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The Passive Voice

January 24th, 2013 . Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Today I was listening to a radio interview with Tracy Kidder (“The Soul of a New Machine”) talking about non-fiction writing as pertains to his newest book, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction and he was asked whether using the passive voice was appropriate. I really liked his answer, which was that it was, “when the thing done is more important than the doer.”

The subject of the passive voice came up during the Intensive Pali Course taught by Professor Gombrich earlier this month. He had mentioned in the handout for the course that there seems to be a particular fondness for the use of the passive in the suttas, and prior to the course, I had wondered about this, so when the subject came up in class, I asked whether this was peculiar to the suttas, or a wider feature of much of the works we have from around this time (which are largely in Sanskrit). His answer was that it was part of a wider trend, not limited to the Pali canon. I remarked that I had wondered if perhaps the passive voice was used in Buddhist texts because of the understanding that there was no self to be the doer of the acts. His answer to this was an amused comment that I should not overthink things.

But that is, of course, what I do. I overthink. I suspect it’s necessary to come up with theories like these about why things were the way they were in order to see anything new. And while my first theory turns out not to be a good fit for the facts, that only means I need to broaden the concept and see where it gets me.

This is part of a long conversation I have been having with anyone who has the slightest interest in the subject of how the structure of our language shapes our view of the world, or conversely, how our view of the world shapes our language — that’s a chicken-and-egg sort of issue, really; the two no doubt go round and round. I have discussed this with Spanish teachers, wondering aloud if the classification of nouns into masculine and feminine affects how we see things, and how we see what is masculine or feminine about people, as a result, for example, of what ideas and characteristics we attach masculinity and femininity to. With my father-in-law, I rued the increasing loss of languages, like Welsh, because with them go the loss of particular points of view.

It seems to me that the pervasive use of the passive voice in which, as Tracy Kidder points out in the quote above, ” the thing done is more important than the doer” has to have an effect on the way people of the time saw the world. In some sense, it may have made it easier for the Buddha to come up with his understanding that it is our actions that are critical in our relationships with other, in the effects we have on those around us, which may have led to his asking himself what it was that caused any given individual to perform this action and not some other — with his answer being that it is our intention that is important. And then there arises the next question: what causes go into the formation of our intentions?

Two of the other three points he brings up as being distinctive in the Pali also support the same possibility: that the frequent use of the absolutive (“having done x”) and the use of a particular tense called the causative (rather than “he makes x” saying “he causes y to make x”) are also elements in a language that sees a chain of events (“having gone for a walk, and having wandered mindlessly, she got lost”) as a series of causes and effects; and certainly speaking about something happening because one set into motion whatever it took to bring it about would make one pay attention to the same: cause and effect. Prof. Gombrich points out that the causative is logical in a society in which rulers direct those under them to do this or that — which seems a likely reason that the causative became a popular form. But I wonder if its use didn’t have a larger effect.

These are just the idle speculations of a writer who comes to the use of words primarily from a story-teller’s point of view. Because I think of the Buddha as “a character”, and I read the suttas as stories, I spend some time wondering how elements of his life and society affected him — what were the causes that led to the effects we see in his life? So along these lines, it has just seemed to me that how people use language not only conveys information about who they are in their place in society, but about how they think, and that these elements in the language of his day (that are not common in ours) — the use of the passive voice making actions more important than actors, the use of the absolutive describing chains of events leading to outcomes, and the causative tense — may have made him better able to see what he saw.

Dependent Arising In Context

January 13th, 2013 . Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

I’ve put together a book that contains my paper “Burning Yourself” as published in the second volume of the Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, as well as the series of blog posts about a pragmatic understanding of each link in the chain that was published on the Secular Buddhist Association website earlier this year. It also includes the post just previous to this one (on sankhara) and a new and fairly lengthy introduction to the whole volume that outlines a hypothesis about what might have gone into the process of losing the context for dependent origination in the first place. This compilation is called “Dependent Arising In Context” and is available at createspace (where the royalty scheme is most favorable) as well as on Amazon.com.

 

In a few months I plan to make it available on Kindle and hopefully in other ebook versions. This is all part of a learning process for me, an experiment in coming to understand where we are nowadays in the change from traditional publishing to the free-for-all system that seems to be taking over.

 

The Words of Dependent Arising: Sankhara

August 15th, 2012 . Posted in Bhikkhu Bodhi, Bhikkhu Nanamoli, causation, interdependence, Nanavira Thera, paticca samuppada, sankhara, Translating | 3 Comments »
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aka “Everything you wanted to know about sankharas but were afraid to ask.”

Over on the blog at the Secular Buddhist Association website, I did a series on a secular approach to dependent arising, and in the comments for the second post, I was asked if I could give specific examples of sankharas, because the suttas we have — and the word choices used in the translations (“formations” “fabrications” “activities”) or lack of them (some translations just skip the word altogether) make it very difficult to understand what is being said. I said I’d give it a try, but in a brief survey of the many mentions of sankhara, I found that there aren’t “examples” as such, at least not in the way that one might have examples of something like vedana (feelings, experiences) which are described sometimes as pleasant, unpleasant, or neither, and we are given stories that can be seen to illustrate these, like the one of the jealous guy who sees his woman talking to another man — the feelings that arise there are examples of vedana, and the thoughts that arise, and ideas for what to do about the situation afterward could be seen to express the tanha and upadana that follow.

