Conjecture and Refutation

"Everything we've learned... is just a theory, and it might well be wrong... the greatest thrill of all would be to prove something wrong." Dr Kathy Romer, Astrophysicist. [1]

THERE IS A CONVERSATION I seem to have again and again when talking with Buddhists. It's about what science is, and how scientists employ the scientific method. Given that we all study science at secondary school, how is it that so few people seem to understand the role of scientists or the process of advancing scientific knowledge? Given the central importance of the applications of science in the modern world, can we afford to be so ignorant?

I have a little confession to make first. I've never read Karl Popper's books on the scientific method. And I never heard of him while studying science at school or university. I read of Popper only as an adult. Particularly in the book "Wittgenstein's Poker", but also in books and lectures by Richard Gombrich whose father was a personal friend of Popper. The young Richard proof read the seminal work Conjectures and Refutations, and it obviously had a powerful effect on him.

Popper is probably the most important figure in the philosophy of science to date. It was he who definitively described what science is and is not, and I want to review my understanding, in the hope that others will appreciate science better, but also so I can point to this essay in inevitable future arguments.

Although I've just been using science as a proper noun, I want first of all to make the point that science is not an entity. We say things like "science says..." or "science does..."; but science in this sense simply doesn't exist. There is no distinct agent or entity which we can name. There is no doubt a body of evolving knowledge. There is a community (or even one might say an ecosystem) of people employing the scientific method of conjecture and refutation (with it's parasites known as science journalists whose method is more like rejecture and confutation). But there is no entity present in all of this - this is a point Buddhists, of all people, ought to be able to appreciate. Science is anātman, asvabhāva, śūnya. At best "science" is a place holder for the body of knowledge and practice, and the community of practitioners. It's very like Buddhism in this sense - there is no single entity or agent identifiable with Buddhism, and finding something we all have in common is difficult; and that commonality exists only on the most general level. As soon as we begin to specify what makes a Buddhist, then Buddhism begins to splinter.

A scientist is anyone who practices the methods of science. All scholars who advance knowledge follow a process of conjecture and refutation. I put forward a conjecture and my grounds for doing so, and I ask my peers to refute it if they can. If it can be refuted then I drop it, and move on to the next conjecture. Science applies this method to the phenomenal world (rather than, say, to literature or history). Religion on the other hand begins with the Truth, and asks us to change our minds until we completely agree with the Truth. No challenge to the Truth is possible, since it is True. Certain strands of religious Buddhism are like this also, and in that sense very far removed from science. Religion also often posits a noumenal world, by which I mean knowledge not related to phenomena. This is an oxymoron in Buddhism, but it has an on going appeal across the spectrum of Buddhism for some reason.

Within the conjecture/refutation procedure the scientist practices by observing phenomena; creating falsifiable predictive hypotheses about the world; testing their predictions; and through peer review and publication inviting others to test their theory. Although we retain the Enlightenment/Victorian Era language of Laws of Physics, scientists know full well that a theory tested to the limits of human ability is still not proved. It was Popper who in the first half of the 20th century began to formalise this, partly in reaction to Logical Positivists who claimed only verifiable knowledge was valid. The classic example is the notion that since all swans are observed to be white, then the statement "all swans are white" is held to be true. The first Europeans to return from Australia brought shocking news - downunder the swans are black. Black swans are a different species, but they are no doubt swans. Since Popper it's been explicit that any theory may be falsified. Mind you anyone familiar with the havoc wrecked on previous theories by Einstein's oeuvre could hardly feel confident about any view they hold about the physical world.

Now non-scientists maintain a number of anachronisms. They seem to think that scientists are stuck in the Victorian Era: trying to prove things, seeking immutable Laws, and believing the equivalent of "all swans are white". While I never studied Popper at school—more's the pity—it's clear that scientists are not stuck in the same Victorian time frame as non-scientists. In fact scientists are all working to disprove everything that we think we know. This is fundamentally what makes science different from religion. Yes, there are scientific "laws", yes there are powerful explanatory theories, but the dream of every scientist is to rewrite those laws, to over-turn those theories. No scientist worth the label is satisfied with the current state of knowledge, and each wants to find a 'black swan' (and have it named after them!).

So the scientist makes observations. Often today it is through complicated and expensive machinery. But not always. One of my scientific heroes is Jane Goodall who changed our paradigms with regards to chimps with a pair of binoculars and a notebook. Scientists pay close attention to phenomena and try to describe as accurately and dispassionately as possible what they perceive. Ideally they see something new, but it may be that they simply observe what has been observed before and see it in a new way. Any explanation they come up with—an hypothesis [2]—seeks to predict further observations suggesting that the explanation has grasped the underlying regularity of the phenomena. For example: if after observing a comet, I hypothesise that it is a small body in an elongated elliptical orbit, I can predict when I will see it again. If it does not appear when I predict then my theory is wrong. The fact that it does appear suggests that my theory is useful, not that it is True.

But science is not a private enterprise. It is public. So having observed, hypothesised, and tested I then submit my results for publishing. Scholarly publishing subjects all potential publications to peer-review. A group of a scientists peers will read the paper to try to ensure that at each stage the scientist has not made gross errors or leapt to false conclusions. As a trainee scientist I was constantly admonished not to go beyond my data - not to add to my observations from past experience, and especially not to try to make my conclusions fit my hypothesis. Of course this process is subject to problems. Publishing a book can circumvent peer-review, though books also get reviewed even if only after the fact. Scientists more and more seem to announce results to the press rather than their peers. One of the most infamous occurrences of this was the announcement by Pons and Fleischmann that they can observed nuclear fusion at room temperature (while others were seeking it at millions of degrees). Peer review panels are subject to human foibles: they are capable of blocking new ideas; individual animosity may intrude; and they also fail to prevent rubbish being printed. There is sometimes, especially in medical publishing, a bias to only publish the results of studies which support an idea, and to suppress those which do not (a variety of conformation bias). But on the whole the system works well.

There is a further step in the scientific method post-publication. For a result to be meaningful or useful, it needs to be repeatable. So a one off result is not worth much. Ideally three or four other scientists or groups of scientists will carry out the same experiment, with the aim of trying to disprove the result or find an alternative explanations, and they will also publish their results. Before a theory becomes accepted as generally useful at predicting future observations, it has to be thoroughly tested. And scientists like nothing more than proving their rivals wrong. The history of science is rife with competitiveness, often devolving in rancorous disputes. Of course these days no one can get funding for merely reproducing someone else's experiment, so what we get a series of overlapping results.

A problem for the lay person these days is irresponsible science journalism. Newspapers eager to increase circulation and sell advertising are not famous for their probity (and are often infamous for their lack of it). What the science journalist does is search for journal articles with sensational findings and write a simplified version of the paper for a general readership. Examples of this are legion. The MMR Vaccine controversy is a good case in point. A researcher with multiple conflicts of interest, publishes a single article suggesting a link between the vaccine and autism. Later he is found to have manipulated evidence and broken ethical codes, and not only is the paper retracted, but the author is struck off the Medical register. Meanwhile the newspaper article claiming that MMR vaccine causes autism has gone viral and many parents refuse to vaccine their kids, causing a minor epidemic of measles in the UK (which has not yet abated). [3] A similar story is the "cell-phones do/don't cause cancer" story that runs and runs, not because anything definitive is discovered, because things that cause/cure cancer sell newspapers.

So this is my view on what science is, and how knowledge proceeds. Knowledge is always provisional, though of course it may retain it's usefulness. I think lay people often throw the baby out with the bath water. They hear, for instance, that Einstein's theory of gravitation supersedes Newton's, and suppose that Newton's theory of gravity is redundant. But this is simply not true. If I were putting up a building and calculating stresses, or building a new aeroplane, or firing a rocket into space, I simply would not need to use Einsteinian mathematics, and to try to do so would simply hamper my efforts. I would use Newtonian mathematics. All measurements have a margin of error - and real science always gives margins of error when stating a measurement. The margins of error, though very much greater when using Newton's equations still amount to a few parts per billion in most of the applications I might be interested in. If accuracy of more than a few parts per billion is required then one switches.

