«

The Artistry of the Buddha’s Suttas

April 5th, 2026 . Posted in anattā, Brahminism, Buddhist Vocabulary, context, dependent origination, Translating | 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Introduction

This piece was written for the Secular Buddhist Network’s (SBN) website, in partial response to Ken Leong’s “Reconstructing the Dharma” in which he proposes reconstructing our understanding of what the Buddha saw through “axiomatic reasoning” — with one of the axioms being of anattā, which he there calls “non-self” though over on Facebook he quite often defines it as “no-self”. Since I am convinced the Buddha avoided dogmatically denying that there is any self of any kind, he and I debated the definition at some length, debates which inspired the insight presented here.

I had hoped to write often for the SBN, but since they rejected this piece as too theoretical, and not having visible relevance to secular Buddhism — and out there in the “theoretical weeds” is where I live and pretty much all I write about — I guess not.

At any rate, I find the connection made in this piece to be logically consistent with my understanding of what the Buddha was doing with not just dependent arising, but throughout his teachings, I don’t want the piece to be lost, so here it is.

The Buddha sits before a loom weaving a tapestry of anacronistic Sanskrit lettering that can form words.

The Buddha’s Tapestry

The Buddha’s many talks are a carefully woven tapestry made of deeply-considered, thoroughly interwoven threads of meaning. Anattā as “not-self” fits the whole of the Buddha’s teachings, but when translated as “no-self” it’s a thread pulled up, ready to spoil the beauty of the whole.

This post may seem like a description of an entirely dry, academic discussion between nerdish types, but there’s another level to the debate about the meaning of anattā, that hasn’t been paid attention to for centuries, for millennia, and that’s the pure artistry that went into the creation of the Buddha’s lessons.

Professor Joanna Jurewicz’s year 2000 paper, “Playing With Fire” gave the Buddhist world a critical key to understanding not just what the Buddha was trying to get across to us with Dependent Arising (DA) but how he created the lesson he did. Not a Buddhist herself, she may not have been accurate in all her guesses at what he was doing, but she was spot-on with many, and gave us enough information to see what he was doing, if we are willing to have a fresh look, and loosen our grip on traditional interpretations.

But I’m not here to talk, this time, about the technicalities of possible new understanding of DA, but of beauty.

As I’ve worked, over the past decade and more, on trying to see how exactly the Buddha used the references Jurewicz pointed out, I came to notice several things, primary among them the extreme care he used in constructing his teachings, and the subtle way he made reference to the mythos Jurewicz pointed out, using the way it applied to daily life in his culture. He subtly addressed the philosophical arguments built on it, used its literary history and language, as well as, himself, using the methods of the philosophers and teachers who passed it on, with a unique, amusing and skillful modification.

The insights the Buddha was trying to get across were so new that there was as yet no language he could use to explain them. As Jurewicz explains it in her books, the method the ancient Vedic poets had used to convey their obscure new ideas about the creation of the ātman and its connection to a universal force — Brahman, “the All” — was to speak of everyday situations, familiar to all, that paralleled the points they were trying to make: in other words, using the mundane to call to mind the obscure. The Buddha gave that style of teaching a significant twist, using that same creation story and the mythos built around it to call to mind the very mundane new concept he was trying to describe, though there was as yet no language to express it. In other words, he used the story that had once conveyed new and obscure ideas about the ātman and rebirth, to try to get people to understand human psychology: using the obscure to explain the mundane.

That was such an elegant method, expressive (as I see it) of the artistry of a brilliant mind like no other in our knowledge of history.

It saddens me that the depth of the Buddha’s skill has gone unnoticed for so long. Oh, we talk about his “skill in means” but that’s just like the way his Dharma is effective in the beginning, middle, and end. When very well understood it is so powerful, that even when we are just beginning to put his teachings into practice, we see results, which keeps us digging in. The same is true of his skill in means: we see it, but I would suggest that what we are seeing is only the faint traces of it. When we see how integral his method is to what he teaches, and how deep it goes, how thoroughly embedded in his time while at the same time aiming to convey enough that is ageless so it will survive the changing nature of human culture, it’s truly astounding.

An Example Of What We Miss

A recent exchange with Ken Leong over on Facebook’s Secular Buddhist Group is what brought this back into mind. He and I generally agree that the Buddha was not trying to convey rebirth as a cosmic justice system that is key to accept, and that the point of his teaching was not “how to escape” from a literal cycle of rebirth. Even with that agreement, we do debate many other of the finer points of what the Buddha was saying. In this case, in a post about misunderstanding the discussions of rebirth in the suttas, the translation of anattā and its meaning came up.

I appreciated a line of his in which he suggested that what anattā represents is a relinquishment of belief in a lasting self, and I said so in a comment. I went on to suggest that, in his post about the Buddhist sphere’s misunderstanding of rebirth, he leaves out a supporting point: the Buddha’s emphasis on refraining from holding views. If I have no experience of rebirth, believing in it is holding a speculative view. “This is how I know that he wasn’t telling us all that belief in rebirth is necessary,” I said in my comment.

Part of Ken’s argument, though, was that if there is no self, there is nothing to be reborn. Because I’m sure the Buddha was not intending anattā to be a dogmatic statement about something we cannot know from direct experience, I objected. In writing up my reasoning, I came to realize — once again — that there was a lovely reflection of the language and philosophy of the Vedic poets expressed in the Buddha’s use of anattā as “not self”.

First, a little context. What Jurewicz’s clues revealed is that the Buddha used the Vedic myth of creation — of everything, but especially of the ātman within each of us — as a parallel to something once obscure, to express something mundane: the way we create what was mistaken for the ātman, what we now mistake for a lasting self. The parallel between the myth and its uses in Vedic rituals is extremely close to what the Buddha is saying about how we create a sense of self, making it a useful teaching tool for those of his audience who saw that parallel.

With his use of the word anattā — an- meaning “not” and the attā in Sanskrit is “ātman” — the Buddha is pointing to the method he offers us to discover that what we think is self/ātman, is not lasting. He asks us to give a close examination to every way we define a self as lasting and notice that it arose out of conditions, and continues as long as conditions remain, and then fades away: not lasting. When conditions change — let’s say we suddenly realize kicking the dog was mean and unnecessary — that aspect of us (as “someone who kicks dogs”) changes. Basically, the Buddha asks us to notice that everything we point to as who we are, as “self” is “not self” so is “not ātman” — not lasting, not separate from the events in the world, but is constructed.

That use of the word anattā to point to the strategy we have for noticing that what we think of as self reveals that it is not self, along with the fact that we have no direct experience that can prove there is not a self out there that is permanent and lasting but has no visible effect in our lives, well, those two alone make it clear that the Buddha’s intended meaning of anattā was not a denial of there being any self, but just that we have no evidence for a lasting self.

But anattā as not self has more significance than that.

Just as the shape of dependent arising uses the shape of the Vedic myth of creation to make its points — reflecting ancient philosophical teachings, but expressing that their understanding was off — so too anattā as not-self does the same.

In the BrU, within many discussions of what ātman is, is a famous phrase: “Neti. Neti.”

Ātman is “Not that. Not that.” Yajnavalkya says that ātman cannot be described by any known means — it is beyond all description — so whatever you ask “Is it this?” he will have to answer that it’s “Not that.”

The Buddha is using a famous predecessors famed language to say almost the same thing. Whatever we believe that lasting self to be, it’s not that. Yajnavalkya meant “It exists but is inexpressible” while the Buddha was saying, “Can’t see that it’s lasting? Then it actually is not anything but speculation.”

Perhaps it’s just me, but I find the elegance of the connection of the Buddha’s use of anattā to simultaneously reflect and refute the very definition (or lack of definition) of ātman to be just stunning.

This is just one small example of how what he did in constructing dependent arising gets reflected throughout the talks he left us. There is incredible, as yet unseen beauty in the way he put his lessons together, with that thread of commentary on the belief systems of his time, using the way they were expressed to make his own point, all throughout the suttas. It only needs some effort from those of us who love the teachings and have both the time and some interest in digging into the suttas with an open mind to find more and more of these. And I hope, over the course of years during which Secular Buddhism develops, we take that time.

