Just A Little Dust

A few days back I was enjoying the quite readable “Theravada Buddhism: A social history from ancient Benares to modern Columbo” by Richard F. Gombrich, © 1998, 2006 when I came across a bit that read:

Only a generation ago, scholars were still unaware of evidence that the Buddhist Canon contained allusions to non-Buddhist texts…. This intertextuality, as it is nowadays known, …helps us better to understand the Buddha’s meaning, since we can see what he was arguing against…

Yes indeed, I thought, but references to the Vedas (which the above quote is discussing) are not the only thing scholars seem to have missed. It’s been increasingly clear to me as I read the Pali suttas (in English) that quite often the stated context for a story has played no part in our understanding of the tale. Perhaps it’s because those who were analyzing the texts are so busy trying to figure out exactly what’s being said in the body of the piece, that they assume the “setting” is irrelevant. But the Sage of Sakya was quite clearly an adept speaker and a man of his times, and was addressing the issues of his day, and it is sometimes the case that the setting for the tale is central to the point being made.

Let’s take for example MN 117 “The Great Forty” in the Majjhima Nikaya, which I have seen listed as an example of the Buddha teaching karma/rebirth. In The Noble Eightfold Path: The Way to the End of Suffering by Bhikkhu Bodhi © 1984, 1994  we have an example of this as well as a summary of MN 117’s teaching on “Right View”:

Mundane Right View

Mundane right view involves a correct grasp of the law of kamma, the moral efficacy of action. Its literal name is “right view of the ownership of action” (kammas-sakata sammadibphi), and it finds its standard formulation in the statement: “Beings are the owners of their actions, the heirs of their actions, and are supported by their actions. Whatever deeds they do, good or bad, of those they shall be the heirs.” More specific formulations have also come down in the texts. One stock passage, for example, affirms that virtuous actions such as giving and offering alms have moral significance, that good and bad deeds produce corresponding fruits, that one has a duty to serve mother and father, that there is rebirth and a world beyond the visible one, and that religious teachers of high attainment can be found who expound the truth about the world on the basis of their own superior realization.

Some years later Bhikkhu Bodhi and Bhikkhu Nanamoli offered us a very lucid translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, Wisdom Publications’ 1995 “The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha” in which MN 117 has a somewhat different translation of this same piece:

(6) “And what, bhikkhus, is right view that is affected by the taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions? ‘There is what is given and what is offered and what is sacrificed; there is fruit and result of good and bad actions; there is this world and the other world; there is mother and father; there are beings who are reborn spontaneously; there are in the world good and virtuous recluses and brahmins who have realised for themselves by direct knowledge and declare this world and the other world.’ This is right view affected by taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions.

Between the paraphrasing in the first quote and the direct translation in the second quote, what was being said became far more crisp and clear. What was about “giving and offering alms” in the earlier piece is now about “what is given and what is offered and what is sacrificed” in the later. That “good and bad deeds produce corresponding fruits” stays pretty much the same, but what was reference to “a duty to serve mother and father” and “that there is rebirth and a world beyond the visible one” and “that religious teachers of high attainment can be found” in the earlier has been given much less extra context in the latter translation.

In part this tells us that different translators – or even the same translator at a different time – can give quite a different meaning to the words, and I for one am grateful to Bhikkhu Bodhi (and all the translators out there) for the amount of time and effort they put in coming up with their best each time, and growing in their skills.

However, the influence that a translator’s skills and understanding will have on the text is only the beginning of this story. This particular sutta is not limited to “Mundane Right View”, but it talks about “Wrong View” as well as “Right View With Taints” (the new translation uses “taints” instead of “mundane”) and the “taintless” Right View – “noble, taintless, supramundane.” In fact it goes on to cover “wrong” and “right, with taints” and “right, but taintless” for intention, speech, action and livelihood as well as another round this time telling those who would argue with the Buddha, why they would be wrong. It’s in this larger context that we find the actual meaning of the portions quoted above.

Since this is going to take more extensive quoting, I’m going to switch over for the heart of this discussion to the freely available version from Access To Insight as translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu © 2008-2009. I have embedded a few markers of my own in this text ¹

[1] “Of those, right view is the forerunner. And how is right view the forerunner? One discerns wrong view as wrong view, and right view as right view. This is one’s right view. And what is wrong view? ‘There is nothing given, nothing offered, nothing sacrificed ². There is no fruit or result of good or bad actions ³. There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings; no priests or contemplatives who, faring rightly & practicing rightly, proclaim this world & the next after having directly known & realized it for themselves.'⁴ This is wrong view.

“And what is right view? Right view, I tell you, is of two sorts: There is right view with effluents [asava], siding with merit, resulting in the acquisitions [of becoming]; and there is noble right view, without effluents, transcendent, a factor of the path.

“And what is the right view that has effluents, sides with merit, & results in acquisitions? ‘There is what is given, what is offered, what is sacrificed. ² There are fruits & results of good & bad actions. ³ There is this world & the next world. There is mother & father. There are spontaneously reborn beings; there are priests & contemplatives who, faring rightly & practicing rightly, proclaim this world & the next after having directly known & realized it for themselves.’ ⁴ This is the right view that has effluents, sides with merit, & results in acquisitions.

“And what is the right view that is without effluents, transcendent, a factor of the path? The discernment, the faculty of discernment, the strength of discernment, analysis of qualities as a factor for Awakening, the path factor of right view of one developing the noble path whose mind is noble, whose mind is free from effluents, who is fully possessed of the noble path. This is the right view that is without effluents, transcendent, a factor of the path.”