But the sankharas don’t get treated that way, probably because they aren’t so much things that happen in our lives, rather, they are underlying tendencies or overall concepts that affect our lives. They get described in a variety of ways, some of which tell us what they look like when they become visible. They become visible as “the actions that are a result of their impact on us”, so we could say that the action the jealous man takes is a sankhara because it is a sankhara-made-visible. But his jealousy is also a sankhara, too, it’s a sankhara-keenly-felt.

Because sankhara is the second term in a conditional chain of events, really, every step afterward is a sankhara in that same sense: the consciousness that arises next is sankhara-consciousness, because sankhara drives it, and in just the same way, it drives every step thereafter.

In working on this, I came to see that what a sankhara is, is a drive. It has limitations on it, like ignorance does (as described in the blogpost just before this one). When I say it is “a drive” I don’t mean just any old drive. It is a very specific drive: a drive for the existence of and protection of and knowledge of the self, a very driven-drive, a slightly over-the-top drive on the best of days, and a very over-the-top drive on the worst of them.

It gets this meaning from the Prajapati myth that is embedded in the first five steps of dependent arising, where sankhara is the craving for existence that brings the universe into being. This leads me to believe that “drive” may be the best all-around translation of sankhara. We can also see the way in which the steps after sankharas are all sankharas, themselves: because every step drives the next.

To test this out, and since I’m not finding jealousy-level examples of sankhara-as-a-drive in the suttas, I figured the next best thing was to find suttas in which sankharas are discussed or described, and see if putting the word “drive” in there makes those sections easier to understand. As a starting point, I used Nanavira Thera’s “Notes on Dhamma” to pull up explanations of, and references to, sankharas, and then wrote my own translation of those bits. I first did a translation that maintained grammatical correctness, and then rewrote it to be more easily read by a modern audience. I did not maintain traditional translations of other words in these pieces (because I feel, after looking at the word origins, that several of them miss the point as well).

I am hoping that gathering so many pieces on sankhara together in this one post will help in understanding the part it plays not just in dependent arising, but in the “aggregates” as well. See what you think.

When they are short enough, I provide the Pali for my translations (or links to the Pali if they are long), followed by my translation of the passage using “drive” for “sankhara”. In most cases, sutta citations are also linked to a more traditional translation given at the bottom of this post, to give you an idea of how the passage has been translated in the past.

SN 12.2 (pts S ii 4)
To Traditional Translation
katame ca, bhikkhave, saṅkhārā? tayome, bhikkhave, saṅkhārā — kāyasaṅkhāro, vacīsaṅkhāro, cittasaṅkhāro. ime vuccanti, bhikkhave, saṅkhārā.

And what kinds of drives are there? Drives are of three types: that which drives the body, that which drives speech, and that which drives thoughts.”

That seems simple enough to me. Not a lot of detail there, but more is coming.

MN 44 (pts M i 301)
To Traditional Translation
“katamo panāyye, kāyasaṅkhāro, katamo vacīsaṅkhāro, katamo cittasaṅkhāro”ti?

“assāsapassāsā kho, āvuso visākha, kāyasaṅkhāro, vitakkavicārā vacīsaṅkhāro, saññā ca vedanā ca cittasaṅkhāro”ti.

“kasmā panāyye, assāsapassāsā kāyasaṅkhāro, kasmā vitakkavicārā vacīsaṅkhāro, kasmā saññā ca vedanā ca cittasaṅkhāro”ti?

“assāsapassāsā kho, āvuso visākha, kāyikā ete dhammā kāyappaṭibaddhā, tasmā assāsapassāsā kāyasaṅkhāro. pubbe kho, āvuso visākha, vitakketvā vicāretvā pacchā vācaṃ bhindati, tasmā vitakkavicārā vacīsaṅkhāro. saññā ca vedanā ca cetasikā ete dhammā cittappaṭibaddhā, tasmā saññā ca vedanā ca cittasaṅkhāro”ti.

“But what is that which drives the body, that which drives speech, and that which drives thoughts?”

“Breathing is a driver of the body. Thought and evaluation are drivers of speech. Perceptions and experience drive thoughts.”

“But why is breathing a driver of the body? Why are thought and evaluation drivers of speech? How do perceptions and experiences drive thoughts?”

“Breathing is physical; the body certainly depends on it. That’s why breathing is a driver of the body. Because we first think and evaluate before speaking, that’s why thought and evaluation are drivers of speech. Perceptions and experiences happen in the mind; the mind depends on them. That’s why perceptions and experiences drive thoughts.”

This makes it clear why sankhara gets identified with breathing — it’s not that when we stop sankhara as part of liberation, we need to stop breathing! It’s just that breathing drives the body. In the Buddha’s day, the breath was often thought of as the life-force, and it seems to be brought up here, in part, to address its importance. It may also be touching on the way our breathing changes in response to various situations — when we can calm the breathing, it is no longer “driving” the body in the same way (this gets touched on in a later passage related to meditation).

The primary point in each of these, though, discusses the mundane requirements for each of the three (body, speech, mind). This is actually another way of discussing ‘nutriment’ or the most foundational element that goes into the process. At the most obvious level, these are the foundations we would not want to have go away. We aren’t wanting to give up breathing, or thinking and evaluating, or being able to perceive our experiences. We might, however, pay attention to each of these to see if we can use them to find the actual problems: a change in our breathing can act as an alarm telling us something new is going on; certain thoughts and evaluations may contribute to our problems; certain perceptions of experiences would, too.