Some In-Depth Writing on Dependent Arising

May 27th, 2025 . Posted in Dependent Arising In Context, Updates | No Comments »
Tags:

Just so you don’t think I’ve stopped writing, I thought I’d drop a note here to direct you to my Skeptical Buddhist on Bluesky Social account, where I am, slowly but surely, documenting what I believe is a better understanding of Dependent Arising. It is slow going because I’m trying to do a good job of “showing my work” — that is, documenting with quotations from Pali suttas, and the research of others whose work has helped illuminate how the Buddha taught, and how embedded in the culture of his times his teachings were. All that while trying to keep it both readable to those who are not much into either the Pali or maybe even the suttas, as well as relevant to our lives.

For me, this more accurate view of Dependent Arising is really just the start of a fresh understanding of, not just what the Buddha taught, but of why he taught it the way he did, and of who he was as a historical figure. I find he was a very precise constructor of talks, extremely careful in the way he put words and concepts together, as well as full of subtlety and a bit of dry humor. Anyone looking for more information on Dependent Arising as discussed in my book, Dependent Arising In Context will find more detail and practical understanding in that thread.

I hope you’ll come visit the Bluesky account (you don’t even need to sign up for it, it’s wide open to public view), and say hello there or here.

P.S. The link to the Bluesky account lands on the first relevant item in a long Table of Contents. In case you (like me) are not Social Site Savvy, it will help to know to click the hyperlink that starts with a # (“hashtag”) to go from the introduction to the thread, to the thread itself.

The Buddhist Catechism

June 19th, 2024 . Posted in AN 10.176, AN 10.27, AN 8.6, AN 9.24, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Brahminism, dependent origination, dhamma, direct experience, diṭṭheva dhamme, DN 15, dukkha, MN 10, MN 9, namarupa, paticca samuppada, SN 35.115, suffering and its end, Uncategorized, vedana | 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A partially ghostly person feeding itself
Perhaps a few interruptions in the flow of posts I was trying to develop are in order. I’d planned on writing about nāmarūpa next — and I’ve got a good start on that post — but there are a few other items that have moved a bit higher up my list. First, just a quick post to put something missing from the internet up where it can be more easily found (by me, if by no one else).

More than a decade ago I encountered a list labeled “The Buddhist Catechism” which, at the time, I found a little strange and mysterious. Now that I understand most of it, it makes sense and I’ve come to suspect its strange mysteriousness is part of its point. “Come to understand these things deeply to understand Buddhism deeply” it says to us.

I find in notes on my more recent efforts to read every sutta (and put the ones I find remarkable into a database, thank goodness, or I’d never find things again) that there’s a sutta source for the list. It’s AN 10.27,1 which in this post I’m just going to distill down to the short list of what are, effectively, mnemonics.

In the sutta, some monks are told that if the Buddha teaches them to “directly know all phenomenon,”2. Well, since that’s what their teachers also say, what’s the difference? When the monks go ask the Buddha, he tells them they need to get dispassionate about these ten things:

1. all beings depend on food (sabbe sattā āhāraṭṭhitikā)

2. name and form (nāme ca rūpe ca)

3. the three experiences (tīsu vedanāsu)3

4. four types of food (catūsu āhāresu)4

5. five components of self that we cling to (pañcasu upādānakkhandhesu)5

6. six individual’s senses (chasu ajjhattikesu āyatanesu)6

7. seven stations of consciousness (sattasu viññāṇaṭṭhitīsu)7

8. eight worldly conditions (aṭṭhasu lokadhammesu)8

9. nine abodes of beings (navasu sattāvāsesu)9

10. ten unskillful actions (dasasu akusalesu kammapathesu10

To me the most interesting thing about this list, as well as how it’s presented in AN 10.27, is that first item, which I summarize as “All beings must eat.

When I first encountered it my first thought was, “Well sure, everyone knows that.”

But then — since I was by then some distance into my understanding of dependent arising and the way the Buddha uses “nutriment” (āhāra) as a key to what’s going on in DA — that is, that what’s described is the way we “feed” the self, defined as “a being,” by the way we think about concepts — so in the first place in the list, it’s expressing how critical understanding that concept is.

That brief statement also is an excellent example of one of the patterns the Buddha uses in shaping many of his lessons: what I call “What Everyone Knows.” He often starts with a statement that everyone can agree with — he gets folks’ heads nodding in response to what were very likely concepts under discussion everywhere — but he isn’t, once we come to understand what he’s teaching, saying what everyone else is saying about what everyone knows. In fact, in most cases what he’s point out is that “What everyone knows” is part of the problem. Both believing we know what’s being said when we actually haven’t yet gotten the whole lesson, or — in life in general — assuming what we know about how people behave means that person over there has the motivations we think they do — gets us in trouble because we actually know very little. Starting with “what everyone knows” but ending by demonstrating that what everyone knows isn’t necessarily correct is a very clever technique and, it seems to me, one we students of the suttas need to pay more attention to.

The other aspect of that first item that I keep thinking about is that it seems different to me from the rest, when presented as AN 10.27 does, as something to become disenchanted with. Here’s Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation in the big volume of the Numerical Discourses:

 

When a bhikkhu is completely disenchanted with one thing, completely dispassionate toward it, completely liberated from it, completely sees its delimitations, and completely breaks through its meaning, in this very life11 he makes an end of suffering. What one thing? All beings exist through nutriment.

 

It should seem quite clear to anyone listening that when the Buddha tells us that “All beings exist through nutriment” very few of us are particularly enchanted with the fact that all critters have to eat to survive. Is this a hint to those who are new to the Buddha’s teachings to look more deeply into why he says what he says?

The other thing about this list: Perhaps it’s just me being “a being” who is overweight, so that I’m keenly aware that food is the one thing one can become enchanted by that we can’t actually give up completely. For as long as I can remember, I have recognized the degree to which I am a person strongly inclined to addiction of all sorts. I’ve given up smoking, for example: not easy to do, but being able to just stop made it easier. Food: not possible to give up. I believe it’s that, that sets that first item apart from the rest, to me. Whatever else is on the list seems more completely quitable.

Then again, maybe not. And maybe that’s the point, and part of the key to understanding here: that all the items described on this list are going to continue to be part of our lives. We are still going to have experiences that feel good, bad, or indifferent to us. We are still going to experience gain and loss, success and failure. What we’re being told here is not that we need to avoid these things, but we need to change our attitudes toward them. In this way Item #1 is actually a key to all the rest because it says that we need to stop feeding the fires of passions about our experiences in order to “make an end to suffering.”

  1. AN 10.27 [pts A v 50][↩]
  2. sabbaṃ dhammaṃ abhijānātha[↩]
  3. Did you ever think about how there are three vedanā*, and that the word vedanā has at its root Veda? Might it be that there are three Veda–nās to form a pointed pun on the famous Three Vedas — The Three Knowledges? The Buddha seems to be suggesting that these are the Three Knowledges that are actually important.

    * pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral[↩]

  4. Food, contact, intention, and awareness
    kabaḷīkāro āhāro — oḷāriko vā sukhumo vā, phasso dutiyo, manosañcetanā tatiyā, viññāṇaṃ catutthaṃ. MN 9 [pts M i 48][↩]
  5. form, experience, perception, drives, consciousness
    rūpa, vedanā, saññā, saṅkhārā, viññāṇa for example in MN 10 [pts M i 61][↩]
  6. The eye experiences form, the ear experiences sound, the nose scent, the tongue taste, the body touch, the mind ideas.
    As in SN 35.115 [pts S iv 92][↩]
  7. A list found in DN 15 [pts D ii 68], as well as other places. I suspect it’s the Buddha’s riff on the seven heavens of Vedism.

