leaves in the hand

do the five realms really exist?

2011-12-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

Do the five (sometimes six) realms really exist? It's an interesting question. One reason is that the Buddhist idea of 'worlds' or 'realms' (loka) can be taken both literally (i.e., as external realms of existence) and metaphorically (i.e., as mental states).

They're definitely real in the sense of various pleasant and unpleasant mental states that we mentally take birth into, which is something we can easily observe for ourselves. For example, BuddhaNet's introductory essay, "Introduction to Buddhism," gives a good explanation of the realms in this way:

If ego decides it likes the situation, it begins to churn up all sorts of ways to possess it. A craving to consume the situation arises and we long to satisfy that craving. Once we do, a ghost of that craving carries over and we look around for something else to consume. We get into the habitual pattern of becoming consumer oriented. Perhaps we order a piece of software for our computer. We play with it for awhile, until the novelty wears out, and then we look around for the next piece of software that has the magic glow of not being possessed yet. Soon we haven't even got the shrink wrap off the current package when we start looking for the next one. Owning the software and using it doesn't seem to be as important as wanting it, looking forward to its arrival. This is known as the hungry ghost realm where we have made an occupation out of craving. We can never find satisfaction, it is like drinking salt water to quench our thirst.

Another realm is the animal realm, or having the mind like that of an animal. Here we find security by making certain that everything is totally predictable. We only buy blue chip stock, never take a chance and never look at new possibilities. The thought of new possibilities frightens us and we look with scorn at anyone who suggests anything innovative. This realm is characterised by ignorance. We put on blinders and only look straight ahead, never to the right or left.

The hell realm is characterised by acute aggression. We build a wall of anger between ourselves and our experience. Everything irritates us, even the most innocuous, and innocent statement drives us mad with anger. The heat of our anger is reflected back on us and sends us into a frenzy to escape from our torture, which in turn causes us to fight even harder and get even angrier. The whole thing builds on itself until we don't even know if we're fighting with someone else or ourselves. We are so busy fighting that we can't find an alternative to fighting; the possibility of alternative never even occurs to us.

These are the three lower realms. One of the three higher realms is called the jealous god realm. This pattern of existence is characterised by acute paranoia. We are always concerned with "making it". Everything is seen from a competitive point of view. We are always trying to score points, and trying to prevent others from scoring on us. If someone achieves something special we become determined to out do them. We never trust anyone; we "know" they're trying to slip one past us. If someone tries to help us, we try to figure out their angle. If someone doesn't try to help us, they are being uncooperative, and we make a note to ourselves that we will get even later. "Don't get mad, get even," that's our motto.

At some point we might hear about spirituality. We might hear about the possibility of meditation techniques, imported from some eastern religion, or mystical western one, that will make our minds peaceful and absorb us into a universal harmony. We begin to meditate and perform certain rituals and we find ourselves absorbed into infinite space and blissful states of existence. Everything sparkles with love and light; we become godlike beings. We become proud of our godlike powers of meditative absorption. We might even dwell in the realm of infinite space where thoughts seldom arise to bother us. We ignore everything that doesn't confirm our godhood. We have manufactured the god realm, the highest of the six realms of existence. The problem is, that we have manufactured it. We begin to relax and no longer feel the need to maintain our exalted state. Eventually a small sliver of doubt occurs. Have we really made it? At first we are able to smooth over the question, but eventually the doubt begins to occur more and more frequently and soon we begin to struggle to regain our supreme confidence. As soon as we begin to struggle, we fall back into the lower realms and begin the whole process over and over; from god realm to jealous god realm to animal realm to hungry ghost realm to hell realm. At some point we begin to wonder if there isn't some sort of alternative to our habitual way of dealing with the world. This is the human realm.

The human realm is the only one in which liberation from the six states of existence is possible. The human realm is characterised by doubt and inquisitiveness and the longing for something better. We are not as absorbed by the all consuming preoccupations of the other states of being. We begin to wonder whether it is possible to relate to the world as simple, dignified human beings.

And this psychological interpretation is supported by the suttas themselves. For example, we find passages like these in AN 4.235 (notice the qualifier 'like'):

And what is kamma that is dark with dark result? There is the case where a certain person fabricates an injurious bodily fabrication, fabricates an injurious verbal fabrication, fabricates an injurious mental fabrication. Having fabricated an injurious bodily fabrication, having fabricated an injurious verbal fabrication, having fabricated an injurious mental fabrication, he rearises in an injurious world. On rearising in an injurious world, he is there touched by injurious contacts. Touched by injurious contacts, he experiences feelings that are exclusively painful, like those of the beings in hell. This is called kamma that is dark with dark result.

And what is kamma that is bright with bright result? There is the case where a certain person fabricates a non-injurious bodily fabrication ... a non-injurious verbal fabrication ... a non-injurious mental fabrication ... He rearises in a non-injurious world ... There he is touched by non-injurious contacts ... He experiences feelings that are exclusively pleasant, like those of the Beautiful Black Devas. This is called kamma that is bright with bright result.

As for the literal existence of these realms, I can't say. It's certainly possible, and it's often fun to speculate about them (I've even heard stories of people who could see beings from these others realms); but I think it's more useful to focus on what we can experience for ourselves in the hear and now, and use our practice to try and transcend these mental realms in order to find a true and lasting happiness inside.

self vs. volition: the illusion of free will

2011-10-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

It's often asked how volition/intention/will/etc. is possible without a self, especially, they argue, when there must be some kind active agency for free will to exist. This, of course, conflicts with the Theravadin Abhidhamma, which labels volition (cetana) as one of the 52 mental factors that are "common to all classes of consciousness," but rejects the existence of any kind of self or independent agency.

It seems like a paradox, but only from the Western philosophical idea of 'free will.' Classical Theravada, on the other hand, views free will more or less as an illusion, and instead take a more casually determined view of volition.

Conventionally speaking, we appear to have functional choice via intention operating within a broader framework of causality that conditions the choices available to us at any given time. However, on a deeper level, intention itself is a product of the aggregate of mental formations (sankharakhandha). Therefore, being a product or process within one of the aggregates, which themselves are types of processes and not-self (anatta), this type of internal decision maker or will-to-do, if you will, has its own requisite conditions and is also not-self, since whatever is conditioned and subject to change can't be said to have an unchanging essence or being.

In essence, volition itself isn't an illusion, it's simply not the result of an independent agent or self; and it, like everything else in the world, is ultimately the result causally determined processes. True free will requires an independent agent, and both Buddhism (as well as science) effectively reject such an agency. And while I tend to take a more moderate position myself, Buddhism is entirely compatible with causal determinism.

For example, Dhammanando Bhikkhu once gave me the example of a mosquito biting you on the nose: first you feel annoyed and want to squash it, but then you recall that you're a precept-observing Buddhist and so restrain yourself.

He explained that when this event is described in conventional terms, or according to the Sutta method, it might be said that you had a choice to kill the mosquito or to refrain, and that you chose the latter. But when it's described according to the Abhidhamma method, your abstention from killing wasn't due to choice but to the arising of kusala cetasikas (wholesome mental factors) such as moral shame and fear of wrong-doing (hiri & ottappa), and abstinence (virati), i.e., it was causally determined.

And then there are passages like this from the Dhammasangani (pp. 7-8):

What on that occasion is volition (cetana)? The volition, purpose, purposefulness, which is born of contact with the appropriate element of representative intellection - that is the volition that there then is.

And the Atthasalini, pp.147-148:

Volition is that which co-ordinates, that is, it binds closely (abhisandahati) to itself associated states as objects. This is its characteristic; its function is conation. There is no such thing as volition in the four planes of existence without the characteristic of co-ordinating; all volition has it. But the function of conation is only in moral and immoral states; as regards activity in moral and immoral acts, the remaining associated states play only a restricted part. But volition is exceedingly energetic. It makes double effort, double exertion. Hence the Ancients said: 'Volition is like the nature of a landowner, a cultivator who, taking fifty-five strong men, went down to the fields to reap. He was exceedingly energetic and exceedingly strenuous; he doubled his strength, he doubled his effort, and said, "Take your sickles," and so forth, pointed out the portion to be reaped, offered them drink, food, scent, flowers, etc., and took an equal share of the work.' Volition is like the cultivator; the fifty-five moral states which arise as factors of consciousness are like the fifty-five strong men; like the time of doubling strength, doubling effort by the cultivator is the doubled strength, double effort of volition as regards activity in moral and immoral acts. Thus should conation as its function be understood.

It has directing as manifestation. It arises directing associated states, like the chief disciple, the chief carpenter, etc., who fulfil their own and others' duties... even so, when volition starts work on its object, it sets associated states to do each its own work. For when it puts forth energy, they also put forth energy... It is also evident that it arises by causing associated states to be energetic in such things as recollecting an urgent work and so forth.

Incidentally, I think the Abhidhammic position accords well with what neuroscientist Sam Harris writes about the illusion of free will here, here and here.

buddhism: ontology or process philosophy?

2011-09-28T05:32:00.000-07:00

From my reading of the Pali Canon, it seems to me that the Buddha's teachings generally tend to avoid metaphysics, including ontology, in favour of a pragmatic approach to understanding mental stress and suffering (dukkha) and removing its causes (e.g., see MN 63). If anything, I'd say Buddhism is closer to something like process philosophy in Western philosophical terminology, where the focus is on processes or becoming rather than unchanging being or essence, e.g., Heraclitus vs. Plato; anicca + anatta vs. atman; or anything else that looks at change vs. essence.

Essentially (for those less familiar with these concepts), if something is impermanent, it means that it's subject to change, whereas that which has a permanent being or essence isn't. In other words, becoming (or any process of change) is only possible within the context of impermanence. In the examples I gave above, the former are examples of things dealing with processes or becoming, while the latter are things dealing with unchanging being or essence.

For example, Heraclitus, if we're to believe Plato, is famous for his idea that "everything flows," whereas Plato is famous for his idea of eternal forms. In the second example, the Buddha taught that what we mistakenly cling to as 'self' is really only impermanent phenomena subject to arising, changing, and passing away, whereas the Vedas and Upanishads are general understood to teach that our self is something real and eternal, something that is.

So strict ontology deals more with what inherently is or exists from its own side (i.e., being or essence), whereas the basic idea behind process philosophy is that what 'exists' is best understood in terms of processes rather than things or substances, and that change — whether physical, organic or psychological — "is the pervasive and predominant feature of the real." As such, it's sometimes called 'ontology of becoming.'

Of course, in Buddhism, becoming (bhava) refers more to the sense of identity that arises when there's clinging to one or more of the aggregates, but the basic idea is that our sense of self is a process of 'I-making' and 'my-making,' which I think can be classified as a type of process philosophy. The only area of metaphysics the Buddha does engage in is causality; but even here, he doesn't offer proofs so much as suggests that adopting these views in a pragmatic, common sense manner is empirically useful in the quest to end suffering. Hence, Buddhism avoids many of the metaphysical quandaries, including questions of ontology, that seem to plague other philosophical/religious traditions.

a new perspective on the middle way?

2011-09-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

Most people know Buddhism as the middle way between the two extremes of self-mortification and self-indulgence, but I think David Kalupahana offers an interesting perspective when he concludes in A History of Buddhist Philosophy that:

"Whereas Sanjaya [a skeptic and original teacher of Sariputta and Maha-Mogallana] was reluctant to make any positive pronouncements through fear of falling into error, the Buddha was willing to recognize the limitations of human knowledge and provide a reasonable description of truth and reality without reaching out for ultimate objectivity. This approach allowed him to avoid any ontological or metaphysical commitments and deal with language in a more meaningful way. For these reasons, he refrained from either raising or answering questions relating to ultimate origins or destinies, questions that had haunted Indian philosophers for centuries...
"If Absolutism is the result of reaching out for ultimate objectivity in philosophical discourse, and if extreme skepticism is the reason for the failure of such an enterprise, the Buddha, in his explanation of human experience, seems to have renounced the search for such objectivity and confined himself to a middle way, thereby renouncing both Absolutism and extreme skepticism." (21)

This idea is explained in more detail later on when he discusses (1) sense experiences and (2) yogic experiences:

"Fourth, his realization that ultimate regarding the object itself cannot be achieved and that the human perspective is unavoidable is underscored by his statement regarding the initial stage of sense experience, that is to say, "depending upon the visual organ and the visible object arises visual consciousness." Where can a philosopher go to determine the nature of the object while avoiding the consciousness of the object? If consciousness is not a tabula rasa but part of the psychophysical personality and hence conditioned by previous experiences, there are many other elements that will enter the scene when a decision is made regarding the object. It is to explain the complex nature of consciousness, while at the same time allowing for the retention of some measure of objectivity of the object, that the Buddha underscores the dependence of consciousness on the sense organ and the object. Furthermore, there is no suggestion of epi-phenomenalism, that is, that consciousness is a byproduct of matter, and therefore generated at each moment as a result of the contact between the sense and the object." (33)

"This is an extremely important reflection [referring to the passage in DN 2 concerning "insight knowledge"], following immediately after the fourth preliminary stage of contemplation (jhana), which, as mentioned earlier, has been wrongly interpreted as a state where all discursive and initial thought are abandoned. It is an unequivocal statement that some of the so-called higher forms of knowledge pertain to the nature of the physical body, the inalienable part of the human personality. It refers not only to the source and nature of the physical personality but also to the fact that there is consciousness associated with it, which makes it a complete person.
"Against the background of the theories of the six heterodox teachers referred to in Chapter 1, this description of the human person is significant. While the heterodox teachers attempted to provide an objective explanation of the human personality by focusing on either the physical body or physical actions, which they felt to be easily and objectively identifiable, the Buddha here introduced consciousness as an inalienable part of the human personality, even though it is not so objectively identified and analyzed. Thus he rejected the purely physical explanation of human personality as well as human behavior." (39)

And regarding the five higher knowledges (psychokinesis, clairaudience, telepathy, retrocognition and clairvoyance):

"The fifth higher knowledge is clairvoyance (dibbacakkhu). As defined by the Buddha, it does not involve knowledge of the future. While clairvoyance is sometimes used in the sense of perceiving events taking place at a distance, and is comparable to clairaudience, more often it refers to knowledge of the evolution of other human beings as they are conditioned by their karma. The recognition of such a form of knowledge appears to be extremely arbitrary on the par of anyone claiming to be an empiricist. The question is often raised as to how an empiricist can explain knowledge of other-minds, let alone their evolution through several existences. It seems that doubts about the existence of other-minds are generated more by philosophers who attempt to reach ultimate objectivity in their explanations. In the Indian context, the Materialists, the Ajivikas, and even the Jainas seem to have been confronted with such problems. In the case of the Buddha, the issue was to a great extent dissolved by his adoption of a philosophical standpoint the simply avoids generating such problems. When subsequent Buddhist philosophers adopted such objective standpoints, they were compelled to compile treatises justifying the existence of other-minds, as exemplified by Vinitadeva's Santanantarasiddhi (Establishment of Other-minds).
"It is possible to adopt two extreme attitudes about the five forms of knowledge referred to above. The skeptic who looks for an objective explanation can insist on the meaninglessness of such knowledge-claims, for they are not compatible with his notion of verifiability, which is confined mostly to the physical. The spiritualist, in contrast, believes that such knowledge is mystical and has nothing to do with ordinary experiences. The middle path adopted by the Buddha avoids both these extremes. Without being unduly skeptical or excessively enamored with them, he was willing to accept whatever information was available through such means as long as it possessed any pragmatic value. Karma and rebirth, two doctrines that the Buddha came to accept on the basis of some of these experiences, were justified not only on empirical grounds but also on pragmatic ones, the latter being highlighted for the benefit of the skeptic." (41-2)

In essence, Kalupahana seems to be making an interesting case for Buddhism being a middle way between Absolutism and extreme skepticism, as well as between the more well-known extremes of sever asceticism/self-mortification and excessive self-indulgence.

some rambling thoughts on nietzsche's ego and will to power, part 2

2011-09-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

There was an interesting discussion on freeratio.org about culturally conditioned morality, particularly religiously influenced ideas such as the Buddhist concept of kamma, and being completely free of their oppressive weight. The OP commented, "Imagine how freeing it would be to know that we could intentionally harm another without any interpretations of right and wrong at all, just because we felt like it." They qualified this statement with, "I'm not saying that I want to do that, but I have seen those that do, and who seem to feel no restraints of a metaphysical nature, or indeed any nature, upon them. Indeed it can be a somewhat joyous process to witness," and then invoked the name of Nietzsche.

Personally, I've always found the concept of kamma (literally 'action') to be quite pragmatic, and not terribly heavy at all. The way I see it, we simply experience the results of our intentional actions in ways that are interpreted to be right or wrong based upon a myriad of factors, some of which may be unique to our species (i.e., kamma is psychological in nature); and we become free of kamma once we get ourselves to the point where we'll never intentional harm another, nor ourselves, and free our mind of clinging (to sensual pleasures, views, rites and rituals, and doctrines of self).

The way they described this freedom from moral conventions, however, immediately reminded me of a psychopath, and I found the thought of purposefully wanting to become like that quite frightening. While I agree that it sounds freeing to a certain extent, even if all psychological restraints are removed from the individual, there are still societal consequences involved in harming others that aren't what I'd describe as 'freeing' or 'joyous.' Moreover, this kind of freedom sounds more appropriate in the Wild West than a modern, civilized society. I suppose this is one of the reasons I've never been a big fan of Nietzsche or Rand, whose philosophies I find somewhat similar in that they seem to exhibit strong psychopathic elements/influences.

In fact, as I've said before, I'd even go so far as to say that Nietzsche's philosophy and type of ego-development leads to an unhealthy type of individual who 'transcends' the world in order to lord over it (a hero who's the antithesis of Buddhism's spiritual egalitarianism). For example, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he calls the 'lust to rule' a "gift-giving virtue"; proclaims that selfishness is blessed, wholesome and healthy; and suggests suffering can be drowned out by continuously creating and overcoming oneself; in The Dawn, he writes, "The striving for excellence is the striving to overwhelm one's neighbor, even if only very indirectly or only in one's own feelings or even dreams"; etc. (Compare the last line to this entry from one of Rand's personal journals: "One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one's way to get the best for oneself. Fine!")

I think this issue arises mainly from his unbalanced view of morality, i.e., his focus on the 'strong-willed individual' and his rejection of what he calls 'slave morality,' which values actions according to their good or evil (i.e., skillful or unskillful) intentions, for 'master-morality,' which values actions according to their good or bad (i.e., pleasant or painful) consequences. This view is unbalanced in that it either overlooks, or completely denies, the efficacy of the intentions underlying our actions (not to mention its blatant disregard for others) (whereas Buddhist concept of kamma recognizes both actions and their intentions as contributing to the experience of mental well-being and/or suffering, for ourselves as well as others).

Nietzsche was undoubtedly a great and original thinker, Rand a little bit less so, in my opinion; nevertheless, I find in his writings evidence that he was also somewhat of a self-absorbed individual with little-to-no conscience or empathy for others, and for whom social rules and conventions had little-to-no meaning, which may have been one of the reasons he seemed so keen on subverting them. At least, that's the impression I get from what little of Nietzsche I've read. The same applies to Rand; maybe even more so since she seems to have admired a likely psychopath named William Hickman, going so far as to model a character named Danny Renahan on him for a novel that was never finished. In one journal entry, for example, she writes of Renahan (emphasis hers):

He is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness—[resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people. (One instance when it is blessed not to have an organ of understanding. Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should. He knows himself—and that is enough. Other people have no right, no hold, no interest or influence on him. And this is not affect or chosen—it's inborn, absolute, it can't be changed, he has "no organ" to be otherwise. In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel "other people."

Of course, some might say that this is a crude misunderstanding of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, and that he most certainly doesn't advocate psychopathy—that he simply acknowledges the 'will-to-power' is inherently sadistic, and his program is to turn that inward in an effort to transcend and overcome various social conditionings, becoming as one wills and not otherwise. And while I'm sympathetic to that view, I believe that his ideas are essentially the perfect ethical foundation/justification for a psychopath when taken to their logical conclusion, and Rand's more explicitly so. At the very least, I find them to be self-indulgent in the extreme as they seem to completely neglect others except as stepping stones. If their idea of joy is reveling in one's power and freedom to the exclusion, even detriment, of others, then it's a kind of joy and freedom I can live without.

sam harris: a neo-buddhist after my own heart

2011-07-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

Sam Harris is by far my favourite of the so-called 'New Atheists.' I especially like his approach to trying to bring things like science, spirituality and reason together, and I think he's more or less on the right track when it comes to these kinds of things, i.e., having no problem being a vocal atheist and critic of religion while at the same time being open to the fact that people have 'spiritual' experiences. As he wrote in "10 Myths - And 10 Truths - About Atheism":

There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.

Being a 'Buddhist' myself, I also like the fact that he's actually practiced meditation, and comes at things like vipasana meditation from the standpoint of neuroscience, de-emphasising their strictly religious roots in an attempt to move more towards developing "a scientific account of the contemplative path" (A Contemplative Science).

I think that if there were more people like Sam Harris who were interested in what Buddhism and other contemplative paths have to offer from a scientific standpoint, we could easily create a contemplative science of our own utilizing the latest in modern technology and knowledge of how the brain functions. For example, I think his latest blog post does a great job of pointing out the importance and usefulness of meditation and transcendent experiences:

My friend Jerry Coyne has posted a response to my recent video Q&A where he raises a few points in need of clarification about meditation, transcendence, spiritual experience, etc.:

This discussion continues at 21:25, when Sam criticizes atheists, scientists and secularists for failing to “connect to the character of those experiences” and for failing to “give some alternate explanation for them that is not entirely deflationary and demeaning and gives some warrant to the legitimacy of those experiences.” He implies that these experiences are somehow beyond the purview of science. I find that strange given Sam’s repeated emphasis on the value of science in studying mental states.

I’m not quite sure what he’s getting at here, and he doesn’t elaborate, but I don’t see why giving credence to these über-transcendent experiences as experiences says anything about a reality behind them. Yes, they might indeed change one’s personality and view of the world, but do any of us deny that?

I had similar experiences on various psychoactive substances when I was in college, and some of them were even transformative. The problem is not with us realizing that people can feel at one with the universe or, especially, at one with God; the problem comes with us taking this as evidence for some supernatural reality. What does it mean to say that an experience is legitimate? If someone thinks that he saw Jesus, I am prepared to believe that he thought that he saw Jesus, but I am not prepared to say that he really did see Jesus, nor that that constitutes any evidence for the existence of Jesus.

So my question for Sam would be this: “So if we accept that people do have these seriously transcendent experiences, what follows from that—beyond our simple desire to study the neurobiology behind them?”

These are all good points. I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that transcendent experiences are “beyond the purview of science.” On the contrary, I think they should be studied scientifically. And I don’t believe that these experiences tell us anything about the cosmos (I called Deepak Chopra a “charlatan” for making unfounded claims of this sort). Nor do they tell us anything about history, or about the veracity of scripture. However, these experiences do have a lot to say about the nature of the human mind—not about its neurobiology, per se, but about its qualitative character (both actual and potential).

So, to answer Jerry’s question: yes, many things follow from these transcendent experiences. Here’s a short list:

1. It is possible to feel much better (in every sense of “better”) than one tends to feel. It is, in fact, possible to be utterly at ease in the world—and such ease is synonymous with relaxing, or fully transcending, the apparent boundaries of the “self.” Those who have never experienced such peace of mind will view the preceding sentences as yet another eruption of “mumbo jumbo” on my part. And yet it is phenomenologically true to say that such states of well-being are there to be discovered. I am not claiming to have experienced all relevant states of this kind. But there are people who appear to have experienced none of them—and many of these people are atheists.

This is not surprising. After all, experiences of self-transcendence are generally only sought and interpreted in a religious or “spiritual” context—and these are precisely the phenomena that tend to increase a person’s faith. How many Christians who have felt self-transcending love for their neighbors in church, or body-dissolving bliss in prayer, decide to ditch Christianity? Not many, I would guess. How many people who never have experiences of this kind (no matter how hard they try) become atheists? I don’t know, but there is no question that these states of mind act as a kind of filter: they get counted in support of ancient dogma by the faithful; and their absence seems to give my fellow atheists yet another reason to doubt religion.

Reading the comments on Jerry’s blog exposes the problem in full. There are several people there who have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about—and they take this to mean that I am not making sense. Of course, religious people often present the opposite problem: they tend to think they know exactly what I’m talking about, in so far as it can seem to support one religious doctrine or another. Both these orientations present impressive obstacles to understanding.

2. There is a connection between feeling transcendently good and being good. Not all good feelings have an ethical valence, of course. And there are surely pathological forms of ecstasy. I have no doubt, for instance, that many suicide bombers feel extraordinarily good just before detonating themselves in a crowd. But there are forms of mental pleasure that seem intrinsically ethical. In fact, there are states of mind for which phrases like “boundless love and compassion” do not seem overblown. Of course, it is possible for a person not to know that this is a potential of the human mind, or to imagine that such experiences must be signs of psychopathology. Again, people who think this way seem to gravitate toward atheism. And it is decidedly inconvenient for the forces of Reason that if a person wakes up tomorrow feeling “boundless love and compassion” the only people likely to acknowledge the legitimacy of his experience will be representatives of one or another religion (or New Age cult).

3. Certain patterns of thought and attention prevent us from accessing deeper (and wiser) states of well-being. Transcendent experiences, in so far as they are usually temporary, are often surrounded by a penumbra of other states and insights. Just as one can glimpse deeper strata of well-being, and briefly see the world by their logic, one can notice the impediments to feeling this way in each subsequent moment. There is no question that all of these mental states have neurophysiological correlates—but the neurophysiology often has subjective correlates. Understanding the first-person side of the equation is essential for understanding the phenomenon. Everything worth knowing about the human mind, good and bad, is taking place inside the brain. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing to know about the qualitative character of these events. Yes, qualitative character can be misleading, and certain ways of talking about it can manufacture fresh misunderstandings about the mind. But this doesn’t mean that we can stop talking about the nature of conscious experience. At one level, there is nothing else to talk about.

4. Certain “spiritual” experiences can help us understand science. There are insights that one can have through meditation (that is, very close observation of first-person data) that line up rather well with what we know must be true at the level of the brain. I’ll mention just two, which I have written about before and will return to in subsequent posts: (1) the ego/self is a construct and a cognitive illusion; (2) there is no such thing as free will. There is simply no question that these statements are well grounded scientifically (in fact, it is very difficult to even imagine a physical account of the human mind that would suggest their falsity at this point). So, here are two facts which science gives us good reason to believe, and which I believe we can know through introspection, but which seem quite paradoxical and troubling to most people.

As for the “various psychoactive substances” Jerry mentions, I’ll address the risks and rewards of these in my next post.

At this point, I should probably make it explicitly clear that my admiration for Sam Harris isn't due to his vocal support of atheism nor to his vocal criticism of religion; but because of his scientific approach to contemplative issues. I think he finds a good balance between his atheistic/materialistic worldview and the fact that people have and can benefit from these kinds of spiritual experiences, something that's definitely missing from other 'New Atheist' writers such as Richard Dawkins.

pali vs. sanskrit: what's the deal?

2011-06-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

People new to Buddhism sometimes ask how it came to be that the teachings of Theravada were transmitted in Pali, but the teachings of Mahayana were primarily transmitted in Sanskrit. I'm certainly not an expert on the subject, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt; but from what I understand, it's mainly due to the combination of when and where each set of texts were initially composed, and when and where they were eventually transmitted.

Pali, an early form of Prakrit related to Hindi and Sanskrit, is thought to be a composite of several dialectal forms and expressions most likely based on the language the Buddha himself taught in, which is generally held to be a dialect of Magadhi Prakrit; although there's still a great deal of debate among scholars as to the exact dates and place of origin of Pali itself.

The commentarial tradition of Theravada holds that Pali is identical to Magadhi; but as the introduction to A New Course in Reading Pali: Entering the Word of the Buddha notes, it doesn't share many of the distinctive characteristics found in Magadhan inscriptions, primarily from the time of Asoka (approximately 300–232 BCE). Nevertheless, it's considered by many scholars, such as Wilhelm Geiger and Walpola Rahula, to at least be closely related to Magadhi, especially in the sense of being a type of popular speech.

Whatever the case, it's believe that at the time of the Buddha (approximately 400 BCE), many of the great wandering ascetics (samana) in the northern area of India known as Magadha, like the Buddha and his contemporary Mahavira (Nigantha Nataputta), taught in the popular vernacular of the people used for general communication and commerce, as opposed to Vedic Sanskrit, the sacred language of Vedas used by brahmins. This was not only done because they rejected the authority of the Vedas, but because they wanted to make their teachings more widely available. The use of Vedic Sanskrit also appears to be in decline by this time.

Not long afterwards, however, Sanskrit seems to have made a serious comeback as a literary and religious language thanks to the great Indian scholar and grammarian, Panini (scholarly dates vary from 500 to 300 BCE), and texts were starting to be written down as well as passed on orally. By the time the early Mahayana sutras were being composed, mostly in the south but also the north, Panini's Sanskrit had already become the standard, most likely starting in Gandhara, his home, and spreading south and east throughout the rest of India.

Early Buddhist texts underwent various degrees of Sanskritization, while newer texts were being composed in what's now termed Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit or even classical Sanskrit itself. Much of the former, making the scriptural basis of Theravada, were transmitted via Asoka to places like Sri Lanka, where they survived the decline of Buddhism in India and Central Asia, while much of the latter, making the scriptural basis of Mahayana, found a safe home in places like China.

some rambling thoughts on nietzsche's ego and will to power

2011-06-29T15:45:00.000-07:00

A recent thread on newbuddhist.com reminded me of something I wrote a while back about what Nietzsche might have meant when he wrote:

Let’s position ourselves, by contrast, at the end of this immense process, in the place where the tree at last yields its fruit, where society and the morality of custom finally bring to light the end for which they were simply the means: then we find, as the ripest fruit on that tree, the sovereign individual, something which resembles only itself, which has broken loose again from the morality of custom, the autonomous individual beyond morality (for ‘autonomous’ and ‘moral’ are mutually exclusive terms), in short, the human being who possesses his own independent and enduring will, who is entitled to make promises—and in him a consciousness quivering in every muscle, proud of what has finally been achieved and has become a living embodiment in him, a real consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of completion for human beings generally.

First, what does the word 'will' really mean? Is it independent of external factors? Is it influenced by them? Both? Neither? Is it possible that the human will isn't immutable, but frequently prone to change? If so, what are the causes and conditions that facilitate such changes? And what does this mean in regard to the individual?

Sometimes I tend to think that I'm little more than the product of my environment and the culmination of ideas and experiences that my senses have taken in during my lifetime. That's part of the reason I sometimes think that the 'individual' is nothing more than a useful fiction we utilize in order to communicate and make sense of the world in a relative sense, but one that ultimately falls apart on further analysis.

It may all just be a matter of perspective, but having been influenced by social, cultural and other omnipresent conditionings, can the 'individual' really be said to be individual in the first place? Or put another way: Does a closed-system, biological entity truly exist?

In a certain sense, we have what appears to be a certain amount of autonomy. Will, volition or the creative spark in humankind expresses itself in a myriad of ways, and it's difficult to deny the products of that expression. Nevertheless, can an individual ever be considered a closed-system when they continually interact with their surroundings and vice versa? I fail to see how. And what of will? Can we, with any degree of certainty, say that it's truly independent? Again, I fail to see how.

If, on the other hand, we are open-systems with, arguably, a number of biological and psychological filters, is there any way to truly pull out the 'individual' as being something separate? I tend to think not. Why? Because trying to do so neglects much of what makes the 'individual' an individual by rejecting the inherent interdependence of their existence. The same also applies to the will of said individual.

Then again, perhaps not. But this line of reasoning has helped me to see that what happens in the world around me does matter to me as an individual, that trying to be active and change things is useful, even important. I quite like how Dr. Anil Rajvanshi puts it, albeit in a different context, when he says that "... each one of us lead our own separate lives which 'dart' randomly depending on the forces acting upon us yet collectively we go forward in a band which is called human evolution" (Free Will, Evolution and Chaos Theory).

What does this all mean? I'm not sure if it means anything; but when I try to piece it all together, here's what I get:

Metaphysics aside, my philosophy has always been that it's up to each individual, as far as they're able, to live their own lives and make their own choices. Nevertheless, as a good friend of mine once said to me, it's not the gods who make the world the way it is; we make the world this way. And we can make it into whatever we desire.

Perhaps Nietzsche was right about the human being who "possesses his own independent and enduring will." Perhaps that's the metaphorical godhead of human evolution, to perfect the skill of consciously creating our reality to the point that we eventually transcend our limitations and experience the world in an entirely new way. Perhaps, then, the problem lies not in the world, but within us, with our desires, our will; self-mastery being the key as well as the goal. But here's were I think Nietzsche goes wrong, at least from a Buddhist point of view.

In my opinion, Nietzsche's type of ego-development leads to an unhealthy type of individual who 'transcends' the world in order to lord over it, a hero who's the antithesis of Buddhism's spiritual egalitarianism, e.g., In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he calls the 'lust to rule' a "gift-giving virtue"; proclaims that selfishness is blessed, wholesome and healthy; and suggests suffering can be drowned out by continuously creating and overcoming oneself.

I think this issue arises mainly from his unbalanced view of morality, i.e., his focus on the 'strong-willed individual'; and his rejection of what he calls 'slave morality,' which values actions according to their good or evil (i.e., skillful or unskillful) intentions, for 'master-morality,' which values actions according to their good or bad (i.e., pleasant or painful) consequences. This view is unbalanced in that it either overlooks, or completely denies, the efficacy of the intentions underlying our actions (not to mention its blatant disregard for others); whereas Buddhism recognizes both actions and their intentions as contributing to the experience of mental well-being and/or suffering, for ourselves as well as others.

I find that the Buddha's teachings and techniques for developing a healthy ego, on the other hand, ultimately take the opposite approach, switching self-grasping (fueling the fire) for letting-go (removing the fire's fuel), with Buddha's teachings on not-self being a "useful way of disentangling oneself from the attachments & clingings which lead to suffering" (The Not-self Strategy). As Thanissaro Bhikkhu puts it:

[The Buddha] would have you drop unhealthy and unskillful ways of self-identification in favor of ways that were more skillful and refined. Only on the highest levels of practice, where even the most skillful concepts of self get in the way of the ultimate happiness, did the Buddha advocate totally abandoning them. But even then he didn’t advocate abandoning the basic principle of ego functioning. You drop the best happiness that can come from a sense of self because an even greater happiness—nirvana, totally timeless, limitless, and unconditioned—appears when you do.

morality sans a belief in god?

2011-06-23T08:38:00.001-07:00

While I accept that one can make a rational argument logically demonstrating the independence of God and morality (e.g., Euthyphro), I'm a little surprised by theists who attempt to argue that it's only through a belief in a creator God that one can be a 'moral' person.