The idea that scientists themselves see their theories or mathematical equations as dogmatically True is wrong in most cases (there are still a few Logical Positivists around, but we need not give them much credence). Though some theories have survived every conceivable test and we simply accept them, the door is never closed. A black swan might appear at any time.

~~oOo~~

Notes

1. "Is Everything we Know about the Universe Wrong?" [documentary] Horizon. BBC HD. 9 Mar 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rgg31
2. hypothesis means 'under-thesis', and thesis means 'a proposition'. The Online Etymological Dictionary relates it to PIE *dhe- 'to put, to do', but also to the Greek tithenai, which suggest to me a connection to Sanskrit √sthā 'to stand, to remain'; c.f. Pāli thāna literally 'place, state' but abstractly something which 'remains' and therefore a 'fact' in the sense of something on which logical conclusions can be based.
3. The story is told in full online in many places. The Wikipedia article MMR vaccine controversy is a good place to start.

Additional note on how real scientists think: 14 Oct 2011.

"The way many scientists work is that while they're pushing one idea passionately, they always have in the back of their mind that they may be wrong, and they have alternative explanations for the same observations - and I did too... When you find evidence that directly contradicts your favourite idea and you have to switch modes, switch paradigms to a different concept, that's real progress...".
Professor Paul Olsen (Columbia University). The shifting face of a 200-million-year-old mystery. BBC News 13 Oct 2011.

Quote 10.12.2011

"There is now no safer occupation than talking bad science to philosophers, except talking bad philosophy to scientists".
- Midgley, Mary. 1979. 'Gene-juggling'. Philosophy. 54(210): 439-458.

Sāriputta

SĀRIPUTTA WAS ONE OF THE TWO chief disciples of Gotama the Buddha. He was born a Brahmin and wandered with his companion Moggallāna in search of the deathless. A chance meeting with Assajī lead to his breakthrough insight and becoming a Buddhist. He was held in extremely high esteem by all who knew him, including the Buddha.

Later however Sāriputta was identified with a brand of formalistic Buddhism, and several texts were composed in which he is portrayed as stiff and rather stupid. Of course Buddhists have always portrayed their enemies this way in texts, but it is particularly infelicitous that such a great figure should become the butt of jokes for the purpose of sectarian pissing contests. One of the things that turned me off Mahāyāna Buddhism was precisely the derogatory attitude towards, and denigration of, Sāriputta. So I offer this translation of the Susīma Sutta where Sāriputta gets his due.

Susīma Sutta
SN ii.29 S i.63

Connected with Sāvatthī. Then indeed Ānanda approached the Blessed One, saluted him and sat to one side. The Blessed One asked him “are you pleased with Sāriputta?”

Could Sāriputta not be pleasing to anyone who is not stupid, wicked, confused or mentally deranged? The Elder Sāriputta is wise, Sir. He has great wisdom, precise wisdom, joyful wisdom, swift wisdom, piercing wisdom. Sāriputta is contented, satisfied, [enjoys] seclusion, living alone, energetically resolute, a speaker [of truth], gently spoken, he exhorts, he censures evil. Could Sāriputta not be pleasing to him who is not stupid, wicked, confused or mentally deranged?

Quite right Ānanda, I agree with everything you’ve said.

Once these virtues of the Elder Sāriputta were spoken Susīma the deva [1], surrounded by a great retinue of devas, approached the Blessed One, saluted him, stood to one side and said:

It is just as you say Blessed One, just so Excellence. I totally agree with you.

Whichever company of devas I approached, I hear this very same full report [in praise of Sāriputta].

Then indeed the deva-company of the deva Susīma, at the telling of the qualities of Sāriputta were pleased and delighted.

Just like a beautiful, excellent, perfectly symmetrical crystal of beryl, artfully arranged on a saffron cloth, shining, glittering, and scintillating

Just like a nugget of gold from the Jambu River, skilfully refined in the furnace by clever goldsmith from a family of smiths, artfully arranged on a saffron cloth, shining, glittering, and scintillating.

Just as in the morning star appears in the sky towards dawn on an cloud free autumnal evening shining, glittering, and scintillating.

Just as the autumnal sun, rising above the morning mists into a cloud free sky, dispels the darkness of the heavens, shining, glittering, and scintillating.

Then indeed Susīma the deva spoke these verses with reference to the Elder Sāriputta in the presence of the Blessed One:

Known as wise,
Sāriputta is loving;
Content, humble, restrained,
a sage conveyed by the teachers praise

Then indeed the Blessed One replied in verse to Susīma the deva regarding Sāriputta:

Known as wise,
Sāriputta is loving;
Content, humble, restrained,
biding his time well restrained and developed.

~~oOo~~

Note

1. Thanks to Sabio Lentz for pointing out a confusion in my translation. Susīma is a devaputta, and I had left the term untranslated at first. A devaputta is a human being who has been reborn in the devaloka i.e. the realms of devas. The word literally means "son of a deva" - just as Sāriputta is the "son of (his mother) Sārī". They often seem to retain a sense of connection to the manussaloka or realm of human beings. There is no obvious single English word that conveys this concept that is unique to India. PED suggests "angel" but this is so wrong as to be laughable. Still unable to choose a better translation I've opted to use 'deva' which should be more straight-forward, and at least does not introduce foreign ideas into the discourse.

Image: a Sri Lankan monk from Scribner's magazine. 1891. I imagine Sāriputta would have looked a bit like this.

In My Eye

I'VE COMMENTED BEFORE on the episode where the Buddha speaks to Bāhiya in a post entitled "In the Seen...". He begins the famous speech with: "in the seen, only the seen; in the heard only the heard...". This is somewhat cryptic, but I noted that I had found another sutta which acts as a commentary on the Bahiya incident: The Māluṅkyaputta Sutta is in the Saṃyutta Nikāya (SN 35.95 PTS: S iv.72).

My translation of part of the text says:

Having seen a form with mindfulness [sati] forgotten,
attending to the delightful appearance;
Experiencing an impassioned mind,
and remaining attached to that;

In him numberless sensations multiply from that form,
Covetousness and worry impair thinking.
Thus suffering is heaped up and nibbāna is said to be remote.

The gist is that without mindfulness, delight in the pleasures of the senses overcomes our minds and our minds are impaired. As a result we heap up suffering and are unlikely to be liberated - we will remain in thrall to pleasure seeking. Those who are mindful, do not delight in the pleasures of the senses, do not heap up suffering, and for them nibbāna is close.

In contemporary Buddhist presentations we usually find the idea that there is something other than the "seen in the seen" attributed to Brahmins. Compare the text above with this passage from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (CU)

atha yatraitad ākāśam anuviṣaṇṇaṃ cakṣuḥ sa cākṣuṣaḥ puruṣo darśanāya cakṣuḥ | atha yo vededaṃ jighrāṇīti sa ātmā gandhāya ghrāṇam | atha yo vededam abhivyāharāṇīti sa ātmā abhivyāhārāya vāk | atha yo vededaṃ śṛṇvānīti sa ātmā śravaṇāya śrotram || CU 8.12.4 || [1]

Where the eye gazes into space, that is the puruṣa of the eye. The eye is for seeing. The one who experiences "let me smell this" is the ātman. The nose is for smelling. The one who experiences "let me say this" is the ātman. The voice is for talking. The one who experiences "let me hear this" is the ātman. The ear is for hearing.

atha yo vededaṃ manvānīti sa ātmā | mano 'sya daivaṃ cakṣuḥ | sa vā eṣa etena daivena cakṣuṣā manasaitān kāmān paśyan ramate ya ete brahmaloke || CU 8.12.5 ||

The one who experiences "let me think this" is the ātman. Mind is its divine eye. [The ātman] sees the delights and pleasures of the world of Brahmā, with this divine eye, the mind. [2]

Here CU is proposing that there is something other than the seen in the seen. In the seen we find 'the one who sees', which here is described as both puruṣa 'person' and ātman 'self' - the two are synonymous.[3] It is this ātman which, through the divine eye, sees the pleasures of the world of Brahmā/brahman (the word could mean either the creator god, or the universal essence; a distinction entirely lost in the Buddhist Canon). Elsewhere we find that this self is to be sought within the heart (i.e. through introspective meditation) and having once identified it, it becomes one's whole world (idaṃ sarvaṃ). The analogy I use is that when one falls in love, one's lover becomes one's whole world. We might also think of a meditator absorbed in samādhi, where the samādhi itself becomes their whole world.

