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Speaking Only From Direct Experience

January 7th, 2010 . Posted in MN 38 Destruction of Craving, paticca samuppada, Rebirth, Suttas, Translating | 2 Comments »
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(As in all my posts involving Pali you are quite welcome to skim the parts about the process of translation if it bores you; it’s there so that it’s available to those who may be interested in the difficulty of translating from the original texts, or who may care about the variety of ways in which texts can be spun. In general my posts are less about translation than about the dhamma, and it’s conversation about the way we see the dhamma in our lives that interests me most; the details of translation are toward the back of the field of horses in the race for my attention.)

If the previous encounters with suttas and Pali had convinced me but not quite motivated me to learn that ancient language, watching the antic dicing and slicing of certain prolific posters on the amazon.com Buddhism forum finally did succeed in kicking my butt into gear. I started working my way painfully slowly through Rune E.A. Johansson’s “Pali Buddhist Texts: An Introductory Reader and Grammar” in mid-December and only today have managed to get to the end of the first puny chunk of a sutta, in this case from the Majjhima Nikaya (I 265 “Experience is the Only Criterion”) but, ah, the reward at the end was worth the effort, even if it made me want to cry.

In this piece the Buddha has apparently just finished discussing Dependent Origination with the monks, and he asks them whether they would in the future base their talk of the dhamma on respect for their teacher, to which they say they would not. He asks if they would speak about that which other recluses had told them? Certain not! He asks if (once having understood Dependent Origination) they would go off and seek a different teacher, or might they return to observing the old rites and ceremonies of ordinary recluses and Brahmins; they would not do either.

In the penultimate line spoken by the Buddha, he asks if the monks would speak only of the things they had found out for themselves, having seen and known it personally. The author’s translation leaves out the word “only”. His translation is:

“Monks, do you not speak that which is known by yourselves, seen by yourselves, found by yourselves?”

Yet the vocabulary for this bit includes “only” – I assume he left it out because he felt that “by yourselves” carried that meaning but I think that leaving that word out – it is repeated twice in the Pali – caused a loss of the force of what the Buddha was actually saying.

The word translated as “only” is “eva” and the whole sentence in Pali looks like this:

Nanu bhikkhave yad-eva tumhākam sāmam ñātam, sāmam dittham sāmam viditam tad-eva tumhe vadethāti.

Using his vocabulary we have:

Nanu: Is it not?
bhikkhave: monks
yad: which
eva: only
tumhākam: you
sāmam: self
nātam: known
dittham: seen
viditam: found
tad: it
eva: only
tumhe: you
vadethati: do speak (with the “ti” at the end of the word being a sort of question-mark)

So we have something like: “Is it not, monks, only that which you(r)self have known, self seen, self found, it only you do speak?”

The active verb in Pali usually comes at the end of the sentence (as it does in modern Hindi). The ending verbal phrase with its subject and object is “tad-eva tumhe vadethāti” (it only you do speak) which then comes out as “you do speak (about) it only?” — smoothing it out a little more we have: “Do you speak about only that?”

But what is it he’s asking that they only speak about? It is that which “ tumhākam sāmam ñātam sāmam dittham sāmam viditam” or “you self know, self see, self found” — the “you” going with “self” in the first is understood as part of “self” (sāmam) in each part of that phrase, so we might say, “you yourself know, yourself see, yourself found”.

Now we have “Do you speak about only that which you yourself know, yourself see, yourself found?”

But we are still missing the front of the sentence. Let’s start by including yad-eva (which only). We already have a “which only” (tad-eva) which relates to the verbal clause about “speaking” at the end. So this “which only” (yad-eva) coming from the middle, before the phrase about knowing, seeing, finding – relates to that phrase: “which only yourself know, yourself see, yourself found”. Almost done, we have (roughly):

“Do you speak about only that which only yourself know, yourself see, yourself found?”

