strategy to attract people with what we already know attracts them, but to some extent it is a deception. One consequence is that some Buddhists still claim that the historical Buddha did not believe in any gods, but our own scriptures show him, on almost every page, conversing with gods from various religions. If he did not believe in gods, then who was he talking to?

What I want to see is evidence that leads to conclusions that change the way we think about life in general, from which we can work out the implications for Buddhism. I don't see this coming from Cosmology or Quantum Mechanics or any branch of physics. I think the parallels drawn to these disciplines are either prosaic or spurious. Probably we will find interesting results from ecologists, and evolutionary biologists - especially the followers of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, and if I had more time I would go back to Lovelock, and read Margulis (who argues that symbiosis and cooperation are more important drivers of evolution than specialisation and competition). For my money I think we will find compelling evidence to change the way we Buddhists think in the work of neuroscientists such as Oliver Sacks, Antonio Demasio, V. S. Ramachandran, Joseph LeDoux; and their colleagues such as Thomas Metzinger (philosopher), and Martin Seligman (psychologist). I had not read anything in this area for some years, but have been working through Metzingers's recent book The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self. It's not always a joy to read, but the book has some very interesting things to say (more to come on Metzinger!). Clearly those who study consciousness and the mind are much closer to our interests than those who study matter.

Rather than railing against rebirth, karma, or any traditional beliefs (which I think will convert very few people) we would be better off to focus on talking about the implications neuroscience research. One fascinating instance of this is the unfolding discovery of just how intimately connected are consciousness and the brain - this area of study is surging ahead at the moment. The conclusion that mind and brain are inseparable seems increasingly obvious; and the idea of disembodied consciousness increasingly unlikely. I predict that actual rebirth won't survive as a viable meme for much longer except in marginal, fundamentalist sects. However symbolic rebirth as a myth (in the Joseph Campbell sense) may well continue to inform our lives. And we will understand the difference more clearly. The challenge will be presenting what is in fact a highly technical body of knowledge to a readership already overwhelmed by information, with a decreasing attention span, and not trained in the kinds of thinking required to truly grasp the implication of science.

The Darwinian approach of presenting a mass of positive evidence and allowing people to come to their own conclusions can change the world. Although an oppositional rhetoric (as described above) for an internal audience must have some value (or it would not survive), it won't reach beyond the borders of the converted - it is not useful for proselytising. In order to make changes in society, even in Buddhist society, one has to be clear that there is a better alternative, and I'm not sure that Buddhist atheists (or perhaps anyone who identifies with the label atheist) have found what that is yet - they know what they're against, but not what they are for. Or at least what they are for is actually part of the background of modern life (secularism, rationalism, materialism etc).

Nāmapada: a guide to names in the Triratna Buddhist Order

This is my second book published under my own imprint Visible Mantra Press. I've been writing about words, and Buddhist technical terms for some time on this blog and have accumulated lots of notes about various words, as well as a number of useful reference works for tracking etymologies. I saw a need for an accessible guide to the Sanskrit and Pāli names we use in the Order. Most people don't have much Sanskrit or Pāli beyond a few technical terms, and struggle with the standard dictionaries. With my interest in words I was well placed to write such a guide.

So I got hold of a list of all the names in current use and began to work on creating a list of all the words used in constructing them, including suffixes and prefixes. For each of these I offered some of the most common definitions, and then as much etymological information as I could find, and in some cases did some original research (for instance on mitra). It turned out to be fascinating as a large proportion of the words have English cognates, but there are also a few which are not Indo-European in origin but come from the Dravidian or Munda language families. Also one or two words are influenced by the Tibetan translation (ḍākinī and mañju) for instance.