In the translation below I have tried to capture cetanā‘s meaning of thoughts that will become visible through action. It is usually translated as “intention” but in our culture “intention” has a conscious quality to it that I think is not appropriate here because the “thoughts” are actually “drives” and, as such, are below what we would call the conscious level. I’m also trying out “dhamma” as “things we are certain of” — the “truths” we rely on (which is a whole ‘nuther article):

SN 22.56 (pts S iii 60)
To Traditional Translation
“katame ca, bhikkhave, saṅkhārā? chayime, bhikkhave, cetanākāyā — rūpasañcetanā, saddasañcetanā, gandhasañcetanā, rasasañcetanā, phoṭṭhabbasañcetanā, dhammasañcetanā. ime vuccanti, bhikkhave, saṅkhārā. phassasamudayā saṅkhārasamudayo; phassanirodhā saṅkhāranirodho.’

And what, monks, are drives? There are six types of thoughts that will drive actions: there are those thoughts driven by visual qualities, by sounds, by scents, by tastes, by tactile qualities, and by certainties (dhamma). These are called drives. With the rise of contact, there is the rise of the drives.

This makes it clear why link #6, “contact” is suddenly found preceding link #2 “sankhara”. This apparent “lack of order” has confused many people over the years. The reason is that the first five links are an overview describing how we come to act the way we do, and only with link #6 do we begin to get a description of that acting. It begins with contact through the senses that touches on and fires off that drive we’ve been told about. Contact makes the drive visible through what happens next.

In the passages above, the sankharas have been examined from the perspective of how they appear to us, and how they happen: they are made visible by our bodies, and our speech, and through our thoughts; they are set off by contact through the senses. Below, we consider the direction that these drives lead in, which gives us a different way of categorizing the sankharas, in terms of their results. This is the sense in which sankharas often get associated with karma, which is of a paralleling “three types”.

SN 12.51 (pts S ii 82)
To Traditional Translation
“avijjāgato yaṃ, bhikkhave, purisapuggalo puññaṃ ce saṅkhāraṃ abhisaṅkharoti, puññūpagaṃ hoti viññāṇaṃ. apuññaṃ ce saṅkhāraṃ abhisaṅkharoti, apuññūpagaṃ hoti viññāṇaṃ. āneñjaṃ ce saṅkhāraṃ abhisaṅkharoti āneñjūpagaṃ hoti viññāṇaṃ. yato kho, bhikkhave, bhikkhuno avijjā pahīnā hoti vijjā uppannā, so avijjāvirāgā vijjuppādā neva puññābhisaṅkhāraṃ abhisaṅkharoti na apuññābhisaṅkhāraṃ abhisaṅkharoti na āneñjābhisaṅkhāraṃ abhisaṅkharoti. anabhisaṅkharonto anabhisañcetayanto na kiñci loke upādiyati; anupādiyaṃ na paritassati, aparitassaṃ paccattaññeva parinibbāyati. ‘khīṇā jāti, vusitaṃ brahmacariyaṃ, kataṃ karaṇīyaṃ, nāparaṃ itthattāyā’ti pajānāti.

“Monks, if a person in a state of ignorance is engaged with a beneficial drive, their awareness seeks the beneficial; if engaged with a harmful drive, their awareness seeks the harmful; if engaged with a static drive, their awareness moves on to the stable. But when a person has left behind ignorance and has come to deep wisdom, there is no engagement with beneficial drives, or harmful drives, or static drives. Then, unengaged with drives, there is no more being caught up in the world. Not caught, there is no more disturbance. Undisturbed, that person attains complete calm, and the understanding that ‘Birth is finished, the highest conduct has been achieved, what needed to be done has been done, there is no other state following this.’”

Notice that there is mention of being totally unengaged with sankhara of any kind — not the beneficial, not the harmful, not the neutral sort. Examining this passage tells us that the end of sankhara is simply about not being caught up in the world anymore — not being driven by ignorance-contact — with no more problematic states of mind following on. Nothing is said about lack of will to live because the drives being discussed aren’t the useful drives that give us the basics that we need to survive, they are the excessive drives — they are the natural drive for survival taken a bit too far.

The passage below is not included in Nanavira’s consideration of sankhara, but it follows on so nicely from the one above, that it seemed to me I should include it. It also may help to explain why “breath” is the driver for bodily sankharas.

SN 36.11 (pts S iv 216)
To Traditional Translation
tisso imā, bhikkhu, vedanā vuttā mayā. sukhā vedanā, dukkhā vedanā, adukkhamasukhā vedanā — imā tisso vedanā vuttā mayā. vuttaṃ kho panetaṃ, bhikkhu, mayā — ‘yaṃ kiñci vedayitaṃ, taṃ dukkhasmin’ti. taṃ kho panetaṃ, bhikkhu, mayā saṅkhārānaṃyeva aniccataṃ sandhāya bhāsitaṃ… Link to the rest of the Pali

(The Buddha speaking): “I have mentioned these three experiences: of the pleasant, unpleasant, and neither pleasant nor unpleasant… I have also said ‘Whatever is experienced, falls within the unpleasant.’ Regarding this, I have said this in reference only to drives’ impermanence: ‘Whatever is experienced, falls within the unpleasant.’ Moreover, I have said this with reference only to the destruction of states of certainty that are the result of drives … the loss of states of certainty that are the result of drives … the indifference towards states of certainty … the cessation of states of certainty … the reversal of states of certainty that are the result of drives. ‘Whatever is experienced, falls within the unpleasant.’

