One of my favorite places to hang out online lately is on The Secular Buddhist’s fan page on Facebook, where there was a recent discussion that began with The Secular Buddhist’s post:
We have an idea that enlightenment is a fundamental change in the person – but there is no externally measurable criteria. This results in not so nice folks making claims that can’t be disputed, and good people giving up because some magic hasn’t happened instead of continuing with this ongoing development practice.
Various points were made, leading up to a comment that:
The Buddha boldly and unabashedly claimed he was awake (e.g. “enlightened”). He even said he was not a man (!) but was awake!”
I was intrigued to hear that the Buddha had said he was not a man, so I asked for a citation; it appears this derives from AN 4.36, the Dona Sutta. We can find the translation that generates the sense that the Buddha said he was not a man right here on AccessToInsight.org where, sure enough, it has the Buddha answering questions about who he is:
“Master, are you a deva?”
“No, brahman, I am not a deva.”
“Are you a gandhabba?”
“No…”
“… a yakkha?”
“No…”
“… a human being?”
“No, brahman, I am not a human being.”
The first thing I did was look the sutta up in my PTS version from 1933, and find a note that says that this is a commonly mistranslated sutta:
“This passage has hitherto been mistranslated. The brahmin does not ask ‘Are you…?’ but uses the future tense common to the verbs ‘be’ and ‘become’. The Buddha replies, not ‘I am not (these things),’ but ‘shall not become,’ also using the future. The gathas clearly imply that he will not again ‘become’ any one of these creatures.” [F.L.Woodward]
Taking nothing on faith, I decided to have a look at the Pali, which looks like this:
“devo no bhavaṃ bhavissatī”ti? “na kho ahaṃ, brāhmaṇa, devo bhavissāmī”ti. “gandhabbo no bhavaṃ bhavissatī”ti? “na kho ahaṃ, brāhmaṇa, gandhabbo bhavissāmī”ti. “yakkho no bhavaṃ bhavissatī”ti? “na kho ahaṃ, brāhmaṇa, yakkho bhavissāmī”ti. “manusso no bhavaṃ bhavissatī”ti? “na kho ahaṃ, brāhmaṇa, manusso bhavissāmī”ti.
The important words are the “bhavissatī” in the brahmin’s questions, and the “bhavissāmī” in the Buddha’s answer. These seem to be forms of “bhavati” which means “becomes; to be; exists”. The closest form I could find of it to match the words in use in our quote had a few differences: long “a” in the “bhav” and an “e” instead of an “i” in the middle. It is the future causative form of “bhava” and looks like this:
| Singular | Plural | |
| 3rd person | bhāvessati | bhāvessanti |
| 2nd person | bhāvessasi | bhāvessatha |
| 1st person | bhāvessāmi | bhāvessāma |
Poking around in dictionaries led me to the suggestion that I look for similar forms, specifically in the word “hoti” which is also about “being” (“to be, exists”). Its future active tense looks like this:
| Singular | Plural | |
| 3rd person | hessati | hessanti |
| 2nd person | hohisi | hessatha |
| 1st person | hessāmi | hessāma |
The first person and third person singular endings are a perfect match for forms of “bhavati” as used in the questions and answers we’re looking at, and the two vowel changes may simply be artifacts of changes in form over time. They could also represent some subtle difference in meaning that we haven’t grasped, but that is not likely to be some huge change in tense. Whereas the present tense — which was used in the translation above — can hardly be mistaken for what is in the Pali. The present tense of “bhavati” looks like this:
| Singular | Plural | |
| 3rd person | bhavati | bhavanti |
| 2nd person | bhavasi | bhavatha |
| 1st person | bhavāmi | bhavāma |
It seems the “ess” in the middle is an indicator of the future tense.