Buddhist critiques of this kind of material are probably familiar to Buddhist readers. CU seems to propose that there is an 'entity' behind experience, an experiencing 'person' or 'self' which has the experiences. Discovering this self within oneself is what enables the seer to be liberated. However note that there is a discrepancy. The Brahmin does not aim to see the delights of this world. This is confirmed in many passages throughout CU as well as other Upaniṣads. Ordinary desire and the delights of this world are as much an anathema in the early Upaniṣads as they are in early Buddhist texts. The Brahmin ascetic aims at union with brahman, and thereby escape from saṃsāra. However the Buddhist criticism focusses on paying attention to delights of the senses. Is it because they deny the possibility of anything behind the senses, or have they just missed the point? I think it's not out of the question that the Buddhists simply did not understand the main points of the Upaniṣads and that the beliefs being criticised were not in fact held by Brahmins. Indeed as far as I can see such beliefs are not even attributed to Brahmins in the Pāli texts.

The Buddhist critique of ātman rests on the idea that, as an immanent aspect of brahman, it is substantial, permanent and makes us happy when we find it. Although the idea does not occur in the suttas, compare this description of nibbāna from the canonical Cūḷaniddesa:

Nibbānaṃ niccaṃ dhuvaṃ sassataṃ avipariṇāmadhammanti asaṃhīraṃ asaṃkuppaṃ.

"Nibbāna is permanent, constant, eternal, not subject to change, indomitable, unshakeable." [4]

Such a statement is common enough in Buddhism. How is this different? The essential difference here is that Buddhists assume Brahmins to be speaking literally, and take their own almost identical statements metaphorically. This assumption goes unchallenged amongst Buddhists. Why? I suggest that it is because of deep seated prejudices against, and antipathy towards, Hinduism. Our identity as Buddhists is bound up with rejecting Hinduism - even if only nominally. However I do not believe that the Brahmins were speaking literally. Rather, I'd say they were struggling to put into words their own meditation experiences, and were themselves inventing a new metaphorical language to do so, and rejecting their own 1000 year old traditions in the process. There's no a priori reason to assume unsubtly or stupidity on the part of Brahmins. In fact Brahmanical thinking of this period is scintillating and full of subtlety. A few centuries later the Buddhists of India adopted precisely the same kind of essentialist metaphor for tathāgatagarbha! Buddhists also posit a faculty other than the six senses—with no name I've been able to discover—which can discern nibbāna or "the Unconditioned" [sic] or "things as they really are". How is this different from the 'eye' which sees the brahmaloka? Note that Buddhists also adopted this Brahmanical idea of the brahmaloka, but again they took it literally. Which suggests that they simply did not understand the idea. The Buddhist criticisms of those seeking rebirth in the brahmaloka are wide of the mark, and more or less irrelevant from the point of view of the Upaniṣads. This is not to say that criticism is not possible, only that early Buddhist texts are wholly unconvincing in their criticism.

I am not suggesting that there is no difference in the doctrinal positions of Buddhism and Brahmanism. Clearly there are differences. However Buddhists have long exaggerated and distorted these differences. Modern Buddhists, like their ancient counterparts, seem largely ignorant of the Upaniṣads or the nuances in them. And as I come to better understand them myself, I am becoming increasingly doubtful about the idea that Buddhist doctrine is a reaction against Upaniṣadic Brahmanism: one can hardly react against what one is ignorant of. This raises interesting questions which I hope to address in the future.

For an inspiring and vivid account of the Brahmanical religion I heartily recommend this book:

William K. Mahoney. The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination. State University of New York Press.

I must warn traditionalist Buddhists however: this book may cause you to experience sympathy and respect for Brahmins, which could be detrimental to your Buddhist faith.

~~oOo~~

Notes.

1. Chāndogya Upaniṣad. Sanskrit text from www.sub.uni-goettingen.de.
2. My translation follows Valerie Roebuck's which is more literal than Patrick Olivelle's.
3. As an aside I would once again like to point out the mad way we capitalise these words when they are in a religious context. We want to say that 'Self' is somehow different from, more important than, 'self'. Capitalising suggests either something substantial (a thing), or something transcendental (beyond our ability to sense or understand). Sometimes, paradoxically, both . Neither is very helpful. The Sanskrit 'ātman' is ambiguous, and the ambiguity is part of the fun. If we try to make clear a distinction when our source text is (perhaps deliberately) ambiguous we are not doing justice to the text: ātman means 'body, and self, and the immanent aspect of brahman.' And especially in the early Upaniṣads all three meanings are found. If we try to fix it as one or other we lose nuances, and we may in fact obscure the meaning.
4. The CST version of the Pāli Canon does not include PTS page numbers for this text. It is from the commentary on the Pārāyanānugīti gāthā from the Sutta-niptāta. CST p.201.

Phenomenon

music of the spheres

FIRST USED IN ENGLISH in 1570s the word phenomenon is traced back to the Greek phainesthai 'to appear, to seem' from phainō 'to show, to bring light'. For instance in The Odyssey, when marking the start of a new day, Homer often used the lovely phrase: phanē rhododaktulos Ēōs "Dawn's rosy fingers appeared". Phainō can also mean 'to make known' via the metaphor 'to see is to know'.

From the Greek come such words as fantasy, fancy, phantom, emphasis, and diaphanous. The PIE root is *bhā 'to shine'. Via Germanic cognates we get words such as banner, beacon, berry. In Latin a phantasma is the name for an apparition or spectre. Also via Latin we get epiphany, sycophant, hierophant. The root goes into Sanskrit as bhāsati 'to shine' and prabhā 'shining' and vibhāta 'shining forth'.

In English the meaning of phenomenon varies according to the context but basically it refers to the something known through the senses rather than by the intellect or reason. It can also mean any kind of observable event. Of course a Buddhist definition of phenomena, would include objects of the mind and observable mental events (not all such events are observable from within).

Phenomena are sometimes contrasted with noumena (from Greek noeō 'to perceive, to observe, to notice'; probably from a non-IE source since there are no other attested forms, and no PIE root). Before Kant philosophers took noumena to be synonymous with Plato's ideal forms. Plato likened human perception to seeing shadows cast on the wall of a cave, suggesting that we don't ever see the things that cast the shadows, i.e. the ideal forms (this gives us the label 'Idealist'), or presumably the light which illuminates them. In Kant's philosophy the appearance of thing (phenomenon) is contrasted with the 'thing in itself' (German Ding an sich) or noumenon, and, according to Kant, noumena are not directly perceptible, we can only intuit their existence from appearances - hence his philosophy is called Transcendental Idealism. Other philosophers hold that noumena can be perceived by the intellect, or pure reason, which might appear to make them akin to the Buddhist notion of the mental sense objects (dharma), however the differences are great enough to warn us off suggesting noumena as a translation. Although most Buddhist traditions would deny the possibility of noumena outright, some Buddhists find it hard to let go of the notion that there is something beyond phenomena, a transcendental reality, which can be experienced "directly".

The adjective noumenal (related to noumena) is sometimes conflated with the adjective numinous, though the latter is from a different root. 'Numinous' is mainly used by theologians to suggest the felt presence of God. This word comes from the Latin numen 'divine will'. Ultimately we can trace it to the PIE root *√neu "to nod"; and it suggests ascent by a nod of the head. A related English word is innuendo.