“I have also declared the drives’ gradual cessation. On entering the first jhana, speech vanishes. On entering the second jhana, reflection and deliberation vanish. On entering the third jhana, delight vanishes. On entering the fourth jhana, in-and-out breathing vanishes….”

In the first paragraph above, it seems clear to me that the Buddha is saying that when he talks about experience (aka “feeling”) always being unpleasant (dukkhasmin) — despite the way he elsewhere describes it as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral — he is specifically talking about it in reference to experience that takes part in dependent arising — experience that is driven by the sankhara drives. When we are contacted through our senses, if there is a drive toward (for example) beneficial acts, the pleasant/unpleasant/neutral experience that results is always bound up with dukkha; it may feel “pleasant” but it is still going to result in dukkha, because it is driven by the need for an (over-the-top) sense of self. It is not that the pleasant is actually unpleasant (it is not that all experience can be immediately felt as dukkha, or should be), it is that even pleasant experiences — the ones that are grounded in ignorance and driven by the sankhara-drives — lead to dukkha (“the unpleasant”).

In the second paragraph, the four jhanas are related to the three visible forms the sankharas take. Speech goes away first, as one sits silently; thought fades with the second; the third picks up the extra slot, having that sensation of joy and rapture that can be a part of meditation fade away; the fourth is usually translated as the cessation of breath, but all four make just as much sense (and the Pali justifies) all four of them “vanishing” — at least to the perspective of the meditator’s awareness.

And then we have the classic triad:

KN 2.20 Dhammapada 277-279
To Traditional Translation
sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā… sabbe saṅkhārā dukkhā… sabbe dhammā anattā

All drives are impermanent… All drives are dukkha… All certainties are not self.

I think the above speaks for itself.

Below we have sankhara as one of the five aggregates that get mistaken for self. “I am my drive to survive”? Seems like a logical belief for the uninstructed to have, to me.

MN 35 (pts M i 228)
To Traditional Translation
‘rūpaṃ, bhikkhave, aniccaṃ, vedanā aniccā, saññā aniccā, saṅkhārā aniccā, viññāṇaṃ aniccaṃ. rūpaṃ, bhikkhave, anattā, vedanā anattā, saññā anattā, saṅkhārā anattā, viññāṇaṃ anattā. sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā, sabbe dhammā anattā’ti.

Form, monks, is impermanent. Experience, perception, drives, and awareness are impermanent. Form is not-self, experience is not-self, perception, drives, and awareness are not-self. All drives are impermanent, all certainties are not-self.

Next up, as if seeing sankharas three ways — in terms of what makes them arise (contact with the senses), and what makes them visible (actions in body, speech, thought), and where they lead (to benefit, harm, or neither) — isn’t enough, here’s one more way to look at them: they drive the way we see ourselves, as the five aggregates. If we perceive of self as form, then when we come into contact with the world, we will perceive self as form; if we perceive self as our experience, then sankhara will drive us to bring about a sense-of-self as experience; if we perceive of ourselves as “the perceiver” we will get confirmation that’s how it is and thereby bring about an active sense of self as “the perceiver”; if we think of ourselves as being our drives, we’ll find that’s what we are; same for awareness. We can see this as “they drive how we see ourselves” or “they drive the appearance of what we mistake for the self as it becomes visible in the world” (which would bring us back to action, both in terms of body, speech, and thought, and actions that are beneficial, harmful, or neither).

SN 22.79 (pts S iii 87)
To Traditional Translation
“kiñca, bhikkhave, saṅkhāre vadetha? saṅkhatamabhisaṅkharontīti kho, bhikkhave, tasmā ‘saṅkhārā’ti vuccati. kiñca saṅkhatamabhisaṅkharonti? rūpaṃ rūpattāya saṅkhatamabhisaṅkharonti, vedanaṃ vedanattāya saṅkhatamabhisaṅkharonti, saññaṃ saññattāya saṅkhatamabhisaṅkharonti, saṅkhāre saṅkhārattāya saṅkhatamabhisaṅkharonti, viññāṇaṃ viññāṇattāya saṅkhatamabhisaṅkharonti. saṅkhatamabhisaṅkharontīti kho, bhikkhave, tasmā ‘saṅkhārā’ti vuccati.

And why do you call them ‘drives’? Because they drive the driven, therefore they are called ‘drives’. What is driven by the drive? In order to bring about form, drives drive form. In order to bring about experience, drives drive experience. In order to bring about perception, drives drive perception. In order to bring about drives, drives drive drives. In order to bring about awareness, drives drive awareness. Because they drive the driven, therefore they are called ‘drives’.

To put it another way, we shouldn’t be reading this as “sankhara creates form”, but as “sankhara gets us to perceive self-as-form”. Sankhara is all about drives that create our sense of self, not our actual physical selves.

Below is one last sutta I found that I think indicates the social aspects of sankhara — that the whole problem does not lie in us, and our perceptions of the world, but that we are often inspired by others’ ways of thinking and being, and we follow them.  It’s not very explicit, so I’m not sure that I have the best understanding of it (I will keep an eye out for any other indications that the Buddha saw sankhara as being able to be a “joint venture” and hope you will point out to me any you find, too). It also points out that we get in trouble through sankhara’s influence whether it is when we are making conscious choices, or just acting without forethought.