Why? For one thing, we can empirically observe the fact that there are many seemingly moral people who are atheist and completely non-religious, so we can conclude that simply believing in a creator God isn't a requirement to being a moral person, i.e., someone who lives by a particular standard of what's right and wrong.

Moreover, we can empirically observe the fact that there are many religions and philosophies, including Buddhism, that have strong ethical and moral principles without being based on the idea of a creator God, many of their adherents being, at least superficially, moral people. From this, we can conclude that theism isn't necessarily the only theological/philosophical basis for morality.

Whether or not a theist accepts the validity of these systems is irrelevant.

As for the basis of Buddhist ethics and morality, which I'd say is ultimately empirical and pragmatic in nature rather than 'revealed,' the underlying principles are kamma — the idea that certain actions produce pleasant, painful or neutral feelings/results — and the principle of ahimsa or harmlessness. (For more of my thoughts about Buddhist morality, see this.)

I've also noticed that there's also some confusion when it comes to Buddhist morality in that some people ask, If Buddhism says everything is an illusion, what's the point of trying to be a moral person? Wouldn't just be a futile effort?

To begin with, as far as I'm aware, the Buddha never said that everything is an illusion (i.e., unreal or empty of substance), especially when it comes to actions and their results. In my opinion, this is most likely a misunderstanding of what the Buddha says in place like SN 22.95, which people sometimes try to apply to everything, including the principle of causality.

And since Buddhist morality is centred on the efficacy of actions and the intentions underlying them, a Buddhist can be a moral person even without a belief in God simply by constantly reflecting upon their actions of body, speech and mind, and whether they lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both (MN 61).

is lying ever ok?

2011-06-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

When it comes to the precept against lying, it's often asked (1) whether it's OK to lie in a particular circumstance, and (2) if we have to undo and/or atone for our past, unskillful deeds. One of the most common questions being, Is it OK to lie if the Gestapo comes knocking on your door and you have a family of Jews hiding in your basement?

It's an interesting questions. I don't know if it's ever OK to lie, but I do think it can be easier to deal with certain situations by lying than not. The question is, how much effort do we want to put into observing the fourth precept? At times, I've put forth a lot, but others, not so much. Looking back at my own life, I don't think I've ever really had a good reason to lie when I did so much as I simply found it to be more expedient. And since becoming interested in Buddhism, I've found myself lying less and immediately correcting myself when I do catch myself telling a fib or exaggerating the truth.

That said, the Buddha seems to take the position that lying is never really 'OK.' Thanissaro Bhikkhu, for example, notes that throughout the 550 birth stories contained in the Jakata, the precept against lying is the only one the Buddha doesn't break. Moreover, the Buddha appears to hold truthfulness in pretty high regard (e.g., see examples of his words on truthfulness here).

Personally, I tend to agree with Aristotle that lying isn't legitimate unless overridden by some higher virtue (i.e., anything leading to the highest good), such as lying to save someone's life (which is probably a position more in line with Mahayana than Theravada). In most circumstances, if I'm forced into a position where I have to either lie or watch someone die because I tell the truth, I'm going to lie my ass off. The only issue I have with the Gestapo scenario, however, is that it (like most hypotheticals of this nature) seems to be based on the assumption that lying is the only way to protect a family of Jews hiding in your basement.

For example, one could preemptively befriend local Nazis, having a few drinks with them or whatnot, so that they wouldn't even be suspected of harbouring Jews in the first place. Or, if confronted unexpectedly, one could simply invite them in (assuming the people were fairly well hidden), offer them a drink and say, "Have a look if you want." It'd be the equivalent of saying "I've got nothing to hide" without actually having to lie.

Either way, there's not much one could do to prevent them from searching one's home if that's what they had in mind to do; although, they probably wouldn't look as hard if they didn't feel suspicious. And having an open and friendly attitude would probably help. But, like I said, I'd have no qualms about lying in this situation if I had to or couldn't think of anything better.

As for rest, there's nothing wrong with trying to correct your past indiscretions (although, it should be noted that mistakes and misunderstandings ≠ lies), but it's my opinion that you don't need to correct every lie you've ever told as long as you make a serious effort to renounce lying and do your best to cultivate the truth in the future, e.g., in AN 10.176, the Buddha says:

And how is one made pure in four ways by verbal action? There is the case where a certain person, abandoning false speech, abstains from false speech. When he has been called to a town meeting, a group meeting, a gathering of his relatives, his guild, or of the royalty, if he is asked as a witness, 'Come & tell, good man, what you know': If he doesn't know, he says, 'I don't know.' If he does know, he says, 'I know.' If he hasn't seen, he says, 'I haven't seen.' If he has seen, he says, 'I have seen.' Thus he doesn't consciously tell a lie for his own sake, for the sake of another, or for the sake of any reward. Abandoning false speech, he abstains from false speech. He speaks the truth, holds to the truth, is firm, reliable, no deceiver of the world.

Notice that he doesn't say you have to go back and un-tell each and every lie or half-truth you've ever told in the past, which would most likely be a never-ending task, but simply to make a firm effort to abstain from lying in the present. The basic idea is that, genuine self-purification comes from a combination of constant reflection and the cultivation of skillfulness in one's actions of body, speech and mind (MN 61). And the more one develops wholesome motivations, the more one becomes purified.

anatta (not-self) vs. attakara (self-agency)

2011-06-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

Someone raised an interesting question yesterday about an apparent contradiction between two suttas, AN 6.38 and SN 22.59. The former seeming to affirm the existence of a self-doer, while the latter stating that the five aggregates are not-self (anatta), which begs the question, How can there be a self-doer if all of the aggregates are not-self?

To begin with, I tend to translate attakara as 'individual effort,' which I think helps avoid some of these linguistic dilemmas. Moreover, I understand this self-doing or self agency or individual effort that's mentioned in AN 6.38 to be analogous to kamma, the intentional actions done via body, speech and mind (AN 6.63).

Kamma is intention (cetana), and intention is a product of the aggregate of mental formations (sankharakhandha). Therefore, being a product or process within one of the aggregates, which themselves are types of processes and not-self, this type of internal decision maker or will-to-do, if you will, has its own requisite conditions and is also not-self, since whatever is conditioned and subject to change can't be said to have an unchanging being or essence.

In other words, SN 22.59 is refuting the idea of a permanent and unchanging self or soul (i.e., an agent free from conditionality, and consequently, aging, illness and death) within and controlling the aggregates, whereas AN 6.38 is refuting the idea that there's no volitional choice available to us whatsoever. They're two extremes the Buddha rejects. As one erudite poster from dhammawheel.com put it:

Desire and attention and volitional choice can all be concomitant causes or effects. Freedom of choice isn't independent of other causes and conditions -- it operates within the same conditioned mind-stream. But it does operate, and it does so in consort with desire and attention, and so on. Hence there is no need for Cartesian notions of free will or Upaniṣadic notions of a permanent, unchanging Self for there to be freedom to choose. In fact, these non-Buddhist systems are not sustainable precisely because of the interdependence of phenomena: i.e. an unchanging agent cannot engage in actions, etc.

As for where the line between volitional and involuntary actions begins, I'd say it's consciousness (vinnana); although, given the complexities of this/that conditionality and the inherent interconnectedness of all these internal and external processes, I don't think there's anyway to pinpoint precisely what or where this element of intention is. For one, it's not a thing as much as a process, and this focus on processes over substances is one reason I view Buddhism as a type of process philosophy.

Basically, I think this apparent contradiction can be easily resolved by taking the context of the two suttas into consideration, as well as surmising that the Buddha essentially took the position that we, as sentient beings, have functional choice via intention operating within a broader framework of causality that conditions the choices available to us at any given time—thus avoiding the extremes of an unchanging agent (eternalism) and no agency at all (nihilism).

But this raises some difficult questions about the nature of volition and the choices we make, and I find myself being once again being swayed by the causal determinism found in the Abhidhamma. True free will requires an independent agent, and Buddhism effectively denies such an agency. And if our volition is itself conditioned by other factors, then it, too, must ultimately be the result of causally determined processes, meaning that it's not so much an agent as it has the appearance of being an agent. For example, Dhammanando Bhikkhu once gave me the example of a mosquito biting you on the nose: first you feel annoyed and want to squash it, but then you recall that you're a precept-observing Buddhist and so restrain yourself.

He explained that when this event is described in conventional terms, or according to the Sutta method, it might be said that you had a choice to kill the mosquito or to refrain, and that you chose the latter. But when it's described according to the Abhidhamma method, your abstention from killing wasn't due to choice but to the arising of kusala cetasikas (wholesome mental factors) such as moral shame and fear of wrong-doing (hiri & ottappa), and abstinence (virati), i.e., it was causally determined.

And there are supporting passages like this from the Dhammasangani (pp. 7-8):

What on that occasion is volition (cetana)? The volition, purpose, purposefulness, which is born of contact with the appropriate element of representative intellection - that is the volition that there then is.

And the Atthasalini (pp.147-148):

Volition is that which co-ordinates, that is, it binds closely (abhisandahati) to itself associated states as objects. This is its characteristic; its function is conation. There is no such thing as volition in the four planes of existence without the characteristic of co-ordinating; all volition has it. But the function of conation is only in moral and immoral states; as regards activity in moral and immoral acts, the remaining associated states play only a restricted part. But volition is exceedingly energetic. It makes double effort, double exertion. Hence the Ancients said: 'Volition is like the nature of a landowner, a cultivator who, taking fifty-five strong men, went down to the fields to reap. He was exceedingly energetic and exceedingly strenuous; he doubled his strength, he doubled his effort, and said, "Take your sickles," and so forth, pointed out the portion to be reaped, offered them drink, food, scent, flowers, etc., and took an equal share of the work.' Volition is like the cultivator; the fifty-five moral states which arise as factors of consciousness are like the fifty-five strong men; like the time of doubling strength, doubling effort by the cultivator is the doubled strength, double effort of volition as regards activity in moral and immoral acts. Thus should conation as its function be understood.

It has directing as manifestation. It arises directing associated states, like the chief disciple, the chief carpenter, etc., who fulfil their own and others' duties... even so, when volition starts work on its object, it sets associated states to do each its own work. For when it puts forth energy, they also put forth energy... It is also evident that it arises by causing associated states to be energetic in such things as recollecting an urgent work and so forth.

Moreover, I think this Abhidhammic position accords well with what Sam Harris writes about the illusion of free will here, here and here, and I find myself being swayed even further from my previous belief in free will by many of the arguments made by Harris and others who consider Buddhism to be entirely compatible with causal determinism.

best dhammapada translations online

2011-06-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

The Dhammapada, a small collection of verses attributed to the Buddha, is one of the most popular and well-known Buddhist texts. It's short, readable and full of great examples of the Buddha's wisdom.

Personally, given the inherent limitations of translation itself (which I view as more of an art form than an exact science), I don't think there's one definitive translation, especially since each translation has its own pros and cons. That said, I do think that there are a lot of good translations out there, many of which can be found online.

If someone is looking for a more poetic rendition, for example, I'd suggest Thanissaro Bhikkhu's version. If they're looking for something that represents the commentarial tradition of Theravada, on the other hand, I'd suggest Daw Mya Tin's translation, which includes the Pali text along with a summary of the background stories to each verse as related by the ancient commentator, Buddhaghosa. Narada Thera's translation and Acharya Buddharakkhita's translation are also highly regarded in the Theravadin community.

And if one wants to go really old school, they can check out Max Muller's 1881 translation; which isn't without its flaws, but still quite popular and respected despite its age.

does buddhism deny evolution?

2011-06-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

Today, on two of the Buddhist discussion forums that I regularly frequent, someone asked about some of the seeming contradictions between Buddhism and the theory of evolution, and I thought it'd be worth reproducing my answers here.

The first question was whether Buddhism and/or Buddhists deny evolution. I answered that, although it's possible there are some who do, as far as I'm aware the answer is no to both.

For example, while I see Buddhism as dealing exclusively with mental stress and its cessation (i.e., psychology), and not biology, physics, etc., the Buddha does tell a story about the beginning of life on this world to two brahmins which, in the end, was used to illustrate how the way to liberation is beyond caste and lineage (DN 27). So, in this regard, the Buddha does give what can be interpreted as a rough theory of evolution to the pair of brahmins in that the physical characteristics of the mythological beings in question change due to environmental changes and interactions.

I think that, when taken literally, the creation myth in DN 27 can be seen as an attempt to give a naturalistic explanation of the origins of life and the universe, and Darwin's fairly well-proven theory of evolution certainly isn't inconsistent with this. That being said, I agree with Prof. Gombrich that, taking the context of DN 27 into account, this sutta is a lively and ingenious parody that's actually meant to make fun of the very need for a cosmology as a foundation for religious development (How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings, pg. 81-82). Either way, Buddhism and the theory of evolution aren't mutually exclusive, and there's nothing in the former that contradicts the latter.

Another question was whether the Buddhist concept of rebirth denies evolution when it says that "evolution or life-cycles follow kamma rather than genes." To this I also answered no, since even if you take the teachings on rebirth literally, they don't say that evolution follows kamma.

In the Suttas, the Buddha defines kamma as intentional actions of body, speech and mind (AN 6.63) that have the potential to produce certain results, which, in turn, have the potential to produce pleasant, painful or neutral feelings (vedana) in the mind (AN 4.235). The word itself simply means 'action.' The basic premise behind kamma is that there's a cause and effect relationship between our actions and how they're experienced, and the teachings themselves deal specifically with the intentional action of individuals and how the results of those actions are then experienced by said individuals.

Intention (cetana) is a product of the aggregate of mental formations (sankharakhandha). The cause by which kamma comes into play is sensory contact (phassa). Furthermore, according to Nyanatiloka's Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines, vipaka, 'fruit' or 'result,' is limited to "any ... mental phenomenon (e.g. bodily agreeable or painful feeling, sense-consciousness, etc.), which is the result of wholesome or unwholesome volitional action (karma, q.v.) through body, speech or mind, done either in this or some previous life."

In other words, kamma is primarily psychological in nature and has nothing to do with the physical evolution of species over time. In fact, later commentaries, stressing the fact that not everything we experience in life is caused by kamma, lists five distinct causal laws or processes (panca-niyamas) that operate in the physical and mental worlds: seasonal laws (utu-niyama), biological laws (bija-niyama), psychological laws (citta-niyama), kammic laws (kamma-niyama) and natural laws (dhamma-niyama). If anything, I'd say that evolution would fall under the category of biological laws, and that both kamma and evolution can be seen as two distinct processes working in tandem when it comes to a sentient being's experience of the present moment.

It was then asked if Buddhism denies that there are 'mental dispositions' in genes. I answered that I don't think so; but I also don't think it promotes this idea, either.

Nothing was known about genes in the Buddha's time, so it's no surprise that this question isn't explicitly addressed. But what I do know is that the Buddha didn't seem to reject that specific mental events are contingent upon corresponding physical events in the brain, which is the prevailing view of modern science, but he didn't explicitly promote it, either. In The Buddha and His Teachings, for example, Narada Thera notes that:

In the Patthana, the Book of Relations, the Buddha refers to the seat of consciousness, in such indirect terms as 'yam rupam nissaya—depending on that material thing', without positively asserting whether that rupa was either the heart (hadaya) or the brain. But, according to the view of commentators like Venerable Buddhaghosa and Anuruddha, the seat of consciousness is definitely the heart. It should be understood that the Buddha neither accepted nor rejected the popular cardiac theory.

So even though the Buddha detailed the mutual dependency of mental and physical activity and consciousness (DN 15), he wasn't a strict materialist. In regard to name-and-form (nama-rupa), for example, he didn't see consciousness as merely the byproduct of matter; he saw mentality and materiality as mutually sustaining immaterial and material phenomena, using the analogy of two sheaves of reeds leaning against one another to illustrate their relationship (SN 12.67). The extent of this connection, however, is debatable.

Nevertheless, I think questions like these, as well as any about evolution itself, lie outside the scope of Buddhism proper, which deals exclusively with one subject, the subjective experience of human mental suffering. The Buddha himself made it clear that:

Both formerly and now, monks, I declare only stress and the cessation of stress.

In essence, Buddhism doesn't seek to explore or explain the objective world, which is the realm of science, but to explore and the inner world of the mind, the microcosm, in order to achieve an inner peace and happiness.

The Buddha approached the problem of mental stress and suffering like a doctor, formulating the four noble truths in the same way that ancient Indian physicians formulated medical diagnoses, i.e., disease (stress), cause (craving), prognosis (a cure/cessation of craving is possible) and treatment (the noble eightfold path). And while it may sound overly simplistic, the basic premise of the path can be summed up by this short passage from the Dhammapada:

The non-doing of any evil, the performance of what's skillful, the cleansing of one's own mind: this is the teaching of the Awakened.

The Buddha's teachings are nothing if not pragmatic in nature. I think this is made especially clear in MN 22, where the Buddha likens his teachings to a raft:

"Monks, I will teach you the Dhamma compared to a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak."

"As you say, lord," the monks responded to the Blessed One.

The Blessed One said: "Suppose a man were traveling along a path. He would see a great expanse of water, with the near shore dubious & risky, the further shore secure & free from risk, but with neither a ferryboat nor a bridge going from this shore to the other. The thought would occur to him, 'Here is this great expanse of water, with the near shore dubious & risky, the further shore secure & free from risk, but with neither a ferryboat nor a bridge going from this shore to the other. What if I were to gather grass, twigs, branches, & leaves and, having bound them together to make a raft, were to cross over to safety on the other shore in dependence on the raft, making an effort with my hands & feet?' Then the man, having gathered grass, twigs, branches, & leaves, having bound them together to make a raft, would cross over to safety on the other shore in dependence on the raft, making an effort with his hands & feet. Having crossed over to the further shore, he might think, 'How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the further shore. Why don't I, having hoisted it on my head or carrying on my back, go wherever I like?' What do you think, monks: Would the man, in doing that, be doing what should be done with the raft?"

"No, lord."

"And what should the man do in order to be doing what should be done with the raft? There is the case where the man, having crossed over, would think, 'How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the further shore. Why don't I, having dragged it on dry land or sinking it in the water, go wherever I like?' In doing this, he would be doing what should be done with the raft. In the same way, monks, I have taught the Dhamma compared to a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto. Understanding the Dhamma as taught compared to a raft, you should let go even of Dhammas, to say nothing of non-Dhammas."

The final question dealt with rebirth and whether Buddhists believe that characteristics like beauty, intelligence, health and longevity, etc. come from past life kamma and not from genes; and if not, how this apparent relationship between past life kamma and genetics is reconciled.

I suppose that some might seeing as how there are suttas which seem to suggest that one will enjoy things like beauty, intelligence, health and longevity, etc. in a future lifetime due to actions done in this life, but there's debate as to what they mean. Some, for example, suggest that these mundane teachings on morality (those dealing with what's regarded as 'me' and 'mine') were given to people who (1) already believed in rebirth and (2) weren't spiritually ready for more advanced, supramundane teachings (those dealing with emptiness and not-self) (e.g., MN 117, MN 143, etc.).

Others, however, take these literally, and suggest that our actions in this life can affect our experiences in the next. But even then, the basic idea is that, skillful actions lead to pleasant results/feelings, and unskillful actions lead to unpleasant results/painful feelings, not that actions in and of themselves are responsible for things like changes in inherited traits. It's quite possible, for example, that evolution takes place, and species physical change over time, while another process is at work in the mental realm, influencing the growth and development of consciousness.

Now, this may be misconstrued as suggesting that psychology and genetics are completely unrelated, but that's not what I'm saying, nor what I believe. Of course our genetic makeup influences our psychology and behaviour to a certain extent (as will external factors such as upbringing), but that doesn't mean our psychology and behaviour is responsible for the evolutionary changes in inherited traits of species over time. In this way, genetics can affect kamma, but not vice versa, as in I do x and y trait will develop as a direct result.

It may also be asked whether the various nimayas imply a type of ontology, which is an interesting question in that the Buddha's teachings generally seem to avoid such metaphysics in favour of a pragmatic approach to suffering and its causes (e.g., see MN 63). I don't think it necessarily does, but if so, I'd say it's closer to something like process philosophy, where the focus is on processes or becoming rather than unchanging being or essence, e.g., Heraclitus vs. Plato; anicca + anatta vs. atman; or anything else that looks at change vs. essence.

If something is impermanent, it means that it's subject to change, whereas that which has a permanent being or essence isn't. In other words, becoming (or any process of change) is only possible within the context of impermanence. In the examples I gave above, the former are examples of things dealing with processes or becoming, while the latter are things dealing with unchanging being or essence. For example, Heraclitus, if we're to believe Plato, is famous for his idea that "everything flows," whereas Plato is famous for his idea of eternal forms. In the second example, the Buddha taught that what we mistakenly cling to as 'self' is really only impermanent phenomena subject to arising, changing and passing away, whereas the Vedas and Upanishads taught that our self is something real and eternal, something that is.

Strict ontology deals more with what is (i.e., being or essence), whereas the basic idea behind process philosophy is that what 'exists' is best understood in terms of processes rather than things or substances, and that change — whether physical, organic or psychological — "is the pervasive and predominant feature of the real." As such, it's sometimes called 'ontology of becoming.'

Of course, in Buddhism, becoming (bhava) refers more to the sense of identity that arises when there's clinging to one or more of the aggregates, but the basic idea is that our sense of self is a process of 'I-making' and 'my-making,' which I think can be classified as a type of process philosophy. And the reason I mention this is because I think that the niyamas are simply an extension of this idea, only applied by later commentators to external phenomena like the growth cycles of plants, weather, etc. in an effort to stress that not everything we experience in life is caused by kamma.

And I think all of this is worth pointing out in order to illustrate that the theory of evolution is entirely compatible with Buddhism—that Buddhism acknowledges change, and doesn't hold the belief (as some mistakenly assume) that everything, including the changes in inherited traits of species through successive generations, is caused by kamma.

(For further reference, more of my thoughts on the Buddhist concept of rebirth can be found here, and some of my rambling thoughts on consciousness can be found here.)

the futility of violence

2011-05-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

My first response to the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by the US was: "Ten years, thousands of lives and billions of dollars later, and the US has finally succeeded in making Osama bin Laden a martyr. Good job?"

All sarcasm aside, I realize that many see bin Laden's death as a cause for celebration, but I think it's worth reflecting on Lao-Tzu's words on war, especially the part about treating victory in war as a funeral:

Where the princely man abides, the weak left hand is in honour. But he who uses weapons honours the stronger right. Weapons are instruments of ill omen; they are not the instruments of the princely man, who uses them only when he needs must. Peace and tranquillity are what he prizes. When he conquers, he is not elate. To be elate were to rejoice in the slaughter of human beings. And he who rejoices in the slaughter of human beings is not fit to work his will in the Empire.

On happy occasions, the left is favoured; on sad occasions, the right. The second in command has his place on the left, the general in chief on the right. That is to say, they are placed in the order observed at funeral rites. And, indeed, he who has exterminated a great multitude of men should bewail them with tears and lamentation. It is well that those who are victorious in battle should be placed in the order of funeral rites.

A similar sentiment can even be found in the Old Testament of the Bible:

Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice, or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from them. (Pro 24:17-18)

Personally, it saddens me to see so many people celebrating the death of another human being, even a not-so-nice one like bin Laden. It reminds me of Gandhi's saying: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." In fact, one of the main things that originally attracted me to Buddhism was its attitude towards violence, e.g.:

"He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who harbor such thoughts do not still their hatred.

"He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred.

Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.

There are those who do not realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels. (Dhp 1.3-6).

And:

Killing, you gain
your killer.
Conquering, you gain one
who will conquer you;
insulting, insult;
harassing, harassment.

And so, through the cycle of action,
he who has plundered
gets plundered in turn. (SN 3.15)

I think Howard Zinn, a WWII vet and political activist, came to a similar understanding — that war can't end war, that violence can't end violence — from his experiences in WWII; an idea which he expressed in part of a speech he gave in 2006:

I was talking to my barber the other day, because we always discuss world politics. And he's totally politically unpredictable, as most barbers are, you see. He said, "Howard," he said, "you know, you and I disagree on many things, but on one thing we agree: war solves nothing." And I thought, "Yeah." It's not hard for people to grasp that.

And there again, history is useful. We've had a history of war after war after war after war. What have they solved? What have they done? Even World War II, the "good war," the war in which I volunteered, the war in which I dropped bombs, the war after which, you know, I received a letter from General Marshall, general of generals, a letter addressed personally to me, and to 16 million others, in which he said, "We've won the war. It will be a new world." Well, of course, it wasn't a new world. It hasn't been a new world. War after war after war.

There are certain -- I came out of that war, the war in which I had volunteered, the war in which I was an enthusiastic bombardier, I came out of that war with certain ideas, which just developed gradually at the end of the war, ideas about war. One, that war corrupts everybody who engages in it. War poisons everybody who engages in it. You start off as the good guys, as we did in World War II. They're the bad guys. They're the fascists. What could be worse? So, they're the bad guys, we're the good guys. And as the war goes on, the good guys begin behaving like the bad guys. You can trace this back to the Peloponnesian War. You can trace it back to the good guy, the Athenians, and the bad guys, the Spartans. And after a while, the Athenians become ruthless and cruel, like the Spartans.

And we did that in World War II. We, after Hitler committed his atrocities, we committed our atrocities. You know, our killing of 600,000 civilians in Japan, our killing of probably an equal number of civilians in Germany. These, they weren't Hitler, they weren't Tojo. They weren't -- no, they were just ordinary people, like we are ordinary people living in a country that is a marauding country, and they were living in countries that were marauding countries, and they were caught up in whatever it was and afraid to speak up. And I don't know, I came to the conclusion, yes, war poisons everybody.

I know that we're not a nonviolent species by nature; but as naive as it might sound, it's my hope that we'll eventually see the futility of violence in the long run.

the place of god in buddhism

2011-05-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

People new to Buddhism, especially those who come from a Judeo-Christian background, often ask about the place of God in Buddhism. Many are surprised to learn that most Buddhist traditions and texts don't posit an omnipotent, omniscient, creator god analogous to the Judeo-Christian God, and it seems to me that there are three main reasons why the question of God is basically a non-issue in Buddhism.

Reason #1: According to the texts, a beginning point to samsara (literally 'wandering on') isn't evident (SN 15.3). This can be interpreted two ways — that a beginning point to the continual cycle of death and rebirth of beings isn't evident, or that a beginning point to the continual cycle of death and rebirth of the conceit 'I am,' the self-identification that designates a being (satta), isn't evident — and they're not mutually exclusive. Either way, the point is the same: all that really matters in the here and now is whether suffering is present, and if so, how it can be overcome.

Reason #2: I think it's safe to say that Buddhism is essentially non-theistic in view. However, I also happen to be of the opinion that, if we dig a bit deeper, the idea of a creator God is incompatible with certain aspects and teachings that, if taken to their logical conclusion, seem to reject the idea of, or a need for, a creator God. For one thing, the logic of dependent co-arising, while primarily concerned with the psychological process by which suffering arises in the mind, negates the idea of a creator God in that it precludes a first cause or a causeless cause.

Then there's this famous problem of evil passage from the Bhuridatta Jataka (although, to be fair, this is most likely a later addition that some date to the 13th century):

We see those rules enforced before our eyes,
None but the Brahmans offer sacrifice,
None but the Khattiya exercises sway,
The Vessas plough, the Suddas must obey.
These greedy liars propagate deceit,
And fools believe the fictions they repeat;
He who has eyes can see the sickening sight;
Why does not Brahma set his creatures right?
If his wide power no limits can restrain,
Why is his hand so rarely spread to bless?
Why are his creatures all condemned to pain?
Why does he not to all give happiness?

Why do fraud, lies, and ignorance prevail?
Why triumphs falsehood, truth and justice fail?
I count your Brahma one of the unjust among,
Who made a world in which to shelter wrong.
Those men are counted pure who only kill
Frogs, worms, bees, snakes or insects as they will,
These are your savage customs which I hate,
Such as Kamboja hordes might emulate.
If he who kills is counted innocent
And if the victim safe to heaven is sent,
Let Brahmans Brahmans kill so all were well
And those who listen to the words they tell.

At best, God would have be more like the impassive and impersonal God of Aristotle, existing outside of time and space, to find a place within Buddhist cosmology; and anything existing outside of time and space would logically be completely static, meaning that God would be an undynamic being if God exists at all. Since everything within the range of our experience (i.e., within space and time) is subject to change, however, it's more logical to conclude that everything within our realm of experience is impermanent, meaning that for God to able to interact with our universe, God would also be temporal and subject to illness, aging and death just like every other being.

Nevertheless, even in the earliest parts of the Pali Canon, there are references to devas or what we might call 'heavenly beings.' However, devas (literally 'radiant ones'), which are often seen as gods when taken literally, are simply non-human beings who are more powerful and long-lived than ordinary humans, and are by no means eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc. (e.g., see DN 1). But more importantly, they can also be viewed metaphorically as the indulgent and hedonistic aspects of our psychology (i.e., the parts that are addicted to sensual pleasures).

In addition, according to AN 3.61, the belief in a supreme being can be unskillful and interfere with Dhamma practice if it leads to the belief that everything a person experiences is due to such a supreme being, a denial of the efficacy of kamma (literally 'action') and a life of inaction:

Having approached the priests & contemplatives who hold that... 'Whatever a person experiences... is all caused by a supreme being's act of creation,' I said to them: 'Is it true that you hold that... "Whatever a person experiences... is all caused by a supreme being's act of creation?"' Thus asked by me, they admitted, 'Yes.' Then I said to them, 'Then in that case, a person is a killer of living beings because of a supreme being's act of creation. A person is a thief... unchaste... a liar... a divisive speaker... a harsh speaker... an idle chatterer... greedy... malicious... a holder of wrong views because of a supreme being's act of creation.' When one falls back on creation by a supreme being as being essential, monks, there is no desire, no effort [at the thought], 'This should be done. This shouldn't be done.' When one can't pin down as a truth or reality what should & shouldn't be done, one dwells bewildered & unprotected. One cannot righteously refer to oneself as a contemplative. This was my second righteous refutation of those priests & contemplatives who hold to such teachings, such views.

Reason #3: In relation to the four noble truths and the practice of the noble eightfold path, the matter of the existence of God is, soteriologically speaking, unnecessary. The impetus of the practice is a strong conviction in the efficacy of actions and the intentions underlying them, not the existence of a supreme being (e.g., see MN 61).

Of course, this doesn't mean that people can't believe in God and still practice the Dhamma, especially some of its more contemplative aspects; but it does mean that, at the very least, such views can negatively impact the practice when held inappropriately. In addition, I understand that a belief in God can provide comfort in difficult times, as well as serve as the basis for a beneficial ethical-spiritual practice. I also accept that certain people may have had some kind of profound spiritual experience that has led them to adopt such beliefs, and I don't have any issues with that myself. (I mean, who am I to argue with someone's personal experiences?)

Moreover, I think one can certainly present Judeo-Christian ideas in a more or less Buddhistic way, and vice versa. As I've often mentioned before, my dear friend Simon shared with me some of his ideas regarding the "excellence of the synthesis of the messages and practices" of Buddhism and Christianity; and people like David Cooper (God is a Verb) and Thomas Merton (Mystics and Zen Masters) seem to continually find harmony between these spiritual disciplines.

what gets reborn?

2011-04-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

The question often arises, If Buddhism doesn't posit a soul, what gets reborn? From the Theravadin point of view (or at least from the point of view of those in Theravada who accept the idea of postmortem rebirth), rebirth is viewed as the continuation of a process—nothing 'remains,' nothing 'transmigrates,' there are merely fleeting phenomena that condition other fleeting phenomena in the interdependent process we call life.

One way to look at it is that a casual process can be self-sustaining, with causes creating effects, and effect acting as causes, creating feedback loops. And if you admit the possibility of immaterial causes and not just material ones (assuming that a clear distinction between the two can even be made), then the continuation of said process isn't limited by or to a single material body. And if you believe Bertrand Russell, the more we understand about matter (i.e., energy), the more the word itself becomes "no more than a conventional shorthand for stating causal laws concerning events" (An Outline of Philosophy).

Here, consciousness isn't seen as a static things going from life to life, but simply as one link or event in a complex causal chain, i.e., moments of consciousness arising and ceasing in rapid succession, with the last consciousness of a being at the time of death immediately conditioning the arising of a new consciousness due to the presence of craving (kind of like 'spooky action at a distance' where two entangled particles communicate with each other instantaneously, even over great distances). It's almost better to think of it as a transmission of information rather than the transmigration of some thing.

Thus, in Buddhism, there can theoretically be continuity between lives without having to posit some type of permanent, unchanging consciousness or soul that travels from life to life. That's why the Pali term vinnanasota or 'stream of consciousness' is often used to describe the flow of conscious events, even when presented within the context of rebirth. (Similarly with terms like bhavangasota (stream of becoming), found in Snp 3.12, and samvattanikamvinnanam (evolving consciousness), found in MN 106.)

Unfortunately, there are no suttas that give a detailed explanation of this process, and the detailed workings of this process are to be found in the Abhidhamma and Pali commentaries. While many people reject the Abhidhamma and commentaries as reliable sources of information regarding what the Buddha taught, I don't think the views of the Buddha and the ancient commentators such as Buddhaghosa are necessarily mutually exclusive.

the power of love

2011-04-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months or so, I've developed a growing appreciation for Christianity. Among the similarities I've already found between Buddhism and Christianity, another possibility is their seeming agreement on the salvific power of love.

In Richard Gombrich's new book, What the Buddha Thought, for example, he mentions that, while the idea of loving-kindness (metta) being salvific is often neglected in Theravada (i.e., the general consensus traditional being that the four brahma-viharas themselves only lead to rebirth in the Brahma realms, not nibbana), there are texts in the Pali Canon extolling kindness and how it can lead to enlightenment. One is the Metta Sutta (found at Khp 9 and Snp 1.8), which begins with extolling kindness towards the world, and climaxes with this passage:

Towards the whole world one should develop loving thoughts boundless: upwards, downwards, sideways, without restriction, enmity or rivalry. Standing, walking, sitting or lying, one should be as alert as possible and keep one's mind on this. They call this divine living in the world. Not taking up ideas, virtuous with perfect insight, by controlling greed for sensual pleasure one does not return to lie in the womb. (Gombrich's translation)

He notes that, "This conclusion to the poem surely corroborates that the whole poem is about how one may become enlightened. Moreover, it is natural to interpret 'not returning to lie in the womb' as meaning that one will have escaped altogether from the cycle of rebirth, which is to say that one will have attained nirvana" (87). Of course, he's careful to point out that the poem doesn't state kindness alone will produce salvific results, and that it mentions other qualities of great importance (e.g., insight and self-control), but then he brings up Dhp 368:

The monk who dwells in kindness, with faith in the Buddha's teachings, may attain the peaceful state, the blissful cessation of conditioning. (Gombrich's tranlsation)

Gombrich concludes this passage is "saying that kindness is salvific, and it is surely no coincidence that the term for nirvana, 'the peaceful state', is the same as the one used at the opening of the Metta Sutta" (87).