    Bhurloka (the world of form), Bhurvarloka (vitality becoming in form), Svargaloka (the mental world), Maharloka (supramental world), Janarloka (blissful world), Tapaloka (thought-world), Satyaloka (the world of self).[↩]

  8. Gain and loss, success and failure, insult and praise, pleasure and pain. AN 8.6 [pts A iv 157] lābho ca alābho ca, yaso ca ayaso ca, nindā ca pasaṃsā ca, sukhañc, dukkhañca[↩]
  9. AN 9.24 [pts A iv 401] A list very like the seven stations of consciousness, but with two more in the list.[↩]
  10. Found in many places in the suttas, for example in AN 10.176 [pts A v 263] where we find the summary: three unwholesome actions in body, four via speech, three in the mind. Taking life, taking what’s not given, sensual misconduct; lies, divisive or harsh talk, idle chatter; greed, ill will, wrong view.[↩]
  11. “in this very life” — this is diṭṭheva dhamme — which actually means “having seen into the truth”[↩]

The Words of Dependent Arising: Viññāṇa

March 19th, 2022 . Posted in Bhikkhu Bodhi, context, dependent origination, dukkha, namarupa, pariyāya, paticca samuppada, responses to blogs &c, Richard F Gombrich, sankhara, SN 12.65 "The City", SN 22.56, SN 22.57, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, vedana | 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
In a nest, a second self whispers to the self

“Tell Me About Me” by Annie Blanchard

I’ve been gone a long time, and now that I’m back, one of the first things I’m doing is touching base in old familiar Buddhist places where I’ve hung out in the distant past. In science fiction fandom the word for what I’m doing is called “ego-scanning”. I type “Blanchard” into the search box on a forum and see if anyone’s read anything I’ve written. Professor Gombrich said it takes about ten years for anyone to take notice, so it’s time now, right? And there have been a rare few mentions.

What I like about ego-scanning is that it turns up interesting on-going conversations about subjects I’m keenly interested in, and while doing this over on Dhamma Wheel, I encountered several mentions of a paper on dependent arising (“DA”) by someone named Bucknell. It turns out I have had this paper on my computer for a long while, along with hundreds of others by a wide variety of scholars, researchers, and opinionators, but like most of the hundreds, I’ve never read it.

10- and 12-link DA for reference

Bucknell’s Investigation

Roderick Bucknell’s 1999 paper “Conditioned Arising Evolves: Variation and Change in Textual Accounts of the Paṭicca Samuppāda Doctrine” got praise from DW participants, but in reading it, I found myself sad that it was written before Jurewicz’s paper in the 2000 Journal of the Pali Text Society, which might have helped explain some of the puzzles Bucknell was trying to solve. In particular, the problem of the apparently non-linear definition of viññāṇa (traditionally: “consciousness”) when it’s used in definitions of phassa (“contact”), out of sequence of the usually orderly-appearing dependent arising.

image of the components of content followed by image of DA links 3-6 skilling 4-5

Working primarily with the ten-link DA, he was attempting to sort out what the earliest version was, or if there was an eo-DA that the versions we have evolved from. He seems to have decided that the definition of contact as having three components that come together — a sense organ, an object for that organ, and a particular consciousness that recognizes the connection, resulting in six types of consciousness1 — is a clue because it pulls consciousness into action simultaneously with contact,2 when there are links between them. On the face of it, when expecting that DA describes a linear series of events, from start to finish, it makes little sense that links a distance apart are combined in one moment’s experience. It’s understandable that he’d try to use that as a lever to pry DA apart to discover clues to its evolution. Read the rest of this entry »

  1. Eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, etc.

    Buddhism counts the five sense organs as we do, plus the mind, which is useful for all the Buddha’s discussions of how we work, though even in his talks we can see that the mind operates differently from the rest. Five senses make contact generated by (usually) physical objects: touch, taste, smell, sight, sound. But the mind makes contact with nebulous ideas.

    In its most fundamental sense, this is the division the Buddha is talking about throughout his talks, and in dependent arising in particular, as can be seen in my paper “Anatomy of Quarrels and Disputes”, in which the primary line of thinking covers externals, while the secondary line covers internals. For example, “the dear” (pīya) as both things outside of us that we hold dear, and things inside of us, namely ourselves, that are also dear to us.[↩]

  2. This is not the only example of definitions of one link including later links. For example — as Bucknell points out — nāmarūpa’s definitions sometimes include phassa (contact) and vedanā (feeling). As far as I can see his theory doesn’t address why that is, but mine covers it easily.[↩]

Words of Dependent Arising: Saṅkhārā Take Two

February 10th, 2022 . Posted in Bhikkhu Bodhi, Buddhist Vocabulary, Dependent Arising In Context, dependent origination, sankhara, SN 12.64, Translating | 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , ,

person in half egg shell thinking and creating self

This really is going to be a post about saṅkhārā, honest it is, and soon. But first, I need to cover two personal points. #1 is to say this is a blog, and I’m a writer and a story-teller who specializes in conveying my own life in my writing. In the case of what I write here, my blog is representative of how much my study of early Buddhism is part of my life. Not just the practice — lots of people write about how practice affects their lives, valuable writing which I admire — but about the study and what I find. #2 is to say that the more I study the Buddha’s descriptions of dependent arising (DA), the more I see what he did with those descriptions, the more in awe of him I am, of not just his insight (which is phenomenal and useful) but of the thought he put into conveying it, and the way he structured it within the context of the tools he had available. Those two “about me” points are combined in what follows.

I despair of my ability to convey what I see of the Buddha’s teaching.

Over most of the last decade I’ve been terribly, unaccountably disabled by some mystery illness the doctors haven’t yet identified, often wishing I’d just die and be done with it. But this view of the Buddha’s teaching — how clear it is, how useful, how beautiful — has effectively served as my will to live. I couldn’t hold it together enough to research, take notes, and write, but I could still read, still think about it, still practice it.
I’m feeling modestly better now, and in my good moments am thrilled to be back to work, but even at my best I keep finding that there is so much depth the Buddha put into DA that even if my audience was as familiar with the context as his was, I might be inadequate to the task of explaining it all. So you can see why I’m in awe of the Buddha’s abilities.

But I have a couple of extra-added complications he didn’t have. One is that my audience doesn’t have the context his did, so on top of trying to describe the depth and complexity he put into DA, I have to explain how differently his audience thought about the workings of the world — like their understanding that a fire, having been extinguished, does not cease to exist. This is very different from the way we think of things. In addition to the difference in worldview, I need to convey the meanings of words the Buddha used, and the multi-layered meanings intended to be understood quite differently from our “I mean only definition #3 when I use that word” sort of thinking. They intended to call to mind many layers of meanings of the words they used; we tend to limit ourselves to one.

On top of all that, the majority of my “audience” is justifiably skeptical of what I’m trying to convey, and — as the Buddha is trying to tell us with dependent arising — the firmly-held views people hold tend to block our ability to fully understand what’s being described about different views. He says ignorance begets more ignorance. I’d translate that as covering “biases breed support for biases.”

That said, I’m going to keep trying to express what I see. I have in mind the possibility that I may not last (I’m getting old) until I’ve worked it all into a cohesive book. That being the case, I’m going to try to get some of the pieces into public view in this blog. Today my focus is on a word I’ve covered here before, this time offering another view of it that deepens the insights into this understanding of dependent arising, its composition and content.

 

Saṅkhārā As Rituals of Self-Creation

It’s been my understanding for many years now that the most difficult-to-translate word in Pali, as used in DA, is saṅkhārā (saṃskāra in Sanskrit). It was used by the Buddha as a representative term for the second link in the chain of events that is dependent arising. It seems he used it, specifically, because during the time he lived it was well-known and in frequent use. Its meaning was, then as even now in Hindi, “ritual”, a ritual of a particular type used for a specific purpose. As Brian K Smith puts it in his book on Vedism, “Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion” in a section labelled “Constructing Selves and Statuses” (pages 91-101):

Following the ritual philosophers, then, one might best consider these rituals not as rites of passage — implying leaps from one ontologically stable condition to another — but rather both as rituals of healing… and as rituals of construction. From conception to birth, from birth to the “second birth” of initiation, and from marriage to death, the life of the Vedic male was punctuated by these rituals of healing and formation, of transformation and transfiguration.