That seems a bit ambiguous. “Which only yourself know” could mean that they should only speak about things for which they have the only bit of knowledge in the whole wide world. That does not seem likely to be what the Buddha is trying to say, so perhaps we need to look at the context of this thought: the Buddha started by asking the group if they would base what they say on what their respected teacher says, or on what other teachers said, and they said they would not. Why would the Buddha get them to say they would not base what they say on what he said? The answer lies here: He is asking them to speak from what they know by themselves only, have seen by themselves only, have found out for themselves only. He’s talking about direct experience. With the context provided, we can now understand that the other “only” refers to their individual actions of coming to know, see, and find out. The “only” does not relate to exclusive knowledge. We can now make the sentence flow the way it should in English:

“Do you speak only about that which you came to know yourself, saw yourself, found yourself?”

Working back to the front of the sentence where we have “monks” and “is it not?” the Buddha might have put it this way in our times:

“Is it not so, monks, that you speak only about that which you came to know yourself, saw yourself, found yourself?”

That’s pretty good but it still loses the force of the double “only” in the sentence. To put that back in I’d revise again:

“Is it not so, monks, that you speak only about that which you came to know through your own efforts only, saw for yourself, found out by direct experience?”

What the Buddha said at the start of this piece – and his monks agreed – was that we should not be speaking about what our teachers say is so, however venerated they may be, even if our teacher is the Buddha himself. We should limit ourselves to discussing that which we have personally found out, seen, and that we know from our own experience. This point is reinforced by the final line (as translated by Mr. Johansson):

“Good, monks! You, monks, have been instructed by me through this timeless doctrine which can be realized and verified, leads to the goal, and can be understood individually by the intelligent.”

We can verify it for ourselves by realizing it in our own lives. The verification is as important as the realization, really, and we should only be talking about that which we have personally verified.

But, you may ask, what is it that makes me want to cry? It’s this:

I spend more time than I perhaps ought to perusing Buddhist forums on the internet where followers of the Buddha’s path spend a great deal of time discussing what they have been told or read. Debates are held over practices and tenets passed on out of respect for a very long and ancient lineage. Within these traditions some members are reputed to have verified — through their own direct experience — that karma and rebirth* represent the true workings of the cosmos and so are a valid and important part of the Buddha’s path. I cannot, of course, say whether they experienced these things or not – it was their experience, not mine, and it is not my place to make judgments; nor is it my place to defend their views — as the Buddha points out in the above snippet, we should stick to discussing what we know from our own experience, not from someone else’s.

Just for a foolish moment, I imagined a history in which the Buddha’s disciples had put at the forefront of their vows that they would do as the Buddha had asked and “speak only about that which they came to know through their individual efforts only, saw for themselves, found out by direct experience” and that they had never spent time on parts of what they were taught that they had not personally experienced. I saw a dhamma passed through the ages with a strong inoculation against all speculative views, and it was that view of some alternate reality in which the uncluttered heart of the Buddha’s teaching had remained easily visible and understandable that made me want to weep.

* among many other things

In Translation, but not just from the Pali to English

October 18th, 2009 . Posted in A K Warder, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Bhikkhu Nanamoli, Buddhist Vocabulary, MN 117 Great Forty, Richard F Gombrich, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Translating | 2 Comments »
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I spent the day yesterday making my first fool attempt at translating a sutta from Pali into English.  I did this for a few reasons.  One is that the particular sutta, MN 117, suddenly seems important to me, since I saw something in its depths that I don’t think others have noticed (see my previous post for the details).  The other reason is that I really wanted to know what words were used in certain spots, and where else they had been used, and what other translators and dictionaries had given as translations of those words, because the varieties I have seen are so different from each other, and the possible meanings carry a lot of weight when trying to understand what’s being said by someone so important and so far away in time and culture.

The aspects that are of greatest concern to me in this sutta are that:

(1) It starts off saying it is about Right Concentration with its supports and requisites – and then says very little about concentration, which would indicate that it is an indirect lesson and likely full of subtlety.