So while I'm not sure if love alone can lead to nibbana, I'm more inclined to agree with Gombrich that it can be salvific in the proper context. It's one of the ten perfections, after all, which are not only the skillful qualities one develops as one follows the path to nibbana, but the basis of the path to full Buddhahood as well. And this, I think, accords well with passages in the Bible such as, "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love" (1 John 4:8).

some rambling thoughts on consciouness

2011-04-06T18:22:00.001-07:00

Truth be told, I've always found the subject of consciousness an interesting one, from a scientific, as well as a philosophic point of view. Lately (and I'm blaming this on all the philosophy I've been reading in the past few months or so), I've been questioning the sharp distinction that's often made between consciousness and matter.

For example, I find myself agreeing with Bertrand Russell that, the more we understand about matter (i.e., energy), the more it seems the word itself becomes "no more than a conventional shorthand for stating causal laws concerning events" (An Outline of Philosophy). This, of course, raises a number of possibilities, one of them being that what we call 'mind' and 'matter' is ultimately groups or structures of events arising from a substance that's neither mental nor material, but in between the two a la neutral monism.

But even that explanation doesn't fully satisfy me, and I find myself going back to the Buddha and Hume, both of which rejected the idea of mental substance in favour of what Hume called association of ideas and bundle of perceptions, and what the Buddha called heaps (khandha).

As Bertrand Russell summarizes Hume's empiricism, "Ideas of unperceived things or occurrences can always be defined in terms of perceived things or occurrences, and therefore, by substituting the definition for the term defined, we can always state that we know empirically without introducing any unperceived things or occurrences." Thus, "all psychological knowledge can be stated without introducing the 'Self'. Further, the 'Self', as defined can be nothing but a bundle of perceptions, not a new simple 'thing'" (A History of Western Philosophy, 603).

Moreover, I don't reject that specific mental events appear to be contingent upon corresponding physical events in the brain. I think it's been conclusively shown that there's a link between consciousness and the body via the brain, and that when the brain's damaged, the link between consciousness and the body is damaged. However, I'm not convinced that this in and of itself proves that consciousness is merely an emergent property of the brain, or that it ceases to exist when the brain itself no longer functions. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation.

I'll admit that it's looking more and more like that's the most likely scenario, but when I read things like The Holographic Universe, Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer, or even some of Rupert Sheldrake's crazy ideas regarding morphogeneic fields, I can't help but think that maybe it's not the whole picture. I suppose it could just be wishful thinking on my part, but I'm not ready to jump on the materialist bandwagon just yet.

Perhaps consciousness is simply a by-product of electrochemical processes in the brain, but perhaps there's another dimension to consciousness that science has yet to discover. I'm not saying that there is, mind you, but it's certainly a possibility. As B. Alan Wallace points out in an interview with Steve Paulson in the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion:

This very notion that the mind must simply be an emergent property of the brain — consisting only of physical phenomena and nothing more — is not a testable hypothesis... Can you test the statement that there is nothing else going on apart from physical phenomena and their emergent properties? The answer is no... If your sole access to the mind is by way of physical phenomena, then you have no way of testing whether all dimensions of the mind are necessarily contingent upon the brain.

Unfortunately, I doubt that I'll ever fully understand what consciousness is, or what its relationship to the body (and the material world) is. I'm just not that clever. So, in the end, this is one of those areas where I'll probably always remain somewhat skeptical; although, from a purely empirical point of view, I do find myself leaning more towards the idea that consciousness is simply a by-product of electrochemical processes in the brain based on the evidence we do have. Science can be very convincing in that respect.

Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't more to consciousness than what's been discovered thus far, or that I've completely discounted other possibilities, especially considering the fact that, in the spirit of full disclosure, my ethical-spiritual practice assumes the possibility of a type of continuity involving consciousness that transcends a single birth and death—a belief built on premises that a strict materialist would reject, and with little from an empirical, scientific standpoint to back them up.

I'm comfortable with that, however, because my ethical-spiritual beliefs and practice are ultimately pragmatic, serving a practical purpose that's subjectively beneficial regardless of their objective validity. Incidentally, this is why I tend to have sympathy for theists, even though I don't have any theistic beliefs myself. While I find too many logical inconsistencies in the Bible to view it as the infallible word of God, there are some interesting philosophical arguments for the existence of God (although, not necessarily a personal God); and I understand that a belief in God can provide comfort in difficult times, as well as serve as the basis for a beneficial ethical-spiritual practice, just as my Buddhist beliefs can. I also accept that certain people may have had some kind of profound spiritual experience that has led them to such a belief.

What I generally don't accept, however, are dogmatic statements about absolute truth and/or reality, especially when they stem from an 'appeal to authority' or personal experience. In the former, the validity of a statement rests not on its own logical coherence or truth, but on the supposed status of the source as an 'authority.' In the latter's case, there's generally no way to confirm or deny them, so they're not very useful in proving something to someone who hasn't had them.

buddhism: short and sweet

2011-04-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

With so many teachings, trying to sum up Buddhism in a couple of sentences can seem like a daunting challenge, but it's actually quite simple: Buddhism is all about the pursuit of true happiness.

The Buddha approaches the problem of mental stress and suffering like a doctor, formulating the four noble truths in the same way that ancient Indian physicians formulated medical diagnoses, i.e., disease (stress), cause (craving), prognosis (a cure/cessation of craving is possible) and treatment (the noble eightfold path).

While it may sounds overly simplistic, the basic premise of the path can be summed up by this short passage from the Dhammapada:

The non-doing of any evil, the performance of what's skillful, the cleansing of one's own mind: this is the teaching of the Awakened.

Ultimately, every teaching in Buddhism is a tool to be used in the pursuit of happiness, and the majority of them focus on our actions and intentions because that's where the real work of moral and spiritual purification takes place (e.g., MN 61). The road to ~~hell~~ happiness is paved with good intentions.

Happiness. It really is just that simple. That's why, in Buddhism, wisdom begins by asking the following questions:

What is skillful, venerable sir? What is unskillful? What is blameworthy? What is blameless? What should be cultivated? What should not be cultivated? What, having been done by me, will be for my long-term harm & suffering? Or what, having been done by me, will be for my long-term welfare & happiness?

vinnanasota

2011-04-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

Contrary to what many believe, there are places in the Canon where the term vinnanasota (stream of consciousness) is mentioned. Unlike the term patisandhi-citta (re-linking consciousness), which is only found in the later commentarial literature, vinnanasota can be found in places like DN 28:

Puna caparaṃ, bhante, idhekacco samaṇo vā brāhmaṇo vā ātappamanvāya…pe… tathārūpaṃ cetosamādhiṃ phusati, yathāsamāhite citte imameva kāyaṃ uddhaṃ pādatalā adho kesamatthakā tacapariyantaṃ pūraṃ nānappakārassa asucino paccavekkhati – ‘atthi imasmiṃ kāye kesā lomā…pe… lasikā mutta’nti. Atikkamma ca purisassa chavimaṃsalohitaṃ aṭṭhiṃ paccavekkhati. Purisassa ca viññāṇasotaṃ pajānāti, ubhayato abbocchinnaṃ idha loke appatiṭṭhitañca paraloke appatiṭṭhitañca. Ayaṃ catutthā dassanasamāpatti. Etadānuttariyaṃ, bhante, dassanasamāpattīsu.

Puna caparaṃ, bhante, idhekacco samaṇo vā brāhmaṇo vā ātappamanvāya…pe… tathārūpaṃ cetosamādhiṃ phusati, yathāsamāhite citte imameva kāyaṃ uddhaṃ pādatalā adho kesamatthakā tacapariyantaṃ pūraṃ nānappakārassa asucino paccavekkhati – ‘atthi imasmiṃ kāye kesā lomā…pe… lasikā mutta’nti. Atikkamma ca purisassa chavimaṃsalohitaṃ aṭṭhiṃ paccavekkhati. Purisassa ca viññāṇasotaṃ pajānāti, ubhayato abbocchinnaṃ idha loke patiṭṭhitañca paraloke patiṭṭhitañca. Ayaṃ tatiyā dassanasamāpatti.

Nevertheless, instead of referring to a permanent, unbroken phenomena of consciousness (i.e., consciousness as a static thing or self), as critics of this term often charge, my understanding is that it's simply referring the flow of conscious events or experience, even when presented within the context of rebirth as traditionally understood in Theravada, which is described in terms of moments of consciousness arising and ceasing in rapid succession, with the last consciousness of a being at the time of death immediately conditions the arising of a new consciousness due to the presence of craving (tahna).

It should be noted, however, that the description of moments of consciousness arising and ceasing in rapid succession isn't explicitly found in the Suttas themselves. It's mainly found in the Abhidhamma Pitaka, as well as in post-canonical material like the Vimuttimagga and the Abhidhammattha Sangaha, and is closely associated with the theory of momentariness (khanavada). But the general principle is extrapolated from sources like AN 3.47:

Monks, these three are fabricated characteristics of what is fabricated. Which three? Arising is discernible, passing away is discernible, alteration (literally, other-ness) while staying is discernible.

Or, an alternate translation courtesy of Dhammanando Bhikkhu:

There are, bhikkhus, these three conditioned characteristics of the conditioned. Which three? Arising is manifest. Disappearance is manifest. The changing of what persists is manifest. These, bhikkhus, are the three conditioned characteristics of the conditioned.

Nm 2.4:

Life, personhood, pleasure and pain
- This is all that's bound together
In a single mental event
- A moment that quickly takes place.

Even for the devas who endure
For 84,000 thousand kalpas
- Even those do not live the same
For any two moments of the mind.

What ceases for one who is dead,
Or for one who's still standing here,
Are all just the same heaps
- Gone, never to connect again.

The states which are vanishing now,
And those which will vanish some day,
Have characteristics no different
Than those which have vanished before.

With no production there's no birth;
With "becoming" present, one exists.
When grasped with the highest meaning,
The world is dead when the mind stops.

There's no hoarding what has vanished,
No piling up for the future;
Those who have been born are standing
Like a seed upon a needle.

The vanishing of all these states
That have become is not welcome,
Though dissolving phenomena stand
Uncombined through primordial time.

From the unseen, things come and go.
Glimpsed only as they're passing by;
Like lightning flashing in the sky
- They arise and then pass away.

And probably even SN 12.61:

It would be better for the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person to hold to the body composed of the four great elements, rather than the mind, as the self. Why is that? Because this body composed of the four great elements is seen standing for a year, two years, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred years or more. But what's called 'mind,' 'intellect,' or 'consciousness' by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another. Just as a monkey, swinging through a forest wilderness, grabs a branch. Letting go of it, it grabs another branch. Letting go of that, it grabs another one.

From the Theravadin point of view, these mind-moments or moments of consciousness aren't seen as fixed or static entities but conditioned phenomena (i.e., they don't arise on their own or in a vacuum), which, due to the logical implications of anicca (inconstancy) and anatta (not-self), is a position Theravada is forced to reject. Hence, the idea of discrete phenomenal objects is replaced by the theory of momentariness, exchanging things for events, wherein one moment of consciousness arises, persists/changes and ceases in a complex, self-sustaining causal chain, with each event a result as well as a cause in that chain.

Moreover, if you admit the possibility of immaterial causes and not just material ones (assuming that a clear distinction between the two can even be made at a fundamental), then the continuation of said process isn't necessarily limited by or to a single material body. It's a theory of events that allows for continuity without the need for fixed and static elements or self, and is a natural outcome of deconstructing conscious experience into its constituent events.

In one essay, Bhikkhu Nanajivako presents some interesting comparisons between the Buddhist theory of anicca and modern philosophy, especially the similarities between the Buddhist theory of momentariness and some of things Bertrand Russell writes in An Outline of Philosophy:

Now, let us get a few quotations from Bertrand Russell. First, as regards substance-matter, he says:

In former days, you could believe it on a philosophical ground that the soul is a substance and all substances are indestructible... But the notion of substance, in the sense of a permanent entity with changing states, is no longer applicable to the world.

A wave in the sea persists for a longer or shorter time: the waves that I see dashing themselves to pieces on the Cornish coast may have come all the way from Brazil, but that does not mean that a "thing" has traveled across the Atlantic; it means only that a certain process of change has traveled.

[Einstein's theory of relativity] has philosophical consequences which are, if possible, even more important. The substitution of space-time for space and time has made the category of substance less applicable than formerly, since the essence of substance was persistent through time, and there is now no one cosmic time.

We found that matter, in modern science, has lost its solidity and substantiality; it has become a mere ghost haunting the scenes of its former splendor... The notion of matter, in modern physics, has become absorbed into the notion of energy.

We cannot say that "matter is the cause of our sensations."... In a word, "matter" has become no more than a conventional shorthand for stating causal laws concerning events.

Thus we are committed to causation as an a priori belief without which we should have no reason for supposing that there is a "real" chair (or any thing) at all.

Next, as regards the theory of events, we note that the idea of fixed and static elements of "matter" has been replaced by that of undeterminable "events" corresponding to the quantum electrodynamic field theory in nuclear physics, which comes very close to the conception of a non-physical but purely phenomenological idea of dhammaa, implied in its primitive significance by kha.nika-vaado, or theory of momentariness, of the Abhidhamma-pi.takam. (This latter aspect, explicitly philosophical, will be sketched in Five, below.) Of this Russell writes:

Everything in the world is composed of "events."... An "event" is something occupying a small finite amount of space-time... Events are not impenetrable, as matter is supposed to be; on the contrary, every event in space-time is overlapped by other events.

I assume that every event is contemporaneous with events that are not contemporaneous with each other; this is what is meant by saying that every event lasts for a finite time... Time is wholly relational.

Space-time order, as well as space-time points, results from the relations between events.

Compare with this last statement, and with those that follow, the assertion of Buddhaghosa in Atthasaalini: "By time the sage described the mind, and by mind described the time."

Lastly, Russell says of mental events:

An important group of events, namely percepts, may be called "mental."

Mentality is an affair of causal laws, not of the quality of single events, and also, mentality is a matter of degree.

What is mind?... Mind must be a group of mental events, since we have rejected the view that it is a single simple entity such as the ego was formerly supposed to be... Its constitution corresponds however to "the unity of one 'experience.'"

As a result of these considerations, Russell concludes that "first of all, you must cut out the word 'I': the person who believes is an inference, not a part of what you know immediately."

In essence, moments of consciousness arising and passing away in succession simply implies that there's a type of continuity involved in conscious experience, nothing more. So when talking about a 'stream of consciousness,' it shouldn't be understood as a singular, discrete phenomenon, but a series of conditioned events that share a particular causal relationship. The same applies to terms like bhavangasota (stream of becoming), found in Snp 3.12, and samvattanikamvinnanam (evolving consciousness), found in MN 106. For example, from Piyadassi Thera's book, Dependent Origination:

In the Aneñjasappāya Sutta, the vipāka viññaṇa is referred to as saṃvattanikaṃ viññāṇaṃ, the consciousness that links on, that proceeds in one life as vipāka from the kamma in the former life.

When it is said, "the consciousness that links on," it does not mean that this consciousness abides unchanged, continues in the same state without perishing throughout this cycle of existence. Consciousness is also conditioned, and therefore is not permanent. Consciousness also comes into being and passes away yielding place to new consciousness. Thus this perpetual stream of consciousness goes on until existence ceases. Existence in a way is consciousness. In the absence of consciousness no “being” exists in this sentient world.

And besides Piyadassi Thera, who comes from a more traditional Theravada background, people like Prof. Gombrich, scholar of Pali and Sanskrit, founder of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies and past president of the Pali Text Society, and Prof. Kalupahana, Buddhist scholar and professor philosophy at the University of Hawaii, are also aware of this term and express a similar understanding of it. For example, from Gombrich's What the Buddha Thought:

Famously, the Buddha's approach to life's problems was pragmatic. Our problems are urgent, and irrelevant theorizing is a silly as refusing to receive treatment for an arrow wound until you know the name of the man who shot the arrow. Today we see the world as in perpetual motion, and that reminds people of the Buddhist principle of impermanence. True, the Buddha saw our experience as an ever-changing process, a stream of consciousness — the literal Pali equivalent of that expression does occur. But we are talking physics, whereas the Buddha was talking psychology. (67)

And from Kalupahana's Buddhist Philosophy, A Historical Analysis:

All this is evidence that it is consciousness that serves as a connecting link between two lives, and this, of course is unequivocally stated in the early Buddhist texts. Several times it is mentioned that a person who has developed extrasensory perception is able "to perceive a man's unbroken flux of consciousness established both in this world and in the next." This stream of consciousness (vinnanasota) is the same as the stream of becoming (bhavasota) mentioned often in the early discourses.

It is important to note that in the early texts there is no mention of this consciousness surviving even for a moment without the support of a psychophysical personality. In other words, early Buddhism does not contribute to a theory of disembodied existence. (52)

Another controversial yet semi-related concept found in both Mahayana and Theravada is the idea of a subconsciousness and/or storehouse consciousness. While technically a type of mind consciousness (mano-vinnana), this particular aspect of consciousness is often presented separately, and mainly posited to account for the times when active consciousness lapses, e.g., during deep sleep.

This type of consciousness, called bhavanga-citta in Theravada and alaya-vijnana in Mahayana, is often used to account for the continuity of individuals, especially over multiple lifetimes. In one essay, Walpola Rahula attempts to show that the three layers of mind as presented by Asanga have their origins in the Pali Canon:

Thus we can see that vijnana represents the simple reaction or response of the sense-organs when they come in contact with external objects. This is the uppermost or superficial aspect or layer of the vijnanaskandha. Manas represents the aspect of its mental functioning, thinking, reasoning, conceiving ideas, etc. Citta, which is here called alayavijnana, represents the deepest, finest and subtlest aspect or layer of the Aggregate of Consciousness. It contains all the traces or impressions of the past actions and all good and bad future potentialities. The Sandhinirmocana-sutra also says that alayavijnana is called citta (Tibetan sems).

It is generally believed that alayavijnana is purely a Mahayana doctrine and that nothing about it is found in Hinayana. But in the Mahayanasangraha, Asanga himself says that in the Sravakayana (= Hinayana) it is mentioned by synonyms (paryaya) and refers to a passage in the Ekottaragama which reads: 'People (praja) like the alaya (alayarata), are fond of the alaya (alayarama), are delighted in the alaya (alayasammudita), are attached to the alaya (alayabhirata). When the Dharma is preached for the destruction of the alaya, they wish to listen (susrusanti) and lend their ears (srotram avadadhanti), they put forth a will for the perfect knowledge (ajnacittam upasthapayanti) and follow the path of Truth (dharmanudharma-pratipanna). When the Tathagata appears in the world (pradurbhava), this marvellous (ascarya) and extraordinary (adbhuta) Dharma appears in the world.'

Lamotte identifies this Ekottaragama passage with the following passage in the Pali Anguttaranikaya (A II, p.131): Alayarama bhikkhave paja alayarata alayasammudita, sa Tathagatena analaye dhamme desiyamane sussuyati sotam odahati annacittam upattapeti. Tathagatassa bhikkhave arahato sammasambuddhassa patubhava ayam pathamo acchariyo abbhuto dhammo patubhavati.

Of course, the majority of the above should be understood as much later elaborations based on terms and ideas found within the early discourses, and shouldn't simply be accepted as reflecting the Buddha's teachings in the early discourses themselves. It's always good to challenge these ideas and see if there are areas where they conflict with the Suttas and with our own experience. That's the approach the Buddha himself advises in places like AN 3.65 and MN 38, with passages like:

"Bhikkhus, you who know thus and see thus, would you say: 'We have reverence for the Teacher. We say it out of reverence to the Teacher'?" "No, venerable sir." "Bhikkhus, you who know thus and see thus, would you say: 'Our recluse said it, these are the recluse’s words. But we do not say that'?" "No, venerable sir." "Bhikkhus, you who know thus and see thus, would you acknowledge another teacher?" "No, venerable sir." "Bhikkhus, you who know thus and see thus, would you seek meaning in religious rites, ceremonies or festivals of other recluses and brahmins?" "No, venerable sir." "Bhikkhus, is it that you yourself knowing, seeing and experiencing this speak thus?" "Yes, venerable sir."

"Good, O, Bhikkhus, I have led you in this Dhamma which is visible here and now, timeless, open to inspection, leading onwards and to be experienced by the wise for themselves. It was in reference to this that it was said: 'Bhikkhus, this Dhamma is visible here and now, timeless, open to inspection, leading onwards and to be experienced by the wise for themselves'."

not-self and awakening

2011-03-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

While I'm not a qualified teacher, or even an experienced meditator, I don't agree with those who say the Buddha's position was that one can't actively develop mindfulness, concentration and wisdom; that, ultimately, there's no control in the present moment. In fact, it seems to me that the Buddha did indeed encourage his followers to develop just these things.

To begin with, the Buddha taught that whatever is inconstant (anicca) is stressful (dukkha), and whatever is stressful is not-self (anatta). The goal of Buddhism is to essentially take this analytical knowledge, along with a specific set of practices, as a stepping stone to what I can only describe as a profound psychological event in the mind. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that I believe the teachings on not-self are understood to deny individuality (MN 22) as well as individual effort (attakara), far from it.

I believe that their intended purpose is to merely point out the ultimately unsatisfactory nature of the psycho-physical entity consisting of form, feeling, perception, consciousness and mental fabrications in a variety of ways, as well as the insubstantiality of our ego that's built upon these five, fleeting phenomena, not to suggest that mindfulness, concentration and wisdom can't actively be developed.

Even though we have no real control over the unsatisfactory and inconstant nature of our existence – and this is evident by the fact that we cannot say, "Let my body be thus, Let my body not be thus. Let my feelings ... perceptions ... mental processes ... consciousness be thus. Let my my feelings ... perceptions ... mental processes ... consciousness not be thus" (SN 22.59) – if you try to move your arm, your arm still moves. In other words, don't let the teachings on not-self lead to inaction but to right action.

The way I see it, craving is the cause of suffering, and to end suffering its cause must be removed; the difficulty arises when it comes to how exactly this is done. My theory is that craving is a very subtle but powerful aspect of our psychology. It's there, latent in the mind, waiting to exert its influence through mental fabrications by directing or at the very least encouraging the mind to feed upon sensory experiences via the five clinging-aggregates in an unhealthy way.

The problem is that these processes of subtle movement in the mind are so subtle that they're almost impossible to discern as they're taking place. That's where I believe meditation comes in; meditation helps to calm and still the mind so that these mental events become easier and easier to observe. One, in effect, uses conditionality in order to fabricate controlled states of mental absorption until they're able to discern the presence of craving, its movement in the mind, and the fact that even these refined and subtle states of mental absorption are ultimately stressful and unsatisfactory.

This leads one to develop dispassion, and dispassion leads one to cease fabrication, thus opening the doors to the deathless by ending the psychological chain of causation that gives rise to suffering. Therefore, my suggestion to someone serious about their practice would be to stick with whatever method of meditation they find to be more conducive to attaining states of mental absorption, and supplement that with a moderate amount of study to strengthen right view.

buddhism and politics (expanded)

2011-03-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

As a Buddhist, I do my best to apply Buddhist teachings and practices to all aspects of my life, including my political activism. This, of course, raises some questions, such as, What sort of political philosophy is most compatible with Buddhism? and Does Buddhism support radical political views? As a Buddhist who also happens to be democratic socialist, I'd like to say yes; but the teachings of the Buddha that are recorded in the Pali Canon are more or less apolitical, so applying them to my political philosophy requires a bit more investigation and thought.

The Buddha doesn't explicitly promote a particular political philosophy, being more concerned with problems of ethics and phenomenology. But he does give some pragmatic advice to lay-followers within the existing political economic system of the time, mainly dealing with generosity, honesty and fulfilling one's duties in society (e.g., DN 31). So in answer to the first, I'd say that Buddhism itself is compatible with pretty much any political-economic system as it predominately deals with developing virtue, concentration and discernment within whatever worldly circumstances we’re confronted with, not the circumstances themselves.

Moreover, I agree with Richard Gombrich that, "The Buddha's Dhamma represents a strong form of what has been called 'religious individualism'" (Theravada Buddhism, 72). I say this because the teachings on kamma (literally 'action') focus on individual actions and their consequences, and not so much collective or societal actions. So Buddhist virtue ethics are generally seen as a personal matter that each individual is encouraged to explore and develop on their own.

As for the second question, there's nothing in the Suttas to suggest that the Buddha was either for or against private ownership of the means of production, especially in the modern industrial sense. That's not a question anybody could have foreseen 2,600 years ago.

Furthermore, while it's true the Buddha encouraged generosity among his lay-followers, and that his monastic community has a relatively egalitarian communal structure, his teachings were also quite popular with the rising mercantile class in India at that time, and many of his wealthier lay-followers were merchants. In fact, I think the Buddha's advice to the lay-community regarding livelihood sounds more like some kind of enlightened entrepreneurialism than socialism.

In DN 31, for example, the Buddha advises lay-followers to use a portion of their income for personal use, including charitable donations, but he also advises that some of it should be used for business investments and saved for hard times, as well. This shows that the Buddha wasn't necessarily against consumption, private property rights and/or the accumulation of wealth, but there are suttas which seem to suggest that he was at least in favour of some type of welfare-state.

There's the case of DN 5, for example, where the brahmin Kutadanta asks the Buddha for advice on how to best conduct a great sacrifice. Kutadanta, who was evidently wealthy, had been given a village and some land by King Bimbisara, which he ruled as a king himself. On being asked by Kutadanta — who had a legion of animals waiting to be slaughtered — how to perform a great sacrifice, the Buddha answered with a fable about a great king who asks his chaplain a similar question.

Long story short, the king (i.e., the state), who'd amassed great personal wealth but whose kingdom was "beset by thieves" and "infested with brigands," is told by his chaplain that taxing the people, executing and imprisoning them, or simply banishing them from the land won't solve his kingdom's problems, and is given this advice:

To those in the kingdom who are engaged in cultivating crops and raising cattle, let Your Majesty distribute grain and fodder; to those in trade, give capital; to those in government service assign proper living wages. Then those people, being intent on their occupations, will not harm the kingdom. Your Majesty's revenues will be great, the land will be tranquil and not beset by thieves, and the people, with joy in their hearts, will play with their children, and will dwell in open houses.

Nevertheless, I don't think that the Buddha would object to a more egalitarian, socialist society that tries to limit the economic and societal conditions which foster things like greed and violence, and the way Buddhism has affected me personally has lead me to adopt more socialist-leaning views. As Albert Einstein put it, "the real purpose of socialism is... to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development," and I have a hard time not getting involved when I see what I perceive to be people being preyed upon by greed, hatred and delusion.

Before I became interested in Buddhism, I didn't really have any political-economic views to speak of. In fact, I was completely uninterested in political economy whatsoever. After years of studying and practicing Buddhism, however, I began to take more of an interest. This was partially due to cultivating compassion and being more sensitive the suffering of others.

Of course, it became clear to me early on that the world was imperfect, and that there is, and always been, suffering in the world. I also realized that it can't be 'fixed,' that there are no perfect solutions. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best to do what we can to make things better, and that's certainly compatible with Buddhism and Buddhist ethics in general. But more specifically, I think that the seemingly unrelated aims of communism/socialism and Buddhism are actually quite compatible, even in the sense that Karl Marx uses it, i.e. the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the working class. For example, in The German Ideology, Marx writes:

Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the “general interest,” but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.

One of the things that I really find interesting in Marx's writings is his materialist conception of history and the idea that "the nature of individuals depends on the material conditions determining their production." While Marx's theory was set within a specific context — that of the complex relationship between the production and reproduction of material requirements of life and the historical development of human society — I think it has much wider implications.

For example, I'm of the opinion that things such as identity are conditioned, at least in part, by the historical and material conditions that we find ourselves in, and that changes in those conditions can fundamentally alter our identity and the ways in which we express ourselves, and vice versa. Not in a rigidly deterministic way, however, but in a complex and symbiotic way.

This idea isn't necessarily new, of course. The Buddha, for example, developed similar ideas about identity in his teachings on kamma and dependent co-arising. In short, he viewed our sense of self as a continuous process—something which is always in flux, ever-changing from moment to moment in response to various internal and external stimuli. Furthermore, he observed that there are times when our sense of self causes us a great deal of suffering, times when we cling very strongly to those momentary and fleeting identities and the objects of our sensory experience on which they're based in ways that cause a great deal of mental stress.

But whereas the Buddha's focus was primarily on how to liberate the individual from their suffering by mastering this process of 'I-making' and 'my-making,' Marx's focus, the bodhisattva that he was, was primarily on how to liberate society from their suffering and alienation by changing the material conditions that support it. In the words of Erich Fromm, "His concept of socialism is the emancipation from alienation, the return of man to himself, his self-realization."

According to Marx, all individuals in capitalist society are essentially alienated, from their labour as well as from each other. The reason Marx singled out the working class was because he saw in the working class the means by which capitalism could be transformed. It was his hope, however, that once this economic transformation was underway, the alienation of each individual would gradual be eliminated via a more socialized means of production, which, in turn, would sow the seeds for the "resolution of the antagonism between man and nature, and between man and man." As the 'young' Marx wrote in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844:

[T]he emancipation of society from private property, from servitude, takes the political form of the emancipation of the workers; not in the sense that only the latter's emancipation is involved, but because this emancipation includes the emancipation of humanity as a whole. For all human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production, and all types of servitude are only modifications or consequences of this relation.

Of course, I disagree with some of Marx's ideas and methods, but I still find a lot of his writings worth reading. Hell, even the Dalai Lama once said:

Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. Marxism is concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis and the equitable utilization of the means of production. It is also concerned with the fate of the working classes--that is, the majority--as well as with the fate of those who are underprivileged and in need, and Marxism cares about the victims of minority-imposed exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and it seems fair. I just recently read an article in a paper where His Holiness the Pope also pointed out some positive aspects of Marxism.

As for the failure of the Marxist regimes, first of all I do not consider the former USSR, or China, or even Vietnam, to have been true Marxist regimes, for they were far more concerned with their narrow national interests than with the Workers' International; this is why there were conflicts, for example, between China and the USSR, or between China and Vietnam. If those three regimes had truly been based upon Marxist principles, those conflicts would never have occurred.

I think the major flaw of the Marxist regimes is that they have placed too much emphasis on the need to destroy the ruling class, on class struggle, and this causes them to encourage hatred and to neglect compassion. Although their initial aim might have been to serve the cause of the majority, when they try to implement it all their energy is deflected into destructive activities. Once the revolution is over and the ruling class is destroyed, there is [not] much left to offer the people; at this point the entire country is impoverished and unfortunately it is almost as if the initial aim were to become poor. I think that this is due to the lack of human solidarity and compassion. The principal disadvantage of such a regime is the insistence placed on hatred to the detriment of compassion.

The failure of the regime in the former Soviet Union was, for me, not the failure of Marxism but the failure of totalitarianism. For this reason I still think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.

So, in the end, even though Buddhism is essentially apolitical in nature, I think that one can easily synthesis their political beliefs, even radical ones, with their Buddhist practice as long as they're able to do so based upon the principle of ahimsa or harmlessness, along with a healthy dose of compassion and loving-kindness.

is buddhism just an offshoot of hinduism?

2011-03-01T09:49:00.000-08:00

I've often heard it said that Buddhism is simply an offshoot of Hinduism, but is there any truth to that claim? I'd argue no. While they both come from the same region and share similar terminology, making them a part of a larger tradition of Indian thought and philosophy spanning thousands of years, their connection isn't as one-sided as many assume.

To begin with, from what I understand, Hinduism is a relatively modern term (coined by the British if memory serves me right) that's used to describe a diverse collection of Indian spiritual traditions, many of which arose after the Buddha's lifetime. Much of the Mahabharata, including the Bhagavad Gita, for example, was most likely composed after the Buddha's lifetime, as was the Ramayana and the majority of the Puranas. In fact, I think it's fair to say that Buddhism actually influenced much of what we call 'Hinduism' today.

For example, it should be noted that the concept of anatman in Sankara's version of Advaita Vedanta is similar to the Buddhist anatta, being derived from it. In one of his commentaries, Sankara writes, "Whenever we deny something unreal, we do so with reference to something real; the unreal snake, e.g. is negatived with reference to the real rope." Sankara essentially used the notion of anatman to deny the reality of the individual self (atman) in favour of Brahman. Many of Sankara's critics actually accused him of being a Buddhist in disguise.

The Buddha, who was born into the khattiya (warrior) caste, was one of the great wandering ascetics (Pali: samana, Skt: shramana) who taught in the later Vedic Period, and whose teachings were considered heterodox because they rejected the authority of the Vedas, the self (atman) of the early Upanishads, and the four main social classes (varna).

The most prominent 'orthodox' tradition in northern India at that time was Brahmanism, which, of course, relied heavily on the Vedas for their religious authority, and included some of the early Upanishads as well. It's clear from the Suttas that the Buddha was extremely familiar with them, but it's unclear as to precisely how he acquired this knowledge. Being from a prominent family, it's possible that he studied them, or it could be that he learned of them while wandering and debating with other religious teachers.

In any case, while many people think of the the Buddha as a reformer of Brahmanism, I think it's more correct to say that he replaced it with his own unique philosophy, often redefining many of the key philosophical terms and concepts of his contemporaries, giving them his own meaning and context. This is clearly documented with a variety of words such as brahmin and kamma.

The Buddha was also an expert at word play, especially puns (which don't always translate well into English), and many of these were in reference to passages from the Vedas and Upanishads. Much of this was apparently lost on later Buddhist commentators, but has since been rediscovered by modern scholarship and textual analysis. Nevertheless, the Buddha wasn't limited to just puns, and he added his own unique ideas to Indian thought, e.g., his introduction of khandha as a technical philosophical term (and possibly nibbana as well). Moreover, in The Place of Buddhism in Indian Thought, Ananda Guruge writes:

Lastly, the contributions to Indian thought made by the Buddha should be carefully borne in mind. It was no doubt the Buddha's admirable sense of humility, which led to his statement that he was not an original thinker. His theory of Dependent Causation or Origination was the most remarkable contribution to Indian thought. It is unique in the history of philosophy.

So, in the end, I think it's safe to say that both Buddhism and Hinduism are closely related and have a lot in common, but I definitely wouldn't go so far as to say that Buddhism is just an offshoot of Hinduism. I think doing so is not only inaccurate, but does a disservice to both in that it denies their individual achievements in the history and progression of Indian thought.

why i can't embrace john horgan's critique.

2011-02-22T22:56:00.000-08:00

Tonight, a member at newbuddhist.com posted a 2003 article from Slate by John Horgan called "Why I ditched Buddhism" (which was originally titled, "Why I Can't Embrace Buddhism"). The article itself is basically a critique of Buddhism as a whole, although most of the examples Horgan uses stem from the Tibetan and Zen traditions.