Because dharma/dhamma is often used in the sense of an object of the senses, particularly the mind-sense (manas), and because it can mean 'a thing', or 'an item' we often translate it as 'phenomenon'. The fit is not exact however. Dharma comes from the root √dhṛ 'to hold, to support'. There is a word which would be well translated by phenomenon and that is vedanā. The root of this word is √vid 'to know, to find' and is regularly used in words to do with knowledge such as veda 'sacred knowledge' and vidyā 'secret knowledge'. We often translate these Indic words with English from the same root, i.e. wisdom 'experience and knowledge combined with the ability to judiciously apply them'. Vedanā then is 'the thing known', in effect it is 'what appears', i.e. the phenomenon. Though again Western thinkers don't typically include mental objects under the rubric of phenomena.

Vedanā is often translated as 'feeling' because in Buddhist doctrine it is associated with pleasure and displeasure (sāta/asāta or sukha/dukkha), leading to attraction and repulsion. I tend to translate 'sensation' because 'feeling' allows for vedanā to be confused with emotions which are colloquially also called 'feelings'. We could say that emotions have a felt component, and a cognitive component. A feeling without a corresponding thought process is possible, but it is usually hard to know what to make of it. In modern terms the feelings of pleasure and pain associated with sensations are part of our internal sense network which includes proprioception, the inner-ear balance organs, the viscera and digestive tract, and other sources of information from within the body itself. We sometimes talk about 'raw sensations' in Buddhism, but this is a bit of a misnomer because even in Buddhist psychology a lot of complex processes have to be active in order for us to become aware of a sensation. What in effect we mean by raw sensation is the vedanā before it gives rise to craving or aversion. To experience this we have to be relatively detached from pleasure and pain.

From the Buddhist point of view one of the important things about vedanā is that it arises in dependence on conditions. It is said to arise when there is contact, and contact occurs when sense faculty meets sense object giving rise to sense consciousness - and the three together constitute the condition for the arising of vedanā. We see a crucial difference in the Buddhist and Western approaches here. The Western intellectual tradition sees our internal world as subjective, as synonymous with the subject. Buddhists see this as a mistake. The subject is involved in creating experience, but only in active interaction with the object. Experience itself then is neither subjective nor objective; it is not a function of either alone, but of the interactions of the two together. I have observed before that this technically means that early Buddhist thought is dualistic - it acknowledges that subject and object are two different things. This is a metaphysical position, and it has wide ranging implications should we choose to follow them up, but the authors of the suttas never did.

Buddhism in the West is still in the process of settling on terminology. Perhaps for the first time in history a culture is having to deal with multiple competing forms of Buddhism which are using radically different oriental vocabulary e.g. Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Korean. Of these languages only Japanese and Korean are even remotely related (and the relationship is remote in this case). Phenomenon and it's counterpart noumenon are widely used, but the discussion about suitability has yet to really take place. I'm reasonably well versed in Indian Buddhist terminology, but I find I cannot read books on Tibetan Buddhism because they use another set of terms with may neologisms that I don't understand. Similarly I often flounder when reading about Japanese Buddhism. Buddhist jargon is often impenetrable, even to Buddhists.

I'm all in favour of just ditching traditional jargon and Buddhist Hybrid English (English vocabulary with Sanskrit syntax) that doesn't make sense. Perhaps it is time to drop all the words and have a new attempt at describing the procedures of Buddhism, and the experiences that result? A word like phenomenon shows that it won't be easy, because words come with baggage. On the other hand we are constantly redefining words: think of terrific (i.e. terrifying OEtD), or silly (originally 'happy, blessed' OEtD). It suggests that there will be a role for philologists—those people who tell us what words mean, and why they mean that—in Buddhism for a long time to come.

~~oOo~~

Everything changes, but so what?

πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει.
Everything flows and nothing stays.

Heraclitus quoted in Plato. Cratylus. 402a. Perseus Digital Library.
[translation Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations]

IT CAN SOMETIMES SEEM that Buddhists take the great insight of the Buddha to be that "everything changes". It can sometimes seem that "everything changes" is equated with paṭicca-samuppāda. While it is certainly true that everything changes, I think we Buddhists are often wrong in the way we present change. In particular we present this idea that everything changes are some kind of revelation from the exotic East, previously unknown to the mundane West. But the fact that everything changes is actually passé in the West, at least as old in our intellectual history as in Indian. So here I want to present a few quotes on the subject from pre-Buddhist Europe:

Nothing endures but change. Heraclitus (540 BC – 480 BC), from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers.

What can we take on trust in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness, pride—nothing is secure, nothing keeps. Euripides, Hecuba.

Observe always that everything is the result of change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and make new ones like them. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 AD - 180 AD),

ὁ κόσμος ἀλλοίωσις, ὁ βίος ὑπόληψις. The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, V, 3.

I have never come across any credible suggestion that these Greek and Roman thinkers were influenced by Buddhism. In fact, Heraclitus most likely predates the Buddha. And yet some of these observations are indistinguishable from the phrases repeated by Buddhists as representing our most profound wisdom. I want to take this a little further by quoting a paragraph from David Sedley's stimulating commentary on Plato's Cratylus Dialogue—here he is actually talking about the Timaeus Dialogue:

According to the Timaeus, the sensible world is gignomenon, something which constantly 'becomes' but never 'is'. It is therefore not an object of knowledge, on the Platonic principle that the contents of knowledge should not, even in theory, admit of being falsified at a later date: items of knowledge are permanent possessions, not subject to revision; their objects must therefore be entities incapable of change, that is primarily at least, the Forms. The sensible world is, by contrast, the domain of opinion, doxa, which shares the instability of it's objects and which, even if true now, can be falsified at any time. [Plato's Cratylus, Cambridge University Press, 2003; p.101]

A similar kind of distinction is made in Buddhism. Our views (dṛṣṭi) about experience are expressed as opinions on the world, and on reality. But with insight and wisdom we begin to see that what we comment on is merely perception which is subject to change even when the object being perceived does not change. However it is possible to see experience just as it is (yathābhūta) and this kind of insight has certain characteristics which do not change. The knowledge gained is called prajñā. I would see this in terms of knowledge about the underlying dynamics and processes of perception - it has no object as such, hence it is without condition (asaṃskṛta). And I see no hint that Sedley is in any way familiar with, let alone influenced by, Buddhism in his reading of Plato. However, modern presentations of Buddhism are influenced by Neoplatonism.

I think this is sufficient to establish that "everything changes" is not an observation unique to Buddhism. There are two possibilities. Either the statement tells us that the Greeks were on the same wavelength as the Buddha; or the statements are both equally banal. And I suggest it is the latter. I don't think that observation that everything changes is very profound; or that the Greeks were awakened in the Buddhists sense; or that "everything changes" is what the Buddha was on about.

Hopefully this opinion doesn't come as a surprise. I've written a number of times that I do not think that paṭicca-samuppāda was intended to be a theory of everything. This is argued at length in my commentary on the Kaccānagotta Sutta, and summarised in my blog post: A General Theory of Conditionality? The theory paṭicca-samuppāda was intended to explain the arising of experience, and guide us towards insights into why we suffer, with suffering distinguished from painful sensations. It might be argued that this is an attempt to discover 'the original Buddhism' which I myself have described as folly, and criticised others for. However I think there are good doctrinal and methodological reasons for adopting this approach and these are set out in many previous blog posts, and longer essays.

I've gathered many quotes from Westerners who, as far as I know, were not aware of or influenced by Buddhism.

All things change, nothing is extinguished. There is nothing in the whole world which is permanent. Everything flows onward; all things are brought into being with a changing nature; the ages themselves glide by in constant movement. Ovid (BC 43-AD 18) Roman poet.

In human life there is constant change of fortune; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life itself decays, and all things are daily changing. Plutarch (46-120) Greek essayist, and biographer.