SN 12.25 (pts S ii 40)
To Traditional Translation
sāmaṃ vā taṃ, ānanda, manosaṅkhāraṃ abhisaṅkharoti yaṃpaccayāssa taṃ uppajjati ajjhattaṃ sukhadukkhaṃ. pare vā taṃ, ānanda, manosaṅkhāraṃ abhisaṅkharonti yaṃpaccayāssa taṃ uppajjati ajjhattaṃ sukhadukkhaṃ. sampajāno vā taṃ, ānanda … pe … asampajāno vā taṃ, ānanda, manosaṅkhāraṃ abhisaṅkharoti yaṃpaccayāssa taṃ uppajjati ajjhattaṃ sukhadukkhaṃ.

Either driven by oneself, or because of another person, inward pleasure and pain arise, driven into existence by that which drives the mind. Either through forethought, or through lack of forethought, inward pleasure and pain arise, driven into existence by that which drives the mind.

 

Finally, there is a variation on the term we need to consider briefly. It’s āyusaṅkhārā where āyu means “age” or “vitality” and gets extended to mean “life force”, so that when it gets combined with sankhara, it can be seen to mean, literally, the drive that keeps us alive, that keeps us aging. It gets used in MN 43 (pts M i 296) in the answer to a question about whether or not that drive-for-living is vedana (a feeling or experience) or not — and Sariputta says it is not, or with the cessation of feeling in jhana, the meditator would never return! This is because, if “the drive to stay alive” were one of dependent arising’s categories of  feelings/experiences, then when one went into meditative states that brought an end to those problematic experiences, one would lose the will to live, and therefore die.  (I note however, that — as in the sutta described below — the Buddha is said to have lost his drive to stay alive three months before he actually did die.)  That āyusaṅkhārā is described as not being vedana does not mean we can’t feel or experience that desire to keep living, either — it just means that when we feel it we are feeling something that is not included within dependent origination.

In the sutta that talks about āyusaṅkhārā there is also an interesting follow-up discussion immediately afterward, about the difference between being dead, and one who reaches the higher states of meditation. In that section the word āyu (“vitality”) gets separated from sankhara, but sankhara comes up again in reference to bodily- verbal- and mental-sankharas — it’s worth reading to see that “the will to live” would not be part of what goes away when liberated. This is also demonstrated in DN 16 (pts D ii 107) where, three months prior to his death, the Buddha gave up his āyusaṅkhārā – which means he had had that positive, reasonable drive all along, because it is not one of the the sankharas grounded in ignorance of dukkha.

To end the post, I’d like to include the sankhara reference I am currently most fond of, in which Mara questions the nun Vajira about the origins of beings, and she comes back with a pointed answer:

SN 5.10 (pts S i 135)
To Traditional Translation
“kiṃ nu sattoti paccesi, māra diṭṭhigataṃ nu te.
suddhasaṅkhārapuñjoyaṃ, nayidha sattupalabbhati.

What’s this?
Do you believe in ‘a being’, Mara?
Have you arrived at a view?
This is simply a mass of drives.
Here in this world no being exists.

*~*~*~*~*

TRADITIONAL TRANSLATIONS:

Translation by Nanavira Thera, Notes on Dhamma
back up to post
SN 12.2 (pts S ii 4):
And which, monks, are determinations? There are, monks, these three determinations: body-determnation, speech-determination, mind-determination. These, monks are called determinations.

Translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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MN 44 (pts M i 301)
“But what are bodily fabrications? What are verbal fabrications? What are mental fabrications?”

“In-&-out breaths are bodily fabrications. Directed thought & evaluation are verbal fabrications. Perceptions & feelings are mental fabrications.”

“But why are in-&-out breaths bodily fabrications? Why are directed thought & evaluation verbal fabrications? Why are perceptions & feelings mental fabrications?”

“In-&-out breaths are bodily; these are things tied up with the body. That’s why in-&-out breaths are bodily fabrications. Having first directed one’s thoughts and made an evaluation, one then breaks out into speech. That’s why directed thought & evaluation are verbal fabrications. Perceptions & feelings are mental; these are things tied up with the mind. That’s why perceptions & feelings are mental fabrications.”

Translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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SN 22.56 (pts S iii 60)
“And what are fabrications? These six classes of intention — intention with regard to form, intention with regard to sound, intention with regard to smell, intention with regard to taste, intention with regard to tactile sensation, intention with regard to ideas: these are called fabrications. From the origination of contact comes the origination of fabrications.

Translation by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Connected Discourses of the Buddha, page 587-8
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SN 12.51 (pts S ii 82)
“Bhikkhus, if a person immersed in ignorance generates a meritorious volitional formation, consciousness fares on to the meritorious; if he generates a demeritorious volitional formation, consciousness fares on to the demeritorious; if he generates an imperturbable volitional formation, consciousness fares on to the imperturbable. But when a bhikkhu has abandoned ignorance and aroused true knowledge, then, with the fading away of ignorance and the arising of true knowledge, he does not generate a meritorious volitional formation, or a demeritorious volitional formation, or an imperturbable volitional formation. Since he does not generate or fashion volitional formations, he does not cling to anything in the world. Not clinging, he is not agitated. Not being agitated, he personally attains Nibbaana. He understands: ‘Destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more for this state of being.’”

Translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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KN 2.20 Dhammapada 277-279
All fabrications are inconstant… All fabrications are stressful… All phenomena are not-self…

Translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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MN 35 (pts M i 228)
‘Form is inconstant. Feeling is inconstant. Perception is inconstant. Fabrications are inconstant. Consciousness is inconstant. Form is not-self. Feeling is not-self. Perception is not-self. Fabrications are not-self. Consciousness is not-self. All fabrications are inconstant. All phenomena are not-self.’

Translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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SN 22.79 (pts S iii 60)
“And why do you call them ‘fabrications’? Because they fabricate fabricated things, thus they are called ‘fabrications.’ What do they fabricate as a fabricated thing? For the sake of form-ness, they fabricate form as a fabricated thing. For the sake of feeling-ness, they fabricate feeling as a fabricated thing. For the sake of perception-hood… For the sake of fabrication-hood… For the sake of consciousness-hood, they fabricate consciousness as a fabricated thing. Because they fabricate fabricated things, they are called fabrications.

Translation by Bhikkhu Bodhi
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SN 36.11 (pts S iv 216) p 1271
“These three feelings have been spoken of by me: pleasant feeling, painful feeling, neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling. These three feelings have been spoken of by me. And I have also said: ‘Whatever is felt is included in suffering.’ That has been stated by me with reference to the impermanence of formations. That has been stated by me with reference to formations being subject to destruction… to formations being subject to vanishing… to formations being subject to fading away…, to formations being subject to cessation… to formations being subject to change.”

“…I have also taught the successive cessation of formations. For one who has attained the first jhana, speech cas ceased. For one who has attained the second jhana, thought and examination have ceased. For one who has attained the third jhana, rapture has ceased. For one who has attained the fourth jhana, in-breathing and out-breathing have ceased…”

Translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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SN 12.25 (pts S ii 40)
(From ignorance as a requisite condition, then) either of one’s own accord one fabricates bodily fabrication on account of which that pleasure & pain arise internally, or because of others one fabricates bodily fabrication on account of which that pleasure & pain arise internally. Either alert one fabricates bodily fabrication on account of which that pleasure & pain arise internally, or unalert one fabricates bodily fabrication on account of which that pleasure & pain arise internally.

Translation by Bhikkhu Bodhi
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SN 5.10 (pts S i 135)
Why now do you assume ‘a being’?
Mara, have you grasped a view?
This is a heap of sheer constructions:
Here no being is found.

The Words of Dependent Arising: Ignorance

August 10th, 2012 . Posted in avijja, Bhikkhu Bodhi, context, interdependence, paticca samuppada, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Translating, vedana | 1 Comment »
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This is the first in a series of articles in which I’d like to explore the language used in the ancient Pali texts to describe dependent origination (paṭicca samuppāda aka interdependence, dependent co-arising, and so on, with dependent arising being my preferred translation). Perhaps I’ll go on to look at a few other words, too, because many of our modern translations need to be reconsidered.

My intention is not to tell anyone what words they should use, but through writing these posts, to engage in a dialog with the larger community of Buddhist practitioners, and scholars, in whatever media they communicate, about what the Pali words actually mean, how they are similar to, or different from the words we use to translate them, and to consider the issues that make translating them such a problem. I am hoping that a light discussion of the Pali words, and their context, will also be interesting enough to those who enjoy reading the Buddhist texts to encourage more people to explore the words used, and the Pali language, via some of the fanastic tools that are freely available on the internet (see “Tools for Translations” on the Buddhist links page). Talking about the words particular to dependent arising should also be a useful way of clarifying what each of the links are about, and how they fit together — and the more ways we have of describing what’s being said, the broader the access to the insights, since different people have different approaches to learning. Read the rest of this entry »

Jayarava’s “The World”

May 22nd, 2012 . Posted in loka, responses to blogs &c | No Comments »
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Over on his blog, Jayarava has a new post up on a subject dear to my heart: “the world” (loka in Pali). I had written a comment to send him before I discovered that he has closed the blog to all comments, so I am just going to post it here. It is not my expectation that Jayarava will actually read this or comment on it — when a person is tired of the blogosphere’s dialog, they deserve a break — it’s just here to put a pin in the word “loka” since I spent some time writing this up.

Hey Jayarava,

For a long time I assumed that when the Buddha spoke of “the world” (loka) he was actually talking about people; I supposed it was a sort of reference to samsara, and the way we create what we mistake for the actual world in more-or-less the same way we create what we mistake for a self. I still think this is the correct interpretation, but that the Buddha was being more specific than making references to samsara: he seems to be referring to Prajāpati’s story of creation, and the way that the First Man was the Cosmos, and when he split himself up into the individuality of name-and-form, each individual was, in a sense, the world. So when he talks (in, for example, SN 12.10) about his pre-enlightenment wondering about “This world, alas, has fallen into sore distress. There is being born, growing old, dying, passing over and being reborn…” he is clearly not talking about planet Earth as “this world” but about us as individuals — each and every one of us as bits of Prajāpati/the Cosmos. He’s actually talking about atta/anatta — that which we mistake for the self.

So in the Rohitassa sutta, when he talks about not being able to walk to the end of the world, he starts by answering the question as if it is meant literally, but when he says that we do have to reach the end of the cosmos, he is saying we have to put an end to that false sense of self. This is, I believe, a teensy-tiny model of dependent arising’s two levels: the literal (as conceived by folks back then) and what he is really talking about.