Then, when discussing the upanayana as “perhaps the most important” of the series of these rituals, Smith says:

It appears that at a very early date in Vedic history the upanayana and subsequent period of Veda study were regarded as mandatory for the Aryan community. By the time of the Sūtras, the upanayana was called simply the saṃskāra to indicate its paradigmatic significance…

Upanayana initiated a young boy into the study of the Veda under the guidance of a teacher and into the performance of the sacrifice… he became, by virtue of the rite, “twice born” (dvija), a term that occurs as early as the Atharva Veda Saṃhitā… This second birth was thus claimed to be a socio-ontological birth standing in radical opposition to the defective natural birth, and was designed to rectify biological faults and construct a higher ontological existence for the young boy…

In this way, the natural birth of individual humans replicates the natural birth of the cosmos as a whole, for both are regarded as equally degenerate. And just as we understood the cosmogonic myths as statements of the ineptitude of Prajāpati, the creator god, so might we understand the denigration of natural birth as statements of the ineptitude of human mothers. The ritualists felt that only they were ultimately qualified to produce proper offspring; both the cosmos and individual humans could be “truly born” only from a womb controlled by priests, from the womb, that is, of the sacrifice.

At the start of this section of his book, Smith notes that the term saṃskāra doesn’t appear in Vedic works until the Sūtras, composed from about 700 BCE to 300 BCE. This means it’s very likely the Buddha — living at some point during that time — taught in a period when the word was in popular use. Smith also says that even before that word’s appearance, “other formations of sam– + kṛ describing the effects of rituals on humans do appear regularly in the Veda, and with much the same meaning.” He cites instances in the ṚgVeda and Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa.

I would suggest that the Buddha didn’t invent the word saṅkhārā out of nowhere to mean “formations” or “volitional actions” or any of the various translations we’ve come up with. He didn’t invent it and then have it start appearing in the Sūtras, adopted there with a quite different meaning from his. No, clearly the term was already in existence, referring to rituals of self-construction, and he included it because rituals of self construction were exactly what he needed as a model to describe our creation of a self via the process of dependent arising.

On page 100 Smith says, “The upanayana delivers a reborn Āryan, who was supposedly more really human because more fully realized, activated through the activity of ritual.”

This is, I believe, what the Buddha was asking his audience to include in their thinking when he began including the term saṅkhārā in his classic versions of dependent arising. Those concepts of “realized” and “activated” will play a part in these posts, here, and in upcoming discussions of consciousness and name-and-form, the representative terms that follow saṅkhārā in DA, because the concept of forces that are not yet manifested as different from those which have had an effect in the world — manifest, real, active — are critical to understanding those two following terms in particular.

In its place as the second link in dependent arising — preceded only by ignorance (avijjā) as a many-layered term clearly making reference to its opposite, “Veda” which represents knowledge — those two starting terms are so clearly intended to get listeners to recognize that the Buddha is talking about rituals of construction that it would have been hard to miss in his day. However, quite easy to miss later when those trying to understand the teachings were not connecting them to the Brahmanical world. (Note especially that during the period when King Ashoka popularized Buddhism a century or two after the Buddha’s death, Brahmins and their teachings were very likely not as much a part of common culture.)

 

What Are Rituals, Really?

What the term saṅkhārā should tell us is that the Buddha’s audience was already familiar with the idea of creating and perfecting a self other than the most basic version of self, understood as a physical individual. The rituals that were present in a certain segment of the population were very likely at least as well-known to those outside that group as concepts of confession or baptism are to those of us who are not Catholics or Baptists nowadays. The idea of “a second birth” within one lifetime, too, would have been familiar, and so it is logical to see the Buddha as calling on those rituals that affected that non-physical “self” — the ātman — to try to get people to recognize that what’s being created in those rituals and (critically) other rituals that parallel those is, because of our ignorance, not exactly what we think it is, and not good for us: dukkha-producing.

The rituals the Buddha was clearly referring to are things we are told by society, and by our family and friends, are beneficial because they’re based on a correct understanding of how the world works. Though the Buddha was using rituals well-known in his time to do just that — Vedic rituals used by the Brahmins and believers in their ways — I am certain he was not intending to limit the application of his teaching to those folks, to Brahmins and believers. He was using the loose definition of those rituals (as I describe it in the first sentence in this paragraph) to address all such rituals: all the habits of thinking we employ — in our ignorance — because they seem beneficial, because those we trust tell us they are right and good and are based on a correct understanding of the way the world works.

Rituals are the things we do often without thinking much about why we do them: habits. As much as we believe they are good things — whether that’s good in the sense of comforting (like going out for a cigarette in times of stress) or good in the sense of bringing us good fortune in the future (repeating affirmations, brown-nosing the boss) makes no great difference. They are things we do without giving very deep thought to most of them. And as much as we are confident they’re okay enough to keep doing them, thinking we control them, yet they shape us, usually without us noticing how much our justification of some of them are entirely embedded in what we’ve been told.
This is, I feel sure, what the Buddha is talking about, what he wanted us to notice when he added saṅkhārā (and ignorance) on to his already quite useful 10-link DA.

Saṅkhārā As Craving, Craving As Saṅkhārā

I have suggested elsewhere (a decade ago) that the first five links of dependent arising are two things. (1) They are references to the Prajāpati myth that underlies the Vedic rituals like the saṅkhārās. (2) They are not so much active links as they are driving forces. I call them “The Givens”: given that we’re ignorant of all that follows, given that we have a drive to exist and keep existing, given that to satisfy that drive we have to have a mind capable of knowing we exist, given that that mind needs information to know we exist, given that our senses try to provide us with that information, all those drives to exist and know we do will cause us to behave in ways that follow those early links. The links in “The Givens” take their shape from the Prajāpati myth, so those two concepts are intertwined.

But those first five links also create another pattern: they are overviews of what follows, a summary. (This is what I mean by how much layering and how much depth the Buddha packs into this one lesson. In summary it is quite simple, but explaining how he conveys it takes a lot of complexity.)

Saṅkhārā definitely points to Vedic rituals but it also points to the Prajāpati myth and other similar creation myths from that culture in which the cosmos comes into being from pure desire. On one level that pure desire is likely sexual lust, and on that same level and at the same time stepping up, it’s pure desire for existence, in particular for one’s own existence to continue through one’s children (well, in those days: sons). Procreation is the model for those creation myths, and the creation myths are tied to the rituals of creation and perfection of the ātman — it’s all one completely intertwined reference to desire — to which the Buddha is adding yet another layer of discussion about how it is our desire to exist, to thrive, that is driving our rituals and habits (that lead to dukkha, not bliss).

So while saṅkhārā is meant to call the literal rituals of his day to mind, it also represents craving for existence on all those levels.

As evidence that this is so, I offer a sutta which might represent an early form of dependent arising. In this sutta, saṅkhārā (rituals/desire/craving) and taṇhā (which we translate as craving) switch places. Craving is usually link #8, whereas here it is a stand-in for link #2.

If, bhikkhus, there is lust for the nutriment edible food, if there is delight, if there is craving, consciousness becomes established there and comes to growth. Wherever consciousness becomes established and comes to growth, there is a descent of name-and-form. Where there is a descent of name-and-form, there is the growth of volitional formations. Where there is the growth of volitional formations, there is the production of future renewed existence. Where there is the production of future renewed existence, there is future birth, aging, and death, I say that is accompanied by sorrow, anguish, and despair.1

DA in its classic 12-link version has 1. ignorance 2. saṅkhārā 3. consciousness 4. name-and-form 5. six senses 6. contact 7. feeling 8. craving 9. clinging 10. becoming 11. birth 12. aging-and-death.