Reading it, a couple of points immediately come to mind. The first is that a belief in postmortem rebirth needn't be faith-based (which, incidentally, holds true for belief in God): it can arise out of personal experiences, such as from the occurrence of past-life memories; it can arise out of anecdotal evidence (e.g., the research of Ian Stevenson); it can arise out of reason (i.e., the concept of rebirth isn't illogical, it simply relies on premises that strict materialists reject); etc.

More importantly, I'd argue that Horgan mischaracterizes rebirth as the belief in a transmigrating soul rather than how it's actually presented in the Suttas and understood by Theravada, which is a process whereby one moment of dependently arisen consciousness conditions the arising of the next, a process that doesn't necessarily cease at death. But whether one takes a literal or non-literal approach, rebirth is simply the continuation of a process — nothing 'remains,' nothing 'transmigrates,' etc. — there are merely phenomena that condition other phenomena in the interdependent process we call life.

The next point is that Horgan's treatment of kamma as "the law of moral cause and effect" which, with rebirth, implies "the existence of some cosmic judge who, like Santa Claus, tallies up our naughtiness and niceness before rewarding us with rebirth as a cockroach or as a saintly lama" is overly simplistic.

The basic premise behind kamma is that there's a cause and effect relationship between our actions and how they're experienced. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu puts it, "It's simply the fact of action—you do something unskillful, it's going to come back in an unpleasant way." In the same way, if you do something skillful, it's going to come back and be experienced in a pleasant way. This idea lies at the heart of Buddhist virtue ethics.

In the Suttas, the Buddha defines kamma as intentional actions of body, speech and mind (AN 6.63) that have the potential to produce certain results, which, in turn, have the potential to produce pleasant, painful or neutral feelings (AN 4.235). The word itself simply means 'action.'

Pragmatically speaking, actions are deemed 'unskillful' (akusala) if they lead to to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both. Actions that don't lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both are deemed 'skillful' (kusala) (MN 61). Therefore, the distinction between skillful and unskillful actions is based upon how their results are experienced—not only by ourselves, but by others as well. (This emphasis on the consequential aspect of actions is similar to Jeremy Bentham's teleological utilitarianism, with John Stuart Mill's idea of higher and lower happiness being similar to the Buddha's distinction between long-term and short-term welfare and happiness.)

Psychologically speaking, however, the quality of the intentions behind the actions is what ultimately determines whether they're unskillful or skillful. (This aspect is closer to Kant's deontological categorical imperative when combined with the Buddhist principle of ahimsa or harmlessness.) Intentional actions rooted in greed, hatred or delusion produce painful mental feelings "like those of the beings in hell," while intentional actions rooted in non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion produce the opposite ("like those of the Beautiful Black Devas"). Then there are acts rooted in both that bring mixed results "like those of human beings, some devas, and some beings in the lower realms" (AN 4.235). By bringing kamma to an end, however, the mind is said to become free from agitation, leaving only moral perfection behind (AN 9.7).

Essentially, Buddhist ethics focuses on the moral character of the individual, and revolves around seeing our desires for happiness and freedom from pain in all living creatures. If we don't respect that in them, how can we ever expect the same? This is especially true regarding human beings. Here I agree with the Buddha that, besides some rare and special cases, there's no one that's as dear to us as ourselves, that all beings essentially want to be happy in their own way (according to their specific capacities), and that it's a fairly decent and logical reason to desire their happiness as well as our own (SN 3.8).

The reason is simple. If our happiness comes at the expense of their happiness, they'll do everything in their power to upset that happiness. Conversely, if they were to infringe upon ours, wouldn't it follow that we'd do everything in our power to upset theirs? It seems like a vicious circle to me, and one of the ways to break this circle is an ethical framework that takes the happiness of others into consideration, which encourages the development of things like generosity and the four brahma-viharas: unlimited goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity.

But regardless of what one thinks about the idea of kamma itself, I think the way it's presented in the Suttas clearly contradicts Horgan's assertion that Buddhism as a whole teaches us to view others as unreal and, by consequence, nullifies his conjecture that, "To someone who sees himself and others as unreal, human suffering and death may appear laughably trivial." Buddhist morality takes great pains to recognize the happiness and suffering of others, and to promote the former while preventing the latter.

Another point is that the practice of meditation has been demonstrated to help to reduce anxiety and lower blood pressure, among other things. It can also help to make one more empathetic. So I think dismissing meditation so quickly, especially without further elaboration, is a bit hasty. In addition, I believe that more research needs to be done in this area to make any conclusive statements as to what meditation can and can't do. Neuroscience is a relatively young field, after all.

Besides that, I also think he mischaracterizes anatta as nonexistence, which is another big mistake, in my opinion. Selfless ≠ nonexistent. The teachings on not-self aren't merely assertions that we have no self; they're a method for deconstructing our false perceptions about reality, as well as an important tool in removing the vast net of clinging that gives rise to suffering. By equating anatta with nonexistence, he's grasping the snake by the tail, as the Buddha would say.

In the simplest of terms, the Buddha taught that whatever is inconstant is stressful, and whatever is stressful is not-self—with the goal being to essentially take this [analytical] knowledge, along with a specific set of practices such as meditation, as a stepping stone to what I can only describe as a profound psychological event that radically changes the way the mind relates to experience.

That doesn't mean, however, that the teachings on not-self are understood to deny individuality (MN 22) or imply that the conventional person doesn't exist (SN 22.22). They merely break down the conceptual idea of a self — i.e., that which is satisfactory, permanent and completely subject to our control — in relation to the various aspects of our experience that we falsely cling to as 'me' or 'mine' (SN 22.59). Moreover, Horgan appears to contradict himself when he says that Buddhism "holds that after death our souls are re-instantiated in new bodies," but then later criticizes the idea of anatta as nonexistence. Either Buddhism is inconsistent on this matter, or Horgan is. My money is on the latter.

As for the rest, I don't really have the time nor the inclination to go into it in detail, but I do think Horgan tries to make some good points. Nevertheless, I think his points are mostly built upon rather spurious assumptions and more aimed at knocking down straw men than anything else. For example, the idea that Buddhism stems from "our narcissistic wish to believe that the universe was created for our benefit" is simply an assumption, and Horgan offers nothing to back it up. The Buddha certainly never said that we're here for a reason.

All in all, I find Horgan's article more of an emotional ad hominem than a solid critique of Buddhism. That said, I think it's a good start, but it definitely needs a lot more work if it's to be taken as a serious critique of Buddhism.

virtue, concentration and discernment

2011-02-18T17:56:00.000-08:00

After a particularly traumatic experience, a friend of mine once asked, "Do you think that the best learning comes from our personal experiences, or can you learn as deeply from teachers, books, or contemplation?" My initial answer was to say personal experience, but the question got me thinking about just what the Buddha taught and how he taught it. In particular, how did he teach his followers to understand and realize the Dhamma for themselves?

Your first impulse may be to say (as I did) personal experience via the noble eightfold path. That in and of itself is a good answer; however, what does the path itself entail? Does it mean that we should learn only by direct experiences, or is it a combination of that and something else? To find the answer, I began looking through the Suttas for some hint of the Buddha's general teaching structure. The noble eightfold path itself has eight distinct subjects, and those subjects become fairly broad and all-encompassing when you divide them into their constituents. But, just as they can be broadened, they can also be condensed into three easier to deal with sections — virtue, concentration and discernment — with each factor falling under one of these three categories.

The first thing I noticed was the Buddha doesn't advise anyone to strive for awakening without at least some form of guidance. Moreover, if the path to nibbana was so easily found and simple to follow, there wouldn't really be a need for a 'turner of the wheel,' would there? So the reason that the Buddha doesn't just suggest searching for an end of suffering blindly and without direction is precisely because this path isn't necessarily easy to find or follow on one's own, let alone teach. This idea is conveyed in places like SN 6.1, where the Buddha, sitting in seclusion not long after his awakening experience, thinks to himself:

This Dhamma that I have attained is deep, hard to see, hard to realize, peaceful, refined, beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to-be experienced by the wise. But this generation delights in attachment, is excited by attachment, enjoys attachment. For a generation delighting in attachment, excited by attachment, enjoying attachment, this/that conditionality and dependent co-arising are hard to see. This state, too, is hard to see: the resolution of all fabrications, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding. And if I were to teach the Dhamma and if others would not understand me, that would be tiresome for me, troublesome for me.

To actually 'see' what the Buddha is pointing at for ourselves, then, we must follow a similar path, one that combines the three basic principles of virtue, concentration and discernment into one. While it's true that the Pali Canon records cases of people just hearing the Dhamma and attaining the fruits of the path, these spiritual advanced people are relatively few and far between, the product of both past and present skillful actions and ripening conditions that the average worldling (puthujjana), intoxicated with sensual pleasures, doesn't possess. Not only that, but they had the added benefit of having the Buddha himself as their guide. Many had to put a lot of effort into their practice.

The most difficult part of the equation is how do you teach something that's unconditioned, beyond concepts and worldly phenomena? No language or method of analysis can impart this kind of knowledge to an individual in and of themselves; it's a realization or gnosis that's born from experience coupled with insight. So, for this reason, the Buddha devised a way for practitioners to gain both—the noble eightfold path. Through this path the Buddha combines methods of virtuous conduct (sila), methods of meditative concentration (samadhi) and methods of developing discernment or insight (panna), and these three intertwined modes of training help to give rise to what are often called the factors for awakening.

Sila or virtue is taught by the Buddha as the foundation of the practice, especially in regard to meditation. Virtue helps to provide the meditator with a mind that's free from remorse, and a mind that's free from remorse is better able to develop deep states of concentration, which are difficult to develop when the mind is consistently worried or agitated (AN 11.2). The training of virtue is best known by the five precepts:

1. Panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from destroying living creatures.

2. Adinnadana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from taking that which is not given.

3. Kamesu micchacara veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual misconduct.

4. Musavada veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from incorrect speech.

5. Suramerayamajja pamadatthana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness.

The five precepts are the basic training rules all Buddhists are encouraged to observe to the best of their ability, and are based on the principle of harmlessness (ahimsa) and renouncing unskillful behaviours that cause other beings harm and provoke retaliation. They constitute the basic level of virtue the Buddha advises is necessary for the peace of mind conducive to a successful meditation practice, and they are seen as gifts "that are not open to suspicion, will never be open to suspicion, and are unfaulted by knowledgeable contemplatives & priests" (AN 8.39). In the context of the eightfold path, this also includes right speech, right action and right livelihood, which are the factors classified under the division of virtue. Without this solid base of virtue, it's extremely difficult to achieve a sufficient state of mental calm and absorption. (Believe me, it's hard to meditate when you've done a lot of things you regret; they're the first things that pop up when the mind starts to get quiet.)

But even though discernment comes at the end of the triad, one won't see the benefits of practicing virtue without at least a modicum of discernment. 'You have to crawl before you can walk,' as the old saying goes. Therefore, it can be said that right resolve, which is classified under the division of discernment, also lies at the beginning since the wisdom and resolve needed to undertake a path of renunciation and harmlessness in the first place must already be present in some degree. This brings to mind the first two lines of the Dhammapada:

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.

Next we have samadhi or concentration. The category of concentration consists of right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. In the context of the path, concentration means meditation, which generally consists of centering the mind on a single meditation object in such a way that eventually leading to states of deep meditative absorption (jhana). And just as discernment is needed to practice virtue, and virtue acts as a foundation for concentration, concentration and discernment go hand in hand. Of course, certain ancient commentaries, as well as contemporary teachers, tend to treat them as two completely separate things, but in reality it seems almost impossible to differentiate between the two when looking at how the Pali Canon itself treats them. For example, there's this passage from the Dhammapada:

There is no meditative concentration for him who lacks insight, and no insight for him who lacks meditative concentration. He in whom are found both meditative concentration and insight, indeed, is close to Nibbana.

Many of the mindfulness meditations can lead to insight as well concentration, while many insight meditations can lead to states of concentration. Right mindfulness consists of developing mindfulness in regard to the four frames or objects of reference, i.e., the body in and of itself; feelings in and of themselves; mind in and of itself; and mental qualities in and of themselves (DN 22). The type of concentration that the Buddha is referring to in the context of right concentration is called jhana or meditative absorption, which can ultimately lead to the "ending the mental fermentations" (AN 9.36). The basic quality here is that there's only one object or focus of mindful-awareness. This focus can eventually lead to states of rapture or joy (piti), which is a factor of the first jhana, all the way on through to the formless attainments—the highest of which is called "the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception."

The most popular method of achieving this type of meditative awareness is mindfulness of breathing, although the four frames of reference can be used as well, especially when coupled with mindfulness of breathing. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu points out in his introduction to DN 22:

At first glance, the four frames of reference for satipatthana practice sound like four different meditation exercises, but MN 118 makes clear that they can all center on a single practice: keeping the breath in mind. When the mind is with the breath, all four frames of reference are right there. The difference lies simply in the subtlety of one's focus. It's like learning to play the piano. As you get more proficient at playing, you also become sensitive in listening to ever more subtle levels in the music. This allows you to play even more skillfully. In the same way, as a meditator gets more skilled in staying with the breath, the practice of satipatthana gives greater sensitivity in peeling away ever more subtle layers of participation in the present moment until nothing is left standing in the way of total release.

The practice of concentration itself has many benefits. It gives the mind a comfortable place to rest and can help to lower blood pressure. It can also help to make one more empathetic. The most important benefit, however, is the ability of concentration to temporarily subdue the five hindrances (nivarana), which the Buddha calls "overgrowths of the mind that stultify insight," i.e., sensual desire, ill-will, sloth and drowsiness, restlessness and anxiety and uncertainty (AN 5.51). SN 47.10, for example, briefly details how directing the mind towards an inspiring object can act as an antidote to these unskillful mental states, and AN 3.100 lists five methods for dealing with unskillful thoughts in the course of meditation. Once the mind is calm, clear, focused, concentrated and temporarily free of the five hindrances, it's then better able to perform the next mode of training—discernment.

Panna or discernment — which includes right view and right resolve — basically means seeing things as they are in relation to the three characteristics of existence (tilakkhana)—unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), inconstancy (anicca) and not-self (anatta). This development of insight is analogous to what many call vipassana or insight mediation, and is especially useful for the contemplation of the five clinging-aggregates — the most discernible aspects of our experience on top of which we construct our sense of self — as Sariputta, the Buddha's most trusted disciple, explains in SN 22.122:

A virtuous monk, Kotthita my friend, should attend in an appropriate way to the five clinging-aggregates as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a dissolution, an emptiness, not-self. Which five? Form as a clinging-aggregate, feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness as a clinging-aggregate. A virtuous monk should attend in an appropriate way to these five clinging-aggregates as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a dissolution, an emptiness, not-self. For it is possible that a virtuous monk, attending in an appropriate way to these five clinging-aggregates as inconstant... not-self, would realize the fruit of stream-entry.

The topics of discernment are numerous, however, and, being entwined with concentration practice, can include things like the contemplation the five subjects of frequent reflection, the contemplation of the body, the contemplation of death, etc. In essence, when the mind of an individual has acquired a solid foundation of virtue, and after the mind has been calmed and settled to a point of focused awareness, it can then proceed to 'experience' life via the profound context of Dhamma:

There is the case where the disciple of the noble ones recollects the Dhamma, thus: 'The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One, to be seen here & now, timeless, inviting verification, pertinent, to be realized by the wise for themselves.' As he is recollecting the Dhamma, his mind is calmed, and joy arises; the defilements of his mind are abandoned, just as when the body is cleansed through the proper technique. And how is the body cleansed through the proper technique? Through the use of scouring balls & bath powder & the appropriate human effort. This is how the body is cleansed through the proper technique. In the same way, the defiled mind is cleansed through the proper technique. And how is the defiled mind cleansed through the proper technique? There is the case where the disciple of the noble ones recollects the Dhamma... As he is recollecting the Dhamma, his mind is cleansed, and joy arises; the defilements of his mind are abandoned. He is thus called a disciple of the noble ones undertaking the Dhamma-Uposatha. He lives with Dhamma. It is owing to Dhamma that his mind is calmed, that joy arises, and that whatever defilements there are in his mind are abandoned. This is how the mind is cleansed through the proper technique.

And the Dhamma is a mirror with many reflections—dependent co-arising, the noble eightfold path, the three characteristics, the four noble truths, etc. So it's not by simply experiencing life that I think we can most effectively realize the freedom and peace of nibbana, nor is it by simply reading the Suttas or listening to Dhamma talks by experienced teachers; but it's a combination of all three (i.e., personal experience, right view/technique and proper guidance) that can really help to free the mind from its defilements. This approach can be likened to the the approach we're encouraged to take in regard to the three jewels of the Buddha, our guide or teacher; the Dhamma, his teachings; and the Sangha, the community of monks, nuns and lay-followers who have practiced well.

In the end, experience in and of itself won't necessarily lead to liberation, especially if our experience of life is characterized by ignorance (avijja) of the four noble truths; but by experiencing life in reference to these "four categories for viewing and classifying the processes of immediate experience," we can be sure to get a clear view of things as they are. And if we're ever in doubt we're on the right path, we can always know the Dhamma by its qualities:

As for the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered, not to being fettered; to shedding, not to accumulating; to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement; to contentment, not to discontent; to seclusion, not to entanglement; to aroused persistence, not to laziness; to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome': You may definitely hold, 'This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher's instruction.'

magha puja: my unexpected experience

2011-02-14T11:39:00.000-08:00

This is an edited version of something I wrote five years ago today after an unexpected experience.

I wasn't originally going to celebrate Magha Puja — the day tradition holds that 1,250 arahants spontaneously gathered at Veruvana Temple, Rajgarh city — this year. I'm not very big on 'holidays,' but I was definitely in for a pleasant surprise this time around.

I originally went to Wat Buddhanusorn on Sunday [February 12] just to visit my teacher, Ajahn Prasert, but I ended up celebrating Magha Puja there as well. It was a nice day; the sun was out, there were a lot of nice people there, and they even had traditional Thai music and dancing along with the ceremony. I was also happy to see my friend, Phra Mike, who'd recently been in Thailand, as well as few others who I had the pleasure of spending the year-end retreat with. And as if that wasn't nice enough, I was invited to go to Abhayagiri the next day with Ayya Tathaaloka.

So, yesterday [February 13], we drove to Abhayagiri and celebrated Magha Puja there too. It was the first time I'd seen Ajahn Amaro in person. For me, it was like seeing a celebrity, and it was such a joy to hear one of his talks in person. My meditation was also unbelievably focused; I came as close as I've ever come to one-pointedness of mind. I think one of the reasons for this was my extraordinary level of inspiration. Not only did I get the meet one of my favourite Dhamma teachers, but I also had the good fortune to meditate in the presence of relics from Ajahn Mun and Ajahn Sao.

Instead of my normal anapanasati (mindfulness of breathing) meditation, I began by mentally repeat 'buddho' over and over again. Since I knew that this was one of Ajahn Mun's methods of meditation, I felt it appropriate to give it a try. I'll admit that I've never had much success with this particular method because my mind often wanders away from the meditation object quite easily; however, last night I was able to keep my awareness right there. Nothing could distract me. If any thoughts or feelings arose, I'd simply dismiss them with my ever-watchful mindfulness, which is usually never-watchful.

This continued until almost everything else faded away. There was only the awareness of 'buddho' and the sensation of whatever it was that was consciously repeating it. If I'd been allowed to continue this undisturbed, I'm positive that I would've achieved complete one-pointedness of mind. But, as my luck often has it, a person nearby had to sneeze. It was pretty loud since the room was quite small, and I was aware of my surrounding just enough to become startled by it. Even so, I still felt very happy because I now knew that such concentration was possible.

I felt so at home there, and I'm glad that I got the chance to go. The whole night felt very auspicious to me. I wish that Abhayagiri wasn't so far away, because regular visits aren't in any way convenient. I'll tell you the truth, I've never really cared too much about 'relics' or the superficial practices of Buddhism such as pujas, but I now understand how powerful they can be—if just for the added inspiration and psychological enhancement of the experience alone.

It was a truly amazing and spiritually inspiring experience. You simply can't help but want to practice when you're around such dedicated members of the Sangha. Once again, my appreciation for the Buddha's monastic community has blossomed, and I'm deeply appreciative of the important place it holds.

These are the verses (gatha) that the Buddha is said to have spoken to the 1,250 arahants who gathered on this occasion:

Ovaada-paa.timokkha Gaathaa

Khantii parama.m tapo tiitikkhaa
Nibbaana.m parama.m vadanti buddhaa,
Na hi pabbajito paruupaghaatii
Sama.no hoti para.m vihe.thayanto

Patient forbearance is the foremost austerity.
Liberation is foremost: that's what the Buddhas say.
He is no monk who injures another;
nor a contemplative, he who mistreats another.

Sabba-paapassa akara.na.m,
Kusalassuupasampadaa,
Sacitta-pariyodapana.m:
Eta.m buddhaana-saasana.m.

The non-doing of any evil,
The performance of what's skillful,
The cleansing of one's own mind:
This is the Buddhas' teaching.

Anuupavaado anuupaghaato
Paa.timokkhe ca sa.mvaro
Mattaññutaa ca bhattasmi.m
Pantañca sayan'aasana.m.
Adhicitte ca aayogo:
Eta.m buddhaana-saasananti.

Not disparaging, not injuring,
Restraint in line with the monastic code,
Moderation in food,
Dwelling in seclusion,
Commitment to the heightened mind:
This is the Buddhas' teaching.

buddhist virtue ethics

2011-02-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

Ethics is fairly broad subject, but it mainly deals with questions of morality and codes of conduct that help guide our actions. When it comes to whether an action is deemed ethical, that depends a great deal on the underlying principles of the ethical system in question. Some, for example, take the outcome of an action to be the most important deciding factor, while others may take the action itself as the key determining factor.

In Buddhism, for example, the Buddha's distinction between skillful and unskillful actions seems like a middle way between, or possibly a synthesis of, Jeremy Bentham's teleological utilitarianism and Immanuel Kant's deontological categorical imperative. (That's not to say that Bentham and Kant represent two ends of a single ethical spectrum, only that the Buddha takes what Bentham and Kant stress and emphasis them together.) With the Buddha, just/skillful actions aren't simply judged to be just/skillful based upon their consequences, but also because there's something inherently just/skillful about the actions themselves. In Buddhism, this would be due to the quality of the intentions behind the actions.

The underlying principles behind Buddhist ethics are kamma — the idea that certain actions produce pleasant, painful or neutral feelings/results — and the principle of ahimsa or harmlessness.

The basic premise behind kamma is that there's a cause and effect relationship between our actions and how they're experienced. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu puts it, "It's simply the fact of action—you do something unskillful, it's going to come back in an unpleasant way." In the same way, if you do something skillful, it's going to come back and be experienced in a pleasant way. In the Suttas, the Buddha defines kamma as intentional actions of body, speech and mind (AN 6.63) that have the potential to produce certain results, which, in turn, have the potential to produce pleasant, painful or neutral feelings (AN 4.235). The word itself simply means 'action.'

Pragmatically speaking, actions are deemed 'unskillful' (akusala) if they lead to to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both. Actions that don't lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both are deemed 'skillful' (kusala) (MN 61). Therefore, the distinction between skillful and unskillful actions is based upon how their results are experienced—not only by ourselves, but by others as well. (This emphasis on the consequential aspect of actions is similar to Jeremy Bentham's teleological utilitarianism, with John Stuart Mill's idea of higher and lower happiness being similar to the Buddha's distinction between long-term and short-term welfare and happiness.)

Psychologically speaking, however, the quality of the intentions behind the actions is what ultimately determines whether they're unskillful or skillful. (This aspect is closer to Kant's deontological categorical imperative when combined with the Buddhist principle of harmlessness.) Intentional actions rooted in greed, hatred or delusion produce painful mental feelings "like those of the beings in hell," while intentional actions rooted in non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion produce the opposite ("like those of the Beautiful Black Devas"). Then there are acts rooted in both that bring mixed results "like those of human beings, some devas, and some beings in the lower realms" (AN 4.235). By bringing kamma to an end via the noble eightfold path, however, and eliminating the skillful/unskillful dichotomy altogether, the mind is said to become free from agitation, leaving only moral perfection behind (AN 9.7).

Essentially, Buddhist ethics focuses on the moral character of the individual, and revolves around seeing our desires for happiness and freedom from pain in all living creatures. If we don't respect that in them, how can we ever expect the same? This is especially true regarding human beings. Here I agree with the Buddha that, besides some rare and special cases, there's no one that's as dear to us as ourselves, that all beings essentially want to be happy in their own way (according to their specific capacities), and that it's a fairly decent and logical reason to desire their happiness as well as our own (SN 3.8).

The reason is simple. If our happiness comes at the expense of their happiness, they'll do everything in their power to upset that happiness. Conversely, if they were to infringe upon ours, wouldn't it follow that we'd do everything in our power to upset theirs? It seems like a vicious circle to me, and one of the ways to break this circle is an ethical framework that takes the happiness of others into consideration. This, in turn, can eventually lead to the development of things like compassion and generosity, which, when combined with other qualities and training methods, can ultimately transform a self-centred desire for happiness into the selfless achievement of happiness via insight into the inconstant (anicca), stressful (dukkha) and selfless (anatta) nature of phenomena.

Nevertheless, Buddhism is a type of 'religious individualism' in that the teachings on kamma focus on individual actions and their consequences, so ethics are more or less a personal matter that each individual must explore and develop on their own; although guidance is certainly advised.

The way I see it, Buddhist ethics aren't entirely black or white, i.e., they aren't seen in terms of ethical and unethical as much as skillful and unskillful. In Buddhism, all intentional actions are understood to have potential consequences, and actions that cause harm to others and/or ourselves are considered to be unskillful and something to be avoided. But the Buddha never condemns people merely for making unskillful choices or breaking the precepts; he simply urges them to learn from their mistakes and to make an effort to renounce their unskillful behaviour with the understanding that skillful behaviour leads to long-term welfare and happiness.

All in all, I find Buddhist ethics to be less judgmental and more forgiving than many other systems when it comes to making mistakes (read 'less rigid'), as well as ingenious and profoundly simple from a theoretical point of view. But more importantly, I find it to be practical and extremely effective when sincerely adopted and put into practice.

buddhism and the ethics of abortion

2011-01-17T18:18:00.000-08:00

Considering the prominence of the Buddhist principle of harmlessness and the broad scope of the first precept, not to mention the ongoing debate over a woman's right to choose, it's often asked whether things like abortion and birth control that prevents the implantation of the fertilized egg are considered to be unethical from a Buddhist standpoint. That's not necessarily an easy question to answer, however.

When discussing the precepts, the first thing that should be mentioned is that the precepts themselves are training rules that are voluntarily undertaken, not edicts or commands dictated by a higher power and/or authority; and they're undertaken to protect oneself, as well as others, from the results of unskillful actions. Actions are considered unskillful when they arise out of the mental defilements of greed, hatred and delusion and lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both (MN 61).

Regarding the issue of conception and the moment when consciousness arises in an embryo, I think that Ajahn Brahmavamso makes some good points in support of his view that fertilized ova and very early embryos outside the mother's womb aren't reckoned as human life because they lack sensitivity to painful or pleasant stimuli. In his words, "[O]nly when the embryo-fetus first shows sensitivity to pleasure and pain (vedana) and first shows will (such as by a purposeful shrinking away from a painful stimulus) has consciousness and nama-rupa first manifested and the new human life started."

There's still a fair amount of controversy over this subject, though, because the Buddha himself never explicitly states when consciousness arises in an embryo; although he does state in MN 38 that "the descent of the embryo" requires the union of three things: (1) the union of the mother and the father, (2) the mother is in season (i.e., fertile egg), and (3) the gandhabba is present. It should be noted, however, that this last term has engendered a fair amount of controversy itself.

Gandhabba generally refers to a class of devas or 'heavenly being,' and the term in relation to rebirth isn't explained anywhere in the Suttas. In fact, it only occurs in one other place in a similar context. Some, such as Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, translate it as 'sperm' or 'seed' based on its association with fragrant substances like flowers (the stem gandha meaning 'scent'), but that's not how it's traditionally been defined in this context. Bhikkhu Bodhi, for example, believes that the traditional interpretation of gandhabba as the being-to-be's 'stream of consciousness' (vinnanasota) is a reasonable one, mostly stemming from the passage in DN 15 that mentions consciousness "descending into the mothers' womb" (The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, n. 411).

But since the Pali Canon is rather vague when it comes to conception and the arising of consciousness, it can also be reasonably argued that sentient life begins at conception (e.g., Ajahn Sujato's essay, "When Life Begins"), and that things like abortion and the use of emergency contraception may transgress the first precept. In essence, there's no way to be absolutely sure of the moment when consciousness arises in an embryo simply going by what the Pali literature has to say on the matter.

That being the case, my own position would be to err on the side of caution and treat any embryo, from the moment of fertilization onward, as being a potential living being from a Buddhist standpoint, meaning that I wouldn't personally urge anyone to do anything that would cause them harm if there are other options. Nevertheless, I still believe in a woman's right to choose for the simple fact that the fertilized egg/embryo is, for all intents and purposes, a part of her body, and no one should have the right to tell another person what to do with their own body. As for whether having an abortion or using emergency contraception is unethical, that's another question entirely.

The underlying principles behind Buddhist ethics are kamma — the idea that certain actions produce pleasant, painful or neutral feelings/results — and the principle of ahimsa or harmlessness. Essentially, Buddhist ethics revolve around seeing our desires for happiness and freedom from pain in all living creatures (SN 3.8). Nevertheless, Buddhism is ultimately a type of 'religious individualism' in that the teachings on kamma focus on individual actions and their consequences, so ethics are more or less a personal matter that each individual must explore and develop on their own; although guidance is certainly advised.

The way I see it, Buddhist ethics aren't entirely black or white, i.e., they aren't seen in terms of ethical and unethical as much as skillful and unskillful. In Buddhism, all intentional actions are understood to have potential consequences, and actions that cause harm to others and/or ourselves are considered to be unskillful and something to be avoided. But the Buddha never condemns people merely for making unskillful choices or breaking the precepts; he simply urges them to learn from their mistakes and to make an effort to renounce their unskillful behaviour with the understanding that skillful behaviour leads to long-term welfare and happiness.

At worst, I think having an abortion or using emergency contraception can be considered unskillful and a violation of the first precept assuming that there's some level of consciousness present in the embryo at such an early stage (which is a mighty big assumption), but I certainly wouldn't consider it unethical unless the intent behind it was truly malicious. However, in the end, I think the answer really comes down to how we choose to view embryos — whether as a collection of cells, potential living beings or both — and this is where science should come into play more than some ancient religious texts.

As Bhikkhu Bodhi notes in his tract, "Taking the Precepts," a full violation of the first precept involves five factors: (1) a living being; (2) the perception of the living being as such; (3) the thought or volition of killing; (4) the appropriate effort; and (5) the actual death of the being as a result of the action. Therefore, if there's no perception of a living being, only a small collection of dividing cells that have yet to develop into one, then there's no violation of the first precept, or at least not a full one.

not-self strategy

2011-01-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

One thing that has always troubled me about the 'orthodox' view concerning the Buddha's teachings on not-self (anatta) is that it seems to go too far, making ontological statements about something the Buddha himself remained silent on. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu rightly points out, the only place in the Pali Canon where the Buddha is asked point blank whether or not there's a self (SN 44.10), he refused to answer on the ground that "to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible" (No-self or Not-self?).

I think part of the reason this doctrine is so misunderstood is due to the fact that it's often taken out of context and given an ontological status it doesn't deserve. Personally, I think it's important to at least understand the purpose of specific teachings — especially those on not-self — so that they're used skillfully, which is essentially the point of the water-snake simile in MN 22. And when it comes to the teachings on not-self, I agree with Thanissaro Bhikkhu that "the anatta teaching is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of its cause, leading to the highest, undying happiness."

The view that there is no self and the view that there is a self are both forms of self-view. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on you how you look at it), the Buddha refused to directly answer whether or not there is a self (SN 44.10), stating that he didn't see "any such supporting (argument) for views [of self] from the reliance on which there would not arise sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair" (MN 22). Instead, he focuses on events in and of themselves, as they are experienced, bypassing the question of self altogether. The Buddha says, "Who suffers," isn't a valid question, and suggests the alternative, "From what as a requisite condition comes suffering" (SN 12.35) in an effort to re-frame these questions in a way that's conducive to liberation — i.e., in terms of dependent co-arising — completely avoiding the question of 'who' or 'what' suffers. In other words, the teachings on not-self are ultimately pragmatic, soteriological methods rather than strictly ontological statements.

The Buddha makes it clear that everything he taught was for the sake of liberation/letting go (Ud 5.5), and "not for the purpose of holding onto" (MN 22). Moreover, while one may apply his teachings to other phenomena, the Buddha limits his scope to the six senses and their corresponding objects, noting that declarations about everything outside of this ultimately leads to vexation on the part of one making such statements when questioned as to their basis since such things lie beyond the range of description (SN 35.23).

In terms of what should be observed as not-self, the Buddha limits the use of this perception to the heaps of activities and processes on top of which we construct our sense of self — the 'all of personality identity' (sakkayasabba) — mainly the five aggregates (khandhas) or the six sense spheres (ayatana). For example, it should be clear from the context that when referring to 'the all,' 'the world' and 'the cosmos,' the Buddha was using these terms as metaphors for the five aggregates or the six sense spheres; and while this may seem to cover everything, we must differentiate between our presumptions and our actual experience. For most of us, as unenlightened worldlings (puthujjana), we don't know the answer for sure. We must follow the Buddha's path to see the truth for ourselves. The Buddha never said that there's nothing beyond the experience of the five aggregates, he simply said that one wouldn't be able to explain such a thing because it "lies beyond range." That's not equivalent to saying that there's nothing there. As for the inclusion of nibbana in the term sabba (literally, 'all'), Thanissaro notes:

The Commentary's treatment of this discourse is very peculiar. To begin with, it delineates three other "All's" in addition to the one defined here, one of them supposedly larger in scope than the one defined here: the Allness of the Buddha's omniscience (literally, All-knowingness). This, despite the fact that the discourse says that the description of such an all lies beyond the range of explanation.

Secondly, the Commentary includes nibbana (unbinding) within the scope of the All described here — as a dhamma, or object of the intellect — even though there are many other discourses in the Canon specifically stating that nibbana lies beyond the range of the six senses and their objects. Sn 5.6, for instance, indicates that a person who has attained nibbana has gone beyond all phenomena (sabbe dhamma), and therefore cannot be described. MN 49 discusses a "consciousness without feature" (vinnanam anidassanam) that does not partake of the "Allness of the All." Furthermore, the following discourse (SN 35.24) says that the "All" is to be abandoned. At no point does the Canon say that nibbana is to be abandoned. Nibbana follows on cessation (nirodha), which is to be realized. Once nibbana is realized, there are no further tasks to be done.

