The Words of Dependent Arising: Viññāṇa

March 19th, 2022
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 consciousness — is a clue because it pulls consciousness into action simultaneously with contact, 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 »

Words of Dependent Arising: Saṅkhārā Take Two

February 10th, 2022

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.

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.

 

 

Differences in Approaches to Reading The Suttas

January 15th, 2022

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.”

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.

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

January 3rd, 2022

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

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

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

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.

Arguing A New Theory (re: Mazel’s “Unpopular facts” about Dependent Arising)

May 7th, 2015

In the comments on my page of links about Dependent Arising, Eisel Mazard wrote:

“Or, we could directly read what the original Pali has to say, we could be honest about it, and we could be open about the history of the ‘European tradition’ of interpretation that has created so many strange assumptions about what the text is supposed to imply (but doesn’t, in fact, say)…

“If you can’t read primary sources (in Pali) it’s a sad fact that nobody playing the game makes it easy for you to know where the original text stops, and where ‘interpretation’ starts. If you have the time to read that article (linked to) you may well be shocked to learn that the diversity of these interpretations reflects a certain degree of intellectual dishonesty.”

In my answer to this comment, I said I didn’t believe what was going on was “intellectual dishonesty” but that “My expectation is that our translators believe they are translating what is actually meant. ” I had read the post the author linked to, and regretted that comments were not allowed, and left it at that.

However now, almost three years later, I have finally gotten around to locating and reading the paper Mazard wrote about Dependent Arising, that is referred to in the post I couldn’t comment on. I’ve even added a link to it on my DA links page, not because I think it has any chance of presenting what the Buddha actually was talking about, but because it demonstrates how easy it is to pick and choose what one looks at — ignoring or failing to notice anything that would undermine one’s theories — to come up with something that can be mistaken for a good argument. Is this apparent blindness to text that would disprove a theory “intellectual dishonesty”? Or is it just human nature at work? It would take greater familiarity with the author to know which is the cause, but I thought it might still be useful (to me, and maybe to others) to note where the arguments he makes might seem logical, and what he fails to notice that so readily undermines the whole point. I would love it if folks would take the time to do this for papers I publish; it can only help refine or strengthen an argument to know where its weaknesses are.

At the start of his paper, he notes that DA is known for its profundity, but then points out that “…it is rare to find a clear answer to the question of what this famous tract of text [is] supposed to be about: what is the thesis that the 12-links formula was meant to explain or support? I find the answer in the text itself…” and he almost builds a decent case for DA just being about how birth comes about, but he does this by using a limited set of the terms in the 12-link DA, and appearing to be completely blind to text in the same suttas he cites that give psychological definitions of terms he focuses on that occur “before birth”. He also entirely skips the middle section, in which the process of “contact”, “feeling”, “craving”, and “clinging” come into play — is the fetus doing that? — all of which come just prior to “becoming” and “birth”.

I do agree that a lot of what is written about DA is fuzzy — that’s why I started (years ago now) focusing on trying to understand it from the texts themselves — and I agree that we need to anchor what we think is being said with evidence from the texts. But because the Buddha’s way of speaking isn’t exactly like ours (not in the grammatical construction of sentences; and not even in his choice of overall rhetorical devices) it is not possible to be certain that we have understood, exactly, all of what he is trying to say, not in any given sentence, nor rephrasing of lessons, nor the whole of his dharma. I say “all of what he is trying to say” because it is my contention that he layers one or more levels of meaning onto much of what he says, and any given interpreter’s reading may make use of one level in support of their theory, while missing the other layers. This is one mistake I believe Mazel makes. He recognizes — correctly, I think — that the Buddha is naming and describing events that come prior to birth, but fails to understand why he is describing them, or how their description fits into the overall lessons the Buddha is trying to get across to us, because he has missed the other layers.