 French prose intro to L'Image du Monde, ca. 1320 CE. BNF Français 574. Translation by @PiersatPenn. A medieval monk defends his encyclopedia...

“We have described everything briefly, because people prefer simple things
that don't take long to explain. Their lives are short & their bodies transitory;
the days pass quickly, centuries roll by, and death comes before you know it.”

The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living, or the dead? Thomas Paine

Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed is painful; yet ever needful; and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope. - Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) British historian and essayist.

Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. Matthew Arnold, A Question.

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, novelist and dramatist.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) British political writer.

Change is inevitable. Change is constant. Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) British politician and author.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. William Somerset Maugham

When you're finished changing, you're finished. Benjamin Franklin

"Everything changes". Amongst Buddhists "everything changes" has become a cliché. But, so what? Awareness of it should, and does affect the way we choose to live, however I do not think it was the radical insight seen by the Buddha. I have tried to show in my essay on the Kaccānagotta Sutta that the idea of that everything changes was, from the Buddha's point of view, demonstrably false. With only his bare senses and mind he couldn't have imagined that gem stones for example changed imperceptibly over millions of years: they simply did not change. However our experience of everything is always changing, even when presented with an apparently unchanging object, and here we are closer to the mark.

~~oOo~~

Nāmarūpa

A diagram of the traditional 12 nidānas and explanations from Pāli and Chinese Āgama texts. Click for a larger image.

TODAY I WANT TO EXPLORE the rather mysterious term 'nāmarūpa' in a Buddhist context. The word has a history pre-dating its use in Buddhist texts, but I don't have space for a fully fledged archaeology. Most of us will only be familiar with the received tradition which defines what this word means, but there are problems with this tradition, and when we begin to explore it things are less than clear.

The word is most often translated as 'name and form', though one also sees such variants as 'sentient-body'. It is the fourth of the 12 nidānas. However, nāmarūpa is a difficult term to pin down precisely. For instance, it does occur in the truncated nidāna sequence in the Mahānidāna Sutta, but unlike the other terms it is not defined in that text.

Elsewhere in the canon the nāma in nāmarūpa is defined in terms of: vedanā, saññā, saṅkhārā, phassa, and mansikāra. However, saṅkhārā precedes nāmarūpa in the nidāna sequence, and both phassa and vedanā follow it. So this does not make sense. Another fairly well known definition, found in the Chinese Āgama texts according to Roderick Bucknell (1999) and in the Pāli (S ii.3), equates nāmarūpa with the five khandhā: rūpa is the four elements (catumahābhūta: paṭhavī, āpo, tejo, vāyo; earth, water, fire, wind) while nāma is the remaining khandhas, i.e. vedanā, saññā, saṅkhārā and viññāna. This is no better. Again, vedanā comes later; and both saṅkhārā and viññāṇa come before. I'm left wondering why the tradition would explain things this way. I find that the simplified popular presentations of this material make a certain kind of sense, but in reading the Pāli Canon and examining the texts that sense drops away, I'm left feeling puzzled. There is no coherence.

I'm aware of a few modern attempts to rationalise this term and will gloss some of them.

Eric Frauwallner (1973) observed that a sequence beginning with taṇha was quite common and concluded that the nidāna sequence was originally two shorter sequences. This has become a popular notion. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to solve the problem of cross-over in the definitions. The shorter versions of the sequence may equally be an abbreviation as an elaboration. Even so, this only places the confusing aspects of the sequence together into the second group. Frauwallner's hypothesis doesn't help us solve the problems of interpreting nāmarūpa.

Dhīvan Thomas Jones, in his 2009 M.Phil thesis, has taken a slightly different approach. He notes that the Suttanipāta contains another (better) candidate for a primitive nidāna sequence in the Kalahavivāda Sutta (Sn 168-170) with synonymous but different terms to the standard model. This sequence begins with nāmarūpa, and leaves out viññāṇa, which helps, but includes sāta-asāta (pleasant and unpleasant) as an equivalent of vedanā which still leaves us with a contradiction if this is part of the definition of nāmarūpa.

One of the most interesting developments of recent times is the attempt by Joanna Jurewicz to show that the terms in the nidānas were deliberately chosen as a parody of Vedic cosmogony. Richard Gombrich (2009, esp. ch.9) has taken this idea and wedded it to Frauwallner's 'two sequence' explanation to suggest that the original list was the short sequence from taṇha onwards, and that this was extended using terms from the Vedic lexicon to form a deliberate parody of Vedic cosmogony. Dhīvan Thomas Jones has shown that this not unproblematic, mainly because there is no evidence to show that Frauwallner's sequence is primitive. The same kind of process might have occurred with the Kalahavivāda Sutta (or something like it) as the nucleus of a teaching on becoming, that was given an ironic twist so that it could also serve as a parody of Vedic cosmogony. This is reasonably plausible, though of course there is no sign of cognizance of such a strategy in the Buddhist tradition itself, so if this is what happened it was almost immediately forgotten by the tradition which adopted it. Such forgetfulness is not easily explained with reference to teachings of such central importance, especially in the face of open and explicit criticism of Brahmins elsewhere. However, the context shows that the commentarial tradition (including those suttas which comment on the sequence) is not internally consistent, so something has gone wrong somewhere.

Bucknell (1999) summarises Reat who sees nāmarūpa as referring to objects of consciousness: nāma refers to conceptual (adhivacana) and rūpa to sensory (paṭigha). As Bucknell points out this view is criticised by both Peter Harvey and Sue Hamilton. However, Reat's suggestion would fit nicely with Dhīvan's model of the development from a nucleus - the primitive nāmarūpa qua objects of consciousness giving rise to 'contact' (phassa) makes some sense. Hamilton's view is that nāma "should be taken to refer to abstract identity and [rūpa] to physically (though not necessarily visibly) recognisable identity." (p.151) For Hamilton nāmarūpa is closely tied to viññāṇa as is shown by the Mahānidāna Sutta (DN 15) that links the two of them in a mutually conditioning relationship. Reat and Hamilton's positions are subtly different, but not incompatible I think.

What is clear is that once we move away from simplified popular presentations of Buddhist doctrine, there is no single and coherent understanding of what this term means or represents. And this is a continuing quandary because it suggests that we have lost touch with the spirit of the texts. If we no longer understand key terms (and I would suggest that saṃkhārā is another candidate for this category) then there is a discontinuity. Being stuck with the term we have come up with different and mutually incompatible explanations, but this only adds to the sense of confusion (rather like commentaries on the Heart Sūtra which are all from incompatible sectarian points of view).

I have no better explanation to offer. No theory, and no sense that any one of the existing theories has recover the lost meaning of the term.

Another issue with nāmarūpa and its place in the 12 nidāna chain is that it suggests that viññāna is a precondition for form, which the received tradition usually treats as the physical body. Although Buddhists complain when they perceive consciousness being treated as an epiphenomenon of the brain, they apparently have no problem believing that the body is an epiphenomenon of the mind. Not even the Three Lifetimes Interpretation can save us from this conclusion. The Mahānidāna Sutta (D 15) nāmarūpa and viññāna are mutually conditioning, but this doesn't really help us. However, elsewhere we find viññāna arising in dependence on the āyatanas (the six sense faculties and the six sense objects). This suggests we can have sense faculties, which includes the eyes, before we have a body. It seems to me that the received tradition has lost the thread somewhere along the line. Buddhists usually gloss over these kinds of inconsistencies and do their best to make sense of them. And unfortunately there is no scholarly consensus on what nāmarūpa might have originally meant in a Buddhist context. Perhaps it's time to rethink this strategy of papering over the cracks?