Thus it seems more this discourse's discussion of "All" is meant to limit the use of the word "all" throughout the Buddha's teachings to the six sense spheres and their objects. As the following discourse shows, this would also include the consciousness, contact, and feelings connected with the sense spheres and their objects. Nibbana would lie outside of the word, "all." This would fit in with another point made several times in the Canon: that dispassion is the highest of all dhammas (Iti 90), while the arahant has gone beyond even dispassion (Sn 4.6; Sn 4.10).

This raises the question, if the word "all" does not include nibbana, does that mean that one may infer from the statement, "all phenomena are not-self" that nibbana is self? The answer is no. As AN 4.174 states, to even ask if there is anything remaining or not remaining (or both, or neither) after the cessation of the six sense spheres is to differentiate what is by nature undifferentiated (or to objectify the unobjectified — see the Introduction to MN 18). The range of differentiation goes only as far as the "All." Perceptions of self or not-self, which would count as differentiation, would not apply beyond the "All." When the cessation of the "All" is experienced, all differentiation is allayed.

When reading the discourses of the Buddha — whether they're translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Bhikkhu Bodhi, or whomever — the picture I get is that the Buddha wasn't teaching or advocating a theory of self as much as stressing the idea that these very questions are a hindrance to the practice. One reason is that, in MN 2, existential questions of existence are considered by the Buddha to be "inappropriate attention." More specifically, both the views 'I have a self' and 'I have no self' are included in what the Buddha calls "a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views," and one who's bound by a fetter of views isn't freed from suffering and stress.

Another reason is found in MN 63. In this exchange, Malunkaputta demands that the Buddha answer ten questions concerning positions that are "undeclared, set aside, discarded by the Blessed One" — whether the cosmos is eternal or not eternal; whether the cosmos is finite or infinite; whether the soul and the body are the same or the soul is one thing and the body another; whether after death a Tathagata exists or does not exist, both exists and does not exist or neither exists nor does not exist — or else he will leave the Sangha. The Buddha responds by asking Malunkyaputta, "Did I ever say to you, 'Come, Malunkyaputta, live the holy life under me, and I will declare to you that 'The cosmos is eternal,' or 'The cosmos is not eternal,' or 'The cosmos is finite,' or 'The cosmos is infinite,' or 'The soul & the body are the same,' or 'The soul is one thing and the body another,' or 'After death a Tathagata exists,' or 'After death a Tathagata does not exist,' or 'After death a Tathagata both exists & does not exist,' or 'After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist?'" Malunkaputta, of course, answers no. The Buddha further explains:

Malunkyaputta, if anyone were to say, 'I won't live the holy life under the Blessed One as long as he does not declare to me that "The cosmos is eternal,"... or that "After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist,"' the man would die and those things would still remain undeclared by the Tathagata.

Taking all of these things into consideration, it's clear to me that the teachings on not-self, when looked at closely, aren't merely assertions that we have no self. They become something much more—a method for deconstructing our false perceptions about reality, as well as an important tool in removing the vast net of clinging that gives rise to suffering. When seen from this perspective, I think we can begin to see how these teachings — which seek to analyze the aspects of our experience on top of which we construct our sense of self in a process of, as the Buddha called it, 'I-making' and 'my-making' — help lead one towards dispassion, relinquishment, being unfettered, release. And this appears to me to be an active process that's done by the meditator; it's an observation, a contemplation and a realization, i.e., it's a teaching that one utilizes.

It seems to me that, if the Buddha really did take such a strong stance on the question of self as some people claim, he would've explicitly said there is, without a doubt, no self; or conversely, that there is, without a doubt, a self that's impermanent, or permanent and finite, or permanent and infinite, or separate from the body, or the same as the body, or neither the same as nor different from the body, etc. Instead, the Buddha taught his followers ways in which they could use what they had available to them (the five aggregates) to realize what was beyond them (nibbana). The question will inevitable arise, What is beyond them? But, as Sariputta warns in AN 4.174, asking what remains after the remainderless stopping and fading of the six contact-media "objectifies non-objectification" (or "complicates non-complication" as Thanissaro's original translation read):

The statement, 'With the remainderless stopping & fading of the six contact-media [vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, & intellection] is it the case that there is anything else?' objectifies non-objectification. The statement, '... is it the case that there is not anything else ... is it the case that there both is & is not anything else ... is it the case that there neither is nor is not anything else?' objectifies non-objectification. However far the six contact-media go, that is how far objectification goes. However far objectification goes, that is how far the six contact media go. With the remainderless fading & stopping of the six contact-media, there comes to be the stopping, the allaying of objectification.

And when Thanissaro says that the teachings on not-self should be used a strategy, it's because that, beyond being studied, they're meant to be put into practice. Without the compliments of observing the precepts, cultivating states of concentration and developing direct insight into our experience of phenomena, nobody's understanding of what the Buddha taught will ever be complete. It should also be remembered that the Buddha said his teachings were not to be used simply to argue with other contemplatives (MN 22), and to focus on only one side of the practice is to destroy this carefully constructed balance designed by the Buddha.

In the simplest of terms, the Buddha taught that whatever is inconstant is stressful, and whatever is stressful is not-self—with the goal being to essentially take this [analytical] knowledge, along with a specific set of practices such as meditation, as a stepping stone to what I can only describe as a profound psychological event that radically changes the way the mind relates to experience. That doesn't mean, however, that the teachings on not-self are understood to deny individuality (MN 22) or imply that the conventional person doesn't exist (SN 22.22). The way I understand it, they merely break down the conceptual idea of a self — i.e., that which is satisfactory, permanent and completely subject to our control — in relation to the various aspects of our experience that we falsely cling to as 'me' or 'mine' (SN 22.59).

There's rarely a moment when the mind isn't clinging to this or that in one or more of the four ways (MN 11). Our identity jumps from one thing to another, wherever the clinging is strongest. Our sense of self is something which is always in flux, ever-changing from moment to moment in response to various internal and external stimuli, and yet at the same time, we tend to see it as a static thing. It's as if our sense of self desires permanence, but its very nature causes it to change every second. As the Buddha warns in SN 12.61:

It would be better for the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person to hold to the body composed of the four great elements, rather than the mind, as the self. Why is that? Because this body composed of the four great elements is seen standing for a year, two years, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred years or more. But what's called 'mind,' 'intellect,' or 'consciousness' by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another. Just as a monkey, swinging through a forest wilderness, grabs a branch. Letting go of it, it grabs another branch. Letting go of that, it grabs another one. Letting go of that, it grabs another one. In the same way, what's called 'mind,' 'intellect,' or 'consciousness' by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another.

To me, what the Buddha seems to be teaching in regards to not-self is that anywhere whatsoever one may look for a permanent and ever-lasting self, one will simply find oneself grasping at unsatisfactoriness and inconstancy out of ignorance [of the four noble truths]. Everything that we can possibly experience in regard to this body (rupa) and mind (nama) is inconstant and stressful; therefore, everything that we can possibly experience in regard to these phenomena isn't fit to be labelled 'me' or 'mine.' And when people try to use the consciousness of nibbana (vinnanam anidassanam) as an example of what lies beyond range but can be experienced at some point, they fail to take into consideration the various teachings concerning this attainment.

For one, to even experience nibbana, all forms of self-view must be abandoned. There's no longer any thoughts of 'I,' 'me' or 'mine' in terms of the six senses media. Moreover, as AN 4.174 illustrates, intellectually trying to uncover a self in that experience seeks to objectify the unobjectified, and as Thanissaro notes, "[T]he root of the classifications and perceptions of objectification is the thought, 'I am the thinker.' This thought forms the motivation for the questions that Ven. Maha Kotthita is presenting here: the sense of 'I am the thinker' can either fear or desire annihilation in the course of Unbinding. Both concerns get in the way of the abandoning of clinging, which is essential for the attainment of Unbinding, which is why the questions should not be asked."

In the Buddha's teachings, everything is a question of skill; and the question "What am I?" isn't a question worth asking. Soteriologically speaking, it's a distraction that isn't conducive to liberation. In trying to answer this question, our focus is taken off of the immediate practice, and instead becomes lost within a 'thicket of views' of self. It's a speculative trap that the noble disciple must learn to avoid, for it only leads to more suffering, more becoming, more craving, and not the arising of knowledge, the abandoning of craving, nibbana. In MN 2, the Buddha makes the danger inherent in this kind of inappropriate attention abundantly clear:

This is how he attends inappropriately: 'Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what, what was I in the past? Shall I be in the future? Shall I not be in the future? What shall I be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Having been what, what shall I be in the future?' Or else he is inwardly perplexed about the immediate present: 'Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where is it bound?'

As he attends inappropriately in this way, one of six kinds of view arises in him: The view I have a self arises in him as true & established, or the view I have no self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive not-self... or the view It is precisely by means of not-self that I perceive self arises in him as true & established, or else he has a view like this: This very self of mine — the knower that is sensitive here & there to the ripening of good & bad actions — is the self of mine that is constant, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and will stay just as it is for eternity. This is called a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person is not freed from birth, aging, & death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. He is not freed, I tell you, from suffering & stress.

Ultimately, I think trying to approach the teachings on not-self from an purely intellectual standpoint runs the risk of turning them into a metaphysical doctrine of self, which I believe falls short of their intended purpose. The Dhamma itself isn't just a collection of words, it's something to be utilized, to be experienced; and the Buddha didn't teach anatta as a doctrine of self, he taught anatta as part of his overall strategy to overcome suffering. There are those who'll automatically disagree with this statement, but if we put the Buddha's entire forty-five years of teaching into context, we'll see that it only has one taste, the taste of liberation (Ud 5.5). And when it comes right down to it, the Buddha only taught two things:

Both formerly & now, it is only stress that I describe, and the cessation of stress.

If we start from here and then ask what part do the teachings on not-self play in achieving this goal, I think we can more easily unveil its important and vital role. When it comes to the four noble truths, one of the main things to be understood in the comprehension of the first noble truth is that, what are called the three characteristics of existence (tilakkhana) are present throughout the most discernible aspects of our experience on top of which we construct our sense of self. When the mind is concentrated, it can be more clearly seen that whatever is inconstant (anicca), whatever is unstable and subject to change, is stressful, unsatisfactory (dukkha); and to hold onto anything that's inconstant, subject to change, break-up and dissolution, is a cause for mental stress, suffering.

Why, then, would we want cling to something that's inconstant, and by its very nature stressful, as a self? Would it proper to regard what's inconstant, stressful and subject to change as 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am'? And if our happiness is based on such unstable footing, is it really true happiness? Looking at it this way, I think we can start to see how the teachings on not-self, combined with those on inconstancy, fit into the Buddha's overall strategy to end suffering. As Thanissaro succinctly puts it, "We apply these standards to the experiences we consume: if they aren't long-term, then no matter how pleasant they might be, they aren't true happiness. If they're not true happiness, there's no reason to claim them as 'mine.' This insight forms the basis for the Three Characteristics that the Buddha taught for inducing a sense of dispassion for normal time- and space-bound experience" (All About Change).

This may be a bit of nonsense, but in one of the ways I like to look at it, the conventional viewpoint (sammuti sacca) explains things through subject, verb and object whereas the ultimate viewpoint (paramattha sacca) explains things through verb alone. In essence, things are being viewed from the perspective of activities and processes.

This, I think, is incredibly difficult to see, but perhaps what happens here is that once self-identity view (sakkaya-ditthi) is removed, the duality of subject and object is also removed, thereby revealing the level of mere conditional phenomena, i.e., dependent co-arising in action. This mental process is 'seen,' ignorance is replaced by 'knowledge and vision of things as they are' (yatha-bhuta-nana-dassana), and nibbana, then, would be the 'letting go' of what isn't self through the dispassion (viraga) invoked in seeing the inconstant (anicca) and stressful (dukkha) nature of clinging to false refuges that are neither fixed nor stable (anatta).

In addition to all of this, I think listening to Thanissaro's talks on the three characteristics and the five aggregates will help to shed some more light onto the reasons he teaches anatta in this way. When studying these teachings, however, I think it should be kept in mind that the purpose of the practice isn't to clone someone else's insights, it's to develop our own. And one of the main points I believe Thanissaro is trying to convey in his essay, "Not-self Strategy," is that one shouldn't study these teachings in an effort to construct a metaphysical view out of them, but in order to put them into practice. It's only after putting these things to the test that we're able to know, through own own experience, those same insights.

buddhahood, mahayana vs. theravada

2011-01-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

Besides presenting what's said to be a complete path to buddhahood via, as Thanissaro Bhikkhu describes it in The Ten Perfections, "traditions set in motion by the experiences of visionaries from the beginning of the common era," one of the main difference between Mahayana and Theravada is that the former has a fundamentally different (or at least expanded) conception of buddhahood and what a buddha is capable of doing.

In Theravada, a sammasambuddha (perfectly enlightened buddha) is understood to be a person who achieves perfect enlightenment without having heard the Dhamma from others, and is able to effectively teach it to others. Once their natural lifespan is over (which, according to DN 16, a buddha can extend if asked), they pass away and attain total unbinding (parinibbana), a freedom that's characterized by the complete cessation of the five aggregates (khandha).

In Mahayana, however, a buddha isn't just one who achieves perfect enlightenment and teaches the Dhamma to others, but, according to the Mahaparinirvana Sutra and certain Tathagatagarbha sutras, one who also possesses purified (i.e., eternal and unchanging) aggregates that are incomprehensible the unawakened.

As such, from the Mahayana point of view, there's nothing stopping a buddha from 'popping back' into samsara (the cycle of death and rebirth), especially considering that, for them, the distinction between samsara and nirvana is little more than an illusion when viewed from the ultimate standpoint of the dharmakaya or 'truth-body.' Moreover, their conception of causality allows for the continuation of the mindstream after the breakup of the body. As Namdrol from E-Sangha once explained it to me:

If the causes if a mindstream were solely afflictive, then with the exhaustion of the karmic share that sustains the life force of the body, and thus the life of a Buddha or an arhat, I might be inclined to agree that the mind stream of a Buddha or an arhat would cease at death, since all causes for its continuance would be exhausted too. However there is a slight problem with this: if the mindstream's causes were solely afflictive, why does the mind not cease with nirvana in toto? Why does the mind continue after the eradication of all afflictions in a Buddha and an arhat? And if the mind continues after the eradication of the afflictions of a Buddha, etc., why could it not continue after the breakup of the body of a Buddha, etc., albeit in a non-afflicted state? In fact, Peter Harvey's interesting book, The Selfless Mind, makes this very suggestion on page 250 where he summerizes all of his arguments and findings.

In other words, not only does bodhicitta act as a cause to help keep the bodhisattva on the path to buddhahood throughout their innumerable lifetimes, it acts as a positive, non-afflictive cause for the continuation of the enlightened being/mindstream as well. And this is perfectly logical and consistent within Mahayana's own understanding of itself, which includes certain terms that Theravada understands differently.

For example, the Theravada standpoint is that the cause of said mindstream (as well as the body) is kamma (literally 'action'), both skillful and unskillful, although I'm not entirely sure if this corresponds to afflictive and non-afflictive in Mahayana. Nevertheless, in the Pali Canon, the noble eightfold path is said to be the kamma that leads to the ending of kamma (AN 4.235).

When it comes to the standard explanation of why the mind and body don't [always] cease with that attainment of nirvana, it's said that as long as the lifespan of the aggregates isn't completely exhausted — which itself depends upon the amount of input remaining from past kamma — the mind and body of an arahant (noble one) will continue. When this input from past kamma is exhausted, there's said to be complete cessation of both mind and body.

A Mahayanist, on the other hand, would probably disagree with this in an ultimate sense, saying that this is only how it appears from the point of view of samsara (think relativity here), but not from the point of view of high-level Bodhisattvas and fully enlightened Buddhas.

Another main difference is Mahayana's understanding of nirvana, which is also understood differently in Mahayana. In Mahayana, those who have attained nirvana still have work to do. This idea originates from certain Mahayana texts such as the Saddharmapundarika Sutra, where the arahant is said not to have reached final nirvana. Essentially, they're seen as being intoxicated with the bliss of the samadhi of cessation, not the nirvana that's attained by a fully enlightened buddha.

Moreover, it's said that buddhas are then able to awaken these individuals from their temporary cessation in order for them to continue towards complete buddhahood (making buddhas extremely important), which is characterized by omniscience. This is said to be due to buddhahood being the result of wisdom and merit accumulation, and not just the eradication of afflictions (which isn't too different from Theravada sans the awakening of arahants bit). As Thubten Chodron explains it:

In the Sanskrit canon, or at least in the Tibetan tradition, when you have arhatship without remainder you abide in meditative equipoise on emptiness for a long, long time. So consciousness still exists, the person still exists, it's merely labeled in dependence upon those aggregates, which are not tainted aggregates, but not completely purified aggregates. Although they're free from ignorance, so they're untainted. Yes, they would be untainted. They still have the cognitive obscurations but they would be untainted. So you abide in the nirvana for eons in your meditative equipoise until eventually the Buddha wakes you up and says, “You have to work for the benefit of sentient beings, your job isn't really done.” So that's from a Mahayana viewpoint, what's happened to the arhats.

The nature of Shakyamuni in Mahayana is a bit more complicated as well. For one thing, Mahayana isn't homogeneous in a number of areas; but in general, the historical Buddha is seen to be a nirmanakaya (created-body), i.e., a manifestation of the dharmakaya who appears for the benefit of sentient beings.

Of course, all of this contrasts with how the Buddha and nirvana are presented and understood in Theravada, which is why these inter-tradition dialogues often end with everyone talking past each other. Whether or not one agrees with all of this is irrelevant, however, since neither tradition is the arbiter of all things Buddhist. The best we can do is agree to disagree. To steal a phrase from tiltbillings, "The Mahayana does not get to define the Theravada for Theravadins any more than the Theravada gets to define the Mahayana for Mahayanists."

I'm not saying that one can't be critical of certain ideas or have inter-tradition debates, only that nobody can really 'win' such debates when each side is logically consistent within itself, and it all depends on what one takes as the basis for their views. It's entirely possible, for example, that a person who accepts the commentarial literature in Theravada as authoritative can have serious disagreements with someone who only accepts the Suttas, so just imagine the amount of disagreement possible with someone who accepts an additional collection of teachings that lies outside of Theravada altogether.

This is why I often try to look beyond these debates and focus instead on other criteria for choosing what to accept as the basis for my views, things such as archeology, scholarly opinion, textual analysis, etc. I'm just as liable to reject the majority of the Theravadin commentarial literature as I am the majority of Sanskrit sutras. Don't get me wrong, though. That doesn't mean I don't find things in each I like, admire or even adopt when I think they're beneficial; and it certainly doesn't stop me from trying to understand where other traditions are coming from in order to see past these differences.

the agganna sutta

2010-12-26T21:36:00.000-08:00

I've been having a rather interesting discussion with some members at dhammawheel.com about the Agganna Sutta of the Digha Nikaya lately, mostly stemming from something I wrote about a month ago:

As for DN 27, the Buddha tells a story about the beginning of life on this world to two brahmins which, in the end, was used to illustrate how the way to liberation is beyond caste and lineage. So, in this regard, the Buddha does give what can be interpreted as a rough theory of evolution to the pair of brahmins in that the physical characteristics of the mythological beings in question change due to environmental changes and interactions, as well as a description the universe somewhat akin to the oscillating universe theory.

I think that, when taken literally, the creation myth in DN 27 can be seen as an attempt to give a naturalistic explanation of the origins of life and the universe, and Darwin's fairly well-proven theory of evolution certainly isn't inconsistent with this, which makes many new Buddhists breath a sigh of relief. That being said, I agree with Prof. Gombrich that, taking the context of DN 27 into account, this sutta is a lively and ingenious parody that's actually meant to make fun of the very need for a cosmology as a foundation for religious development (How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings, pg. 81-82).

Personally, I see Buddhism as dealing exclusively with mental stress and its cessation (i.e., psychology), not biology, or physics, etc. And while some people get excited when they discover that Buddhism contains teachings which seem to be in accord with modern science, I think they can often be misleading and shouldn't be taken too seriously, or at least, too literally. I think this is especially true of DN 27 considering that recent observations of cosmic background radiation indicate the universe is actually expanding at an accelerated rate, hence there may not be any contraction or 'Big Crunch.' (Lawrence Krauss mentions this in his talk at the 2009 AAI Conference; although it should also be noted that Roger Penrose recently challenged the commonly-held 'inflationary theory' of cosmology with his suggestion that analysis of cosmic microwave background shows echoes of previous Big Bang-like events.)

There have been some valid and thought-provoking criticisms of what I've written above. One thing that was brought up by yuttadhammo is that, "This argument assumes that the word 'sa.mva.t.tati' in the Agganna Sutta means 'contracts', which it doesn't." This criticism is mainly levelled against Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation of DN 27, however, which reads:

There comes a time, Vasettha, when, sooner or later after a long period, this world contracts. At the time of contraction, beings are mostly born in the Abhassara Brahma world. And there they dwell, mind-made, feeding on delight, self-luminous, moving through the air, glorious—and they stay like that for a very long time. But sooner or later, after a very long period, this world begins to expand again. At a time of expansion the beings from the Abhassara Brahma world, having passed away from there, are mostly reborn in this world. Here they dwell, mind-made, feeding on delight, self-luminous, moving through the air, glorious—and they stay like that for a very long time.

Having a look at the Pali myself, the words translated here as 'contraction' and 'expansion' are samvattati and vivattati respectively. I agree with Phra Noah that 'contraction' and 'expansion' aren't generally the best translations, ('dissolve' and 'evolve' might be better), and I'm not sure why Bhikkhu Bodhi translates them this way. Perhaps it's due to something in the commentarial literature, or maybe he simply thought it was more appropriate given the overall context. Either way, I think this is something that merits further discussion.

Another good point was made in the same thread by son of dhamma, who said, "I don't consider that the world being talked about in the Agganna Sutta is 'the universe'. In fact I don't see why anyone would have this notion after considering the context." Taking another look at the Pali, I'm inclined to agree.

Since the Buddha uses the word loko or 'world,' which is often used as a metaphor for the six sense spheres, I agree that given the context, 'the world' being referenced is most likely not the universe but the world of sensory experience, which, incidentally, makes me even more convinced that this sutta is a lively and ingenious parody that's actually meant to make fun of the very need for a cosmology as a foundation for religious development. However, it should be noted that according to Nyanatiloka's Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines, the term loka denotes "the 3 spheres of existence comprising the whole universe," which seems to be more in line with how Buddhist cosmology has traditionally been presented in Theravada (i.e., expanding and contracting world-systems), so perhaps this term should be analyzed in more detail as well.

All in all, I'm still of the opinion that questions about the origin of the universe are ultimately irrelevant to the practice, and this is mainly due to the focus of the practice itself, which is simply to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize its cessation and develop the path leading to that cessation (SN 56.11).

puggalavada: a brief look

2010-12-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

This revised version of something I wrote back in 2006 initially began as response to a member's post, which eventually evolved into a topic in its own right. This entry is simply an attempt to share some of the things that I found regarding the Puggalavadins, as well as my own thoughts on the subject.

Be honest. How many times have you ever pondered the teachings on not-self (anatta) in an effort to discover whether there's a hidden self (atta) lurking around in the shadows somewhere? I can admit that I was once interested in pinning down the exact meaning of 'self,' 'not-self,' and whatever was in-between, mainly in an attempt to discover the answer to the timeless question, Who am I?

The difficulties in understanding the Buddha's teachings on rebirth (punabbhava, literally 'again becoming') along with not-self have plagued practitioners since the beginning of the Buddha's dispensation. Throughout the beginning of my own journey into Buddhism, I flirted with a version of the Puggalavadin view of self, which was helped along by the fact that I was previously a practicing Pagan with a fairly strong belief in the existence of a type of self or soul already. However, I quickly discovered a key problem: I was in no position to determine the exact nature of self from the Buddhist point of view when I'd yet to even grasp the basic tenets of Buddhism itself.

So in search of an answer, I turned to the discourses of the Buddha recorded in the Pali Canon, hungrily looking for something I could wrap my intellectual understanding around. At the beginning, I mistook the meaning of SN 44.10, thinking that perhaps the Buddha was just being coy and hinting at something there that was so unlike what anybody thought was there that it couldn't simply be labelled as 'self.' But after spending some time with a monk from the Thai Forest tradition, and more time reading the Suttas, I began to realize that the Buddha wasn't hinting at a self or a lack thereof at all; he was simply avoiding the misunderstandings and spectrum of wrong views the issue itself presents. At that point, I resigned myself to leave the question of self alone, deciding that that was what the Buddha himself recommended thanks to suttas such as AN 4.42 and MN 2.

I could now clearly see that trying to affirm or even deny a self of any sort wouldn't lead me to the cessation of suffering, so what was the point? I realized that whatever the truth may be, it must be 'seen' for oneself. It's not something that can adequately be put into words without giving the wrong impression, and it's not something that can be understood solely through reason; it's something that must eventually be experienced. All of the teachings and techniques expounded by the Buddha are ultimately meant to lead to 'knowledge and vision of things as they are' (yatha-bhuta-nana-dassana), and subsequently, to awakening. "Ah, so it's like this."

As for the Puggalavadins, they went by the same collection of teachings (sans the Abhidhamma Pitaka) as the other accepted schools of Buddhism, and they weren't necessarily deemed 'heretical' at the time of their existence. It's reported that their sect covered much of India before the decline of Buddhism in that area, and the main difference between them and the other sects existent at the time was their interpretation of the Buddha's teaching on not-self. There was much debate at the time as to what the Buddha was really pointing at in regard to the existence or non-existence of self — that which is "permanent, stable, eternal, not subject to change" (SN 24.3) — with sutta references presented as evidence by both sides. One of the most famous and contentious is SN 22.22, with its unique mention of the 'person' (puggala) as the "carrier of the burden." Beyond this debate, however, their methods of practice were, as far as we know, quite similar.

This brings me to my point. It seems that even today, certain teachers in the Theravada tradition have views and teachings that seem to mirror the ancient Puggalavadin's, long after the latter's disappearance. There are certain teachers in the Thai Forest tradition, for example, whose teachings regarding the purified mind (citta) bear a striking resemblance to the Puggalavadin's regarding the person. That's not to say that they believe in, or teach about, a 'self' as the Puggalavadins did, but that they teach in a way that does at least seem to leave the question open. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, for example, wrote a controversial essay called "The Not-self Strategy," which some criticize as being an "eel-wriggling interpretation of anatta as a strategy." And then there are quotes like this from "Five Piles of Bricks":

Other passages mention a consciousness in this freedom — "without feature or surface, without end, luminous all around" — lying outside of time and space, experienced when the six sense spheres stop functioning (MN 49). In this it differs from the consciousness-khandha, which depends on the six sense spheres and can be described in such terms as near or far, past, present, or future. Consciousness without feature is thus the awareness of Awakening. And the freedom of this awareness carries over even when the awakened person returns to ordinary consciousness.

But there are others who are even more suspect in the eyes of the 'orthodox' Theravadin community, such as Ajahn Maha Boowa, who some accuse of holding more blatantly 'eternalistic' views. For example, in the appendix to his Arahattamagga Arahattaphala - The Path to Arahantship, he says things like "the true power of the citta's own nature is that it knows and does not die" (99). The real question is, Are the Puggalavadin's views, albeit subtly, still around today?

To begin with, who exactly were the Puggalavadins? From what little we do know, they were a sect of Buddhism that arose in about 300 BCE. They broke off from the older Sthaviravadins (part of which eventually evolved into our modern day 'Theravada' tradition). Their sect was known as the 'Personalist' school because of their belief that, while there is no 'self,' there is a 'person,' which is neither the same as, nor different from, the aggregates (khandhas).

The Puggalavadins more or less accepted and used the same collection of discourses (Sutta Pitika) and shared the same the monastic rules (Vinaya Pitika) as the Sthaviravadins, but they didn't accept the Abhidhamma Pitika, a systematization of certain concepts and terms found throughout the Sutta Pitaka — with additional concepts and terms added in for logical consistency — which was possibly intended to act as a pedagogical tool, as well as an attempt to describe the ultimate nature of reality. (Many scholars also agree that the Abhidhamma Pitaka is a later addition to the original teachings that gradual developed over several centuries. This is not only evident from the fact that the Abhidhamma utilizes words that are found nowhere else in the Canon, but also from the fact that each school had their own version, and some, like the Sautrantika school, even rejecting it altogether.)

As with other sects, they did have different versions of certain suttas, but the majority of their canon was apparently close to that of the Sthaviravadins. This is significant because they had to have comparable texts and/or teachings to be able to debate their views with their Sthaviravadin counterparts without automatically being deemed heretical. Unfortunately, almost none of their personal texts have survived besides a few poorly translated Chinese versions, so who can say how close their respective canons actually were.

In any case, after time, the 'orthodox' sect of the Sthaviravadins that eventually evolved into what we call Theravada deemed the Puggalavadin's take on the 'person' to be a misinterpretation of what the Buddha taught — mistaking the Buddha's conventional usage of speech for something metaphysical — and saw their rejection of the Abhidhamma as unorthodox, therefore they were officially labeled as heretical. Perhaps this was done even earlier, but we know for sure that in the Theravada Abhidhamma (as well as other versions) there's a section dealing with the refutation of heretical views including the Puggalavadin's called the Kathavatthu or Points of Controversy. An example of such a refutation from the Sarvastivadin viewpoint is found in Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosa, an abstract of which can be found in Edward Conze's book, Buddhist Scriptures (pg. 103-06):

The Personalist Controversy

Is final deliverance then possible outside this Dharma, and can it be won on the basis of non-Buddhist doctrines? - No, it cannot, for all other teachings are corrupted by false ideas about a 'self'. Instead of taking it as a mere conventional term applied to a series of impersonal processes, they believe in a self which is a substance independent of the Skandhas. But the mere belief in such a self must of necessity generate defilements. Those who hold it will be forced to pursue life in the Samsaric world, and will be unable to free themselves completely from it.

The Personalist thesis, first part: But is it not true that a Buddhist school, the Personalists, speak of a Person who is neither identical with the Skandhas, nor different from them? And is not this Person a kind of self? And yet, as Buddhists they should be able to win deliverance! - We must ask ourselves whether this Person exists as a real entity, i.e. as one of the separate elements of existence, like the elementary sight-objects, sounds, and so on, which careful analysis reveals; or whether it has a merely nominal existence, which denotes a combination of simple elements, as 'milk' is a combination of sights, smells, tastes and touchables.

The Personalist: Why should not either assumption be true? - Vasubandbu: If the Person is a real entity with a nature of its own, it must be different from the elementary data, just as these are different from one another. It must then be either produced by causes, or unconditioned. In the first case it is not eternal, as you maintain, and you must be able to state its conditions in detail. In the second case you adopt a clearly non-Buddhistic doctrine, and, in addition, your Person could not do anything, and would be a rather useless hypothesis. The Person is therefore unlikely to be a real entity. But if you regard it as a mere designation, then your view does not differ in the least from ours. - The Personalist: We claim that there is a Person; but we do not say that he is an entity. Nor do we believe that he exists merely as a designation for the Skandhas. What we say is that the word 'Person' denotes a kind of structural unity which is found in correlation with the Skandhas of one individual, i.e. with those elements which are actually present, internal to him, and appropriated by him.

The Personalist thesis, second part: The Personalist also teaches that the Person is 'ineffable', that his rektion to the elements cannot be defined, that he is neither identical nor non-identical with them. He distinguishes five kinds of cognizable things -the first three are the conditioned dharmas, i.e. those past, future and present; the fourth is the Unconditioned; and the fifth is the 'ineffable', and refers to the Person. - But if the Person were quite ineffable, if nothing at all could be stated about it, then one could also not say of it either that it is the fifth category or that it is not!

The Personalist: It is perfectly true that the Person is not an object of consciousness. - Vasubandhu: Very well, but then one can never be aware of it; if unaware of it, one cannot cognize it; if it cannot be an object of cognition, how can its existence ever be established? And if one cannot do that, your system falls to pieces. - Vasubandhu then quotes a number of canonical texts, of which I give three here: The Bimbisarasutra says: 'The foolish ignorant common people, putting their trust in words, imagine that there is such a thing as a self. But there is neither "I" nor "mine". There are only dharmas, ill at ease, future, present and past.' In the Kshudragama the Buddha says to the Brahmin Badari: 'Badari, one who has heard the four holy truths, he can free himself from all bonds: thought alone defiles, thought alone purifies. The self has, in fact, not the nature of a self. To think that there is a self is a perverted view. There is nowhere here a living being, there is no self; dharmas alone together with their causes do exist.

No person can be found in all the Skandhas when examined. And, having seen that a person is inwardly empty, you must also see the outside world as empty. Even those who meditate on emptiness cannot be said to exist.' And another Sutra says: 'Five calamities result from a belief in a self: wrong opinions about the actual status of a self, an individual, a soul; non-distinction from non-Buddhists; one goes astray on a wrong road; thought does not leap forward into emptiness, finds no serenity in it, does not abide in it, does not resolve upon it; one will never be sufficiently purified to win the qualities of a saint.'

The Personalist: These texts have no authority for us. They do not form part of our Scriptures. - Vasubandhu: What then is the authority behind your system - your sect or the word of the Buddha? How can you claim the Buddha as your Teacher, how can you be Shakyamuni's sons, if you do not accept all the Buddha's words as binding on you? - The Personalist: The texts you have just quoted are not the Buddha's own words, and they are not in the Scriptures of our school. -Vasubandhu: That is not very convincing. For all the other schools accept these texts, and they are not in conflict either with other Sutras, or with the Dharma. This is therefore sheer effrontery on your part. And how then, incidentally, do you explain the Sutra which says: 'To mistake for a self that which is not a self, that is a perverted notion, a perverted idea, a perverted opinion.' - The Personalist: The Sutra only says that it is a perversion to mistake a not-self for a self; but it does not say that it is a perversion to recognize a self as a self. And also: According to your doctrines the Lord could not possibly be omniscient. You say that all thoughts and mental activities change incessantly, and that each mental act lasts only for one moment. How then can it know all the dharmas? Only an abiding Person can be omniscient. - Vasubandhu: May I point out that then your Person would be eternal, and that contradicts your statements that we cannot say whether he is eternal or not. And this is how we account for the Buddha's omniscience: For us the word 'Buddha' is a term denoting a series of momentary events. We do not believe that in one single moment he just knows all the dharmas simultaneously. The unique feature of his series of momentary mental actions lies in the fact that, by the mere act of turning his mind on anything, there arises immediately a correct and unperverted knowledge of any object whatever, if there should be at the same time the desire to know it. That is the sense in which we speak of 'omniscience'.