In the above sutta we start from a little further back — with eating and delight — but what’s important is that craving immediately precedes consciousness, so it is standing in saṅkhārā’s usual place. I say that’s fine because saṅkhārā is craving (for existence, craving that takes many forms). Consciousness and name-and-form take their usual order. Then a few steps appear to be missing, but I don’t think they are actually missing, because next is “volitional formations” — a translation of saṅkhārā — in a very unusual position. This, I say, is also fine, because saṅkhārā in its “overview” position represents the rituals we do every day, over and over again, that create and modify our selves, and that is what the middle portion of DA details in its classic version. So saṅkhārā, here, is holding the place of contact, feeling, craving, and clinging. This is followed by what usually follows that middle section: becoming, birth, aging-and-death, and the dukkha that accompanies that life.

The other insight the above quote offers us is a view of how the initial links of DA are overviews of what happens in later links. Craving drives consciousness into existence where it gains identity in name-and-form (which, unmentioned here but well-covered in fuller versions of DA, also provides the six senses through which we view the world). Within saṅkhārā contact etc. happens — contact we also know leads to “craving” thus matching the earlier overview of events. Some other complex operations occur inside saṅkhārā, leading to the gestation of the self via becoming, and its birth/appearance — described in the earlier overview as consciousness and name-and-form — through which it gained the senses (often mentioned in detailed descriptions of birth). The one thing the overview didn’t tell us was that all this would result in that last step: aging-and-death, a.k.a. “suffering” — dukkha. That’s the surprise ending the Buddha left unforeshadowed.

 

What Is Saṅkhārā‘s Role In DA?

All the above is my attempt at just explaining the huge amount of information the Buddha put into one word. One word! It’s taken me three thousand words (with help from Smith and Bodhi) to just try to unpack one word.

Saṅkhārā, then, is many things within dependent arising. In its place as the second link, it’s a bell rung to get the attention of the Buddha’s audience that what’s being described can be seen within Vedic saṅkhārā rituals. It’s not about those rituals, but uses them as an example and a model because those Vedic rituals are about the creation and perfection of “the self” and what the Buddha is talking about is the way we create and attempt to perfect a self — out of ignorance because of which we don’t see that what we’re doing leads to dukkha. Saṅkhārā is also intended to be seen as a driving force — a desire, a craving for existence — a lot like classic lust, a desire that is one big reason for all the rest that follows. And it represents an overview of the rituals we do that start with contact and continue through feeling, craving, and clinging, to bring about “future renewed births” that are very like the “second birth” that is the point of the locus classicus of Vedic saṅkhārā rituals, especially the upanayana — but it isn’t talking only about that Vedic second birth, but a birth of what all of us may mistake for the self.

You see? I can say it in less than 3k words — just that one paragraph above — but I can’t explain it in fewer when providing supporting evidence and explanations. All this for just one word!

I’m going to go rest now.

 

 

  1. SN 12.64 “If There Is Lust” [pts S ii 101] Bodhi, Bhikkhu. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya (Kindle Locations 11127-11131). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.[↩]

Differences in Approaches to Reading The Suttas

January 15th, 2022 . Posted in Possibilities, responses to blogs &c | 4 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been noticing — both recently and many times before — that the way most writers thinking in secular ways about the Early Buddhist Texts (EBTs) approach those texts is very different from my approach, and I’m wondering if I’m on the right track here (am I seeing this accurately?) or if I’m mistaken. I’d love to hear what you think.

What I find is that the approach I’ve been seeing is for most thinkers, researchers, academics — writers all — to read the suttas and when they find something that they see as self-contradictory, or confusing, or even not matching with their experience of reality or what’s evidenced by Buddhist practice, they seem to think to themselves, “Something is wrong here,” and their instinctive reaction is to either assume there is some corruption to the texts they’re reading, or that the Buddha just got it wrong. Next step is then to try to set it right.

In the case of Stephen Batchelor, his main solution seems to be to work at inventing Buddhism 2.0: the corrected version. He has in the past said he approached the texts by throwing out anything that might’ve been said by other thinkers in the Buddha’s time and keeping only what’s unique to the Buddha. In his conversation with Dhivan Thomas Jones,  Batchelor often says he thinks the things in the suttas he disagrees with are later additions.

I found this approach, also, in Doug Smith’s posts on The Secular Buddhist website, for example with “Can Dependent Origination Be Saved?” which opens with a statement I firmly disagree with: “…it is a deeply problematic attempt to reconcile kammic rebirth with a potential awakening into non-self.” This comes from accepting — without apparently questioning the proposition — that the traditional interpretation of what the Buddha was saying is correct. I agree that there’s something deeply problematic there: if that was what the Buddha was doing, it would be problematic, but there’s another possible reason it’s seen as problematic, which is that we’ve misunderstood what the Buddha was doing, and it was not that problematic thing.

Currently I’m working through a paper written by Roderick Bucknell — also on dependent arising — where he uses the same approach, basically saying, “Something seems not quite right here, let’s see if we can figure out what went wrong.” I don’t know if his approach is secular, but the paper does not seem to advocate for any particular tradition, nor deal with faith, so it’s secular enough to provide another example for the sake of this discussion.

 

My Approach Is Different

Looking at those approaches leads me to wonder if part of the reason my work isn’t well understood might be because I have a very different approach to reading the suttas. Perhaps what I’m saying is being judged from within their understanding of what should be done, and how it should be done, and so it simply seems wrong from the outset, and their interpretation of what I’m saying is colored by that discomfort with what might seem like an off-kilter view.

I’m sure that’s not the only problem, of course. I’m well aware that presenting a piecemeal view of the Buddha’s lessons that’s quite different in some important respects doesn’t work well because each piece lacks all the supporting pieces. Much the same happens when non-Buddhists are first presented with isolated bits of the Buddha’s teachings, for example one often short-handed down to “All life is suffering.” Without the context, that doesn’t sound like an appealing view of life at all. (It’s also not something the Buddha ever said.)

Here, then, is my approach: I read the suttas trying to understand how they can be internally consistent, and to the greatest degree possible, saying things visible to anyone at any time if they just know where and how to look for them.

If the folks I’ve described find something that seems internally inconsistent, or not matching reality, they conclude that it must be wrong in some way. Either a corruption, or the Buddha was just wrong.

If I find something that seems internally inconsistent, or not reflective of visible reality, I conclude that I have not yet understood it.

They want to fix it: find the corruption, throw that bit out. Rewrite Buddhism.

I want to study more to figure out where my understanding is lacking. Maybe I will, finally, decide that on certain points, there is no corruption, nor is there something missing, the Buddha was just wrong, but so far I’ve not found a clear example where that was the case. I do believe there are some corruptions. For example, I agree with Analayo that the Buddha didn’t see women as inferior. I can recall one thing the Buddha says that I can’t find a basis for, and that is his comments on having one’s last thoughts be in line with the dhamma — not sure what that’s about; have no evidence for its usefulness — but it’s a small point and simply set aside until I get more information.

Mostly I’ve just found evidence that we’ve not understood what he’s saying as well as we like to think we have: “Needs more work.” When I get a fresh new understanding, it’s invariably a good match for reality.

 

Men and Women

There’s something else interesting about this. It seems to me — here’s another theory of mine, please tell me what you think — that this division in approaches is largely reflective of something we commonly hear about a difference between men and women. When a problem is being discussed, men have a strong tendency to want to fix it, whereas women tend to just want to air it. Women sharing a problem with other women instinctively listen thoroughly because we recognize that what we most want is to be heard. Fixing might also be offered woman-to-woman, but listening to hear and acknowledge the hearing is usually foremost.

I believe my approach to the text has its heart in thinking like a woman. As a mother of children, when they were wee tots, I had to accept the proposition that they weren’t going to be speaking to me with eloquence and precision. I had to listen hard for meaning. The intent behind the words was far, far more important than the words themselves. And that listening wasn’t just about interpreting the words, it was also about recognizing a very different understanding of the world than my own. To quote George Miller:

“To understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of.”1

I’ve always recognized in myself a belief that it’s far more important to aim for accurate understanding in any conversation, discussion, or debate, than it is “to win” or win over the other participants. I understood this to be true of me long before I had children. Is this “female instinct” passed on by our genes as a useful trait for the one who’s going to nurse and nurture a wordless infant? Or is it not nature but nurture: a lesson society teaches us? It hardly matters which is true, especially for the purposes of this blog post.