It takes reading the whole — or at least as much of the canon as one can get to — and trying to make sense of the pieces in terms of the overall points being made, to begin to put together a theory. And while it is wise to anchor our arguments in the texts, we would do well to remember that the talks presented in the text are framed in the context of a certain time and place, with much of that context simply assumed as background by the speakers, and as such unstated. Hints at this background might well be found in the texts, but in so large a volume of work as the collections of the Buddha’s talks, hints often go unnoticed. It seems to me almost easier to argue a theory from what we can see and to then assess it on how logical it is within the frame, than to expect every element to be readily visible. Interpretation is necessary. Then the best way to disprove an interpretation might well be to then find examples in the text that make that interpretation impossible.

Which is a little of what I’m doing here, starting with the mention, above, of the way the support for his theory that it’s all about what leads up to birth leaves out four central links that describe how we process experiences. This needed to be left out of his thesis because the detailed description of these links includes not only the activation of the senses, and recognizing that contact as pleasant or unpleasant (which could happen before birth) but then there is craving (tanha) for sensual pleasures, and for becoming (bhava) or what is not becoming (vibhava), which describe cravings far more complex — psychological — than a fetus will be capable of in the womb. The next step afterward is clinging (upadana) which is described as being about not just sensual pleasures but about views about the self, and about rites and rituals, none of which the fetus can even be aware of.

Mazel first defends the eleventh link (jati) as clearly describing the actual, physical process of being born, and I am sure he is right about the description being literal. He then uses a bit of DN 15 [pts D ii 63] on name-and form (namarupa) in which — he is also correct here — the Buddha is clearly talking about the moment when consciousness (link three — vinnana) comes into the mother’s womb, so this has to be about how we come to be born. Then he says:

“…however, the passage is wildly incongruent with attempts of many other interpreters to render the whole doctrine in more abstract terms (variously psychological or metaphysical).”

and somehow he seems to have missed the section just before the part he quotes, which is clearly about the psychological:

“‘From name-&-form as a requisite condition comes contact. Thus it has been said. And this is the way to understand how, from name-&-form as a requisite condition comes contact. If the qualities, traits, themes, & indicators by which there is a description of name-group (mental activity) were all absent, would designation-contact with regard to the form-group (the physical properties) be discerned?” [Translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu]

Now, granted, it’s a bit tough to decipher the above. This is because the Buddha isn’t speaking to us now, but to the people of his own time who thoroughly understood the terms and the context. Basically it is the start of an argument that says that because we are already familiar with “qualities, traits, themes, & indicators” that allow us to have created definitions (“name-group”) we can tell when we contact something’s form (through any of our senses) what it is, and what it is good for — through its “form-group”. That may not be easy to understand, but even without clear understanding, the mention of mental processes involving “qualities, traits, themes, & indicators” alone has to make it clear that what’s being discussed are activities of a person out in the world, not a fetus in the womb. This is not metaphysical, I agree, but it definitely is psychological. And it is in the same sutta, right next to the portion Mazel quoted.

I am agreeing, then, that in this section, the Buddha is clearly talking about how consciousness appears in the womb, but at the same time I disagree that those who argue that he is talking about something psychological should be scoffed at the way Mazel does, because — clearly — the Buddha is talking about psychology. How can I both agree and disagree with Mazel? Simple: layering of meaning. Mazel is right that the Buddha is describing the obvious process of birth, but he doesn’t recognize that this is because seeing the mechanism of the process is necessary to understanding something else that is harder to see. The Buddha uses the way human beings are conceived and come into the world as a model to describe how something else, something very important, is conceived and comes into the world — and that is a psychological something.

Mazel next argues that the deity — a gandhabba— that is found in some descriptions of the process of conception, is there because it was believed the demi-god’s presence enabled fertility. This is in contrast to a traditional view that the gandhabba is some part of the being moving from a past life to the next. In my view, either possibility works as something the Buddha would be saying here — and in fact he may have designed the description with generic enough wording that the text would fit right into the worldview of believers in either way of looking at how conception happens. I propose that the Buddha’s mention of the gandhabba isn’t described so that we understand “how life begins as the Buddha has seen it to be” but rather is a very generalized model that serves one great purpose: to model the action being described in something subtler. A generic description makes the model accessible to more people. The details of the role the gandhabba plays aren’t actually important, which is why they are never described in any text.