The Personalist: Why then, if the word 'person' means nothing but the five Skandhas which form the range of grasping, did the Lord teach the 'Burden Sutra', which says: 'I will teach you the burden, its taking up, its laying down, and the bearer of the burden. The five Skandhas, which are the range of grasping, are the burden. Craving takes up the burden. The renunciation of craving lays it down. The bearer of the burden is the person: this venerable man, with such and such a name, born so and so, of such and such a clan, who sustains himself on this or that food, experiences these pleasures and pains, lives for just so long, stays here for just so long, terminates his life-span in just this way.' For, if 'person' were only another name for the Skandhas, if 'person' and Skandhas were actually identical, then the burden would carry itself, and that is absurd. - Vasubandhu: You have misunderstood the message of this Sutra. The Lord speaks of a 'person' here only in order to conform to the usage of the world. In fact this so-called 'personality' is nothing but a series of consecutive impersonal momentary events, all of them linked to suffering. But the processes which have taken place in the past cause suffering in those which succeed them. The preceding Skandhas are therefore called the 'burden', the subsequent ones its 'bearer'.

The Personalist: Moreover, another Sutra says: 'One person, when he arises, when he is born in the world, is born for the weal of the many. Who is that one person? It is the Tathagata.' - Vasubandhu: Here again the Lord just conforms to the usage of the world. For that reason he treats here as a unit that which is in fact a complex; it is quite usual for people to speak of a 'word', although it is in fact a compound of syllables, or of a heap of rice, although it obviously comprises a multiplicity of grains. In addition, this Sutra says of the person that 'he arises', and that, contrary to your teaching, makes him into something conditioned. - The Personalist: The term 'arises' has one meaning when applied to the dharmas, another when applied to the Person. A dharma is said to 'arise' because it exists now after not having existed before. A person, however, is said to 'arise', or to 'be born' when, on rebirth in a certain form, he takes up, or acquires, certain constituents, which make him into 'this man', 'this animal', 'this ghost', and so on. It is quite usual to say of a man who has acquired a knowledge of grammar that 'a grammarian is born', or 'a grammarian has arisen', but that does not mean that he has come from nothing. The person 'arises' in the sense that he acquires at a certain time a certain series of attributes, in the above quotation those of a Buddha. - Vasubandhu: This explanation has been expressly condemned by the Lord. For He has said: 'There is action, and there is the retribution of action. But apart from the causally linked sequence of impersonal dharmas there is no one who acts, there is no one who gives up one set of Skandhas, and takes up others instead." In consequence there is no person who gives up his Skandhas at death and takes up others at rebirth.

The Personalist: Nevertheless, the Person is real, for it has been said: 'To say that the self does not exist, in truth and in reality, is a wrong view.' - Vasubandhu: This is no proof, for it has also been said that to affirm the existence of a self is a wrong view. We Abhidharmists believe that both the general affirmation and the general negation of a self are extremist views, in accordance with the well-known saying of the Vatsagotra-sutra: 'Those, Ananda, who affirm a self fall into the extreme of the belief in its eternal continuation; those who deny it fall into the extreme of the belief in its eventual annihilation.'

The Personalist; If the Person does not exist, who then is it that wanders about in Samsara? It is difficult to see how the Samsara itself can wander about. - Vasubandhu: The correct explanation is, however, quite simple: When a flame burns a piece of wood, one says that it wanders along it; nevertheless there is nothing but a series of flame-moments. Likewise there is a continuous series of processes which incessantly renews itself, and which is falsely called a living being. Impelled by craving, this series is said to 'wander' in Samsara.

The Personalist: If the momentary processes alone exist, how can you explain these words of the Lord, when he said, on recalling one of his former lives: 'This sage Sunetra, who existed in the past, that Sunetra was I.' All the psycho-physical elements have changed, and it can therefore only be the 'person' that makes the Buddha and Sunetra identical. -Vasubandhu: What in fact is it that the Lord thinks of when he speaks here of I? If, as you say, he means the 'person', then the past 'I' is identical with the present I, and your 'person' will be permanent, as against your intentions. For us, however, the Lord only meant to say that his actually present dharmas are parts of the same continuous series of dharmas as those of Sunetra. As one says: 'This fire has burned its way to here.' - In any case, you assert the existence of a real self, which is of a nature so subtle and elusive, that the Tathagatas alone can see it. In that case, the Buddhas would become believers in I and 'mine', with all its pernicious consequences for the spiritual life. They will form an attachment to that part of the universe which they come to consider as their own, and in that way they will be far removed from deliverance! -The Personalist: It is only when, as is the habit of non-Buddhists, something which is not the true Self is mistaken for the true Self, that one will feel affection for that pretended self. If, however, one sees, as the Buddhas do, the Ineffable Person as the true self, then, because that actually is the true self, no affection for it is thereby engendered.

So back to the question: Are their views still around today? In my opinion, the answer is yes and no. While some teachers, like Thanissaro, tend to be somewhat suspect and are often accused of holding quasi-eternalistic, Puggalavadin-type views by strict traditionalists, I believe that they're actually teaching wisely by using a variety of skillful means to burn away clinging (upadana) to all forms of self-view equally, from the idea of 'I have a self,' to the idea of 'I have no self,' and everything in between. And while some of Thanissaro's writings and talks did make me seriously question his approach at first, I've since come to the conclusion that his teachings aren't at odds with the Buddha, although they do occasionally conflict with what some consider to be Theravadin orthodoxy.

The way in which Thanissaro writes about not-self, while seeming to leave the question of self open, actually lays the question aside altogether. It may appear that he's hinting at a 'self' lurking around somewhere, but in reality, he's going by what the Suttas themselves actually say (e.g., DN 11, MN 2, MN 8, MN 22, SN 22.85, SN 44.10, etc.). On closer examination, it's clear (to me at least) that he tries to teach people in a way that discourages both attachment to a belief in a self and an attachment to not-self as a substitute. This might not sound like it makes very much sense, but it's actually quite ingenious. Many people simply attach to the idea of having no self instead of a self, which the Buddha also warns against:

This is how he attends inappropriately: 'Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what, what was I in the past? Shall I be in the future? Shall I not be in the future? What shall I be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Having been what, what shall I be in the future?' Or else he is inwardly perplexed about the immediate present: 'Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where is it bound?'

As he attends inappropriately in this way, one of six kinds of view arises in him: The view I have a self arises in him as true & established, or the view I have no self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive not-self... or the view It is precisely by means of not-self that I perceive self arises in him as true & established, or else he has a view like this: This very self of mine — the knower that is sensitive here & there to the ripening of good & bad actions — is the self of mine that is constant, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and will stay just as it is for eternity. This is called a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person is not freed from birth, aging, & death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. He is not freed, I tell you, from suffering & stress.

In addition, Thanissaro, contrary to what some might think, never suggests that the teachings on not-self and kamma (literally 'action') don't work together, implying the need for a pseudo-self to have it all make sense. This is a horrendous but easily cleared up misunderstanding of what he says in his essay "No-self or Not-self?" Far from claiming that the teachings on not-self and kamma don't fit well together, he's simply explaining that this is a perception many people have (i.e., they don't seem to fit), especially Westerners with a Judeo-Christian background, when they learn about Buddhism and first encounter these teachings. More importantly, by laying aside the question of whether or not there's a self altogether, he's attempting to approach the subject in the same way the Buddha does in SN 44.10 since, in his words, "to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible."

However, there are some who've studied the Puggalavadin's doctrines and views and have actually come out in favour of them, and quite openly in fact. One such person is D. Amarasiri Weeraratne. In his article "Puggalavada and Theravada Buddhist teachings," he writes:

Upto the time of the 2nd Council 200 years after the Buddha, there were no sectarian divisions among Buddhist monks. The Buddha had permitted the Sangha to change minor rules after his demise, according to the wishes of the fraternity and by a majority decision. In pursuance of this concession, the monks of the Vajji country well known for its republican form of government called for the adoption of ten minor changes in the Vinaya rules.

The hard core orthodox and conservative monks headed by Revata and Sabbakami resisted these changes. Hence the conservative elders disallowed these changes. Consequently, the dissident monks broke away from the conservative elders (The Theras) and established the Mahasanghika Sect and held their own Sangha Council. Thus came about the first division in the Sangha. The Maha Sanghikas as their name implies constituted the majority of the Sangha. The Theras constituted a minority of hard core reactionaries who were opposed to an form of change.

Between the 2nd and 3rd Councils 236 years after the Buddha the Conservative Elders (The Theras) broke off into two sects, viz: Vibjjavadins and Sautrantikas. Almost simultaneously the Mahasangikas also broke off into a sect called Puggalavadin. (Believers in persons.) The Vibjjavadins broke off into three sects, one of which was the Theravada - the Buddhism we have in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos etc. Thus you will see that the Puggalavada Sect and the Theravada Sect were the earliest of the sectarian divisions in Buddhism.

Controversy on Abhidhamma

The chief characteristic of the Puggalavada Sect was their rejection of the Abhidharma Pitaka as a teaching of the Buddha. They maintained that Abhidharma is apocryphal scripture cooked up by the Theravada Elders between the 2nd and 3rd Councils and adopted at the 3rd Council. The Puggalavadins as well as Sautranitikas rejected the Abhidharma Pitaka and had only 2 Pitakas viz: Sutta and Vinaya Pitakas.

In the Suttas the Buddha speaks of a person who fares on in Sansara, performs good and bad deeds and receives reward or distribution for them. In fact the entire Sutta Pitaka is based on the assumption that there is a person (puggala) who is subject to the sufferings in Sansara. The purpose of the Buddha-Dhamma is to eliminate this suffering and help them to attain Nirvana.

The Anatta concept

The Abhidharma denies the existence of a person or an individual. It accepts only fleeting thought moments which arise and flash instantly. In this process there is no person or being. The Buddha taught the Suttas to men on earth, referring to a person. In the Abhidharma he is supposed to have preached to the gods in which he denies the existence of a person or an individual. In order to bridge the gulf of this inconsistency the Abhidharma scholars invented the theory of two truths. The Sutras are true in the conventional sense, and the Abhidharma is true in the ultimate sense which is the highest truth.

The Puggalavadins could not accept the theory that the Buddha had taught two kinds of truth. Nowhere had he done so. The Theravadins cannot quote from any part of the Sutras where he has taught that there are two truths called Sammuti and Paramartha. Thus they refuted this contention and asserted that the Abhidharma Pitaka is a fabrication and required another concoction to maintain its validity. It is with the help of this fabrication that Abhidharma scholars reconcile the inconsistency in the Sutra and Abhidharma teachings.

The Southern School of Buddhism

Theravada Buddhism is Abhidharma oriented. All its commentaries and ancillary literature are written in a way to accommodate the Abhidarma. Ven. Buddhagosha asserted that the Abhidharma Pitaka is a teaching of the Buddha. But he himself admitted in the Atthasalini Commentary that there were ancient Sinhala Elders at Anuradhapura who challenged the validity of the Abhidharma Pitaka.

They pointed out that the Buddha had taught in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra that we should not accept teachings presented to us in his name if they are inconsistent with the Sutra and the Vinaya teachings. They also asserted that in the Anagatabhaya Sutra the Buddha envisaged a time when monks will cook up doctrines and scriptures not taught by him and present them as the Buddha-word. He admonished his followers to carefully compare such teachings with the Sutras and the Vinaya and accept them only if they are compatible and consistent.

Therefore Abhidharma being incompatible with the Sutra and Vinaya teaching was rejected by the Puggalawadins. The Sautrantika teachers too rejected the Abhidharma on the same grounds. The very name Sautrantika Sect means those who take only the Sutras as authoritative.

The controversy on Antarbhava

They accepted Abhidharma only to the extent that it is found in seed form in the Sutras. Another important teaching of the Puggalavadins was the doctrine of Antarabhava. The interim spirit existence between one life and another. This was denied by the Therevadins who asserted that the acceptance of Antarabhava by the Puggalavadins was due to a misunderstanding of some passages of the Sutras. The Puggalavadins maintained their position and showed that the misinterpretation of key passages is the work of Abhidharma oriented Theravada teachers, who tried to cut and hack the Buddha-word to suit their Abhidharma-oriented views. Their teaching was that their was no person, or being, but a mere flux of fleeting thought moments which are impersonal. The Puggalavadins considered this a bovine folly.

Between the 2nd and 3rd Council, the Theravadins had compiled 7 Abhidharma books and asserted that except one other were the teachings of the Buddha preached in the Tavatismsa heaven to the gods. Not to be outdone the Sarvastivadin teachers also compiled 7 Abhidharma books and adopted them as their Abhidharma Pitaka. They were candid and frank enough to reveal the names of the authors of the books, unlike the Theravadins who took up the position that their 7 books contained preachings of the Buddha to the gods in the Tavatimsa heaven.

The common denominator

But an examination of the two Abhidharma Pitakas show too many discrepancies whereas their Sutra and Vinaya Pitakas are similar. This is clear proof that the Abhidharma Pitaka was composed after the monks broke off into sects. The Puggalavadins taught that a person or a pudgala who performs good and bad deeds reaps the results and fares on in Sansara until the attainment of Nirvana. The Bharahara Surta was the favourite text of the Pudgalavadins. Therein Buddha said" Bhara have Panchakkhando, Bharaharo Ca Puggalo." This means the five aggregates are a burden, the puggala or person is the burden bearer.

Here clearly the Buddha distinguishes between the five groups of aggregates (skandas) and the person who bears them. But according to the Theravada Abhidharma the burden carries itself. There is no burden-bearer. This is what Buddhaghosha meant when he said in the Visuddhi Magga - the standard text of the Theravada - that" there is mere suffering but no sufferer exists". "There is the Noble Eightfold Path but no one traverses it". Buddhaghosha copied the idea from a verse in Nagarjuna’s Mula Madhyama Karika - his magnum opus in which he ennunciates his Madhyamika philosophy with its central doctrine of Sunyata - the void. According to this, the whole world and all its phenomena are mirage, a dream, an illusion or" a castle in the air" as Nagarjuna put it. This is the Hindu doctrine of Maya dressed up in a Buddhist garb.

The Puggalavadins taught that to deny the existence of a person is to bring down the whole edifice of the Buddha-Dharma. It is absurd to say that the burden carries itself, that mere suffering exists and there is no sufferer, or that the Path exists without anyone to tread the path. This is not Buddhism, it is the Buddhaghosha brand of Abhidharma Buddhism.

The self and no-self

The Puggalavadins point out that if there are no beings, the practise of Metta would not be possible, Karma and Rebirth would be meaningless, without a person faring on in Sansara. Memories of previous lives, the preaching of the Satipattana Sutra for the purification of beings and overcoming their sufferings would be meaningless, if there is no person.

The Buddha said, "One person is born among men for the welfare and happiness of beings". Hundreds of such texts can be quoted from the Sutras. To deny a person in the ultimate sense (the highest truth) and accept him in a conventional sense is to talk with two tongues and dilute the truth of the Buddha-word. The Sutta Nipata says that "Buddhas have no two words." "Truth is one and not many". (Ekam hi saccam na dutiyamatthi). Two contrary truths is foreign to the Buddha’s teaching.

The chief difference between Puggalavada and Theravada comes with the acceptance and non-acceptance of the Abhidharma Pitaka as a teaching of the Buddha. Theravada is steeped in Abhidharma and is abhidharma oriented. The Puggala vadins have only two Pitakas namely Sutra and Vinaya Pitakas. The Puggalavadins took care not to use the word Atman or soul as is understood in Vedanta, i.e. an immutable self characterised by permanence, bliss and substance.

The Puggala of the Pudgalavadins is a self that is subject to impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and is not to be considered as the essence or core for those reasons. This appears to be a halfway house between the Vedantic soul and the no-soul doctrine of the Theravadins. The Buddha is neither an anatmavadi nor atmavadi.

The Puggalavadins teach that the puggala arises simultaneously with the five aggregates, is not within or outside them, but forms a structural unit with them.

It is the astral body, secondary body or bio-plasamabody of modern Para-psychological research. Its existence and verifiability has been vindicated by 150 years of Psychical Research in the West in which very eminent scientists have taken part. It is the mano-kaya or the Suttas.

If Buddhism is to be a practical religion of value to mankind, it must take into account and recognise the existence of persons or individuals - otherwise Buddhism falls flat and collapses like a pack of cards. When you deny a person, you have to deny the Buddha, his Dhamma and the Sangha. That reduces Buddhism to a force.

As for myself, I try to look at it from the perspective of, In the end, who really knows? If we were to conclude now what the answer may be, without the insights born of the practice itself, it'd be little more than speculation; there'd be no 'gnosis,' no knowledge of the truth. And we're never asked by the Buddha to speculate about what he meant, nor are we told that we'll be freed by our conceptual thoughts of such. All that does is lead to what the Buddha called "a thicket of view" and to the propagation of those views (a mental form of samsara, literally 'wandering on'). In fact, I think the Suttas are quite clear that, as important as having an intellectual understanding of the teachings is, people who are serious about ending suffering will eventually need to put these teachings into practice to see whether they really do lead to a true and lasting happiness. Simply clinging to views of self certainly won't do it.

And what is clinging/sustenance? These four are clingings: sensuality clinging, view clinging, precept & practice clinging, and doctrine of self clinging. This is called clinging. (SN 12.2)

And with clinging comes what?

From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications. From fabrications as a requisite condition comes consciousness. From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form. From name-&-form as a requisite condition come the six sense media. From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact. From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving. From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging/sustenance. From clinging/sustenance as a requisite condition comes becoming. From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth. From birth as a requisite condition, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering. (SN 12.2)

That's right, stress and suffering (dukkha) eventually arises due to the sustenance of clinging. That's the danger of clinging, even to the idea of 'self' if such a thing exists. And this is important because the Buddha himself said that he didn't "envision a clinging to a doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair" (MN 22). And the Buddha only taught one thing:

Both formerly and now, monks, I declare only stress and the cessation of stress.

What this says to me is that, when we travel the path to put down all of our burdens, we must be careful not pick up more along the way. This includes the burden of self-view in any of its subtle forms. That's where the Puggalavadins seem to go wrong in one respect. Their views, whether right or wrong in the ultimate sense, are sustenance for clinging, especially if we see that the idea of a 'person' beyond the conventional sense is, for all intents and purposes, a doctrine of self. And while their interpretation of the teachings on not-self does offer a possible explanation of how kamma and rebirth work, they fail in keeping to the Buddha's overall teachings. In just these three lines, the Buddha leaves no ground for any type of self-view to gain a foothold:

Sabbe sankhara dukkha. (All processes are stressful.)
Sabbe sankhara anicca. (All processes are inconstant.)
Sabbe dhamma anatta. (All phenomena are not-self.)

For us unawakened worldlings (puthujjana), it seems that the quest continues. We each undertake this journey with the hope of finding out these answers for ourselves, to find our own freedom from dukkha. There's not much certainty in this world, even in Buddhism it sometimes seems, but there's one thing I think we can have confidence in—the noble eightfold path.

I've come to the conclusion that the answer to the question, Who am I? isn't important. What's really important, however, is realizing that our attachment to views and doctrines of self keep us rooted in "perceptions and categories of objectification" that continually assail us and our mental well-being (MN 18). One must clear away all views, opinions and preconceived notions about self, and cut at the very roots of such attachments to gain release. It's through a combination of meditation and contemplation of the five aggregates that we can develop the insight into the teachings on not-self that's beyond mere speculation, and rests instead within the realm of direct experience. That kind of insight is the only kind that leads to real freedom, not simply repeating the formula, 'All things are not-self.'

interview

2010-12-07T17:54:00.000-08:00

Here's an interview of sorts I did via PM with a member at dhammawheel.com:

Laurens: I thought I would start by asking you about what your personal take on Buddhism is, which teachers you follow and the kind of practice that you undertake.

Me: Well, I think that Buddhism can be seem from many different angles, but I prefer to see it as a type of 'transcendent psychology.' I think that a critical analysis of the earliest texts reveals a much more pragmatic and specialized method of mental training than many people (traditional Buddhists and Western converts alike) realize—one that seeks to diminish and even eliminate suffering by radically changing the way the mind relates to experience.

As for myself, I've had many teachers, and almost all of them are Thai Theravada. My first teacher was Ajahn Chuen from the Midwest Buddhist Meditation Center in Warren, MI. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago. I also visited Wat Dhammasala frequently when I lived in Michigan, and practiced with Ajahn Khemasanto. After I moved to California, I started going to Wat Buddhanusorn and practiced with Ajahn Prasert, as well as with Ayya Tathaaloka, who was also a student of his at the time. My most recent teacher is Ven. Fa Thai, a Thai monk who is now in charge of a Taiwanese Mahayana temple called Miao Fa Chan Temple in Portland, Oregon, although I haven't been there in some time. In addition, I gain a great deal of inspiration and practical insights from Thai Forest teachers such as Thanissaro Bhikkhu, who makes his way up to Portland about once a year.

My meditation practice has mainly centred around mindfulness of breathing (anapanasati), although for the past few years I've been doing more studying than anything.

L: Would you say that the essence of Buddhism stands clear consistently in the scriptures that you study? Some religion's important messages are completely lost when in comes to interpretation of scripture (look at the number of different sects of Christianity) - why is Buddhism different?

I noticed that there seems to be a very mild evolution of the teachings in different cultures, but it struck me how the essentials of Buddhism remained pretty consistent throughout. Something that you couldn't say about all religions.

Me: Yes, I'd say that the essence of what the Buddha is recorded as saying in the Pali Canon is fairly consistent throughout. I think this is mainly due to the fact that the Buddha was a superbly gifted teacher, and that, despite evidence of later additions and modifications, much of what he taught seems to have been faithfully passed down by his disciples.

If you analyze other religious texts, such as the Bible or the Mahabharata, for example, there's evidence of layers of authorship (even in places where there is said to be only one author), and you can literally trace the evolution of these texts via changes in style, grammar and content.

The core of Pali Canon, however, shows evidence of originating from a single source through its consistency of content. As Prof. Richard Gombrich puts it, "I find (as Buddhists have always found) that the central part of the Canon... presents such originality, intelligence, grandeur and - most relevantly - coherence, that it is hard to see it as a composite works" (Theravada Buddhism, pg. 20).

I'm not completely sure why this is, but I think the methods of preservation may have had something to do with it. At the beginning, this included memorization of suttas by large groups of monks, who would then have periodic councils where they would recite and compare various recitations in order to weed out alterations and distortions. This was later done with written texts, as well.

L: I got the feeling too that Gotama was a gifted teacher. I feel however, that in the centuries since his death mankind has built a religious organization around him. My opinion is that the Buddha was aware that this may have been the case because he instructed his followers to essentially not make idols of him [I can't find a reference for that at some point, I will add it later, I thought I'd get the question out there first]. Yet we did, and there is a lot of superstition that has developed around 'gaining merit' and bowing to giant statues creating rituals and so forth . I think this says a lot about religion, and mankind's tendency to make idols and ritualistic behaviour. I don't think the Buddha intended to gain worship, I think he intended to have the focus on his teachings only.

What, if any, do you think are the differences between 'Dhamma' (in this context meaning the essential teachings of the Buddha) and Buddhism the religion?

Local customs, deities and religious practices have certainly found their way into Buddhism wherever it's been established. As such, I think there are quite a few difference between what the Buddha taught and Buddhism as a traditional religious institution. Take the Thai tradition of amulet making and the water blessing ceremony, for example. The Buddha didn't teach anything like these, but they've made their way into Buddhism anyway, even despite the whole 'not clinging to rites and rituals' thing.

I mean, there's nothing inherently wrong with having an amulet to remind you of the practice, or participating in a water blessing ceremony. Hell, I'll admit that I like to get sprinkled as much as the next person. But I also don't think that amulets can protect me from bullets or make me successful, and I know that only meditation and contemplation can cleanse my mind, not a splash of H2O in the face.

L: I have a theory that a lot of Westerners, particularly in America turn towards Buddhism as a reaction to Christianity. The reason I say particularly in America, is because in America Christianity is often associated with right-wing conservatism - which for some, holds negative connotations. I think that Buddhism provides a liberally minded, peaceful alternative to the often intolerant views of the Christian right, and therefore it wouldn't surprise me if there were some that turned to Buddhism as a kind of backlash against the faith that they were brought up in. I am by no means saying that this is the case for all Westerners, but it wouldn't surprise me if this was a factor in the spread of Buddhism to the West. Do you think that there is any weight to this notion?

It would be interesting for me to know also, if you were raised in a Christian family?

Me: I think there's some truth to that. Most of the Buddhists I know were raised in a Christian family. As for myself, I was lucky in that I raised without any kind of religious upbringing whatsoever, so I was free to explore my own spirituality without constrainment.

As a child, I began my spiritual exploration out of shear curiosity, beginning with Greek and Roman mythology. I used to love looking through the dictionary to find names of various gods and goddesses and read all about them. From there, I branched out to Egyptian, Norse and other ancient myths. I eventually got my Mom to buy me some books about mythology like Edith Hamilton's Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes and Kevin Crossley-Holland's The Norse Myths.

At some point, I became interested in Christianity for a brief period. I was under the assumption that since so many people believed in God, God must exist. I mean, why else would there be so many churches and television shows about God? But, after researching more about Christian theology, I began to have some serious doubts. I discovered alternative views, especially those of the Gnostics. Later, during the majority of my adolescence, I found myself drawn to LeVay-style Satanism until I was introduced to a witch and began practicing Paganism and Witchcraft. (Those were some interesting times.)

When I was around 24 [I'm currently 32], I discovered Buddhism after visiting a Thai Theravada temple near my house. I spent a lot of time visiting the temple and meditating, especially during some really difficult times, and I had a feeling that this path had more potential for my spiritual growth and well-being than any I'd previously undertaken (including materialistic self-indulgence). It's been a big influence on me ever since.

L: Can you tell me more about meditation? How does it relate to the teachings, and how did it help during difficult times?

Me: The way I see it, craving (tahna) is the cause of suffering (dukkha), and to end suffering its cause must be removed; the difficulty arises when it comes to how exactly this is done. My theory is that craving is a very subtle but powerful aspect of our psychology. It's there, latent in the mind, waiting to exert its influence through mental fabrications (sankhara) by directing or at the very least encouraging the mind to feed upon sensory experiences via the five clinging-aggregates (upadana-khandha) in an unhealthy way.

The problem is that these processes of subtle movement in the mind are so subtle that they are almost impossible to discern as they are taking place. That's where I believe meditation comes in: meditation helps to calm and still the mind so that these mental events become easier and easier to observe. One, in effect, uses conditionality in order to fabricate controlled states of mental absorption (jhana) until they're able to discern the presence of craving, its movement in the mind, and the fact that even these refined and subtle states of mental absorption are ultimately stressful and unsatisfactory. This leads one to develop dispassion (viraga), and dispassion leads one to cease fabrication thus opening the doors to the deathless (amata) by ending the chain of causation (paticca-samuppada).

As for how I've experienced meditation personally, that's difficult to describe. I've experienced states of clam, and occasionally feelings of pleasure that permeated my whole body when I was meditating regularly, but those experiences are rare and, sadly, I've let my meditation practice slide for some time.

When I was going through a really difficult time, though, I really looked forward to evening chanting and meditation at the Midwest Buddhist Meditation Center. It helped keep me sane and allowed me to deal with some things that I normally wouldn't have been able to deal with. For me, it was like a shelter in a storm. I also had a hard time eating because I was so upset and my stomach would just get so tight I couldn't eat anything. After meditation, however, my stomach would usually relax and I was able to go to my favourite Thai restaurant and eat. Lucky for me I just happened to start meditating before shit hit the fan, otherwise I'm not sure what I would've done. Probably would've just drank myself stupid or something.

L: Are their any popular misconceptions about Buddhism, or Buddhist practice that you would like to address?

Me: Heh, lots, (e.g., anatta, kamma, the idea that Buddhism teaches life is suffering, etc.)

L: What are your views on the various kinds of religious extremism that we see in the world?

What advice would you give to a religious extremist if you could?

Me: I have mixed ideas about this. On the one hand, religion is, among other things, a creative expression of our search for happiness, meaning and truth in a seemingly infinite universe. Religion can be a beautiful thing that brings communities together, as well as bring individuals closer to a happiness that transcends much of the suffering and unsatisfactoriness seemingly inherent in this fragile thing we call life.

On the other hand, religion is being used to justify and even instigate violence and oppression, and that's a real problem; although, I think that when you dig a little bit deeper, it becomes apparent that there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. For one thing, it's not just the religions themselves that need to be scrutinized, but also the cultures that are influenced by these religious traditions.

I think it's fair to say that certain people and cultures are more intolerant and prone to use religious teachings to justify violence, but I'm not sure it's fair to single out a specific religion, such as Islam, for example, because, they way I see it, it's not religion that makes people dangerous so much as it's people who make religion dangerous. And the same can be said about almost anything, especially political ideologies.

As for what I would say to a religious extremist, I don't know. The problem is, how can you talk to a person about this in a rational way when they're not necessarily in a rational states of mind? I doubt anything I could say would have any affect on someone unless they were at least somewhat open to hearing what I had to say; but when you're sure you have the Truth™, you're often not listening, I mean really listening, to what other people have to say.

I've heard people express their desire to "kill religion" (e.g., Dawkins et al.), and I can understand some of their reasoning for making such statements, especially when you have people using religion to justify suicide bombing and discrimination against gays, women, etc., but I also can't help but think that doing so would come at a great cost to humanity in that we'd be losing an important part of what makes us human.

unanswered questions

2010-11-25T17:22:00.000-08:00

How was the world created? Where did we come from? What is the nature of the universe? Is there a God? These are seemingly timeless questions, questions which most religions attempt to answer, even Buddhism to a certain extent it would seem. There does appears to be a type of creation myth in the Agganna Sutta of the Digha Nikaya, after all. Nevertheless, many people new to Buddhism may be surprised to hear that these questions are really a non-issue in Buddhism, especially in regard to the practice itself. In fact, the Buddha leaves most of them unanswered, and the ones he does answer, it's not always how we expect.

Take MN 63, for example. In this exchange, Malunkaputta demands that the Buddha answer ten questions concerning positions that are "undeclared, set aside, discarded by the Blessed One" — whether the cosmos is eternal or not eternal; whether the cosmos is finite or infinite; whether the soul and the body are the same or the soul is one thing and the body another; whether after death a Tathagata exists or does not exist, both exists and does not exist or neither exists nor does not exist — or else he will leave the Sangha.

The Buddha responds to this onslaught of questions by asking Malunkyaputta, "Did I ever say to you, 'Come, Malunkyaputta, live the holy life under me, and I will declare to you that 'The cosmos is eternal,' or 'The cosmos is not eternal,' or 'The cosmos is finite,' or 'The cosmos is infinite,' or 'The soul & the body are the same,' or 'The soul is one thing and the body another,' or 'After death a Tathagata exists,' or 'After death a Tathagata does not exist,' or 'After death a Tathagata both exists & does not exist,' or 'After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist?'" Malunkaputta, of course, answers no. The Buddha further admonishes:

Malunkyaputta, if anyone were to say, 'I won't live the holy life under the Blessed One as long as he does not declare to me that "The cosmos is eternal,"... or that "After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist,"' the man would die and those things would still remain undeclared by the Tathagata.

As for DN 27, the Buddha tells a story about the beginning of life on this world to two brahmins which, in the end, was used to illustrate how the way to liberation is beyond caste and lineage. So, in this regard, the Buddha does give what can be interpreted as a rough theory of evolution to the pair of brahmins in that the physical characteristics of the mythological beings in question change due to environmental changes and interactions, as well as a description the universe somewhat akin to the oscillating universe theory.

I think that, when taken literally, the creation myth in DN 27 can be seen as an attempt to give a naturalistic explanation of the origins of life and the universe, and Darwin's fairly well-proven theory of evolution certainly isn't inconsistent with this, which makes many new Buddhists breath a sigh of relief. That being said, I agree with Prof. Gombrich that, taking the context of DN 27 into account, this sutta is a lively and ingenious parody that's actually meant to make fun of the very need for a cosmology as a foundation for religious development (How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings, pg. 81-82).

Personally, I see Buddhism as dealing exclusively with mental stress and its cessation (i.e., psychology), not biology, or physics, etc. And while some people get excited when they discover that Buddhism contains teachings which seem to be in accord with modern science, I think they can often be misleading and shouldn't be taken too seriously, or at least, too literally. I think this is especially true of DN 27 considering that recent observations of cosmic background radiation indicate the universe is actually expanding at an accelerated rate, hence there may not be any contraction or 'Big Crunch.' (Lawrence Krauss mentions this in his talk at the 2009 AAI Conference; although it should also be noted that Roger Penrose recently challenged the commonly-held 'inflationary theory' of cosmology with his suggestion that analysis of cosmic microwave background shows echoes of previous Big Bang-like events.)

As for the question of God, that's also a non-issue in Buddhism. According to the texts, a beginning point to samsara (literally 'wandering on') isn't evident (SN 15.3). This can be interpreted two ways — that a beginning point to the continual cycle of death and rebirth of beings isn't evident, or that a beginning point to the continual cycle of death and rebirth of the conceit 'I am,' the self-identification that designates a being (satta), isn't evident — and they're not mutually exclusive. Either way, the point is the same: all that really matters in the here and now is whether suffering is present, and if so, how it can be overcome.

All in all, I think it's safe to say that Buddhism is essentially non-theistic in view. However, I also happen to be of the opinion that, if we dig a bit deeper, the idea of a creator God is incompatible with certain aspects and teachings that, if taken to their logical conclusion, seem to reject the idea of, or a need for, a creator God. For one thing, the logic of dependent co-arising negates the idea of a creator God in that it precludes a first cause or a causeless cause. Then there's this famous problem of evil passage from the Bhuridatta Jataka (although, to be fair, this is most likely a later addition that some date to the 13th century):

We see those rules enforced before our eyes,
None but the Brahmans offer sacrifice,
None but the Khattiya exercises sway,
The Vessas plough, the Suddas must obey.
These greedy liars propagate deceit,
And fools believe the fictions they repeat;
He who has eyes can see the sickening sight;
Why does not Brahma set his creatures right?
If his wide power no limits can restrain,
Why is his hand so rarely spread to bless?
Why are his creatures all condemned to pain?
Why does he not to all give happiness?

Why do fraud, lies, and ignorance prevail?
Why triumphs falsehood, truth and justice fail?
I count your Brahma one of the unjust among,
Who made a world in which to shelter wrong.
Those men are counted pure who only kill
Frogs, worms, bees, snakes or insects as they will,
These are your savage customs which I hate,
Such as Kamboja hordes might emulate.
If he who kills is counted innocent
And if the victim safe to heaven is sent,
Let Brahmans Brahmans kill so all were well
And those who listen to the words they tell.

At best, God would have be more like the impassive and impersonal God of Aristotle, existing outside of time and space, to find a place within Buddhist cosmology. Nevertheless, even in the earliest parts of the Pali Canon, there are references to devas or what we might call 'heavenly beings.' However, devas (literally 'radiant ones'), which are often seen as gods when taken literally, are simply non-human beings who are more powerful and long-lived than ordinary humans, and are by no means eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc. But more importantly, they can also be viewed metaphorically as the indulgent and hedonistic aspects of our psychology (i.e., the parts that are addicted to sensual pleasures).