What’s important is to recognize that my focus, when reading the suttas, is to try to understand the Buddha’s words as “true” and to get enough information about the worldviews and ways of speaking in his time to be able to get to an understanding of “what it could be true of”.

I don’t start from the premise that if there are things in there that “seem wrong” that they “are wrong”. Instead I assume I’ve got it wrong. I need to listen like a mother. I need to work at understanding. It hardly matters to me if, in the end, what the Buddha is teaching disagrees with my worldview or approach to things. If I can find no way to reconcile what’s there other than “He’s wrong” then at least I’ve understood and rejected the teachings from a place of solid understanding, not from a place of my own ignorance and biases.

In all honesty, I find the approach that just throws out much of the Buddha’s lessons — dismissed as just wrong — and coming up with one’s own New Improved version to be a mistake, and hubris to boot. The approach I’ve taken reveals to me the mind of someone who saw so clearly into human nature, found an unimaginably brilliant solution to problems we inadvertently create for ourselves, and expressed them with supreme elegance in the style of his times. Throwing that out — and imagining any one of us can build something better — is tragic.

  1. George Miller, Princeton professor and psychologist, as quoted in Wikipedia[↩]

Dependent Arising’s Links Described By the Buddha as “Not Literal”

January 3rd, 2022 . Posted in Bhikkhu Bodhi, Buddhist Vocabulary, dependent origination, DN 15, dukkha, Maurice Walshe, Nanavira Thera, pariyāya, Rebirth, Richard F Gombrich, Sujato, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Translating | 5 Comments »
Tags: , , ,

another “importance of how we translate” post

 

DN 15 is one of the classic locations providing both an overview and detail on dependent arising (DA). It seems to be a middle-years formulation. That it’s not one of the oldest suttas on the subject is indicated by its crisply linear structure, so it’s likely later than “Quarrels and Disputes”1 which has two tracks running parallel to each other. DN 15 only has nine of twelve links that appear in the full version, though, so it is likely earlier than many others. The fact that in one of DN 15’s rounds of this-begets-that the Buddha heads it in the direction of real-world examples – and even mentions “quarrels” and “disputes” – suggests it is, yet, close in time to what’s possibly the oldest version we have of DA.

In various papers, posts, and my book, I’ve been trying to convey my understanding that the Buddha’s teaching of DA uses a structure meant to take the shape of a discussion of the Vedic world’s view of rebirth, but that it uses that shape to convey a different lesson entirely.

The Vedic structure is referring to forming and perfecting one’s eternal self, one’s ātman in a way that, ideally, will lead to a good life after death (whether that’s in heaven, a rebirth, or union with Brahman isn’t important). But the Buddha’s point in the teaching of DA is to describe the way we, instead, shape what’s not ātman (but can be mistaken for it). As with the shaping of ātman, we shape not-ātman (anatta in Pali) because we want good results in the future, either the future of the next life, or just this one. But — the Buddha says — instead of leading us to a happy future as we wish, it leads to bad outcomes instead, because we’re not clear on what it is we’re doing.

With his lesson on DA he is trying to show us what we’re actually doing, using something like a very large metaphor to provide the action, the force, and the underlying reasons we do things, while simultaneously pointing out to people in his time something specific to his time.2

One of the questions I get asked, when chatting with other Buddhists about what I see as DA’s structure goes roughly like this: “If the Buddha is using a metaphor, why doesn’t he say so?”

 

Does the Buddha Ever Say Dependent Arising is Metaphorical?

Read the rest of this entry »

Dependent Arising In Context Teaching Cards

April 5th, 2017 . Posted in Dependent Arising In Context, dependent origination | No Comments »
Tags: , ,

Craving, Original art by Annie.

My sister has created a set of 12 post-card-sized cards with her art from the book on the front, along with a quote from a sutta detailing each link in dependent arising. On the back are key portions of text from the various chapters of my book, that act as reminders for what each one is about. You can find the set at here.

The Importance of How We Translate: The End of Suffering

July 18th, 2016 . Posted in Buddhist Vocabulary, nirodha, suffering and its end, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Translating | No Comments »
Tags: , ,

This post first appeared December 2015 on the Secular Buddhist Association website. You’ll find some interesting discussion in the comments there.

 

Both formerly and now, monks, I declare only stress and the cessation of stress." -- The Buddha, translation from MN 22 by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

 

How readers understand Buddhism depends a great deal on how it is presented to us. This should be obvious. Though Buddhism teaches us to see for ourselves whether what we learn applies to our lives, how we practice, and what we look for when we practice is going to be affected by how we are told to practice, and what we are told to look for. Ironically, this is largely the point of what the Buddha taught: that our perceptions affect what we believe about what we have seen first-hand. This makes for a practical conundrum, a conceptual Catch-22.

One of the biggest factors in how we understand Buddhism is the language used to describe it. This is why I decided, years ago, to follow the commonly-heard advice to apply myself to learning to translate the texts that are the oldest sources used to figure out what the Buddha was actually saying. And, as it turns out, the words used to translate the Pali language in those ancient texts are slanted toward a particular understanding of what the texts are thought to mean, which is why, when we read English translations, it seems so clear that the Buddha was championing a certain view of the cosmic order that includes a justice system run, not by God or any deities, but one that just ticks along by itself: karma and rebirth.

The general outline of this system, as seen from the point of view of the Four Noble Truths, is that the life we lead is full of suffering (dukkha) — that’s Truth Number One. Further, suffering has something that causes it to arise (samudaya) — Truth Number Two. But suffering can cease (nirodha) — Truth Number Three. It can cease because there are things we can do to bring about that cessation, things that are described as a path (magga) — Truth Number Four.

There is, of course, much more to it than the above, but those are the introductory basics. These four truths actually come in two sets, and each set begins at the end of a process because that is how not just the practice of Buddhism works, but how our lives work. In order to understand what’s going on, we first see results, and then we look back in time to try to figure out what brought the situation about.

The pairs, then, are, first, the experience of dukkha, and then the recognition that something made the pain we feel happen. This is often — accurately — described as being very like why we visit a doctor: first there’s the ouch! and then the doctor looks for what caused it. The second pair represents a cure for dukkha (its cessation), followed by a description of the course of practice — the treatment — that brings about relief, and health. In both cases, we discuss the results first, and what brought on the results second.

All of this is quite logical, and karma and rebirth don’t really need to come into it at all at such a simple level. However, each of these four truths require understanding much more in order to be effective. For example, just being told that there is a cause that brings about dukkha leaves us no information about what that cause is. And being told there is a path of practice doesn’t give us any detail, either. And it is once we get into what the cause is, and what the details of the practice are that we need to begin to care about the meaning of the words being used.

What is dukkha, after all? And what does it mean for it to cease? It is not just the second and fourth truths that need more explanation, but the first and third as well.

In the most literal, traditional understanding dukkha is all forms of suffering, both mental and physical. In this view, dukkha happens because of things done in the past, and every immoral or moral act we commit will have a karmic result. All experiences of pain and pleasure are the result of karma, and if we do something in the last moments of our lives that requires such a result, it has to be punished or rewarded, so there will be a next life. In this traditional view, the point of becoming a practicing Buddhist is to escape from the endless rounds of samsara — the woeful cycles of life. First, we learn to stop producing bad karma so that we use up all the accumulated bad results without making more, meanwhile learning how to generate good karma through meritorious acts (like generosity to monastics). This is the Buddhist practice that will lead to good future rebirths, which lead us toward the possibility that we can get to the point where we do not produce karma that is either bad or good, but only the karma-that-ends-karma. In the last lifetime, the one in which liberation is reached, all old karma is resolved so that when we die, we will have escaped from all forms of suffering.