Mazel again:

“This essay has for its purpose the simple but fundamental task of establishing what the 12-links formula is about (i.e., the subject matter broached in the canonical primary source texts). I would now contrast a few of the popular opinions on this matter, taking my motto from Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man: ‘False facts are highly injurious … for they often endure long; but false views… do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness…’.

“Many of the leading interpretations are pointedly vague. The influential translator Bhikkhu Bodhi remarks: ‘In its abstract form the principle of dependent arising is equivalent to the law of the conditioned genesis of phenomena.’ As anodyne as this may sound, I must repudiate it as a ‘false fact’: the subject of the doctrine is simply incarnation (inclusive of conception, the development of the embryo, and birth).”

False views can be built up from missing facts, and I commend Mazel on recognizing that they will be met with folks — like me — who will take, if not pleasure then at least education from working through them to try to understand where the falseness derives from.

I do agree that many explanations of Dependent Arising are vague; I believe this is because the writers haven’t fully understood the layering of meaning. As in the snippets of suttas quoted from DN 15 both above and in Mazel’s paper, two different layers may be discussed side-by-side, and if a translator is only working with one layer, while half-blind to the other, confusion (with a resulting vagueness) ensues.

“The conditioned genesis of phenomena” is pretty vague, but wouldn’t be entirely wrong as something discussed in DA if it was addressing the meta-model described by idappaccayatā, known as “this/that conditionality” but which more literally means “this is supported by that”. Understanding in general how “because this is, that can come to be” is critical to understanding what’s being pointed out in DA, and the Buddha does use examples on many levels to help us see what’s going on. “The conditioned genesis of [all] phenomena” is the most general of examples of what’s going on in DA, which is, perhaps, what Bodhi is talking about when he calls this “the most abstract form”. How we come into being (conception, gestation, birth) and come to suffer aging and death provides a more detailed example of the mechanism being pointed out. But neither the meta-model nor the detailed model are the ultimate point of DA; they just point to “the shape” of what’s going on, they model the action taking place in the hardest to see, critical layer of the lesson.

“The Pali canon contains many discourses concerning the function of the mind and perception, but this isn’t one of them. ” Mazel says. And yet, the Buddha has said that if we see Dependent Arising, we see the dhamma, so if his discourses on the dhamma often concern the mind and perception, ipso facto DA has to include them, too. And it does, in the DN 15 quote I cited, and in the four middle links Mazel doesn’t mention.

When he goes on to deny that there is any support for the three-lives model, he takes on Mahāsi Sayadaw, who is quoted as saying that the Buddha did not describe consciousness’s relationship to past existence. Mazel then says:

“This is, in fact, a confession that the three-lifetimes interpretation is not supported by the primary source texts: there is no discussion of a past (nor future) existence internal to the 12-links formula”

This is wrong — there is certainly quite clear mention of a life that follows birth, aging, and death. It is there, in DN 15 [pts D ii 63], in the description of how name-and-form supports consciousness, in the section immediately following the quote Mazel used to show that DA is definitely about conception taking place in a woman’s womb:

ettāvatā kho, ānanda, jāyetha vā jīyetha vā mīyetha vā cavetha vā upapajjetha vā.
“This is the extent to which there is birth, aging, death, passing away, and re-arising. ” [Translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu]

It’s hard to imagine how he missed that.

“Or, we could directly read what the original Pali has to say, we could be honest about it,” he said in comments on this blog, and I would insert “all of the suttas on the subject in” after that “what”, meaning we need to read the whole sutta, and every one that deals substantively with subject, and be honest if we didn’t take the whole into account, for whatever reason.
 