Just to be sure, I did a search of the suttas in the four central volumes (DN, MN, SN, AN) and found “bhavessati” appearing 217 times, by far the most popular variant of the future tense. I looked at several suttas. The first use was present tense but could as well have taken future tense, ‘The ascetic Gotama bears me ill-will…” could as easily have been said “…will bear me ill will…” (DN 3) but all the rest were either clearly future tense
- “know that after death they will be better off…” (DN 23)
- “I have brought it back to you as a playmate for your child” (it will be a playmate) (MN 56)
- “…that will be helpful for the Sangha.” (MN 81)
- “all suffering will be exhausted.” (MN 83)
or on the cusp between present and future:
- “He is called old, prince, because he has not long to live.” (DN 14)
or hovered on the edge of future tense and optative’s wishing (would, could, should)
- “should attain to union with Brahma” (DN 13)
- “that there could be such a form of individual existence!” (SN 19.21)
When I got to SN 22.62 “The Pathways of Language” I felt I’d struck oil, since it is being extremely precise and clear about the use of tense in language. For example, the talk opens with:
“yaṃ, bhikkhave, rūpaṃ atītaṃ niruddhaṃ vipariṇataṃ ‘ahosī’ti tassa saṅkhā, ‘ahosī’ti tassa samaññā, ‘ahosī’ti tassa paññatti; na tassa saṅkhā ‘atthī’ti, na tassa saṅkhā ‘bhavissatī’”ti. “
“Whatever form has passed, ceased, changed: the term, label, and description ‘was’ applies to it, not the term ‘is’ or the term ‘will be.'” [Connected Discourses of the Buddha, Bhikkhu Bodhi, page 905]
The “will be” is that final “bhavissatī“.
And then we have the definition of what “bhavissatī” means:
“yaṃ viññāṇaṃ ajātaṃ apātubhūtaṃ, ‘bhavissatī’ti tassa saṅkhā, ‘bhavissatī’ti tassa samaññā, ‘bhavissatī’ti tassa paññatti; na tassa saṅkhā ‘atthī’ti, na tassa saṅkhā ‘ahosī’”ti.
“Whatever consciousness has not been born, has not become manifest: the term, label, and description ‘will be’ applies to it, not the term ‘is’ or the term ‘was’.”
This seems to indicate quite clearly that “bhavissati” is a future tense. So our original conversation should read:
“Master, will you become a deva?”
“No, brahman, I will not become a deva.”
“Will you become a gandhabba?”
“No…”
“… a yakkha?”
“No…”
“Will you become a human being?”
“No, brahman, I will not become a human being.”
After all, hasn’t the Buddha said, “This was the last birth, having done what needed to be done, there is no more becoming”?
Linda —
Your usual fine job. Two thoughts — surely BB had the PTS version available to him, notes and all. Later in the same sutta, TBO is clearly using the future conditional tense, which is consistent with saying what he won’t become (be reborn as). BB trying to make TBO claim to be supernatural?
It is remarkable, isn’t it. At the bottom of the sutta are some of Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s notes, and it’s workable reasoning, I suppose. But if I were to use similar reasoning, I’d be told I was bending the sutta to conform to what I already believe. For this reason I try not to mess with the grammar — at least not until I get to a final version. I’ll often have a graceless version that is grammatically correct, carries some sense, but is hard for us to read comfortably in English, and will bend the grammar and order just a little in the final version, but I try to keep it all in the original tense.
So we are left with “maybe the Buddha said he is not a man, and maybe he just said he would not be one when reborn.” At any rate I would not rest any tenet of my conviction in what the Buddha is saying (in general) on him having stated that as he lived and breathed and taught, he was no longer human.
Hi Linda
The form is obviously a future tense (the tell-tale is the -iss- infix). You might have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you had read Thanissaro’s notes, particular footnote no.2. There he explains, with reference to Warder p.54-5 (which uses bhavissati as one of it’s examples!) that the future tense also expresses perplexity, surprise, and wonder. And of course Dona is very surprised because he “saw, in the Blessed One’s footprints, wheels with 1,000 spokes, together with rims and hubs, complete in all their features.”
Imagine that Dona is Irish… “Will you be a man?”. Getting the hang of Pāli idiom takes a lot longer than getting to grips with the basic grammar.
What is perplexing is that Bhikkhu Bodhi completely missed this nuance in his translation and opted for a literal reading over Thanissaro’s idiomatic one. However AA clearly thinks it refers to the future (AA iii.78), and where there is any doubt Bodhi inevitably follows the commentary. I would not put any faith in Woodward – bless him for putting in so much effort, but he was a lousy translator. So this is one of those rare occasions when I think Thanissaro has produced the best translation.
Whatever it says, you appear to take it all very literally. Does this mean that you also believe that the Buddha had “wheels with 1,000 spokes, together with rims and hubs, complete in all their features” on the soles of his feet?