~~oOo~~

[I'll be away from 2-9 Sept]

• Bucknell, Roderick S. (1999) Conditioned Arising Evolves: Variation and Change in the Textual Accounts of the Paṭicca-samuppāda Doctrine. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 22 (2), 312-342,
• Frauwallner, E. (1973). History of Indian Philosophy. (Vol. 1). (V. Bedekar, trans.) Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
• Gombrich, Richard. (2009) What the Buddha Thought. Curzon.
• Hamilton Early Buddhism a New Approach.
• Jones, Dhīvan Thomas. Paṭiccasamuppāda in Context: The Buddha in Debate with Brahmanical Thinking. M.Phil Dissertation. Cambridge University [unpublished]
• Jurewicz, J. Playing with Fire: the pratītyasamutpāda from the perspective of Vedic Thought. Journal of the Pali Text Society, 26, p.77-103

The Science of Pleasure

dopamine

MOST BUDDHISTS AND MANY NON-BUDDHISTS would not be surprised by statements along the lines that desire and craving are what cause us to suffer. The message is repeated throughout Buddhist literature, both canonical and commentarial. But what is it about desire and pleasure that is problematic? I want to approach this via an overview, culled from many different sources, of the neuro- and evolutionary biology of pleasure.

The feeling of pleasure is associated with activity in a surprisingly large number of areas of the brain with no one area alone that is responsible. This may be because pleasure itself is a complex phenomenon, and it is tied into so many other functions. But we know that pleasure is correlated with dopamine and a group of endogenous (made in the body) opioid compounds known as endorphins and encephalins.

Dopamine, again, is involved in all kinds of brain and gut activity, but it is particularly correlated with such activities as determining the desirability of an object or stimulus; with anticipation and enjoyment of rewards, with alertness or arousal, and motivation. Although clearly involved in these functions dopamine is also implicated in the experience of pain and fear as well. It seems that the same physical mechanisms may be involved in both cases. Research has found that those with more hunger for stimulation, including drug addicts, have higher dopamine levels than those with less. Dopamine levels rise in anticipation of a reward.

The opioid compounds are associated with feelings of pleasure, satiation and well being. Exogenous opioids (those not produced by the body) include the various chemicals found in the juice of the opium poppy: heroin, morphine, codeine; and there are also synthetic opioids like methadone, and pethidine. Opioids are involved in the pain response, so exogenous and synthetic opioids find use an painkillers, with morphine being the strongest known pain relief drug. Most people will know that activities like sex, vigorous exercise, and even singing in groups, stimulate the production of endogenous opioids and these are thought to account for the feelings of well being engendered by these activities. Incidentally, this is probably why chanting together in groups usually leaves us with a feeling of well being, and can be ecstatic.

There are certain features of the physical side of these systems—the chemicals, synapses, receptors etc—that are salient to a discussion of the problems of pleasure. Consider heroin (I was going to write "Take heroin", but realised this might be read as an imperative!). I recently enjoyed Keith Richard's memoir, where amongst other things he describes the process of becoming addicted to heroin and getting off it. Most people find that over time they have to increase the dose this drug to get the same effect. Humans beings build up a tolerance to heroin. What happens at the level of the neuron is that a cell reaches a threshold of excitation through incoming signals coming in via it's dendrites, and discharges through it's axon - thereby exciting the dendrites of other neurons. Reaching this potential always takes a little time, and after the discharge it takes time to recharge. What happens in the synapse is that as the signal reaches the end of the fibre special organelles release neurotransmitter chemical into the gap of the synapse. These travel across the gap and bind with receptor organelles on the dendrite of the receiving neuron. The synapse also has organelles for mopping up stray molecules, and this helps to reboot the synapse ready for the next signal.

In the every day business of the neuron it seldom exceeds its operating tolerances, and has plenty of time to recharge, and to mop up after every discharge. But with intense or repeated stimulation the neuron cannot keep up. And as the individual neurons cannot keep up, the system its forms a part of cannot keep up. So for instance if we flood our blood stream with heroin which binds to all the receptors for endorphins, we get a rush of pleasure. But if we keep doing this the feedback mechanisms which moderate the production of endorphin shut down, because they assume they are not needed. This renders the heroin addict incapable of feeling pleasure or well being without their drug. And when you go cold turkey, as Keef gives heart rending testament to, you go through a period of 72 hours of hell as the body takes this long to restart endorphin production for itself. The acute lack of endorphin leads leads to vomiting, incontinence, shaking, sweating, and global bodily pain.

Of course our brain chemistry is usually operating on more subtle levels than the heroin addict. Isn't it? Not necessarily. Consider that the pleasure we feel is related to endogenous opioids. Living as we do we are exposed to a lot of intense stimulation: refined sugars and fats are not unlike heroin in terms of the neurochemistry: a huge dose of sugar and/or fat overloads our ability to deal with the stimulus and can crash the system. Repeated doses make it difficult for user to experience pleasure when eating ordinary food.

A little fact I picked up recent from the Science Blog, is that men who use pornography on a daily basis often develop erectile dysfunction. The problem appears to be related to overloading the pleasure response - the anticipation of orgasm, the intense stimulation of pornography create a situation where lesser stimuli do not lead to arousal (which is also mediated by dopamine). Following the links on this I discovered that researchers have found that having sex more often with a partner leads to losing interest in them more quickly. This usually leads either to moving on or infidelity, since the new partner freshly excites arousal (for a time); or it leads to interest in more and more intense, not to say extreme, forms of stimulation. Users of pornography often find themselves trapped in the same kind of cycle as the heroin addict - it takes more and more to get the effect you seek, and lesser pleasures lose their savour.

So what have we learned? It seems that seeking out pleasurable experiences produces diminishing returns, and the pleasure response has a natural level beyond which it cannot respond. The pursuit of pleasure is self defeating. This should be no surprise to anyone that has opened a packet of [insert name of favourite comfort food] and just kept eating. But if it is no surprise then how come we can't stop? More or less everyone I know indulges in some kind of pleasure seeking behaviour which has no other goal than to experience pleasure, be it the stimulant effects of caffeine, the 'rush' (and crash) of sugar, or the excitement of driving fast. Even the bliss of meditation can be addictive. Why is it that we do these things in the full knowledge that we'd be better off if we didn't?

I argued before that these urges are biological, evolutionary adaptations. It seems that these systems are not entirely or easily under our direct conscious control. Dieting is hard because confronted by high calorie food we naturally desire it (elevated dopamine) and we get so much pleasure from eating it that it seems a little puritanical to deprive ourselves. But it's even more difficult if we've spent a lifetime training our bodies to expect to get that pleasure, and habituating it to higher levels of stimulation. The sense of anticipation (again dopamine) overwhelms our conscious decision to lay off the chocolate biscuits (or whatever); and since we no longer feel truly satiated without the intensity of refined sugar and fat, then we don't feel satisfied till we've had it. Our pleasure response is tuned so high that we simply don't enjoy anything less.

Of course for most of us this is not a runaway process - we don't gradually build up our sugar intake over time, or have sex increasingly often. But for some it is. In the days before medical ethics committees a man had a wire implanted in his brain that stimulated pleasure. He ended up self-stimulating to such an extent that he lost interest in all other activities including eating! He would have died if the experimenters did not disconnect him, and complained when they did. It is also possible that the mystery of falling fertility rates in the Western World is simply due to the increasing availability, intensity and use of pornography depleting the reserves of sperm (it takes more than a day to replenish them). Look also at the way the media has changed in the last 50 years with increasing use of anger, violence, and sex to 'spice shows up'. We think of this as related to more liberal attitudes, but what if the driver is that we have slowly become less able to respond to more subtle forms of entertainment? It does seem that even if we as individuals manage to find some kind of equilibrium, that over generations the ability to indulge our desires is causing us to be fatter and to seek more and more extreme forms of stimulation and entertainment. Pushing the envelope can lead to experiencing new pleasures - just as someone bored with a partner can find a new person exciting (for a time). But once we start pushing the envelope, the returns diminish, and we feel the need to keep pushing. We are probably moving along the axis in the wrong direction and should be thinking in terms of less extreme forms of stimulation, indulged in less often, in order to maximise pleasure and satisfaction.