This view explains why the fully awakened Buddha still had backaches and illnesses and experienced death, though he had reached a state known as “the deathless” and though he says he has experienced “the end of suffering” (dukkha-nirodha). There was still a bit of unresolved karma from his path that would work itself out in his post-awakening life, so there was still some ouch! left.

It also explains why we find it so hard, in our secular practice, to imagine how there could be an end of suffering. It’s not only that we are certain that, however enlightened we might be, we will still experience the dukkha-of-physical pain – accidents and illnesses – but we find it hard to conceive of how life would be without any emotional pain either. Is that even possible? Would it be a good way to live one’s life, so detached from everything that we never feel the loss of a loved-one? This is because (in the traditional way of looking at it) we are still caught up in samsara.

The traditional view has its own, quite consistent, internal logic that seems to make perfect sense. At least it does until those of us who aren’t believers in rebirth and the cosmic justice system of karma try applying that view to our own lives.

But the Buddha is justifiably famous for redefining terms in common use in his day, giving them a new slant that makes them fit his own unique system. He did this with karma — which means “action” and was previously used primarily to mean the sort of action performed during rituals that would bring about an effect on one’s future. Then the Buddha redefined it as “intention” and thereby fit it neatly into a moral system unheard of before. In his way of seeing karma, it was not about how good one’s knowledge of the old texts was and how well one performed the rituals, but it was about how we treated each other. It was about not killing, not taking what has not been freely given, about the qualities of our speech, and our livelihoods. His karma was all about actions that would bring future results, yes, but the results came largely through social interactions. This made his karma similar to the original meaning — it was about actions that would bring results — but it totally redefined the basis for understanding not only what actions were of concern, but why they were important: because the intention behind the action was critical. Karma “action” was no longer tied purely to actions!

What if he also redefined dukkha, not as all forms of suffering, but limited it to the things we feel, that we would rather not feel, that are the results of our own behavior, things that are visible to us right here and now? And what if the cessation he speaks about is not complete cessation at all? What if — as turns out to be the case — the word nirodha doesn’t actually mean “cessation”?

A look at the Pali, and recent discussions on the internet, even by trained monastics1, shows that it may not mean “cessation” in the way we take it. The ni– means “without” or “the end of an action” and the rodha means “obstruction” or “a dam, a bank”. From our modern point of view, this might suggest that we are going to stop obstructing dukkha and let it run amok, without confining it — it could wash right over us, and that would be a bad thing. This doesn’t make sense in terms of our aims for or experience of practice, so what else might it mean?

Fortunately, our modern way of looking at the situation is quite different from the way folks saw things in the Buddha’s day. In order to understand what nirodha actually means, we need to understand their point of view.

We can see this by looking at the verb related to nirodha: rundhati can mean “prevents; obstructs; besieges; imprisons”. What would it mean for dukkha to be “without obstruction, without imprisonment”? This gives dukkha a relationship to an individual similar to the Vedic understanding of the relationship of fuel to fire: they cling to each other — they are both trapped, bound together2. Dukkha that has experienced nirodha is dukkha that is no longer bound to us. This doesn’t mean that dukkha no longer exists, no, because in the Vedic worldview it still does — it is just freed. I would suggest that what this means is that dukkha is no longer bound to “the self” (or, as the Buddha put it, to “a being”). The dukkha may still be there, and it could get stuck to us if we let it, but we don’t — we set it free. It is unbound, and so are we.

You may well ask what difference this makes. For me, it makes a significant difference to my practice. I am not reaching for a goal in which I expect that I will never see any kind of suffering again — no physical pain, no sorrow over a loss, and no regrets over stupid things I’ve done in the past. I no longer hear the Buddha setting such an unrealistic goal, the one we secular Buddhists are so fond of debating as impossible anyway. As I see it, an end to all suffering is not what the carefully-chosen word the Buddha used represents.

As I understand the Buddha’s message, my job is only to practice in a way that lets me notice dukkha when it arises, and look for its causes. If those causes are things beyond my control — if it is a physical pain that I cannot find a viable cure for — I will not cling to that pain in ways that make it something bigger than it is. If it is an emotional pain over the loss of “the dear” (the Buddha’s term) I will decide whether I find the pleasures of the dear worth the pain of those loses or not before I attach myself that way again. That choice is one each of us gets to make for ourselves. But either way, I’ll deal with the pain I am feeling in a way that doesn’t make it last longer than it needs to, in ways that don’t cause harm to others (for example, blaming them for my pain).

When dukkha comes my way, I will set it free by not attaching myself to it, and that way, over and over again, I can become free.

 

1“The Island: An Anthology of the Buddha’s Teachings on Nibbana” Ajahns Pasanno and Amaro (2009) p. 135. http://www.dhammatalks.net/Books9/Ajahn_Passano_Amaro_The_Island.pdf

2“…fire, when burning, is in a state of agitation, dependence, attachment, & entrapment — both clinging & being stuck to its sustenance.” “The Mind like Fire Unbound” Thanissaro Bhikkhu (2010) see p. 36-38 http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/TheMindLikeFireUnbound2010Edition.pdf

Insights During The Three Watches of the Night

January 8th, 2016 . Posted in ayatana, causation, dhamma, dukkha, kamma, Rebirth, sankhara, Translating, Udana 1.1-.3, vedana | 2 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,

I have recently gotten interested in the two versions of what happened during the night that the Buddha got describable insights, during or shortly after his moment of awakening. He speaks of what he saw during the three watches of the night.

The sutta-based versions describe “The Three Knowledges” but that title is clearly his using the Brahmins’ Three Knowledges (of the three Vedas) in the playful way he uses many words and phrases of his day, twisting them to have a very different meaning from the definitions the originators would use. Instead of knowledge of the Rg, Yajur, and Sama Vedas, he describes knowledge of his past lives, of the arising and passing away of beings according to their karma, and of the four noble truths, and the taints.

But in the Vinaya and Udana renditions of what he saw during the three watches, he describes dependent arising — first in a pattern in which something arises, secondly in a pattern in which it doesn’t arise, and finally both ways.

I am working on taking a detailed look at the language in both versions, because, though they sound quite different, I suspect they are actually two ways of describing the exact same insight.

Toward that end, I’ve just finished a translation of the first three suttas in the Udana, which describe the dependent arising variant in almost exactly the same words as the one found in the volumes of the monastic code, the Vinaya. It’s a first draft, so I may yet make changes to it, but I thought I’d offer it for your consideration, and (if you wish) comments. Because my translation of many terms are not the familiar ones, I’ve added footnotes to explain some of the differences. Also, this is not a word-for-word translation; instead I am aiming for a somewhat friendlier modernized version, almost as if the Buddha were speaking now.

Because of this, I have cut out some of the repetition when it describes action, and I have been quite liberal in one area: in the verses that follow each story, I have changed the singular male described (in another of the Buddha’s changes-of-meaning) as “a Brahmin” to the generic plural to cover all of us who do the work and gain the insight as “devoted practitioners”. He wasn’t using the term Brahmin to limit the insights to those of the Brahmin caste, but he had (elsewhere) redefined the term to mean one of any caste who had done the work and become one worthy of the elevated title.

 

IN THE FIRST WATCH OF THE NIGHT

Thus I have heard: At one time the Illustrious One was staying at the Bodhi Tree, in the Wide-bank Woods on the shore of the Naranjara River, abiding in supreme knowledge for the first time. He sat cross-legged for seven days, experiencing the happiness of emancipation. During the first watch of the night, arising out of that state of concentration, having attained a certain state of mind, he attended to the natural flow1 of dependent arising, thus: in this having come to be, this is; this arising, this arises.2

Namely:

Out of dependence on ignorance, drives3;
out of dependence on drives, awareness4;
out of dependence on awareness, identity5;
out of dependence on identity, the extension of the six senses6;
out of dependence on the extension of the six senses, contact;
out of dependence on contact, experience7;
out of dependence on experience, thirst8;
out of dependence on thirst, clinging to fuel9;
out of dependence on clinging to fuel, becoming;
out of dependence on becoming, birth;
out of dependence on birth, old age and death, pain and distress, trouble come together.