Nothing is lost in making myself quite familiar with the Pali forms. I am more likely to remember the grammar this way!
I can hear Dona looking at the footprints and saying, with wonder, “Who would this be?” I can hear him asking the Buddha, “Who will you be, then, a deva?” But I cannot hear the Buddha answering, “I will not be a deva.” If the Buddha understands that the question being asked is about the present, he would most likely have confirmed that by answering in the present, “I am not a deva.”
Or maybe this is, as you say, idiom. Do you have any clear examples in which someone was speaking (Pali with our imaginary Irish accent) asking such a question, and the answerer clearly recognizes the meaning as present tense, but answers in future also?
I would posit that “wheels within spokes” is the Brahmin’s point of view. The whole story is told from Dona’s point of view. Perhaps the wheels within spokes are the whorls on the soles of the feet that have their equivalent in our fingerprints. As he walked down the road he noticed that he could see these, and as any good reader of signs would know, this would require not just the ideal weather for the dust on the road to hold them (neither too dry, too wet, nor too windy) but someone walking quite slowly and mindfully to leave them behind. Wouldn’t you be impressed by such a one as that?
(Hopefully you can hear the smile in my voice as I write. I do not say “This is what happened” but I do say, “There can be many explanations.”)
I also wanted to say that I agree that Woodward is often very bad in his translations, but I actually find that helpful, because rather than reading a translation by a translator who is certain of what is being said, and conveys that certainty with clarity, I am given words related to the underlying Pali, that fit together loosely. This makes it easier to see many different possibilities in what the original meaning may have been.
[…] In 1994, the British Library obtained several decaying birch-bark scrolls with writing in an ancient Gandharan script. They contained a variety of Buddhist texts, and were dated back to the middle of the first century — to about the year 50 C.E. Though no one knows exactly where and how they were found, the evidence points to these texts having been buried in clay pots, probably in lieu of throwing them away, after they had been recopied for a library in what is now far eastern Afghanistan, somewhere around the area between Jalalabad and Peshawar, in what was a thriving and cultured area known as Gandhara. The texts are still partly readable, and cover a range of Buddhist works, and include a sutta (AN 4.36) recently discussed, in the post “I Am Not A Man.” […]
Quelle importance attacher aux propos rapportés, souvent traduit …parfois trahis, ces deux mots ont la même origine. Trahis inconsciemment je précise.
Le Bouddha a certainement refusé de rentrer dans ce jeu, pour un éveillé censé avoir une connaissance approfondie de la réalité des êtres et des choses, ce qu’il était n’avait aucune importance. Il avait tué son ego, conséquence directe de l’éveil, donc il n’était plus rien. Il savait que seul celui qui a perçu cela pouvait comprendre qu’il n’était plus que poussière. Mais une poussière qui agissait afin de permettre aux autres êtres humains de devenir à leur tour un bouddha. Cela fait parti des non-dits du Bouddha.
Que suis-je …cela n’a aucune importance, l’important c’est à quoi je sers
pour vous, pour tout les êtres, pour la nature qui est notre mère à tous.
Voila la seule réponse digne d’un Bouddha.
buddha said he was not a man. Then what was he?
Was he a dog? He was telling very complicated words
ko lay, you seem to be reacting just to the title to the post without understanding the post itself, because your question is answered in what I have written. The answer is: The Buddha *does not* say he was not a man, so there is no question to ask “then what was he?” It is not complicated at all, his answer is that he is awake. And by implication, what *else* he is, is not important enough to be concerned with. All that really matters is that he is awake. (Regimbeau charles says this above, too, I think — though in French.)
There’s a similar discussion about the use of the future tense in the “talk” page on the Dona Sutta on Wikipedia. The commentary by Stephen Hodge, who is quite authoritative on these matters, is worth reading. Though clearly he lost patience and left the article full of misinformation about how it should be read and understood.
Thanks for the pointer, Jayarava. An interesting read. The logic of Hodge’s answer, though, is pretty circular. I agree that the future tense is used to express surprise, and what’s “really” meant by it is a statement about the present tense. That doesn’t erase the fact that what’s used *is* the future tense, and that would make a play on words possible in Pali, just as it is in English, with the meaning of the future as present still being there. The text can be read either way, and without a time machine and the skills to go back and ask the Buddha what he meant, there is no way to be certain which is meant. I prefer to think the man was funny rather than deluded.