That all dependent arising is about is how we come to be born makes no sense when it is viewed as part of the whole of the Buddha’s teaching, and, while Mazel’s paper proves that the Buddha does talk about how we come to be, it ignores evidence indicating that there is far more to it than that.

The “Many Views” View of Buddhism

May 1st, 2015

Goodness, where I have I been. It’s been too long — more than two years! — since I’ve updated this blog. I’ve had plenty of thoughts I felt suitable to blog about. I even, recently, wrote a draft of a post, but it came out to over 10k words, so I’ll have to figure out how best to break it up before putting it up here. I’ve started lots of other drafts, but have found them leading to incomplete lines of thinking. I’ve written and had a couple of papers published. Mostly, I’ve been working on a book that will serve to clarify my thinking enough to sort out the difference between what I see as well worked out, and where there are questions with answers I am still unsure of. There will always be questions with answers I am unsure of (as there should be) but what’s important is knowing which is which, as well as coming to recognize which answers I am quite sure of, or even relatively sure of, that I still need more evidence for, to support my ability to get the concepts across to others.

Looking at Buddhism from a fresh perspective is tricky enough on its own; trying to communicate what I find to others is even harder. A lot of the problem comes from the difference between traditional views of Buddhism being so similar — all of them to each other, and mine to all the rest. There seem to be a multitude of ways of interpreting what the Buddha was trying to convey, and there is a strong tendency, when I try to explain any one difference in the way I am seeing what was said from the way others do, of judging the newness in terms of whatever larger understanding the listener has of the whole — which is, really, the natural thing to do. Since the Buddha’s lessons worked together to create one whole understanding — one dharma — the teaching is perhaps best explained as a holographic image, in that any little piece we pick out actually contains information that significantly affects the whole picture. This is why any one small piece I try to describe won’t fit comfortably into someone else’s understanding of the dharma. And this is why the blogpost I wrote at 10k words still isn’t complete — because, to be fully understood, it has to be supported by all the other slightly-changed pieces that fit together to make a beautifully integrated understanding of the Buddha’s dharma.

One of the things I believe I am seeing in this new way of looking at the Buddha’s teaching is that he very intentionally provided multiple paths through his lessons to get to the heart of his dharma — different strokes for different folks, as we hippie-types have been known to say. The amazing thing to me is the skill with which the man made these multiple paths blend together — this is what that lengthy, unposted post discusses: one set of threads through the tapestry he wove.

His skills in presenting multiple ways through may have had the unfortunate effect of making it more likely that confusion would abound, as different people picked up different threads, and declared theirs the one and only “right view” of what the Buddha meant. Ironic, given that what the Buddha seems to me to be pointing out as key, is that we need to let go of dogmatism over views, not just of the Cosmic Order, but of what is the right way to grasp his teaching, as I pointed out some while back in my post on The Raft over on the Secular Buddhism blog.

A variation on this theme occurred to me today as I was reading a pamphlet called “The Faith of a Unitarian Universalist Buddhist”, by James Ishmael Ford. In this very well-written piece, the author says something I have heard many times before but rarely put as succinctly:

When asked what I meant by ‘Buddhism’, I briefly outlined my belief that the human condition is marked by dis-ease, dissatisfaction, angst. There is some fundamental sadness to our human condition.

The Buddha examined this apparently universal human experience closely. He came to believe this pervasive unrest occurs as a natural consequence of our human consciousness.