In addition, according to AN 3.61, the belief in a supreme being can be unskillful and interfere with Dhamma practice if it leads to the belief that everything a person experiences is due to such a supreme being, a denial of the efficacy of kamma (literally 'action') and a life of inaction:

Having approached the priests & contemplatives who hold that... 'Whatever a person experiences... is all caused by a supreme being's act of creation,' I said to them: 'Is it true that you hold that... "Whatever a person experiences... is all caused by a supreme being's act of creation?"' Thus asked by me, they admitted, 'Yes.' Then I said to them, 'Then in that case, a person is a killer of living beings because of a supreme being's act of creation. A person is a thief... unchaste... a liar... a divisive speaker... a harsh speaker... an idle chatterer... greedy... malicious... a holder of wrong views because of a supreme being's act of creation.' When one falls back on creation by a supreme being as being essential, monks, there is no desire, no effort [at the thought], 'This should be done. This shouldn't be done.' When one can't pin down as a truth or reality what should & shouldn't be done, one dwells bewildered & unprotected. One cannot righteously refer to oneself as a contemplative. This was my second righteous refutation of those priests & contemplatives who hold to such teachings, such views.

Furthermore, in relation to the four noble truths and the practice of the noble eightfold path, the matter of the existence of God is irrelevant and, soteriologically speaking, a distraction to be avoided. Of course, this doesn't mean that people can't believe in God and still practice the Dhamma, especially some of its more contemplative aspects, but it does mean that, at the very least, such views can negatively impact the practice when held inappropriately.

In my opinion, Buddhism has always been what we might call a type of 'transcendent psychology,' and it's only been relatively recently (at least in the West) that its more technical terms have been understood and translated in ways that make this clear. I think this shift is due in no small part to the decades of excellent scholarship that's been brought to bear on the texts and the religious-historical context in which they took shape. As I mentioned all the way back in my first post, regardless of how it's been popularized, at its core, Buddhism deals exclusively with one subject, that of human mental suffering. The Buddha himself made it clear that:

Both formerly and now, monks, I declare only stress and the cessation of stress.

That's not to say there aren't 'supernatural' concepts in Buddhism, or that local customs, deities and religious practices haven't found their way into Buddhism wherever it's been established. But rather than a pure system of thought or a strictly faith-based worship of the supernatural, a critical analysis of the earliest texts reveals a much more pragmatic and specialized method of mental training than most traditional Buddhists and Western converts realize—one that seeks to diminish and even eliminate suffering by radically changing the way the mind relates to experience.

Whatever else this radical transformation may open one up to, I can't say, but I suspect that Thanissaro Bhikkhu's right when he says that we're "not committing spiritual suicide." The allegory of the cave in Plato's Republic immediately comes to mind here, where he uses the image of the philosopher turning the soul (mind) away from the darkness of the visible realm (samsara) towards the light of the form of the Good (nibbana). So, from this perspective, being an atheist, or even a theist for that matter, doesn't preclude one from practicing Buddhism so long as one has an open mind and is willing to at least give some of these teachings a chance.

sexual misconduct

2010-11-14T19:01:00.000-08:00

The five precepts are the basic training rules all Buddhists are encouraged to observe to the best of their ability. They constitute the basic level of virtue the Buddha advises is necessary for the peace of mind conducive to a successful practice, especially in regard to meditation, and they are seen as gifts "that are not open to suspicion, will never be open to suspicion, and are unfaulted by knowledgeable contemplatives & priests" (AN 8.39). While most of them are fairly straightforward, the third needs a bit more explanation seeing as it's somewhat vague.

To begin with, it should be made clear that the precepts aren't equivalent to commandments in that they're training rules that are voluntarily undertaken rather than edicts or commands dictated by a higher power and/or authority. In essence, these precepts are undertaken to protect oneself, as well as others, from the results of unskillful actions. Actions are considered unskillful when they arise out of the mental defilements of greed, hatred and delusion and lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both (MN 61).

In regard to Buddhist sexual ethics, the third precept states: "I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual misconduct." This, of course, will naturally lead one to the question, What is the definition of sexual misconduct? To answer that question, however, we must take into account the other four precepts. The five precepts are an integrated whole, and each precept helps to support the others. The other four precepts are (1) to refrain from harming living beings, (2) to refrain from taking what's not given, (3) to refrain from false speech and (4) to refrain from taking intoxicants that lead to carelessness.

Therefore, generally speaking, we can say that sexual misconduct consists of any sexual conduct that involves violence, manipulation and/or deceit. As the Ven. S. Dhammika elaborates, "If we use trickery, emotional blackmail or force to compel someone to have sex with us, then this is sexual misconduct. Adultery is also a form of sexual misconduct because when we marry we promise our spouse that we will be loyal to them. When we commit adultery we break that promise and betray that trust. Sex should be an expression of love and intimacy between two people and when it is it contributes to our mental and emotional well-being."

So, to summarize, from what I've been taught by my teachers, as well as from what I've read in the suttas, sexual misconduct includes any sexual activity that leads to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both, or that involves any person who's already in a committed relationship (e.g., engaged, married, etc.), protected by law (e.g., under age, etc.) or under religious vows entailing celibacy (e.g., monks, nuns, etc.). Hence in Theravada, sex between consenting persons of legal age who aren't already in committed relationships and haven't taken vows of celibacy isn't considered misconduct.

In regard to anal and oral sex, there's a prohibition against sex concerning "inappropriate orifices" (i.e. anal and oral) that can be found in Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosabhasyam, as well as a few other Sarvastivadin texts, but there's no such prohibition found in any Theravadin source. The same goes for masturbation. These were most likely introduced by later commentators such as Vasubandhu.

Personally, I think that a lot of the views concerning marriage and sex are influenced more by cultural, religious and social norms than by any universal constant. And regardless of what any tradition of Buddhism has to say about, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with sex or masturbation; although I do think that strong sexual desires can cause discomfort in the mind when in deep states of concentration, and can actually make it difficult to develop more refined states of mind in the first place.

desire

2010-11-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

People new to Buddhism often conflate desire (chanda) and craving (tahna), and this is partially the fault of translators, but desire and craving are actually two different but closely related aspects of our psychology. Desire is a neutral term, and one generally has to have the desire to achieve a goal in order to achieve it, even nibbana (SN 51.15); whereas the Pali word for craving, tahna (literally 'thirst'), is something that's directly tied to suffering.

The second noble truth states that the origination of suffering is "the craving that makes for further becoming — accompanied by passion & delight, relishing now here & now there — i.e., craving for sensual pleasure, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming" (SN 56.11). As Thanissaro Bhikkhu explains in Wings to Awakening:

Craving for sensuality, here, means the desire for sensual objects. Craving for becoming means the desire for the formation of states or realms of being that are not currently happening, while craving for non-becoming means the desire for the destruction or halting of any that are. "Passion and delight," here, is apparently a synonym for the "desire and passion" for the five aggregates that constitutes clinging/sustenance [III/H/ii].

Desire, on the other hand, can be skillful (kusala) or unskillful (akusala) depending on the context. The desire for happiness, especially long-term welfare and happiness, is actually an important part of the Buddhist path. Moreover, desire is listed as one of the four bases of power (iddhipada), which themselves are included in the seven sets of qualities that lead to the end of suffering (MN 103). The four qualities listed in the bases of power are desire, persistence, intent and discrimination. In Wings to Awakening, Thanissaro Bhikkhu points to this passage:

There is the case where a monk develops the base of power endowed with concentration founded on desire & the fabrications of exertion, thinking, 'This desire of mine will be neither overly sluggish nor overly active, neither inwardly restricted nor outwardly scattered.' (Similarly with concentration founded on persistence, intent, and discrimination.)

He goes on to explain that, "This passage shows that the problem lies not in the desire, effort, intent or discrimination, but in the fact that these qualities can be unskillfully applied or improperly tuned to their task."

If we take a look at the exchange between Ananda and the brahmin Unnabha in SN 51.15, for example, we can see that the attainment of the goal is indeed achieved through desire, even though paradoxically, the goal is said to be the abandoning of desire. That's because at the end of the path desire, as well as the other three bases of power, subside on their own. As Ananda explains at the end of SN 51.15:

He earlier had the desire for the attainment of arahantship, and when he attained arahantship, the corresponding desire subsided. He earlier had aroused energy for the attainment of arahantship, and when he attained arahantship, the corresponding energy subsided. He earlier had made up his mind to attain arahantship, and when he attained arahantship, the corresponding resolution subsided. He earlier had made an investigation for the attainment of arahantship, and when he attained arahantship, the corresponding investigation subsided. (Bodhi)

However, since the second noble truth states that suffering is caused by any kind of craving that leads to becoming, how can the end of suffering be attained if it seems the desire to end it is itself a possible cause of suffering? The answer does present somewhat of a paradox; and to make sense of it, I suggest checking out Thanissaro Bhikkhu's book The Paradox of Becoming for a detailed look at what the Buddha means when talking about becoming (bhava) and how he resolves this apparent paradox.

existentialism, stoicism and buddhism

2010-10-31T17:55:00.000-07:00

Before reading this edited version of something I wrote a while back, please be forewarned that what you're about to read is undoubtedly flawed. I have a very limited understanding of Western philosophy in general, and I fully realize that what I present here isn't complete and probably incorrect in many respects. It is, more than anything, just a collection of thoughts that were inspired by a day of reading about Existentialism, Stoicism and Buddhism in relation to one particular paragraph. This was written for fun, and not intended to be taken as any sort of authority on the matter.

Until recently, Western philosophy wasn't one of my major interests, mainly because I didn't find much of it very interesting or useful. But lately, I've found myself increasingly drawn towards it, and that interest has grown out of my initial curiosity about the various 'isms' that people often compare to Buddhism. Out of these various philosophies and systems of thought, two have especially caught my attention—Stoicism and existentialism. These more than any of the others have elements that closely resemble ideas and concepts found within the Buddha's teachings.

Stoicism, for example, focuses on self-control, detachment, virtue, reason and finding inner peace by mastering human passion and emotions. Seneca's warning regarding "snares" in Moral Epistles closely parallels that of the Buddha in MN 26, and his admonishment regarding food, clothing and shelter closely parallels that of the Buddha in MN 2. From this, it's easy to see the resemblance and why people new to Buddhism often compare the two. When it comes to explanations of what Existentialism focuses on, however, I've found it difficult to find any consensus, and opinions on this seem to vary from person to person. This is a notoriously hard philosophy to pin down, apparently. Even so, I decided to do my best, and while I was researching existentialism in order to gain a better understanding of it, I came across this paragraph from The Existential Primer:

Siddharta Gautama was appalled by suffering and chaos in the world. So much so, he left his wife and son to meditate on the meaning of everything. Unfortunately, he didn’t find answers among the gurus. There were no easy answers. In some ways, yes, Siddharta experienced an "existential" discovery: life is suffering.

But, Siddharta did not follow the existential notion of rebelling or fighting to establish a meaning. He did not openly challenge people and political leaders. Instead, he took a different approach:

When he met his first disciples at Benares after his enlightenment, the Buddha outlines his system, which was based on one essential fact: all existence was dukkha. It consisted entirely of suffering; life was wholly awry. Things come and go in meaningless flux. Nothing has permanent significance. Religion starts with the perception that something is wrong. […] The Buddha taught that is was possible to gain release from dukkha by living a life of compassion for all living beings, speaking and behaving gently, kindly and accurately, and refraining from anything like drugs or intoxicants that cloud the mind. - A History of God; Armstrong, p. 32

Unlike the existentialists, Siddharta is a stoic in nature: accept things as they are, don’t try to change them or control them. Curiously, this is rebellious in that it rejects social norms. Siddharta was rejecting the Hindu teachings of his time, much as Kierkegaard challenged the ritualized nature of Christianity. But, Siddharta was not an active rebel. He was, in many ways, teaching a passive resistance that the existentialists would reject.

In regard to this paragraph, I don't think it's fair to say that the Buddha wasn't existential because he was stoic—simply accepting things as they are, not trying to change them or control them in any way. In fact, this might not even be a fair characterization of the Stoics. While it's difficult to put the goal of the Buddha's path into words — as the limits of human language fail to express what's beyond conceptualization and conditions — I don't think Buddhism is accurately describe as stoic as described above, although the two certainly share similar elements between them. For one thing, the Buddha taught that the end of suffering was attainable, that nibbana — the cessation of greed, hatred and delusions — could be experienced here and now, provided that one put forth the right effort in the right direction by following what called the noble eightfold path.

The problem of suffering as seen in Buddhism is that when we suffer, we become bewildered as to why we are suffering, and then we look for a way out—except we look in all the wrong places because we're confused about what suffering is, as well as what true happiness is. That's why the Buddha developed the four noble truths and formulated them in the same way that ancient Indian physicians formulated medical diagnoses (i.e., disease, cause, prognosis and treatment), so that we're able to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize its cessation and develop the path to that cessation. Contrary to what C. S. Wyatt writes above, the Buddha was very much trying to change things via a process of self-transformation, going against the stream of craving in the form of renunciation (Iti 114).

From the Buddhist perspective, many of the assumptions we make about ourselves and our experience of the world, particularly our attachment to views and doctrines of self, keep us rooted in "perceptions and categories of objectification" that continually assail us and our mental well-being (MN 18), and passive acceptance of these faulty assumptions only serves to perpetuate them. The Buddha termed this mental process of conditionality by which suffering arises dependent co-arising (paticca-samuppada), and it's intimately tied into our sense of self, or ego if you prefer.

In fact, when looked at closely, the teachings on dependent co-arising, the five clinging-aggregates (panca-upadana-khandha) and not-self (anatta) are quite insightful in that they're the parts of Buddhism that correspond to parts of modern psychology. For one thing, they basically detail the process by which we construct our sense of self and, ultimately, how to utilize that process in more skillful ways.

The aggregates themselves, for example, aren't simply descriptions of what constitutes a human being as some people mistakenly think—they're one of the many ways of looking at and dividing up experience that we find throughout the Pali Canon (e.g., aggregates, elements, six sense-media, etc.). But more importantly, they represent the most discernible aspects of our experience on top of which we construct our sense of self in a process of, as the Buddha called it, "I-making" and "my-making" (e.g., MN 109).

The first noble truth states that, in short, the five clinging-aggregate are dukkha (SN 56.11), i.e., it's the clinging in reference to the aggregates that's dukkha, not the aggregates themselves. But what does this really mean? To start with, according to the commentaries, dukkha is defined as 'that which is hard to bear.' In MN 9, clinging is defined as:

"And what is clinging, what is the origin of clinging, what is the cessation of clinging, what is the way leading to the cessation of clinging? There are these four kinds of clinging: clinging to sensual pleasures, clinging to views, clinging to rituals and observances, and clinging to a doctrine of self. With the arising of craving, there is the arising of clinging. With the cessation of craving, there is the cessation of clinging. The way leading to the cessation of clinging is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view... right concentration.

In addition, the Buddha said that the five clinging-aggregates are not-self. He called them a burden, the taking up of which is "the craving that makes for further becoming" and the casting off of which is "the remainderless fading & cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, & letting go of that very craving" (SN 22.22). The way I understand it, becoming (bhava) is a mental process, which arises due to the presence of clinging (upadana) in the mind with regard to the five-clinging aggregates, and acts as a condition for the birth (jati) of the conceit 'I am,' the self-identification that designates a being (satta).

Put more simply, there's rarely a moment when the mind isn't clinging to this or that in one or more of the four ways (MN 11). Our identity jumps from one thing to another, wherever the clinging is strongest. Our sense of self is something that's always in flux, ever-changing from moment to moment in response to various internal and external stimuli, and yet at the same time, we tend to see it as a static thing. It's as if our sense of self desires permanence, but its very nature causes it to change every second. As the Buddha warns in SN 12.61:

"It would be better for the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person to hold to the body composed of the four great elements, rather than the mind, as the self. Why is that? Because this body composed of the four great elements is seen standing for a year, two years, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred years or more. But what's called 'mind,' 'intellect,' or 'consciousness' by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another. Just as a monkey, swinging through a forest wilderness, grabs a branch. Letting go of it, it grabs another branch. Letting go of that, it grabs another one. Letting go of that, it grabs another one. In the same way, what's called 'mind,' 'intellect,' or 'consciousness' by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another.

Change is, of course, a fact of nature. All things are in a perpetual state of change, but the problem is that our sense of self ignores this reality on a certain level. From birth to death, we have the tendency to think that this 'I' remains the same. Now, we might know that some things have changed (e.g., our likes and dislikes, our age, the amount of wrinkles we have, etc.), but we still feel as if we're still 'us.' We have the illusion (for lack of a better word) that our identity is who we are, a static entity named [fill in the blank], and we tend to perceive this as being the same throughout our lives.

That said, the conventional use of personality is a function of survival, as well as convenience. However, clinging to our personalities as 'me' or 'mine' is seen as giving continued fuel for becoming, i.e., a mental process of taking on a particular kind of identity that arises out of clinging. Our sense of self, the ephemeral 'I,' is merely a mental imputation — the product of what the Buddha called a process of 'I-making' and 'my-making' — and when we cling to our sense of self as being 'me' or 'mine' in some way, we're clinging to an impermanent representation of something that we've deluded ourselves into thinking is fixed and stable. It becomes a sort of false refuge that's none of these things.

These attachments, particularly our attachment to views and doctrines of self, keep us rooted in "perceptions and categories of objectification" that continually assail our mental well-being. Thus, with the presence of clinging, the aggregates have the potential to become suffering (i.e., 'difficult to bear') when our sense of self encounters inconstancy. That's why the Buddha taught that whatever is inconstant is stressful, and whatever is stressful is not-self:

"What do you think, monks — Is form [same with feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousness] constant or inconstant?"

"Inconstant, lord."

"And is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful?"

"Stressful, lord."

"And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am'?"

"No, lord."

Thus, monks, any form [same with feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousness] whatsoever that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every form is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as: 'This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am.'

In order to break down the conceptual idea of a self (i.e., that which is satisfactory, permanent and completely subject to our control) in relation to the various aspects of our experience that we falsely cling to as 'me' or 'mine,' we must essentially take this [analytical] knowledge, along with a specific set of practices such as meditation, as a stepping stone to what I can only describe as a profound psychological event that radically changes the way the mind relates to experience.

This may be a bit of nonsense, but in one of the ways I like to look at it, the conventional viewpoint (sammuti sacca) explains things through subject, verb and object whereas the ultimate viewpoint (paramattha sacca) explains things through verb alone. In essence, things are being viewed from the perspective of activities and processes. This, I think, is incredibly difficult to see, but perhaps what happens here is that once self-identity view (sakkaya-ditthi) is removed, the duality of subject and object is also removed, thereby revealing the level of mere conditional phenomena, i.e., dependent co-arising in action.

This mental process is 'seen,' ignorance is replaced by knowledge and vision of things as they are (yatha-bhuta-nana-dassana), and nibbana, then, would be the 'letting go' of what isn't self through the dispassion (viraga) invoked in seeing the inconstant (anicca) and stressful (dukkha) nature of clinging to false refuges that are neither fixed nor stable (anatta). And without the presence of clinging in regard to the aggregates, they cease to be 'difficult to bear.'

Stoicism, on the other hand, has similar teachings, such as the development of self-control can lead to the overcoming of destructive/violent emotions. It also shares with Buddhism a strong focus on ethics, ethics that have their basis in 'natural laws' or patterns. At first glance, there seems to be little to distinguish the two until we come to the seemingly inherent contradiction between determinism and free will in the Stoic's doctrine of virtue (see Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy, pg. 254-255), and this is where I think Buddhism really distances itself from Stoicism.

The Buddha essentially took the position that we, as sentient beings, have functional choice via intention (cetana) operating within a broader framework of causality that conditions the choices available to us at any given time. As one erudite poster from dhammawheel.com put it:

Functional choice isn't independent of other causes and conditions — it operates within the same conditioned mind-stream. But it does operate, and it does so in consort with desire and attention, etc. Hence there is no need for Cartesian notions of free will or Upanisadic notions of a permanent, unchanging Self for there to be functional choice. In fact, these non-Buddhist systems are not sustainable precisely because of the interdependence of phenomena: i.e. an unchanging agent cannot engage in actions, etc.

Nevertheless, the Buddha taught that one can actively transcend this process of conditionality — that one can 'touch the deathless' in an experience that's unable to be satisfactorily expressed in words — and this is directly opposed to the idea that Buddhism simply boils down to the sheer acceptance of things as they are. The same can possibly be argued of Stoicism as well.

While a complete overview of Buddhist philosophy isn't possible to explain in such a brief comparison — as it'd have to include such time consuming topics as kamma, rebirth, emptiness, nibbana and what they mean in relation to suffering and the end of suffering — I think it's clear from this short description that the Buddha wasn't 'stoic' in the sense that he taught one should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief by being passive and submissive to these natural laws or patterns of conditionality, but that one can and should transcend them altogether.

As for Existentialism, I think Buddhism is actually quite similar to that as well. As one person aptly put it:

"Enlightenment" is to eventually realize that all conceptions of the Self are simply that, mere conceptions, illusory, not the "Thing in Itself". In order to find the Self, one must give up being attached to any particular concept of the Self. In other words, its a way to see Reality as it is, without being attached to concepts of Reality.

This is why Buddhism is essentially Non-theistic, but in an Agnostic manner. It was basically an historical reaction to Hinduism which had developed very complex conceptions of the Self, but it is also complementary to Hinduism (or, as [Jason] points out, other local religions).

Some might suggest that Buddhism says that there is no Self, but I see it more as stating that there is no Ultimate Model of the Self. Thus it becomes a sort of philosophical dialectic, not merely in opposition to conceptualization, but in balance with it.

I think that out of the underlying concepts of Existentialism, or at least those that are put forward by C. S. Wyatt in the above article, one of the main reasons Buddhism shouldn't be considered 'existentialist' is the fact that the Buddha taught there are 'universal' (as in applying to all equally) guidelines for most decisions. This forms the basis of his teachings on kamma, the basic premise being there's a cause and effect relationship between our actions and how they're experienced. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu puts it, "It's simply the fact of action—you do something unskillful, it's going to come back in an unpleasant way." In the same way, if you do something skillful, it's going to come back in a pleasant way.

In the Suttas, the Buddha defines kamma as intentional actions of body, speech and mind (AN 6.63) that have the potential to produce certain results, which, in turn, have the potential to produce pleasant, painful or neutral feelings (AN 4.235). The word itself simply means 'action.'

Pragmatically speaking, actions are deemed 'unskillful' (akusala) if they lead to to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both. Actions that don't lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both are deemed 'skillful' (kusala) (MN 61). Therefore, the distinction between skillful and unskillful actions is based upon how their results are experienced—not only by us, but by others as well. (This emphasis on the consequential aspect of actions is similar to Jeremy Bentham's teleological utilitarianism, with John Stuart Mill's idea of higher and lower happiness being similar to the Buddha's distinction between long-term and short-term welfare and happiness.)

Psychologically speaking, however, the quality of the intentions behind the actions is what ultimately determines whether they're unskillful or skillful. (This aspect is closer to Kant's deontological categorical imperative when combined with the Buddhist principle of ahimsa or harmlessness.) Intentional actions rooted in greed, hatred or delusion produce painful mental feelings "like those of the beings in hell," while intentional actions rooted in non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion produce the opposite ("like those of the Beautiful Black Devas"). Then there are acts rooted in both that bring mixed results "like those of human beings, some devas, and some beings in the lower realms" (AN 4.235). By bringing kamma to an end, however, the mind is said to become free and undisturbed. This, I think, is also the essence of the famous passage from Leo Tolstoy's letter, "To the Working People":

People fare badly only because they themselves live badly. And there is no more injurious thought for people than that the causes of the wretchedness of their position is not in themselves, but in external conditions. A man or a society of men need but imagine that the evil experienced by them is due to external conditions and to direct their attention and efforts to the change of these external conditions, and the evil will be increased. But a man or a society of men need but sincerely direct their attention to themselves, and in themselves and their lives look for the causes of that evil from which they suffer, in order that these causes may be at once found and destroyed.

In conclusion, while I think there are valid reasons why the Buddha shouldn't be considered stoic or existential in nature, even though there are many similarities between them, it's unfair to say that the Buddha wasn't an active rebel, or that he was passive by any means. The Buddha actively rebelled against craving, against the assumptions we make about ourselves and our experience of the world and against the natural flow of worldly life itself. Instead of merely accepting things as they are, he gave up everything he was supposed to hold dear in order to discover a cure for what he believed to be the ultimate disease, human mental suffering.

In that search, he challenged everything from his assumptions, experiences and those of his companions, to society's ideas of what's truly valuable. He challenged everything until he was finally able to find a cure for this suffering, and then out of compassion, taught what he had discovered to those who were willing to listen. While the Buddha may not have openly challenged political leaders, he certainly didn't accept things as they are—he simply sought to change them from within.

is there meaning in evil and suffering?

2010-10-29T23:15:00.000-07:00

On one of the discussion forums I frequent (freeratio.org), someone started an interesting topic on the meaning of evil and suffering based on a panel discussion and debate with Dr. William Lane Craig, Ravi Zacharias, Dr. Bernard Leikind and Dr. Jitendra Mohanty. I thought I'd share some of my thoughts about a couple of the more general issues raised in the debate from a Buddhist perspective — the majority of which has been taken from previous posts of mine — especially Dr. Mohanty's rejection of karma/kamma on the basis that "no causal explanation in terms of a law-like statement can be a good explanation of it" because when confronted with suffering, the inevitable question arises: Why me?

To begin with, I'd argue that kamma itself is naturalistic and arises out of more or less naturalistic (and predominately mental) causes. In the Suttas, the Buddha defines kamma as intentional actions of body, speech and mind (AN 6.63) that have the potential to produce certain results, which, in turn, have the potential to produce pleasant, painful or neutral feelings (AN 4.235). The word itself simply means 'action.'

The basic premise behind kamma is that there's a cause and effect relationship between our actions and how they're experienced, and the teachings themselves deal specifically with the intentional action of individuals and how the results of those actions are then experienced by said individuals. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu puts it, "It's simply the fact of action—you do something unskillful, it's going to come back in an unpleasant way." In the same way, if you do something skillful, it's going to come back and be experienced in a pleasant way. That's why the Buddha advises his followers to frequently contemplate:

'I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.'

Pragmatically speaking, actions are deemed 'unskillful' (akusala) if they lead to to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both. Actions that don't lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both are deemed 'skillful' (kusala) (MN 61). Therefore, the distinction between skillful and unskillful actions is based upon how their results are experienced—not only by ourselves, but by others as well. (This emphasis on the consequential aspect of actions is similar to Jeremy Bentham's teleological utilitarianism, with John Stuart Mill's idea of higher and lower happiness being similar to the Buddha's distinction between long-term and short-term welfare and happiness.)

Psychologically speaking, however, the quality of the intentions behind the actions is what ultimately determines whether they're unskillful or skillful. (This aspect is closer to Kant's deontological categorical imperative when combined with the Buddhist principle of ahimsa or harmlessness.) Intentional actions rooted in greed, hatred or delusion produce painful mental feelings "like those of the beings in hell," while intentional actions rooted in non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion produce the opposite ("like those of the Beautiful Black Devas"). Then there are acts rooted in both that bring mixed results "like those of human beings, some devas, and some beings in the lower realms" (AN 4.235). By bringing kamma to an end, however, the mind is said to become free and undisturbed.

Intention (cetana) is a product of the aggregate of mental formations (sankharakhandha). The cause by which kamma comes into play is sensory contact (phassa). Furthermore, according to Nyanatiloka's Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines, vipaka, 'fruit' or 'result,' is "any ... mental phenomenon (e.g. bodily agreeable or painful feeling, sense-consciousness, etc.), which is the result of wholesome or unwholesome volitional action (karma, q.v.) through body, speech or mind, done either in this or some previous life."

Essentially, intentional actions of body, speech and mind produce results that are said to have the potential to ripen during this lifetime, in the next birth or in later births. This can be taken literally (i.e., ripening in the form of a pleasant or unpleasant rebirth in an external realm of existence), or metaphorically (i.e., ripening in the form of various pleasant or unpleasant mental states). In the words of S. Dhammika:

According to the Buddha, every intentional action modifies our consciousness, thus building our character and thereby influencing our behaviour, our experience and consequently our destiny. Positive intentional actions (motivated by generosity, love and wisdom) tend towards consequences that are experienced as positive while intentional negative actions (motivated by greed, hatred and delusion) tend towards consequences that are experienced as negative.

Therefore, I think that in certain contexts, it would be appropriate to think of kamma as 'habit energy' in the sense that the potential effects of an action can be to condition and even strengthen certain physical and psychological reactions. This is especially true in regard to psychological reactions considering that vipaka is limited specifically to 'mental phenomena.'

(And just for reference, here's an interesting talk I watched recently dealing with the biological basis for morality: 'Morality: From the Heavens or From Nature?' I agree Dr. Thomas that morality is natural in the sense that it comes from the "evolved architecture" of our minds, which is why I believe that, psychologically speaking, the quality of the intentions behind our actions can determine how the results, whether positive or negative, are experienced.)

As for Buddhist ethics in general, they revolve around seeing our desires for happiness and freedom from pain in all living creatures. Essentially, if we don't respect that in them, how can we ever expect the same? This is especially true regarding human beings. Here I agree with the Buddha that, besides some rare and special cases, there's no one that's as dear to us as ourselves, that all beings essentially want to be happy in their own way (according to their specific capacities), and that it's a fairly decent and logical reason to desire their happiness as well as our own (SN 3.8).

The reason, I think, is simple. If our happiness comes at the expense of their happiness, they'll do everything in their power to upset that happiness. Conversely, if they were to infringe upon ours, wouldn't it follow that we'd do everything in our power to upset theirs? It seems like a vicious circle to me, and one of the ways to break this circle is an ethical framework that takes the happiness of others into consideration. Combine this with the Buddha's teachings on kamma, and you have a logical and naturalistic morality based on the principle of ahimsa or harmelessness.

Concerning the issue of evil and whether it 'exists' in some objective sense as in Christian theology — which presents evil as an objectively existent entity or force, personified by the most infamous scapegoat the world has ever known, the Devil — Buddhism is, philosophically speaking, more or less empirical and pragmatic in nature. Things like 'good' and 'evil' aren't really given any sort of ontological status in the suttas. as I've already mentioned, in regard to actions, bad actions are deemed 'bad' or 'unskillful' if they lead to to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both. Good actions, on the other hand, are deemed 'good' or 'skillful' if they don't lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both (MN 61). In other words, these are descriptive labels that are limited to observable qualities and experiences (adjectives), not self-existent entities (nouns).

In the context of actions (kamma), the Pali term kusala, often translated as 'skillful' or 'wholesome,' basically means that which is not conducive to harm and pain, but to benefit and pleasure (AN 2.19). It denotes doing something well, such as in the case of playing a lute (see AN 6.55). The Pali term akusala (composed of the negative prefix a- + kusala), often translated as 'unskillful' or 'unwholesome,' basically means the opposite, or that which is not conducive to benefit and pleasure, but to harm and pain. The Pali word that's usually translated as 'evil' is papa, which can also be translated as 'bad,' 'demerit' or 'wrong action' depending on the context. It seems to me that papa has a stronger, more negative connotation than akusala, but they're more or less synonymous.

So when looking at the question of evil in Buddhism from this perspective, it can certainly be said to exist in a subjective sense, and I'd say it's an appropriate descriptor for qualities that most people would agree to be extremely shocking and harmful. But as far as I can tell, Buddhism refrains from presenting evil as something which exists independently of us, something 'out there' as it were. And while Buddhism has its own scapegoat in the form of Mara, he's generally used as a metaphor for the death, the psychological clinging to the aggregates that gives rise to suffering or to the mental defilements of greed, hatred and delusion.

This, then, brings me to dukkha or suffering. The first noble truth states that, in short, the five clinging-aggregate (panca-upadana-khandha) are dukkha (SN 56.11), i.e., it's the clinging in reference to the aggregates that's dukkha, not the aggregates themselves. What does this mean exactly? According to the commentaries, dukkha is defined as 'that which is hard to bear.' In MN 9, clinging is defined as:

"And what is clinging, what is the origin of clinging, what is the cessation of clinging, what is the way leading to the cessation of clinging? There are these four kinds of clinging: clinging to sensual pleasures, clinging to views, clinging to rituals and observances, and clinging to a doctrine of self. With the arising of craving, there is the arising of clinging. With the cessation of craving, there is the cessation of clinging. The way leading to the cessation of clinging is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view... right concentration.

In addition, the Buddha says that the five clinging-aggregates are not-self (anatta). He calls them a burden, the taking up of which is "the craving that makes for further becoming" and the casting off of which is "the remainderless fading & cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, & letting go of that very craving" (SN 22.22). Becoming (bhava) is a mental process, which arises due to the presence of clinging in the mind with regard to the five-clinging aggregates, and acts as a condition for the birth (jati) of the conceit 'I am,' the self-identification that designates a being (satta).

Looking at it from another angle, there's rarely a moment when the mind isn't clinging to this or that in one or more of the four ways (MN 11). Our identity jumps from one thing to another, wherever the clinging is strongest. Our sense of self is something that's always in flux, ever-changing from moment to moment in response to various internal and external stimuli, and yet at the same time, we tend to see it as a static thing. It's as if our sense of self desires permanence, but its very nature causes it to change every second. As the Buddha warns in SN 12.61:

It would be better for the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person to hold to the body composed of the four great elements, rather than the mind, as the self. Why is that? Because this body composed of the four great elements is seen standing for a year, two years, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred years or more. But what's called 'mind,' 'intellect,' or 'consciousness' by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another. Just as a monkey, swinging through a forest wilderness, grabs a branch. Letting go of it, it grabs another branch. Letting go of that, it grabs another one. Letting go of that, it grabs another one. In the same way, what's called 'mind,' 'intellect,' or 'consciousness' by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another.

Change is, of course, a fact of nature. All things are in a perpetual state of change, but the problem is that our sense of self ignores this reality on a certain level. From birth to death, we have the tendency to think that this 'I' remains the same. Now, we might know that some things have changed (e.g., our likes and dislikes, our age, the amount of wrinkles we have, etc.), but we still feel as if we're still 'us.' We have the illusion (for lack of a better word) that our identity is who we are, a static entity named [fill in the blank], and we tend to perceive this as being the same throughout our lives.

That said, the conventional use of personality is a function of survival, as well as convenience. However, clinging to our personalities as 'me' or 'mine' is seen as giving continued fuel for becoming, i.e., a mental process of taking on a particular kind of identity that arises out of clinging. Our sense of self — the ephemeral 'I' — is merely a mental imputation, and when we cling to our sense of self as being 'me' or 'mine' in some way, we're clinging to an impermanent representation of something that we've deluded ourselves into thinking is fixed and stable. It becomes a sort of false refuge that's none of these things.