So the picture that is emerging from neuroscience and evolutionary biology is one which leads us towards conclusions that are not new. Find pleasure in what you are doing, don't do things only for pleasure. Moderation is a virtue, and abstinence does make the heart grow fonder. Spacing out intense stimulation - whether food, sex, TV, movies, drugs, or whatever - gives the body time to reset and allows us to feel pleasure more easily, more naturally. Cutting down on strong stimulation allows us to appreciate more subtle experiences.

Satisfying natural urges is probably not a bad thing, but we need to recall that we have not lived in 'natural' circumstances for something like 10,000 years (since the dawn of agriculture and civilisation). People often cite the middle way as justification for their indulgence, and I like to remind them of what the early Buddhists considered the middle way in terms of lifestyle: no family, no job, one meal a day, no possessions, no sex, several hours of meditation etc. So, what is natural? In fact most of us could do with drastically reigning in our desires and impulses and the language of early Buddhist ethics begins to seem highly relevant again. The Buddha reportedly said:

nāhaṃ, bhikkhave, aññāṃ ekadhammaṃ pi samanupassāmi yaṃ evaṃ adantaṃ, aguttaṃ, arakkhitaṃ asaṃvutaṃ, mahatp anatthāya saṃvattatīti yathayidaṃ, bhikkave, citta.

I do not see any other single thing, monks, which left untamed, unguarded, unprotected, unrestrained, leads to so much misfortune: i.e. the mind [citta].

And though this kind of thinking is deeply unfashionable these days, in light of the research I've been exploring it starts to make a new kind of sense. Guarding the gates of the senses seems more important than ever.

~~oOo~~

Amateur Scholars: Pros and Cons.

I'M AN AMATEUR SCHOLAR. I don't get paid to write about Buddhism. Although I've been a Buddhist for 18 years, like many Buddhist bloggers, I have almost no training in linguistics or Indic languages; no training is philosophy, history, anthropology or any of the relevant disciplines.[1] I'm not a lineage holder, or a Buddhist 'teacher' or anything fancy like that. And yet every week I make pronouncements on language, on philosophy, on history, and especially on Buddhism.

I admire amateurism. I grew up in the twilight era of amateurism in sport and politics: a time when a professional could not compete in the Olympics; when our national rugby team all had day jobs; and our government was run by people who once had real jobs. Many of the fundamental breakthroughs in the modern study of Buddhism were made by enthusiastic amateurs.

However professionalism brings advantages in scholarship. Access to resources, to conferences, to mentors, to critical dialogue with peers. The lack of mentoring and critical feedback are probably the biggest hindrances to the amateur, especially in this day of freely available internet resources. Pali is not a difficult language to learn. There are several self-teaching guides, as well as dictionaries and grammars available online. Anyone can teach themselves Pāli and dive into reading and translating texts. I wish more people would. But scholarship requires more that this. We amateurs face some difficulties that professionals do not. I want to look at some of these problems with cases studies drawn from reading Buddhist blogs.

Access to resources.

Although there is a huge amount of material online, most of the secondary literature is not. Amateurs seldom have access to journals for instance. We might get the occasional article, but really as scholars we should at least scan every issue of the main journals in our field. So much of Buddhology, and especially Pali philology, remains buried in journal articles. The internet has facilitated identifying articles, but unless one is a member of a university, it hasn't helped with access because publishing companies charge as much as £30 per article for one-off access, and subscriptions are often expensive as well. An exception to this is Buddhist Studies Review which is quite cheap to subscribe to (and probably needs your money!).

But then there are the monographs. If we are interested in history and want to read Johannes Bronkhorst's two most recent tomes then we're looking at around £300 for both. They are the sort of books that only libraries buy, and only in universities with a large Indology or Buddhist studies department. I imagine there are not more than a dozen copies in the UK. But if the history of Buddhism is your subject, then you can't not read these books. In fact if have any interest in the context within which early Buddhist texts exist then you must read these books to be well informed. So most amateurs are not well informed, or not well enough.

The lack of access to, or even interest in, resources often mean that Buddhist bloggers are out of touch with academic Buddhist Studies. Amateurs are often simply uninformed; or they are informed, but about the state of Buddhist Studies 20 years ago, when in fact the last 20 years have seen some remarkable publications.

Critical Thinking

One of the major problems that amateur scholars have is working with their own preconceptions, especially the extent to which our modern Western worldview intrudes. All too often the amateur has an idea, comes to a conclusion, and then goes looking for material to support their thesis. And usually of course they find it. Professionals will do this as well, but less often. A good scholar does have a working hypothesis, but they look at all of the evidence and try to decide what it is telling them. They also have peers and mentors to bounce ideas off.

The following case study is a composite drawing on real blogs that I read. The point is not to make personal comments but to highlight the kinds of problems that all amateur scholars confront (which are not necessarily the problems that all bloggers face). Blogger A is a modern Western Buddhist. They read a little Pali, and they have access to a version of the Canon on the Internet. They think of themselves as a Buddhist, but they are concerned about certain aspects of Buddhism that contradict their worldview. As moderns we are inheritors of the European Enlightenment and its fallout. We have been told (since the late Victorian period) that Buddhism is a "rational religion", consistent with Western scientific paradigms (even quantum mechanics) and does not require blind faith. Not only this, but we have been taught that the Buddha himself was supremely rational. The doctrine of rebirth is a contradiction of all of these: it is not rationally based, conflicts with science, and requires blind faith. There is no doubt that rebirth is a problem for Western Buddhists, even if they don't think it is!

Blogger A, like many other Western Buddhists, sees the Kālāma Sutta as one of the most important suttas in the Canon since it appears to confirms their doubts. They have read it in several translations, but never got around to translating it themselves or studying what it says in detail, so they tend to go along with the urban legends about this text. In particular they take the consolations of being an ariyasāvaka discussed at the end of the text as saying that one need not believe in rebirth. Which is a relief to them.

Blogger A decides that rebirth cannot be true, since it fails the test of rationality, and the Kālāma Sutta says we need not believe it. But it is clearly a major part of all the Buddhist traditions. So how to make sense of these facts? Blogger A comes to the conclusion that the Buddha himself did not believe in rebirth, but that this 'foreign belief' was smuggled into Buddhism by his corrupt (possibly Brahmin) followers in the years after his death. Either the Buddha did not actually teach rebirth at all, or if he did, then he took it as a metaphor and did not believe or teach literal rebirth.

This "later corruption" narrative does not spring from nowhere. It goes back to the early Victorian translators, particularly Mrs Rhys Davids. They had the very same project: squaring the obviously irrational and superstitious elements which abound in Buddhism as it is practised today, and as we find it in Buddhist texts, with the idea that the Buddha was effectively an Enlightenment figure who, had he met, say, Newton or Leibniz would have got along fine with them. What most amateurs don't see is that the 'rational Buddha' is a product of the Western imagination in the first place, the Buddha of tradition is not quite irrational, but there is plenty of non-rational mysticism attached to him—he very often converses with gods for example (more like William Blake than Isaac Newton).

The 'later corruption' narrative is a polemic developed amongst Protestant intellectuals to account for the decline of the Roman Catholic Church due to moral corruption, which appeared to mirror the decline and fall of the Roman Empire due to its moral corruption. It was first employed in relation to Buddhism by Victorian scholars who were culturally, if not religiously, Protestant. In fact there is no a priori reason to treat a development or an evolution as a corruption: the emergence of Tantric Buddhism, for instance, corresponds to a major re-invigoration of Buddhist culture in India following the chaos of the Post-Gupta Empire period. Blogger A doesn't see that their ideas are conditioned by their own culture, or that their ideas themselves have a history.