I think I understand this perspective, but whenever it is presented, I find I can’t actually relate to it. I would agree that in given instances I experience dis-ease and dissatisfaction, but angst, which the Urban Dictionary defines beginning with:

Angst, often confused with anxiety, is a transcendent emotion in that it combines the unbearable anguish of life with the hopes of overcoming this seemingly impossible situation.

sometimes in descriptions of the Buddha’s point described as “existential angst” — I can’t relate to at all. For me there is not now nor has there ever been any strong feeling of an “unbearable anguish of life”. Looking at what I experience, and what drives me, even now, after years of being a practicing Buddhist, I can find nothing deep within me that is even remotely like that. At the very base of my thinking about my particular life, what I always find, is great joy and pleasure in the richness and complexity, a feeling of gratitude for the opportunity to experience all that I do — both ups and downs — and, sure, there is the wish that I might go on enjoying the fullness of life for a long, long time, probably longer than the time I will have. I would not mind at all if this same consciousness of mine went on to other things after this body dies but I have no expectation that it will, nor any huge sadness facing the likelihood that “I” won’t exist after death.

I have long accepted that this is very likely my one and only existence, and this means for me that I had damned well better make the best of it. And if it is not? Without direct and convincing evidence of the ways in which my behavior now would affect my life after this death, I cannot know “the rules” for affecting that possible future. So I am left to do the best I can with this life, and I find nothing wrong with that, certainly nothing anguish-making.

What I find, in the first-quoted portions of the pamphlet above, is writing representative of people who do feel this underlying anguish that I don’t feel, accompanied by the assumption that since that is what they have found deep in their hearts, it must be what everyone will eventually find deep in theirs. I have spoken to people with this conviction who tell me that I haven’t found it because I haven’t “gone deep enough yet”. And I’m sure if I were surrounded by people who only saw the world that way — and if I were not so familiar with my glass-half-full way of looking at things — that I could convince myself if I tried hard enough.

But why would I want to?

I tend to think I am already (and have been fortunate to always be, by nature) at the place the Buddha wanted us to get to, where we stop worrying so much about what comes next — where, certainly, we stop fighting with each other about it — and just go with what we can see for ourselves, and let what will be, be. This is not by way of saying that I am already a fully enlightened being, just that in this one aspect — it being an attitude toward life that is one of underlying acceptance, maybe even satisfaction, with the overal situation — I am fortunate to have been born or to have acquired early an attitude of life that doesn’t incorporate that “fundamental sadness” but instead I have a fundamental happiness, with lots of situational confusion and attendant upsets to keep me busy practicing.

So what I wonder — back to the theme of this post — is whether the Buddha was addressing both kinds of people, those angst-ridden types, and glass-half-full types like myself.

When I debate with my friend Mark Knickelbine, about how the Buddha was defining dukkha, and what he was saying about it, in Mark’s writings I hear him describing existential angst as what the Buddha was talking about — inescapable suffering that we must learn to accept as part of life, but not cling to; there is no escape from the angst but we can lessen its effects through a change in attitude toward it. When I define what I believe the Buddha meant by dukkha when it gets translated as “the end of suffering”, it is that this dukkha (by definition) has to be escapable suffering (because he says it can end) — it *is* the attitude, or more exactly, dukkha is what results from a certain attitude toward the inescapable. It is not the painful events in our lives — loss of loved ones, loss of ability, the ultimate loss of our own lives — that are dukkha, but it is the attitudes we have towards these things that cause us to suffer in completely unnecessary and avoidable ways. I have often remarked, during these conversations, that Mark and I arrive at the same place: there are painful events we can not, while living, escape from, and what the Buddha is saying is we have to change our attitudes towards them; this will give us relief.

But what I am wondering about today, is whether the difference between Mark’s view and mine is based on two different attitudes towards life, the one that sees the world through the lens of existential angst, and the one, like mine, that doesn’t concern itself much at all with inevitable losses, doesn’t feel a deep and constant angst over the situation, but does recognize that individual situations could be handled better than they are. And if the two different views of dukkha are perceived through two fundamentally different views of life, could it be that both are woven into the Buddha’s teachings because he recognized that different sorts of people have these different views, so he wove both into his teachings, so that each of us could find a thread that matched our view, to pull us across — using the metaphor of the Raft — to “the other shore”?

The Passive Voice

January 24th, 2013

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: Read the rest of this entry »