Thus the arising together brings about this whole conglomeration of dukkha10.

Then, on that occasion, the Illustrious One, having gained the sense of this, declaimed:

Surely, when certainties11 have become apparent
by means of devoted practitioners’ ardent meditation,
then all doubt disappears
because they know clearly for the first time the cause of certainty.

 

 

IN THE SECOND WATCH OF THE NIGHT

Thus I have heard: At one time the Illustrious One was staying at the Bodhi Tree, in the Wide-bank Woods on the shore of the Naranjara River, abiding in supreme knowledge for the first time. He sat cross-legged for seven days, experiencing the happiness of emancipation. During the middle watch of the night, arising out of that state of concentration, having attained a certain state of mind, he attended to the ebb of dependent arising, thus: In this not having come to be, this is not; this released, this is released.

Namely:

Out of the release of ignorance, drives are released;
out of the release of drives, awareness is released;
out of the release of awareness, identity is released;
out of the release of identity, the extension of the six senses is released;
out of the release of the extension of the six senses, contact is released;
out of the release of contact, experience is released;
out of the release of feeling, thirst is released;
out of the release of thirst, clinging to fuel is released;
out of the release of clinging to fuel, becoming is released;
out of the release of becoming, birth is released;
out of the release of birth, aging and death, pain and distress, trouble are released.

Thus the release of this whole conglomeration of dukkha.

Then, on that occasion, the Illustrious One, having gained the sense of this, declaimed:

Surely, when certainties have become apparent
by means of devoted practitioners’ ardent meditation,
then all doubt disappears
because he has penetrated the destruction of causes.

 

 

IN THE THIRD WATCH OF THE NIGHT

Thus I have heard: At one time the Illustrious One was staying at the Bodhi Tree, in the Wide-bank Woods on the shore of the Naranjara River, abiding in supreme knowledge for the first time. He sat cross-legged for seven days, experiencing the happiness of emancipation. During the last watch of the night, arising out of that state of concentration, having attained a certain state of mind, he attended to the natural flow and the ebb of dependent arising, thus: in this having come to be, this is; out of this arising, this arises; in this not having come to be, this is not; this released, this is released.

Namely:

Out of dependence on ignorance, drives;
out of dependence on drives, awareness;
out of dependence on awareness, identity;
out of dependence on identity, the extension of the six senses;
out of dependence on the extension of the six senses, contact;
out of dependence on contact, experience;
out of dependence on experience, thirst;
out of dependence on thirst, clinging to fuel;
out of dependence on clinging to fuel, becoming;
out of dependence on becoming, birth;
out of dependence on birth, old age and death, pain and distress, trouble come together.

Thus the arising together of this whole conglomeration of dukkha.

From ignorance,
out of the complete, release beyond passion, drives are released;
out of the release of drives, awareness is released;
out of the release of awareness, identity is released;
out of the release of identity, the extension of the six senses is released;
out of the release of the extension of the six senses, contact is released;
out of the release of contact, experience is released;
out of the release of feeling, thirst is released;
out of the release of thirst, clinging to fuel is released;
out of the release of clinging to fuel, becoming is released;
out of the release of becoming, birth is released;
out of the release of birth, aging and death, pain and distress, trouble are released.

Thus the release of this whole conglomeration of dukkha.

Then, on that occasion, the Illustrious One, having gained the sense of this, declaimed:

Surely, when certainties have become apparent
by means of devoted practitioners’ ardent meditation,
they abide, scattering Mara’s army
just as the sun lights the atmosphere.

 

Footnotes:

1 The word translated as “natural flow” is anulomaṃ, which refers to the direction in which hair naturally lies, or it could be described as “with the grain”. It is matched in the next verse by paṭilomaṃ, which the Pali English Dictionary (PED) has as “’against the hair,’ in reverse order, opposite, contrary, backward”. This is often translated as “in reverse order”, as in Bhikkhu Ānandajoti’s version to be found here on Sutta Central. But because the first description of dependent arising (DA) starts with ignorance and ends with aging-and-death, “reverse order” would lead one to expect the second would start with aging-and-death and work back to ignorance, but that’s not what it does. The second starts with ignorance, just as the first does. It seems to me one might use the word “reversing” as in “undoing order” but I have, here, settled on another natural metaphor that seems to me similar enough to the idea of going with the grain of the hair and against it, calling on our familiarity with ocean tides, with their rising flow and subsiding ebb.

2 This short-hand for dependent arising is usually translated more along the lines of, “From this, that” but the pronoun used in both cases are forms of idaṃ which, as the PED explains in its first definition, “refers to what is immediately in front of the speaker (the subject in question) or before his eyes or in his present time & situation” – in other words, something right here now. There is no sense of the distance or separation that “that” implies when juxtaposed to “this”. This is an important clue to the close-at-hand nature of what is being described, which is all within us: from this within me, this arises. And in the following verse: if this within me does not arise, this won’t arise either.

3 The word I translate as “drives” is saṅkhāra, usually translated as “formations” or “fabrications” or “volitional processes”. See “The Words of Dependent Arising: Sankhara”

4 “Awareness” is viññāṇa, usually translated as “consciousness” but detailed as being fully in existence only when it is engaged with something – thus, “awareness”. More specifically it is, quite naturally, driven awareness because saṅkhāra drives it into existence.

5 “Identity” a.k.a nāmarūpa a.k.a “name-and-form”. When we name something according to its form, we are giving it an identity. When we recognize something by its form and recall its name and all the information we associate with it, we are identifying it.

6 Usually translated as just “the six senses” the six āyatana are not passive receptors, but active seekers, as they, too, are driven by saṅkhāra. PED has the first definition of āyatana as “1. stretch, extent, reach, compass region”; the second as “2. exertion, doing, working, practice performance”; and only with the third does it get to “3. sphere of perception or sense in general, object of thought, sense-organ & object”. I have tried to capture both the extent and activeness with “extension”.

7 “Experience” could perhaps be translated as “knowledge of contact” but that’s a bit redundant with contact as the previously-mentioned condition. The Pali word is vedanā, usually translated as “feeling” which is reasonable enough given its frequent definitions as one of three varieties of feelings: pleasant, unpleasant, or neither of those.

8 “Thirst” – the usual translation is “craving” – taṇhā is literally a thirst, and here calls to mind the thirst fire has for its fuel, or the thirst we have for what fuels our pleasures, or our sense of who we are.

9 The “fuel” – upādāna – that, in the previous condition, we thirst for. Usually translated as “clinging” which is also reasonable, though it misses the metaphor being created of fire-as-self. In the Vedic view, fire and fuel are stuck together, but if the fire were released from the fuel, it would still exist, and be free.

10 I leave dukkha untranslated – the usual translation is “suffering”, but there really is no word for what dukkha is, and “suffering” distorts its meaning. What the dukkha that the Buddha is telling us we can avoid is, is all unnecessary feelings that we’d rather do without that are within our control once we understand what’s going on and put the teachings into effect. But, like many words the Buddha uses, it has other meanings as well.

11 The word I translate as “certainties” is dhamma, and I know of no one else who translates it that way. But I do have good reason. When used in the phrase “The Buddha’s dhamma” it tends to be taken to mean either “The Truth” or “his teachings”, the latter in the sense of “what he’s teaching us to see” which is, effectively, the truth, reality. But dhamma also gets used to mean other people’s teachings, the things they hold as truth, natural law, reality. Seen from the Buddha’s point of view, though, all too often the other teachers’ dhamma isn’t actually true, or an expression of reality. However, “certainties” covers both. If we see dhamma as “the things we are certain of” then the Buddha’s dhamma is that which we become certain of by seeing it again and again, after close examination, applying his teachings to our lives. Others’ dhamma are things they are certain of, some of which they should not be so sure of. But in this clever verse, the valid certainties that have become apparent through ardent meditation are how invalid certainties are created, those being the ones that get us in trouble. That is precisely what dependent arising describes: how we create false certainties.

« Older Entries