The popular idea that, ignoring what Buddhists themselves believe and practice, one could reconstruct the 'original' Buddhism from the Pali texts is the very essence of the Protestant project transferred into the Buddhist arena. Although it was seen as a viable project into the mid 20th century, it is largely discredited now. And worse, as Greg Schopen has vociferously (and, one might say gleefully) pointed out, is the fact that where we do have epigraphical and archaeological evidence for early Buddhism it tends to conflict with the textual accounts rather than confirm them. Let me quote a professional at this point:

"But, during the present century, and especially during the past several decades, Buddhologists, anthropologists, and historians of religion have raised serious doubts about this naive use of the suttas as sources for reconstructing Theravāda Buddhist history. Thus it is now recognised that the form in which the suttas survive today, like Pāli itself, is the result of grammatical and editorial decisions made in Sri Lanka centuries after the lifetime of the Buddha... More important still, historians and anthropologists have pointed to the rift between Buddhism constructed as 'canonical' on the basis of the teachings in the suttas and the actual practices and ideas of contemporary Theravāda Buddhists. As similar divergences from this 'canonical Buddhism' are evidenced as early in Buddhist history as our evidence itself, namely the time of Aśoka Maurya (third century B.C.), the question emerges whether the reconstructed 'early Buddhism' ever existed at all.

... I think it fair to say that among contemporary historians of the Theravāda there has been a marked shift away from attempting to say much of anything at all about 'early Buddhism'"

- Walters, Jonathan. S. (1999) 'Suttas as History: Four Approaches to the Sermon on the Noble Quest (Ariyapariyesana Sutta).' History of Religions 38.3: 247-8. [my italics]

But because amateur scholars are not part of this broad scholarly discussion, because they never read articles like Walters', they have not participated in this marked shift. They continue to work an abandoned gold mine, even though they only find iron pyrite. Though I note that professionals still sometimes stray into this quagmire! [2]

Pursuing this course they proceed to look for texts which supplement the Kālāma Sutta and 'prove' that the Buddha did not believe in rebirth. Perhaps they stumble upon SN 15.1. This is an interesting text which describes saṃsāra in terms of ancestors stretching back through beginningless time. A couple of the other texts in this short saṃyutta also use this metaphor. However if we keep reading we see that the metaphor changes at SN 15.10 and describes one person (ekapuggala) wandering through saṃsāra leaving a mountainous pile of bones behind them. This is also somewhat anomalous, but since it contradicts the starting premise that the Buddha did not believe in rebirth it is not even considered by Blogger A. In fact SN 15.10 creates a paradox - because in it the Buddha is talking about one person over several life times, and this contradicts the accepted Buddhist notion that the next life is not the same person, but only the inheritor of previous karma. So we have here three views on rebirth - traditional rebirth, ancestral lineage, and reincarnation. All of them in the Pali Canon, and all in the mouth of the Buddha! I've read through these texts and I don't see any way of deciding which should have priority on the basis of the texts. There are no criteria one could apply.

But Blogger A has an a priori criteria, they have their view that the Buddha did not believe in rebirth. So it is obvious to them that the text which describes saṃsāra in terms of an ancestral lineage is the "true text", and the others are corruptions. And so it goes. This is technically called confirmation bias. Amateurs are particularly pray to this it seems.

Language

Teaching oneself a little Pali in order to read texts which are already familiar in translation, or where there are excellent translations already available to act as commentaries, is one thing. Knowing the language and the literature thoroughly so that one can understand the texts from the inside is another. It takes time, and is unlikely to be possible without an experienced mentor. I've more or less given up trying to translate texts from the Suttanipāta for instance because the poetry and the archaic language are so difficult to understand, even though I have access to translations and extensive notes by the great Middle-Indic philologer K. R. Norman. Interestingly Norman himself declined to formally translate the Dhammapada for the Pali Text Society because it would be "too difficult"! Let us pause to consider the implications of that!

As an amateur one can spend hours chasing one's tail. The other day I wasted a lot of time on the word esevanto = es'ev'anto = eso eva anto = "just this is the end". It just took ages for it to dawn on me that there must be two sandhi, partly because I saw -vanto and assumed it must be a present participle. And I had the English translation in front of me! This is what inexperience is like. It gets worse when we want to look at the untranslated commentaries. And it must be said that anyone seriously reading a text must look at the traditional aṭṭhakathā alongside, if not also the ṭīka. But the Pāli of the aṭṭhakathā is much more difficult—being a literary form highly influenced by Sanskrit models—and there is no guide, no standard translation to consult.

I've said that Pāli is not a difficult language, but like all languages it is idiomatic. This means that Pāli learnt from a primer must be supplemented by reading many texts. So Blogger A following up their desire to prove a supposition about rebirth finds this phrase from the Dona Sutta (A ii.37):

‘‘Devo no bhavaṃ bhavissatī’’ti? ‘‘Na kho ahaṃ, brāhmaṇa, devo bhavissāmī’’ti.

Blogger A wants this sentence to say: "Will you, Sir, become a god? No, Brahmin, I will not become a god". In the Dona Sutta various other words are substituted for deva as the Brahmin tries to decide what to make of Gotama: is he a god? A yakkha? A man? The implication deduced by Blogger A, on the basis that the verb is in the future-tense, is that the Buddha is rejecting the idea of his rebirth in various realms. The form bhavissati is undoubtedly the future-tense of √bhū 'to be', but here it is used idiomatically. As Warder points out (Introduction to Pali, p.55) "The future also expresses perplexity, surprise, and wonder." Warder's example is directly relevant: kim ev'idaṃ bhavissati 'what can this be?' So our question means 'Sir, are you a deva?', but with a tone of puzzlement. Dona the Brahmin is expressing his perplexity, and is trying to determine just what class of being the Buddha is. Blogger A over-rides these grammatical facts—ignores the cases, and idioms—and finds only confirmation of their pre-existing view.

Conclusion

I love the way that the Internet has reopened the field to amateurs. But the Internet has produced very few scholars of note, and few commentators consistently worth reading—some exceptions that I enjoy can be found in the "Blogs I Read" section in the sidebar. The best Buddhist blogs are usually the popular comment blogs with no pretension to scholarship, or the scholarly blogs by academics (though again there are exceptions). The tensions that often exist between popular magazine writers, and popular blog writers are a feature of the landscape of popular Buddhism, but they don't usually impinge much on the realm of serious scholarship. Where popular and professional Buddhist writing and Buddhist scholarship do cross over the result is often mutual incomprehension.

We need to be aware of our limitations. Unfortunately amateurs, with no training and often no discipline, no access to the secondary literature, and no participation in critical dialogue, can be unaware of their limitations. But amateurs are also free from the constraints of earning a living from their writing, from the artificial conditions imposed on 'serious' writing, and from the paradigmatic thinking that makes new ideas hard to see in academia. As amateurs we do not have to find approval from our peers, and this can be both weakness and strength.

Scholars, whether amateur or professional, play an important role in the ecosystem of Buddhism. Scholars are part of the system of checks and balances that characterise a healthy society. Old ideas are conserved, and put into appropriate context and perspective. New ideas, emerging from experience, are assessed in the light of existing intellectual frameworks. Knowledge gradually accumulates. Scholars, whether directly or indirectly, are in dialogue with practitioners (and increasingly span both camps) and help to refine interpretations of experiences, and the language by which our ideas, images and practices are communicated. Without scholars our ecosystem would collapse. We need only look at the toxicity of the the anti-intellectual fundamentalist religious sects to see where a rejection of scholars and scholarship lands us. Of course scholarship should not blind us to the experiential nature of the Buddhist program. Ideas can get in the way of practice—too many of us are trying to prove a dogma instead of paying attention to what is happening—but a good scholar knows this limitation and works with it.

~~oOo~~

Notes

1. My undergraduate degree is in chemistry, and my graduate qualification in library management.
2. I refer to Alexander Wynne's recent, award winning, article: "The Buddha's 'Skill in Means' and the Genesis of the Five Aggregate Teaching." J. of the Royal Asiatic Soc. 2010, 20(2):191-216. Wynne piles up speculation and conjecture without ever citing solid evidence, because of course there is none, and comes to a conclusion about the "original" teaching of the khandhas. Wynne's concatenation of multiple uncertain conjectures doesn't take into account what every scientist knows: that when you add two uncertain quantities together, the uncertainty accumulates.