Then I wrote an introduction which covers the basic elements of how words are constructed (morphology) in Sanskrit. Hopefully this will be accessible enough for lay people to use in decoding names. Below is an example of how the book looks using the example of our founder Urgyen Sangharakshita.


urgyen

(ö-rgyan ཨོ་རྒྱན). Tibetan rendering of S. udiyāna (or oḍḍiyāna and other variants). Xuán zàng (玄奘) translated the word as 'garden' suggesting he read S. udyāna 'going out; walking out; park or garden'. The legendary birthplace of Padmasambhava. Though still not positively identified many consider it to be in the Swat Valley, others in South India or Orissa. P. uddiya means 'northern, northwestern' i.e. Nepal. PED suggests a connection with S. udīcya 'territory north and west of the Sarasvatī River' which could include the Swat Valley. The name Urgyen was given to Sangharakshita by Kachu Rinpoche in 1962.

The name Sangharakshita (more correctly transliterated as saṅgharakṣita) is made up of two parts saṅgha and rakṣita.

saṅgha

(also spelt saṃgha which is less correct, though not entirely wrong). Derivation is uncertain but most likely √hṛ as per PED. MW √han is unlikely; but C.f. MW entry for saṃ-√hṛ 'to bring together, unite, collect, etc'. PIE *√gher 'grab, grip, seize' > Gk. khortos 'enclosed space'; L. hortos (cf. W. garth 'fold, enclosure'; Irish gort 'crop, field'); Gk khoros > E. choir, chorus. Gmc *gurdjan > E. girdle, yard, orchard. Interestingly there is a L. parallel from PIE *ko(m)-ghṛ (= S. sam-hṛ/saṅ-gha) > L. cohors > E. cohort, court. The suffix –gha is a verbal (kvi) suffix which retains the PIE g.[1] In S. spelling rules any nasal followed by gh > ṅ, hence correct spelling is saṅgha. However it is further possible, though avoided in Classical S., to use anusvāra – ṃ – to represent any nasal followed by a consonant allowing for saṃgha. Buddhist scribes often favoured anusvāra because it is invariably easier to write.

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[1] This happens in other roots in gha, e.g. S. √han 'to kill' *ghan. See Jayarava 'Philological Odd & Ends V' for a more in-depth discussion of the etymology and spelling of saṅgha.

rakṣita.

(P. rakkhita) "guarded, protector, watched over" < √rakṣ 'to protect, observe, guard'. (note 'observe' means 'watch over' ). PIE *√ark > Gk. áléxo hence Alexander 'the protector'; L. arceo > E. ark, arcane 'enclosed' (and therefore 'hidden'), and exercise. The name Gurkha comes from go 'cow' + √rakṣ.

As the introduction says, there are a number of ways of adding two words together to form a compound. In Nāmapada I describe the various approaches and the applicable form is:

1. Here the relationship is 'Y of X' for example: Prajñāpriya 'the lover (priya) of Wisdom (prajñā)'; or Dharmadhara: 'the bearer or memoriser (dhara) of the teachings (dharma). Note that the first element can be plural. The relationship can also be 'Y for X'; 'Y through X'; or, particularly when the last part is a past–participle like rakṣita 'protected', 'X by Y' e.g. SAṄGHARAKṢITA 'protected by the saṅgha'.

Note that I've included some of the technical jargon (this is tatpuruṣa compound) but it is not emphasised. So we see that Saṅgharakṣita means 'protected by the spiritual community'. Finally in the introduction I have sections on pronunciation and stress - so saṅ rhymes with 'sung', not 'sang' for instance; and kṣi has a short i sound as in 'bit', not a long ee sound as in 'beet'. Stress falls on the ra (which is 'heavy' because it is followed by a conjunct consonant), so: Saṅgharakṣita.

With almost 500 entries the book covers the meanings of all names in use in the Order up to June 2010. I've tried to make it as easy as possible, so the entries are in the order of the English alphabet ignoring diacritics - all diacritics are provided, along with some guidance on how to break down names which might be tricky. For instance Dharmolka 'a firebrand for the Dharma' is make up from dharma + ulka 'firebrand'. The change of spelling is caused by sandhi meaning 'junction'. The rules for sandhi are complex, but only a few are relevant to names in use, and these are listed and explained in the introduction. In this case when a word ending in a is combined with a word beginning with u, the two vowels coalesce to o.

I'm very pleased to be able to make this offering to the Triratna Order, and I hope that it helps everyone involved with the Order to feel more comfortable and familiar with our names.