The reference was probably clearer to the people of the times than it is to us, because the word you mention, byama (‘an-arm-span’) is actually a reference to the measurement of the altar in sacrifices that used the model of the Prajāpati story. Joanna Jurewicz points this out in her year-2000 article “Playing With Fire” on p. 79 “A general example could be provided by the famous declaration of the Buddha that in this “fathom-long body” (vyāmamatte kalevara) is the world, its origin, its cessation, and the path which leads to its cessation. The Sanskrit term vyāmamāttra appears in SB 1.2.5.14 denoting the measure of the altar. It has the shape of a man and is not only the counterpart of the sacrificer but also the manifested counterpart of the Creator (Prajāpati)…”

By this reasoning, Ananda’s answer is that when *we* talk about “the world” we are talking about how we perceive and conceive it as something that has to come to an end. Buddhaghosa is also right, since sankharas have everything to do with the way we construct (perceive) self and world. The Loka Sutta, too, is consistent with this understanding, in that the world that arises is our perception of the world as being ours/us/self/in reference to us (because the Prajāpati myth says it is), and of course what arises from those kinds of perceptions is dukkha. As an aside I’m going to toss out a postulate of my hypothesis, that the five khanda will turn out to refer to the five layers of the altar that is self / Prajāpati / the World (though I have yet to find any solid evidence for it, it would make sense). I also wonder if Buddhaghosa’s comment about “wood and grass” is a reference to what gets burned during sacrifices — the sacrificial objects also being equated to atta.

I believe the language of the world-as-self refers back to dependent arising, as you will probably gather if you read the paper I wrote on it just out in the Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. The structure I see in dependent arising speaks both to “rebirth as real” and “the world of experience” and in so doing explains why both can be found in the suttas.

As always, thanks for this and all the insightful articles you write.

Buddhism in Midland, Texas. And Two Darts

January 18th, 2012 . Posted in local | 3 Comments »
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I live in the old home town of President George Bush, and spend lots of time in the library where Laura worked. This is a conservative town, and as far as I know, there aren’t many Buddhists in it, but for those who are here, or are interested in learning a little about Buddhism, we do have weekly meetings that vary in location, style, and subject.  For the next two weeks we’re just doing a little socializing and hanging out, and then there’s a round of official talks that work well as an introduction to what Buddhism is about, led by my one and only in-person dharma teacher, who is very good at explaining the concepts. You can find out more about us through Meetup.com or you can come find me on Facebook (easiest through the Skeptical Buddhist group’s page there).  It is not necessary to want to become a Buddhist to join us; open-minded interest in what it’s about is all that’s needed.

Tonight was the last of a series of six introductory meetings, and toward the end I was asking about the “two darts” that were mentioned earlier. The first dart is the pain that life deals us all by itself — everyone gets to experience this, whether it’s physical ailments and limitations, or the loss of those we love, or shared sorrows over world events, or whatever — and the second dart is the one we deal ourselves through the ways we attach to those pains and draw them into us or draw them out in time. There are the “why me”s and the “it doesn’t have to be like this, we can put it all back”s and the numerous ways in which we add to what’s already there.  We had already been talking about reality, aligning ourselves with reality — -”that might be a form of nirvana”- — and I was thinking about how often I hear the words “delusion” and “illusion” in Buddhism, and how misunderstood they seem to me to be sometimes, and wanted to clarify a point, but I think I did not do a very good job of making what I was saying clear.  So I thought I’d try again here.

The subject of illusion came up in an accurate context: that we tend to build up our illusions of what is or can be.  That seems to be the heart of the issue, precisely to the point.  It is when our illusions get described as delusions that some line begins to get crossed with connotations in which the victim (as the perpetrator of the delusion) begins to get blamed for it, and all the ways we interpret the world get dismissed along with those delusions as fictions, as samsara, as nothing but fake suffering.  (Not that this is what was being taught in the meeting — far from it — the teaching was far more accurate than that.)  But I often want to make the point that while we sometimes delude ourselves into thinking that we can make things different than they are (which is being out of alignment with reality), or that things are all about us when they are not, even if we are doing it to ourselves, it’s not illusory suffering.  When the first dart hits, that’s real pain we feel, and when we hit ourselves with the second dart — however we manage it — that is real pain too.  The point is just this: that second dart is UNNECESSARY pain.

We are doing it to ourselves, but don’t blame the perpetrator who is also the victim too much because, for the most part, we are simply so unclear on what is happening that we don’t even recognize how we manage to hurt ourselves. As was pointed out in the meeting by our well-spoken teacher, the practice is all about slowing things down enough to see how and what arises out of events.  The point, it seems clear to me, is to allow ourselves to see the first dart hit, and see what comes about afterwards that has us aiming that next dart at ourselves in response; to learn the skills to pay enough attention to see the process happening. Sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes more slowly, but the more often we manage to be mindful of what is happening, and what we feel as a result, and what our first instinct is, the more chances we get — the more choices we open up — to bring wiser behavior into being, so we don’t hit ourselves with that second dart that usually causes very real, but unnecessary pain.

Dependent Arising Is Not Interdependent

November 4th, 2011 . Posted in interdependence, paticca samuppada, Possibilities | 6 Comments »
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It’s been a long time since my last post and here’s the reason why: this has been a really difficult post to write. I knew what I wanted to say — it’s laid out in the pieces of my previous posts on “Possibilities” for ways to understand what the Buddha taught — but every time I tried to write it, I found that what I am certain of (that Dependent Arising doesn’t describe interdependence) ran into conflict with what I also know (that interdependence is a valid concept within Buddhism). I have been having trouble with these two facts for a year or more; what on earth made me think I could resolve that conflict in one short post? So I wrote, and rewrote, and wrote again, getting nowhere.