These attachments, particularly our attachment to views and doctrines of self, keep us rooted in "perceptions and categories of objectification" that continually assail us and our mental well-being (MN 18). Thus, with the presence of clinging, the aggregates have the potential to become suffering (i.e., 'difficult to bear') when our sense of self encounters inconstancy. That's why the Buddha taught that whatever is inconstant is stressful, and whatever is stressful is not-self:

"What do you think, monks — Is form [same with feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousnes] constant or inconstant?"

"Inconstant, lord."

"And is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful?"

"Stressful, lord."

"And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am'?"

"No, lord."

Thus, monks, any form [same with feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousness] whatsoever that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every form is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as: 'This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am.'

Suffering isn't inescapable, however. Like all conditional phenomena, it too has a cause. The second noble truth states that the origination of suffering is "the craving [tahna, literally 'thirst'] that makes for further becoming — accompanied by passion &; delight, relishing now here &; now there — i.e., craving for sensual pleasure, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming" (SN 56.11). As Thanissaro Bhikkhu explains in Wings to Awakening:

Craving for sensuality, here, means the desire for sensual objects. Craving for becoming means the desire for the formation of states or realms of being that are not currently happening, while craving for non-becoming means the desire for the destruction or halting of any that are. "Passion and delight," here, is apparently a synonym for the "desire and passion" for the five aggregates that constitutes clinging/sustenance [III/H/ii].

Craving is a very subtle but powerful aspect of our psychology. It's there, latent in the mind, waiting to exert its influence through mental fabrications by directing or at the very least encouraging the mind to feed upon sensory experiences via the five clinging-aggregates in an unhealthy way. Hence, in Buddhism, suffering is a psychological phenomena that can be transcended via the "remainderless fading & cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, & letting go of that very craving" (SN 56.11). This is why I tend to think of Buddhism as a type of 'transcendent psychology.' Regardless of how it's been popularized, at its core, Buddhism deals exclusively with one subject, that of human mental suffering. The Buddha himself clearly states that:

"Both formerly and now, monks, I declare only stress and the cessation of stress.

"Now, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones, when touched with a feeling of pain, does not sorrow, grieve, or lament, does not beat his breast or become distraught. So he feels one pain: physical, but not mental. Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, did not shoot him with another one, so that he would feel the pain of only one arrow. In the same way, when touched with a feeling of pain, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones does not sorrow, grieve, or lament, does not beat his breast or become distraught. He feels one pain: physical, but not mental.

Whatever else this radical transformation may open one up to, I can't say, but I suspect that Thanissaro Bhikkhu's right when he says that we're "not committing spiritual suicide." The allegory of the cave in Plato's Republic immediately comes to mind here, where he uses the image of the philosopher turning the soul (mind) away from the darkness of the visible realm (samsara) towards the light of the form of the Good (nibbana).

unskillfulness

2010-10-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

I received this rather interesting comment today on my last blog post, some thoughts on conscience and concern:

The one thing that I noticed about this post is your frequent use of two words, unskillful (19 times) and skillful (24 times). You seem to be using these terms in an unconventional way, a specialistic way. Once you use the word 'unskillful' in a quote from Thanissaro Bhikku, and from that I conclude that it is a Buddhistic way of talking about something else. I am not familiar with Buddhist literature.

How does one know what is skillful and what is unskillful behavior? How does one determined who is skilled and who is unskilled? Where does skill come from? And finally, are we born unskilled and, if so, how do we acquire it?

To contrast your use of "unskillful" with what I take it to mean, I offer this verse from Psalm 51:5 replacing the original words with the terms you use…

Behold, I was brought forth in unskillfulness,
and unskillfully my mother conceived me.

All that I can gather from your post, brother, can be summed up in this single observation: Until you recognize "unskillfulness" for what it really is, and what its effects are, you are just spinning your wheels.

I'd like to a make a couple of points in response. To begin with, I think that it may be a mistake to compare the Buddhist concept of unskillfulness to the Christian idea of sin unless we limit the idea of sin to the Greek word hamartia, which is closely related to the verb hamartanein or 'missing the mark.' As such, I'm not sure the use of 'unskillfulness' in place of 'sin' in Psalm 51:5 is entirely appropriate, if at all.

In the context of actions (kamma), the Pali term kusala, often translated as 'skillful' or 'wholesome,' basically means that which is not conducive to harm and pain, but to benefit and pleasure (AN 2.19). It denotes doing something well, such as in the case of playing a lute (see AN 6.55). The Pali term akusala (composed of the negative prefix a- + kusala), often translated as 'unskillful' or 'unwholesome,' basically means the opposite, or that which is not conducive to benefit and pleasure, but to harm and pain.

Actions are deemed unskillful if they lead to to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both. Conversely, action are deemed skillful if they don't lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others or to both (MN 61). In this sense, Buddhist ethics and philosophy are basically empirical and pragmatic in nature, and these are descriptive labels that are limited to observable qualities and experiences (adjectives), not self-existent entities (nouns). The focus is on actions and their consequences.

At the heart of the practice, Buddhism encourages one to renounce their unskillful habits and desires, and to renounce what's conducive to short-term welfare and happiness in favour of what's conducive to long-term welfare and happiness. In the ultimate sense, this involves, to adopt an image from Plato's Republic, turning the soul (mind) away from the darkness of the visible realm (samsara) towards the light of the form of the Good (nibbana). But at the beginning, it starts with learning to ask the right kinds of questions, such as, "Is what I intend to do here skillful or unskillful? Will it lead to well-being or harm?"

One comes to know what's skillful and unskillful via repeated reflection (MN 61), which is one of the reasons Buddhism is called a gradual path (MN 107). From the Buddhist perspective, until we achieve moral perfection (i.e., the ending of kamma and the elimination of the skillful/unskillful dichotomy altogether), we all have the potential do both skillful and unskillful things, and this is why the Buddha often stresses the importance of being as mindful of our actions and the intentions behind them as we can. As the Buddha notes, "all skillful qualities are rooted in heedfulness, converge in heedfulness, and heedfulness is reckoned the foremost among them" (AN 10.15).

Skill is something that comes from practice, through trial and error. Unskillfulness, on the other hand, doesn't really come from anywhere; it arises out of ignorance (avijja), specifically ignorance of the four noble truths, and ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge. (Incidentally, this is almost identical to the Stoic's belief that people act in ways that are harmful to themselves and others out of ignorance, i.e., if they understood the nature of happiness, of the mind itself, they would never willingly act against their own happiness or the happiness of others.) I think Thanissaro Bhikkhu sums this idea up well in his essay "Ignorance":

Avijja, the Pali word for ignorance, is the opposite of vijja, which means not only "knowledge" but also "skill" — as in the skills of a doctor or animal-trainer. So when the Buddha focuses on the ignorance that causes stress and suffering, saying that people suffer from not knowing the four noble truths, he's not simply saying that they lack information or direct knowledge of those truths. He's also saying that they lack skill in handling them. They suffer because they don't know what they're doing.

The four truths are (1) stress — which covers everything from the slightest tension to out-and-out agony; (2) the cause of stress; (3) the cessation of stress; and (4) the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress. When the Buddha first taught these truths, he also taught that his full Awakening came from knowing them on three levels: identifying them, knowing the skill appropriate to each, and knowing finally that he had fully mastered the skills.

Stress he identified with examples — such things as birth, aging, illness, and death; sorrow, distress, and despair — summarizing it as five clinging-aggregates: clinging to physical form; to feelings of pleasure, pain, and neither pleasure nor pain; to perception; to thought-constructs; and to sensory consciousness. The cause of stress he identified as three kinds of craving: craving for sensuality, craving to take on an identity in a world of experience, and craving for one's identity and world of experience to be destroyed. The cessation of stress he identified as renunciation of and release from those three kinds of craving. And the path to the cessation of stress he identified as right concentration together with seven supporting factors: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, and right mindfulness.

I agree that, until we recognize unskillfulness for what it really is, and what its effects are, we're just spinning our wheels; although I doubt that everyone will agree about what that means.

some thoughts on conscience and concern

2010-10-17T18:18:00.000-07:00

This is something I wrote on newbuddhist.com a few years ago.

Many times, the emotional feelings of shame or guilt that are associated with the results of our unskillful actions are looked upon as undesirable things—we see them as just unnecessary thorns in our side. Because we act out of a basic need to be happy, we like to think that all of our actions, whether good or bad, are justifiable. The outcome of this kind of thinking, however, is that when we commit acts of body, speech and mind that turn out to be harmful to ourselves or to others, we want to find some excuse in order to justify those actions. Unfortunately, since we don't posses the wisdom to see that there are other kinds of happiness in the world besides those that are based on fulfilling our sensual desires, we cling to the kinds of happiness that depend upon us to continually feed them. Happiness then becomes an act of relentlessly feeding our desires to the point that our happiness comes before the happiness of others. If we feel that we have to hurt others, steal from others, lie to others or whatever else we deem necessary in order to be happy, then we'll be able to talk ourselves into doing anything to obtain that happiness.

Once we come to a point where we begin to see the effects of our unskillful actions, however, we're unprepared for how to skillfully deal with such consequences. When our conscience catches up with us, our first reaction tends to be to run away from those feelings of guilt and remorse that happen to arise. If we can't outrun them, then we try to bury them underneath the haze of drugs and alcohol. Essentially, the ways in which we try to rid ourselves of these feelings are just as harmful as the actions that brought those feelings into being. We indulge in even more unskillful behaviour in order to cover up the memories of our anger, embarrassment, fear, grief, hatred, pain, selfishness, etc. in an attempt to just get through another day. To make matters worse, these unskillful actions are what have the potential to become unskillful habits or addictions because these temporary solutions are unable to permanently get rid of those painful feelings, and we gradually become dependent upon them to ease our suffering. Because we lack a better way to deal with these things, we become prisoners trapped within our own nightmarish world.

One of the many things the Buddha said was that these emotional feelings of guilt and remorse are actually guardians, treasures and associated with skillful qualities. To begin with, these feelings of guilt and remorse are a warning sign that something is wrong. They alert us to the fact that somewhere, deep down inside, we're uneasy about something we might've done or said, or at least thought about. In the Buddha's teachings, feelings of guilt and remorse are said to guard us from harm. Without conscience (hiri) and concern (ottappa), or shame and fear of wrongdoing, we're unable to recognize those who deserve respect such as mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, teachers, etc. (AN 2.9). In addition, if we're unable to recognize these people for what they are in relation to ourselves or to other people, we're more capable of doing unskillful deeds of body, speech and mind that directly cause them pain and suffering. Not only can this cause us suffering internally when we reflect on those unskillful actions, but it can also cause suffering externally by placing ourselves in trouble with the authorities or other people.

When it comes to skillful qualities, conscience and concern are said to arise out of clear knowing (Iti 40). This clear knowing can be seen as a kind of internal honesty which is aware of our intentions. This awareness doesn't try to cover up our intentions or make excuses for them, but it's an awareness that's open and honest about the qualities of our intentions that enable us to cleanse them of their impurities. In other words, the qualities of ignorance, desire and greed that arise in the mind are seen for what they are. This enables us to develop a sense of moral responsibility that's derived from self-esteem. When we view unwholesome actions as beneath us, when we see that they cause us harm or give rise to bad destinations, we'll be more inclined to refrain from committing those actions, or if we've committed them, to refrain from committing them again. We do this because we have respect for ourselves, and we see the benefits of making the right choices by observing that, as Thanissaro Bhikkhu notes, "unskillful intentions, based on craving and delusion, invariably lead to unpleasant results."

While all of this might be useful to consider before we make any more unskillful decisions in the future, the Buddha also discussed what to do about unskillful things that we might've done in the past. Unfortunately, we're unable to undo past unskillful actions, but fortunately there are ways in which to lessen the inevitable harmful results of those actions. Although the complexity of the relationship between actions and their results can be hard to understand — one that reaches far beyond this present life — that same complexity allows for the possibility of limiting the consequences of past unskillful actions. The first step is to at least observe the five precepts, which are to (1) refrain from harming living beings, (2) refrain from taking what is not given, (3) refrain from telling falsehoods, (4) refrain from committing sexual misconduct and (5) refrain from taking drugs and alcohol that lead to carelessness. This helps to prevent further damage from being done, and to construct the foundation for the rest of our practice. The next steps are to abandon wrong view and develop expansive mind states of good-will, compassion, appreciation and equanimity (SN 42.8).

The development of good-will, compassion, appreciation and equanimity is so powerful that it can take us from being restricted, small-hearted and dwelling in suffering to being unrestricted, large-hearted and dwelling with immeasurable concentration—a state of mind that's only possible with the absence of hostility and ill will. The Buddha also describes four assurances that can be experienced in the present by those people who, filled with doubt, cultivate and develop such purified states of mind: If there's a world after death, if there are results of skillful and unskillful actions that are done, then one can be assured that they'll reappear in a good destination after death. If there's no world after death, if there are no results of skillful and unskillful actions, then here in the present one can be assured that they'll live safely, free from hatred and malice. If evil results befall one who commits evil actions, then one who doesn't entertain evil thoughts towards another can be assured that they'll not experience ill results. And, if evil results don't befall one who commits evil actions, then one can be assured that they're safe in any case (AN 3.65).

It's hard to imagine that cultivating certain mind states can have a tangible effect on our lives. Nevertheless, the Buddha often spoke of the immeasurable benefits of cultivating good-will, compassion, appreciation and equanimity. He once compared the actions of a person who commits an evil deed with an untrained mind — a mind undeveloped in regards to virtue, discernment, etc. — to a glass of water. As there's so little development in the mind of such a person, one evil act is like a salt crystal that's then dropped into that glass of water and the water becomes unfit to drink. He further compared the actions of a person who commits an evil deed with a mind that is well trained — a mind developed in regards to virtue, discernment, etc. — to the River Ganges. As there's so much development in the mind of such a person, one evil act is like a salt crystal that's then dropped into that great river and the water doesn't become unfit to drink. The former person, due to their actions, goes to a bad destination whereas the later person experiences the resulting pollutant for barely a moment in the here and now (AN 3.99).

Ultimately, those emotional feelings of shame or guilt that are associated with the results of our unskillful actions can be looked upon as catalysts to overcoming the results of our unskillful actions if they're seen with the proper insight. When we become remorseful by realizing that what we've done wasn't right, perhaps because we're told by a wise person that such actions are blameworthy, we'll also realize that what we've done can't be undone. These feelings, if they're not properly understood, have the potential to become debilitating. However, when due to those feelings we abandon the taking of life, taking what's not given, telling falsehoods, committing sexual misconduct and taking drugs and alcohol now and in the future, we can be said to have abandoned those evil deeds, those unskillful actions, and to have overcome them. Even more so, when we abandon those unskillful actions now and in the future, as well as cultivate, develop and then pervade all four directions with good-will, compassion, appreciation and equanimity, the inevitable consequences of our past unskillful action will count for next to nothing (SN 42.8).

the fifth precept

2010-10-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

New Buddhists often ask what the Buddha's stance on alcohol was, and whether being a Buddhist means they can no longer drink. The short answer is, it's definitely better not to. The fifth precept clearly discourages the use of drugs and alcohol for the sole purpose of intoxication because it leads to carelessness.

That said, it should be made clear that Buddhist precepts aren't equivalent to commandments in that they're training rules which are voluntarily undertaken rather than edicts or commands dictated by a higher power and/or authority. The precepts are undertaken to protect ourselves, as well as others, from the results of unwholesome actions.

As for whether having a glass of wine with dinner or something like that violates the fifth precept, it depends on who you ask. Some say yes and some say no. Dhammanando Bhikkhu, for example, states:

In the Theravadin understanding the fifth precept enjoins complete abstinence, not moderation. It is broken when one knowingly consumes even the smallest amount of alcohol. It is not broken if the alcohol is consumed unwittingly or is an ingredient in an essential medicine.

The main reasoning behind this interpretation — which is based on Abhidhammic teachings — is that "every breach of the fifth precept arises from a greed-rooted citta."

Ajahn Khemasanto, on the other hand, has said that having a glass of wine with dinner (for a lay-followers at least) doesn't violate the fifth precept as long as one stops before they can "feel [the effects of] the alcohol." The main reasoning behind this interpretation, I suppose, is the intent of the precept itself — i.e., to help protect one from breaking the other four precepts, not to insinuate that drinking alcohol in and of itself is unwholesome — which I think is supported by this passage from Sn 2.14:

A layman who has chosen to practice this Dhamma should not indulge in the drinking of intoxicants. He should not drink them nor encourage others to do so; realizing that it leads to madness. Through intoxication foolish people perform evil deeds and cause other heedless people to do likewise. He should avoid intoxication, this occasion for demerit, which stupefies the mind, and is the pleasure of foolish people.

This point is echoed by the Ven. Huifeng (Pannasikhara), who notes:

Whatever the case, there is still a problem with either of these approaches when it comes to the fifth precept, because most Buddhist schools take the stance that drinking alcohol is not a nonvirtue itself, unlike the first four precepts which necessarily have at least some amount of unwholesome mental state behind them. In the northern traditions, this precept is called a "precept of avoidance" (something like that!), and the others "precepts by nature".

Whether this is what the Buddha himself meant when he formulated the fifth precept, I can't say for sure; I'm just passing along what I've heard/read. I have a glass of beer or wine once in a while myself, and I don't lose any sleep over it. Suffice it to say that I tend to follow the spirit rather than the letter when it comes to doctrine. One drink doesn't make me careless, and I don't beat myself up if I decide to have a pint with my mates or my girlfriend. I just note that I gave into this particular sense-pleasure and carry on with my practice. No excuses, but no guilt, either.

Of course, many people will take issue with this, suggesting that to openly break a precept you've undertaken amounts to hypocrisy or even spiritual laziness, and I think there's some truth to that. But looking at it another way, I think taking the precepts knowing that I'm probably going to break one on occasion is better than not taking them at all.

I may not be a very good 'Buddhist' in the eyes of some because I occasional have a glass of wine or a pint of beer, but hey, at least I'm not lying about it. After all, Buddhism isn't called a gradual path for nothing (MN 107). Some of us are just harder to train than others.

re: a newfound appreciation

2010-10-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

Before publishing my last post, I sent a copy to Simon asking him what he thought. Because I think it's worth sharing (with his permission, of course), here's his reply:

I like the blog. You are tunelling from your end as I from mine and we appear to be on track to meet in the middle.

Your scepticism about Mystery is shared, I am sure, by many people, myself among them. Most, if not all, the 'institutional' depictions leave me cold - indeed, they often arouse my deepest doubts. It makes it hard to address what I see as one of the greatest dangers facing us today, the danger of dying of spiritual thirst for all the best reasons.

As you may remember, I use the image of the desert to symbolise our trek through life - and I must recognise the influence of Nietzsche's myth in Also Sprach Zarathustra. What seems to me to have happened is that the yearning that Saint Augustine describes is no longer experienced, just as thirst finally goes away despite approaching death. This is not the "God-shaped hole", not a hole at all, it is the thirst that the Psalmist sings about. Augustine's actual words are:

Man [sic] is one of your creatures, Lord, and
his instinct is to praise you. He bears about
him the mark of death…But still, since he is a
part of your creation, he wishes to praise you.
The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he
cannot be content unless he praises you,
because you made us for yourself and our
hearts find no peace until they rest in you.

Augustine, Confessions, Book I, section I.
[Translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin (London:
Penguin, 1961)]

In Buddhism, I find the same sort of expression in the poetry, music and stories which are, for me, even more indicative than 'serious' sutras.

You, dear friend, have often demonstrated the breadth and depth of your knowledge of the Pali Canon and I hope that you take time to turn away from dry-as-dust texts to find the mind of Buddhism in Buddhist art. In Christianity, too, as you learn more about the oldest forms of it in Eastern Christianity, look at the history of icons and mosaic art (and the brief periods of iconoclasm): that is where the 'soul' of the beliefs reside.

Let me leave this with two among the texts that I use to calm my mind before mediation, which are quoted in Sogyal Rinpoche's book on Living and Dying:

No words can describe it
No example can point to it
Samsara does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
It has never been born
It has never ceased
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
It has never existed
It has never been nonexistent
It has no limits at all
It does not fall into any kind of category
(Dudjom Rinpoche)

Profound and tranquil, free from complexity,
Uncompounded luminous clarity,
Beyond the mind of conceptual ideas;
This is the depth of the mind of the Victorious Ones.
In this there is not a thing to be removed,
Nor anything that needs to be added.
It is merely the immaculate
Looking naturally at itself.
(Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche)

Now I shall turn back to examining Article 13 of the Anglican Articles of Religion from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is remarkably apposite when we consider dialogue between belief families:

XIII. Of Works before Justification

Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of his Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ, neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the School-authors say) deserve grace of congruity: yea rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.

BCP 1662

Nice thoughts, eh? But what if we substitute political, national or racial terms?

a newfound appreciation

2010-10-07T15:33:00.000-07:00

Admittedly, I've been fairly critical of Christianity as an institution for most of my life, not to mention certain scriptural passages that are, in my eyes, less than divine. And yet, I find myself coming to appreciate Christianity, and Orthodox Christianity in particular, as an extension of the ancient Greek mystery religions mixed with a bit of Eastern mysticism; although much of its 'mystery' seems to have been lost on many of its adherents.

My appreciation began after reading an interview with Archimandrite Dionysios, and discovering that Gregory Palamas is said to have constantly prayed: "Enlighten my darkness." It also struck me how Hesychastic prayer bears a superficial resemblance with Buddhist meditation, e.g., specific body postures, deliberate breathing patterns, acquiring an inner stillness, sense restraint, etc. It was years ago, however, and my appreciation quickly faded; but it was recently rekindled by my reading of Plato's Republic, as well as other of his dialogues, and a conversation I had at a local Greek Orthodox church.

While I practice Buddhism and am interested in things like philosophy and religion in general, I'm a very skeptical and secular person by nature. I have a hard time seeing into what some call 'the realm of the divine' — i.e., Plato's realm of forms, Spinoza's absolute substance, Buddhism's unconditioned reality — and I regularly doubt that such a realm even exists, but my recent readings of Plato have at least piqued my interest in trying. And talking with my kind guide at Holy Trinity last weekend during the annual Greek festival got me thinking about Christianity in a whole new way.

Seeking to explore this subject more, I decided to ask Simon, my long-time kalyana-mita (admirable friend) from newbuddhist.com, to explain to me his views regarding the "excellence of the synthesis of the messages and practices" of Buddhism and Christianity. After receiving a brief message saying that it may take a day or two for him to condense his views for me, I was delighted to find this reply later in the day:

Despite what I said about taking time to reply, I reflected on this over my latte and toast in the autumn sun while in town and have put together a preliminary outline for your consideration. As you have been speaking to Orthodox Christians, you might like to consider the Christos Pantocrator with what I say about creative sunyatta.

I would add (because these first lines are written after the rest) that a fundamental principle, on which all rests, is that 'revelation' does not stop, either with the Buddha's death or with that of Saint Paul, but that we can inform our understanding across the ages.

First of all, I must stress that I do not imagine that I have a complete or, even, a completely coherent account. The fact is that I see humanity as progressing towards a more perfect understanding and we, you and I at this time and in this place, are within the process, the work in progress (see Note below). A synthesis will require the total transformation of all the elements, resulting in something new and, probably, very alien to our present thinking. This, for me, is the meaning of Jesus' saying about the grain of wheat that must fall to the ground and 'die' before it can grow. My personal image is that of the caterpillar the pupa and the butterfly. Just as the individual ego resists the apparent death of awakening, so bodies of belief like faiths and religions resist their own 'transmogrification'.

This leads me to my second point, which is that I expect to find contradictions because those are the places where the most reflection is needed and where the energy of that mediative reflection is transformative. Do you know the poetry of George Herbert? One of his poems, which is now sung as a hymn, The Elixir

TEACH me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see

The last two stanzas talk about "the famous stone/That turneth all to gold", the Philosophers' Stone of the alchemists taken as a metaphor for the Christ-inspired mind:

A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine :
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
Makes that and th' action fine.

This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold ;
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.

It is at the points of resistance that transformation occurs. Here, the poet Rilke and his attitude to praise for "the secateur and the rose" helped form my view.

Both you and I, I seem to remember, find inspiration in the Gospel of Thomas, which sometimes makes it hard to dialogue with those Christians who reject it as authentic or inspired, nevertheless, there are still enough hints in the canonical New Testament to point us to areas of the Way that Jesus taught that have tended to be overlooked or ignored in practice, and the same goes for the Buddhist sutras. These gaps are, to some extent, filled when both are brought together.

Here are some examples:

Jesus says that we are "deny our selves". This occurs in both the canonical and the Thomas gospels, although Thomas is closer to an 'Eastern' approach, an abandonment of ahamkara (the word McGregor Ross uses in his Thomas translations), of atman. The classical explanation is one of self-denial, of disciplining the senses but stops short of a denial of 'self'. I would argue that the Buddhist notion of the aggregates empowers the Christian's self denying practices, making it mindful of the deceit of the world that is often the subject of scripture. Here, as in other examples, Buddhist texts reveal a model of 'how' and Christian texts reveal outcome, particularly if we take the Teilhard view of the Cosmic Christ and the Omega Point. The thorny question of 'soul' must, in the end, be up to each one of us to decide for ourselves, if possible from our own experiences arising from practice or enlightenment.

Of course, there are challenges. By and large, Christians do not accept the notion of anatta as traditionally described and Buddhists object to a teleology or purposefulness other than personal. We have to go deeper.

Deeper brings us to sunyatta and kenosis and the mystery of creative emptiness. Much argument is wasted on whether or not there is a 'Creator', conceived along quasi-human lines. As I see it, Jesus reveals that there is compassion and caring which is behind and subtends all that is, from which all arises and into which all falls back, and that this parent-like caring is personal as well as ineffable. It is, if you like, the Buddha-nature (or indwelling Christ) of the universe.

Arising from the depths of mystery, a further example of creative interaction between Buddhism and Christianity is in the realm of social and politico-economic action. Buddhism, for too long, has tended towards a solipsistic approach, focusing on individual Awakening and ignoring political action. It is salutary to notice that Buddhists like Thich Nhat Hanh or Joanna Macy, along with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, coming to the Western tradition, have brought in an emphasis on 'good works', an area where Christians have been active for many centuries. Whereas there are excellent schools, hospitals and other 'guardian' institutions which were founded by and continue to be run by Christian groups across the ages, catering for all faiths and none, delivering services at the point of need, similar Buddhist institutions are few and far between - indeed, I can only think of hospices or animal sanctuaries. The abolition of slavery, too, is a further example.

From these few examples, you may be able to see why and how I developed, for myself, a 'hermeneutic', a way of reading scriptures and of seeing the world which rejects exclusivity of truth to any one theory or body of faith in favour of another: each brings something to the party. Often, however, I need to sit for a while with a contradiction or a 'knot' before I can penetrate the symbolism because I truly believe that we perceive shadows, as Plato taught in his Cave Myth, and it is up to us to spend the effort needed to understand what casts the shadows, the Reality behind apparent phenomena. In this, I recognise that I am in the mainstream of neither Buddhism, which can be seen as denying an ultimate Reality, and Christianity which ignores dependent origination.

This is already rather long but I hope it gives you some idea of how it all connects for me.

Note:
Years ago I came across a talk given at the World Council of Churches by an IT specialist priest who likened the unfolding universe to a computer program. Such a program, they said, who need to be answering a question and the question is there, in one of the creation stories in Genesis (1:26): "Let us create in our own image". Thus we are part of the (to us) long process by which Compassionate Creativity is achieving that goal. And why? The next (older) story gives us the clue: (2:18) "It is not good to be alone." Inherent in these texts are also the notions of relationship and interbeing.

A lot of what Simon wrote reminded me of what the amiable gentleman at the church said, especially regarding the notions of relationship and interbeing. For example, he said that in talking to me, he saw God. Not that I was God, but that there's something special, something divine, in our interactions with other people. This brought to mind one of the images of hell mentioned by the deacon in one of the church tours earlier in the day — that of being utterly alone — and I couldn't help but be reminded of the Buddha's words to his cousin, Ananda, in SN 45.2:

Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life.

I also found it interesting that Simon mentioned the allegory of the cave from Plato's Republic since it's one of the things that helped motivate me to explore this subject in the first place. (I even wrote a blog post recently comparing what's in the Republic to many of the things the Buddha is recorded as saying in the Pali Canon.)

I'm not planning on converting to Christianity anytime soon; still, I do feel like I'm deepening my own practice and understanding of Buddhism simply by allowing myself to be open to these, for lack of a better word, mysteries. This is not only due to the works of Plato and my recent conversation at Holy Trinity, but to people like David Cooper (God is a Verb), Thomas Merton (Mystics and Zen Masters) and Simon who continually seek to find harmony between spiritual disciplines. Perhaps in time I'll go back to my old, critical ways, but for now, I'm enjoying this newfound appreciation of what devoted people of all religious disciplines have to offer.

the five aggregates

2010-10-04T19:33:00.000-07:00

Another subject that people new to Buddhism seem to have trouble understanding is the concept of the five aggregates (khandhas) and how they fit in with other teachings, such as those on dependent co-arising (paticca-samuppada) and not-self (anatta). The way I like to look at it, the teachings on dependent co-arising, the aggregates and not-self are quite insightful in that they're the parts of Buddhism that correspond to parts of modern psychology. For one thing, they basically detail the process by which we construct our sense of self, i.e., our ego or identity, and, ultimately, how to utilize that process in more skillful ways.

The aggregates themselves, for example, aren't simply descriptions of what constitutes a human being as some people mistakenly think—they're one of the many ways of looking at and dividing up experience that we find throughout the Pali Canon (e.g., aggregates, elements, six sense-media, etc.). But more importantly, they represent the most discernible aspects of our experience on top of which we construct our sense of self in a process of, as the Buddha called it, 'I-making' and 'my-making' (e.g., MN 109).

The first noble truth states that, in short, the five clinging-aggregate (panca-upadana-khandha) are dukkha (SN 56.11), i.e., it's the clinging in reference to the aggregates that's dukkha, not the aggregates themselves. But what does this really mean?

According to the commentaries, dukkha is defined as 'that which is hard to bear.' In MN 9, clinging is defined as:

"And what is clinging, what is the origin of clinging, what is the cessation of clinging, what is the way leading to the cessation of clinging? There are these four kinds of clinging: clinging to sensual pleasures, clinging to views, clinging to rituals and observances, and clinging to a doctrine of self. With the arising of craving, there is the arising of clinging. With the cessation of craving, there is the cessation of clinging. The way leading to the cessation of clinging is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view... right concentration."

In addition, the Buddha says that the five clinging-aggregates are not-self. He calls them a burden, the taking up of which is "the craving that makes for further becoming" and the casting off of which is "the remainderless fading & cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, & letting go of that very craving" (SN 22.22). The way I understand it, becoming (bhava) is a mental process, which arises due to the presence of clinging (upadana) in the mind with regard to the five-clinging aggregates, and acts as a condition for the birth (jati) of the conceit 'I am,' the self-identification that designates a being (satta).

Looking at it from another angle, there's rarely a moment when the mind isn't clinging to this or that in one or more of the four ways (MN 11). Our identity jumps from one thing to another, wherever the clinging is strongest. Our sense of self is something that's always in flux, ever-changing from moment to moment in response to various internal and external stimuli, and yet at the same time, we tend to see it as a static thing. It's as if our sense of self desires permanence, but its very nature causes it to change every second. As the Buddha warns in SN 12.61:

"It would be better for the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person to hold to the body composed of the four great elements, rather than the mind, as the self. Why is that? Because this body composed of the four great elements is seen standing for a year, two years, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred years or more. But what's called 'mind,' 'intellect,' or 'consciousness' by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another. Just as a monkey, swinging through a forest wilderness, grabs a branch. Letting go of it, it grabs another branch. Letting go of that, it grabs another one. Letting go of that, it grabs another one. In the same way, what's called 'mind,' 'intellect,' or 'consciousness' by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another.

Change is, of course, a fact of nature. All things are in a perpetual state of change, but the problem is that our sense of self ignores this reality on a certain level. From birth to death, we have the tendency to think that this 'I' remains the same. Now, we might know that some things have changed (e.g., our likes and dislikes, our age, the amount of wrinkles we have, etc.), but we still feel as if we're still 'us.' We have the illusion (for lack of a better word) that our identity is who we are, a static entity named [fill in the blank], and we tend to perceive this as being the same throughout our lives.

That said, the conventional use of personality is a function of survival, as well as convenience. However, clinging to our personalities as 'me' or 'mine' is seen as giving continued fuel for becoming, i.e., a mental process of taking on a particular kind of identity that arises out of clinging. Our sense of self — the ephemeral 'I' — is merely a mental imputation, and when we cling to our sense of self as being 'me' or 'mine' in some way, we're clinging to an impermanent representation of something that we've deluded ourselves into thinking is fixed and stable. It becomes a sort of false refuge that's none of these things.

These attachments, particularly our attachment to views and doctrines of self, keep us rooted in "perceptions and categories of objectification" that continually assail us and our mental well-being (MN 18). Thus, with the presence of clinging, the aggregates have the potential to become suffering (i.e., 'difficult to bear') when our sense of self encounters inconstancy. That's why the Buddha taught that whatever is inconstant is stressful, and whatever is stressful is not-self:

"What do you think, monks — Is form [same with feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousnes] constant or inconstant?"

"Inconstant, lord."

"And is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful?"

"Stressful, lord."

"And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am'?"

"No, lord."

Thus, monks, any form [same with feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousnes] whatsoever that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every form is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as: 'This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am.'

In order to break down the conceptual idea of self (i.e., that which is satisfactory, permanent and completely subject to our control) in relation to the various aspects of our experience that we falsely cling to as 'me' or 'mine,' we must essentially take this [analytical] knowledge, along with a specific set of practices such as meditation, as a stepping stone to what I can only describe as a profound psychological event that radically changes the way the mind relates to experience.

As I like to think about it (I use this a lot if you haven't already noticed), the conventional viewpoint (sammuti sacca) explains things through subject, verb and object whereas the ultimate viewpoint (paramattha sacca) explains things through verb alone. In essence, things are being viewed from the perspective of activities and processes. This, I think, is incredibly difficult to see, but perhaps what happens here is that once self-identity view (sakkaya-ditthi) is removed, the duality of subject and object is also removed, thereby revealing the level of mere conditional phenomena, i.e., dependent co-arising in action.

This mental process is 'seen,' ignorance is replaced by knowledge and vision of things as they are (yatha-bhuta-nana-dassana), and nibbana, then, would be the 'letting go' of what isn't self through the dispassion (viraga) invoked in seeing the inconstant (anicca) and stressful (dukkha) nature of clinging to false refuges that are neither fixed nor stable (anatta). And without the presence of clinging in regard to the aggregates, they cease to be 'difficult to bear.'