What you will notice here is that we have a portion ending in ² in both “wrong view” and “right view with effluents” and they are both about what is given, offered, sacrificed, but these do not appear in “right view that is without effluents”. In the “wrong view” these things are denied (“There is nothing given…”) but in the effluent-inducing “right view” they are acknowledged (“There is what is given…”)

The same pattern is true with ³ this time being about the denial or acknowledgment that there are fruits and results of good and bad actions.

In the negative statements ending with ⁴ we find a denial of views of reality (“no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings…”) and in the “right view with effluents” a corresponding positive statement about there actually being all the things that we believe there are.

My question in reading this was, if this is a statement about the necessity for a belief in karma and rebirth, embedded in a larger teaching, what exactly did the portions about “given, offered, sacrificed” and the bits about mothers, fathers, and so on have to do with it?

The answer, the key, came in the closing of the sutta where the Buddha tells us what inspired this particular talk. Back to Bhikkhus Nanamoli and Bodhi’s Wisdom Press version:

38. “Bhikkhus, even those teachers from Okkala, Vassa and Bhanna, who held the doctrine of non-causality, the doctrine of non-doing, and the doctrine of nihilism, would not think that this Dhamma discourse on the Great Forty should be censured and rejected….”

Notes in the back tell us we don’t know who “Vassa and Bhanna” were, we have no other reference to them, and it is quite understandable how we could interpret this as two teachers from Okkala. And yet, there are three doctrines listed: non-causality, non-doing, and nihilism. Shouldn’t there be three teachers? Perhaps one from Okkala, one from Vassa, one from Bhanna? Or several teachers from Okkala, plus one guy named Vassa and one named Bhanna? What their names were and where they were from is a minor point, what is critical is that the Buddha made reference to THREE schools of thought.

Let’s look at them one-by one.

“Causality” in the Buddha’s day was the Vedic understanding that “as below, thus above; as above, so below” – that there was correspondence between the two realms, and that what we did down here in our rituals was what kept things running smoothly up there, which in turn kept things running smoothly down here. Cause and effect, for Brahmins of the day, was all about understanding and correctly performing the sacrifices. The teaching of “non-causality” would hold that all of that was meaningless, had no effect at all.

The second school of “non-doing” is a denial of kamma. “Kamma” to the people of the time was “action” – perhaps originating in “ritual action” and even “doing one’s duty” in one’s role in society, but slipping over into moral action as time went on. So a doctrine of “non-doing” would be a denial of kamma having any effect at all.

The third school is “nihilism” – a flat denial that what we understand about the world has anything at all to do with reality – it’s all mind-created objects, all dualities, what we understand of the world is not real at all. The opposite of that would of course be that mind-objects aren’t mind-objects at all, rather, that the way we understand the world is accurate.

Now let’s go back up to the “wrong view” above and match these up.

• ² non-causality: “There is nothing given, nothing offered, nothing sacrificed.”
• ³ non-doing: “There is no fruit or result of good or bad actions.”
• ⁴ nihilism: “There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings; no priests or contemplatives who, faring rightly & practicing rightly, proclaim this world & the next after having directly known & realized it for themselves.”

Clearly, the Buddha is saying that holding any of these three views is wrong view.

Next let’s match them up to “right view with taints/effluents”

• ² causality: “There is what is given, what is offered, what is sacrificed.”
• ³ action: “There are fruits & results of good & bad actions.”
• ⁴ the world is as we believe it to be: “There is this world & the next world. There is mother & father. There are spontaneously reborn beings; there are priests & contemplatives who, faring rightly & practicing rightly, proclaim this world & the next after having directly known & realized it for themselves.”

Here he is saying these three are good views – not perfect views, obviously, since they are with “taints” or “effluents” but way better than the views held in the “wrong view” section.

Finally, the last section listing “right view that is without effluents, transcendent, a factor of the path” mentions none of these doctrines. Instead it suggests that the best path, the taintless path, is the one that’s about “discernment, the faculty of discernment, the strength of discernment, analysis of qualities as a factor for Awakening, the path factor of right view of one developing the noble path whose mind is noble, whose mind is free from effluents, who is fully possessed of the noble path.”

“One whose mind is free from effluents.”

I could understand why the Buddha would teach that nihilism was wrong; and given how many Buddhist traditions state that the Buddha taught kamma and rebirth it would make sense within that view that he would teach that denial of action as bearing fruit was a wrong view; but why the heck would he teach that denying the effectiveness of Brahminical sacrifice was wrong?

The answer lies within the “right view with effluents” saying that the three doctrines: Vedic sacrifice, belief in kamma, and belief that the world is as we think it is (including our views about spontaneously reborn beings, and recluses who have seen this world and the next for themselves) are good but tainted. He is saying that “These three views are preferable to their opposites, for they lead to moral action.” These are good paths, mundane paths, for regular folk to take. If they can’t see the Dhamma directly through discernment, these paths are all still reflective of good people doing their best. They are still going to be “affected by taints” (clinging to views?), “partaking of merit” (still clinging to something they feel they must acquire?), “ripening in the acquisitions” (of merit? of suffering?) ⁵

This seems to me a very elegant support for the contention that the Buddha was tolerant of other people’s paths, for here he is offering them gentle support for their beliefs, and only just saying (not ranting) that his way is better.

My conclusion, then, after applying the key of the three wrong doctrines to the teaching on three kinds of views is that if this sutta has the Buddha supporting the doctrine of kamma, it also has him supporting the doctrines of Brahminical causality and the value of ritual sacrifice, as well as the view that what we believe about the world is absolutely true.

If.

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Added Note: This post has an update

1. in double brackets[↩]
2. A[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
3. B[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
4. C[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
5. It seems I may have to learn Pali.[↩]