The resolution came by way of my friend Ian, whom I know enjoys the writings of Thich Nhat Hahn (TNH), who writes quite a bit about “interbeing” — a variant way of describing interdependence. I felt sure that what I understood TNH to be saying about how we are all interrelated was true, was observable in everyday life, and if it was true then it would have to be consistent with the Buddha’s dharma if what I see — that the Buddha was dead-accurate in his assessment of the human condition — was also true. Every time I tried to think about these two things — interdependence is true; dependent arising is not interdependence — my brain felt like it had the flu. Then I asked Ian to describe TNH’s interbeing, and it all became quite clear.

Before we get to that, let’s talk about why Dependent Arising is not about interdependence. Read the rest of this entry »

Possibilities: Karma, Merit and Vipaka

August 5th, 2011 . Posted in Angulimala, causation, dukkha, kamma, Modern Teachers and Translators, Possibilities, vipaka aka merit | 6 Comments »
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In my last post, I described a different way of looking at “truth” that divided up what we experience into things that are “necessarily real” — objects and other phenomenon that are independent of individuals, usually measurable in some way — and those that are “unnecessarily real” — that is, we really experience these things, but we can do without them (they are unnecessary). The “unnecessarily real” usually aren’t measurable by any scientific method, and they may or may not be desirable (a smile is unnecessarily real, because it comes and goes, but it’s worth keeping around). The focus of that post was on dukkha, and how we add layers of meaning to our experiences, and in that way we create unnecessary dukkha — but it’s important to recognize that dukkha is real in this sense, not a delusion; people do genuinely suffer.

In just the way that dukkha is unnecessarily real — it is something we create that we can learn to stop creating, and live without — karma, too, is unnecessarily real. We know that both fit in the category of “unnecessarily real” because the Buddha’s system is all about the ending of karma, and through that, the ending of dukkha.

Karma

The Buddha talks about four kinds of karma: the good stuff, the bad stuff, the neutral stuff, and the karma that ends karma Read the rest of this entry »

Not Necessarily Real: Absolute Truth vs Samsaric Truth

July 20th, 2011 . Posted in Critical thinking, dhamma, direct experience, dukkha, Possibilities | 4 Comments »
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Possibilities: Truth

I have recently been working on a different way of looking at the classical Buddhist division of “truth” into higher and lower realities, or “absolute truth” and “delusion”. The Buddha didn’t make these divisions in his discourses, and I find those ways of looking at things unhelpful, if not downright harmful since they lead people to be dismissive of others’ suffering as “delusion”. This is why I’ve been looking for a different way of explaining what the Buddha may have seen, and the phrase I have come up with is that some things are “necessarily real” and some things are not.

Those phenomena which are “necessarily real” — solid objects are the easiest example of these things — are things that have an existence apart from the momentary whims of humans, things that are generally measurable by science (though there are undoubtedly things that are “necessarily real” but that we have yet to figure out how to measure); and there are things that are “unnecessarily real” — things which *may* be measurable by science, but that are optional; for example, a smile. That last category is of things we create on the fly, whether consciously or not (like the smile), things that are *ours* because no one else can take them away from us without our cooperation. Someone can have an effect on us that plays a part in us ceasing to smile, but it is still our choice to smile or not — no one can actually lift the smile off our faces because it’s not just *in* our faces.

Read the rest of this entry »

Possibilities: Causation

July 15th, 2011 . Posted in causation, kamma, paticca samuppada, Possibilities, Rebirth, Thanissaro Bhikkhu | No Comments »
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This post and the next few step away from my usual anchor of discussing “What the Buddha Taught” as (very precisely) stated in texts found in the Pali canon. Instead it is a look at what’s stated in the canon a bit vaguely, with the intent to then examine what we can see for ourselves in our lives, and to try to match the canon with the what we can see. It’s an attempt to take the Buddha’s statements and ask if we are correctly interpreting them or if, perhaps, we sometimes over-extend our definitions of the concepts to say more than they are meant to say.

The posts will cover:

(1) That the Buddha’s “causation” is not “cause and effect” but “effect and cause”.

(2) That the division of truth into “Absolute” and “Delusion” is harmful; a more useful view would be of “necessary” and “unnecessary”.

(3) That karma is real but, in my own way of putting it, it is “not necessarily real”, but is a little more real than some things.

(4) That “interdependence” is not what Dependent Arising describes. Nor is it the arising of “this” from “that” in every case. 

Causation

When this is, that is.

From the arising of this comes the arising of that.

When this isn’t, that isn’t.

From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.

[Udana 1.3 translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu]

In his book on Dependent Arising, “The Shape of Suffering” Thanissaro Bhikkhu states of the above that:

“The Arising of A will, at some point in time, cause the arising of B. The ceasing of A will, at some point in time, cause the ceasing of B.”

While I agree with the latter statement — because if condition A is required for condition B to come into existence, then removing condition A means B cannot come about — the earlier statement makes for a deterministic universe, and it is not consistently observable in the complex universe in which we live. Also, it seems it was not what the Buddha meant.

Some of my recent explorations in Pali (see for example “Where One Becomes One’s Natural Self“) have led me to look at the ways in which the Buddha says that action A does not always lead to result B. Much as we might wish (because the thought is comforting) that the universe always squares things up in the end or, at least, that the cosmos is predictable, it isn’t — though we often reason as if it was.

To use a purely mechanical example of this sort of causation we could say:

From the arising of a seed, comes the arising of a new tree.

From the cessation of seeds, comes the cessation of new trees.

But it does not follow that with the arising of a seed there is *always* a tree. Read the rest of this entry »

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