(2) From the evidence of the references at the end, it is clearly an answer to three doctrines current in the day, “non-causality”, “the doctrine of non-doing”, and “nihilism”, and these are reflected in the text. In his last lines the Buddha says these three philosophers would not consider rejecting this teaching for fear of blame, attack and confutation, so he feels he’s answered their points.

(3) The sutta lists two “Right Views” and I want to know what he meant that the difference is between them.

There is no way I can answer these questions yet; I didn’t get that far.  For one thing, the dictionaries I have access to didn’t have all of the critical terms I needed, for another, I don’t know Pali grammar yet.  I have a lot more work to do, and you’ll probably get to watch me struggling, now and then, with these concepts as this blog proceeds onward.

One interesting word captured most of my time and attention, and that was “sasava”.

The two phrases for the difference between the two kinds of Right Views, in Pali, is:

(a) sammadinnhi sasava pubbabhagiya upadhivepakka
and
(b) sammadinnhi ariya anasava lokuttara maggaiga

In these two versions, “sammadinni” is “right belief” (right views) and the difference between these two ways of believing are in the following three or four words in the phrases.  “Sasava” I found listed as  “connected with the depravities” in two dictionaries.  “pubbabhagiya” means “former or previous” and though I didn’t find “upadhivepakka” spelled just that way (the one-letter change could be a grammatical shift) “upadhi” means “substratum of rebirth; attachment” and “vipakka” is “fully ripe”.  So just slamming these words together in a tentative translation I have:

(a) right belief connected with the depravities previous attachments (or rebirth?) fully ripe

Doing the same for (b) we have the difference beginning at “ariya” which is, of course, “noble”, “anasava” which is “free from intoxicants; passionless”, “lukuttara” which is “super-mundane”, and “maggaiga” which is “the constituents of the path”.  So:

(b) right belief noble, passionless, super-mundane, constituent of the path.

Making an attempt to smooth these out a bit we have two forms of Right View:

(a) Right belief connected to the depravities, fully ripened in their attachments (or rebirth?);
(b) Noble right belief which is passionless, supramundane, a factor of the path.

In looking at various translations, I noticed that the entry for MN 117 on Access to Insight (1) referenced the word “asava” instead of the “sasava” that I found on the Sri Lankan Tipitaka site (2) (at the end of the 7th paragraph down).  I thought I should go check the meaning of “asava” in case it is the opposite of  “sasava” but no, the definition I found was multiple: “that which flows; spirit; discharge from a sore; ideas which intoxicate the mind” so not the opposite of “sasava”.  I found the opposite to be “anasava” which means “free from intoxicants, passionless”.

This definition of “asava” explained the mildly worded “with effluents” on Access to Insight, “effluents” being something which flows. And I suppose that “taints” (as seen in the Nanamoli/Bodhi translation of the Majjhima Nikaya (3)) is a very polite word for “discharge from a sore” – quite understated.

I find it illuminating to look at the choices of words used in a translation, and what other words can be used.

The translations I have for phrase (a) are:

From (1): “There is right view with effluents [asava], siding with merit, resulting in the acquisitions [of becoming]
From (3)  “…right view that is affected by taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions”

Where might “merit” and “acquisitions” come from?  From “upadhivepakka” where “upadhi” means “substratum of rebirth; attachment” and “vipakka” is “fully ripe”?

I had wanted to know what [the brackets] meant. In (1) it refers to the word being translated [perhaps meaning something like: “I used “asava” instead of “sasava” here] and since “bhava” is the word I know as “becoming” and it isn’t in there, nor any version of “becoming” that I could find in any of the Pali dictionary entries I had, I assume [the brackets] around “of becoming” mean “I’m adding for clarification because I feel it should be in the original but isn’t; or it is somehow ‘understood'”.

Then, just in time to distract me from all this – sort of — the book I’d been looking forward to, “What the Buddha Thought” by Richard Gombrich arrived, and so I’ll drop my attempts at translation and learning Pali until I have thoroughly digested this great read.  However I will note that even in his Introduction, he has several things to say that shed light on the issues of translating the Pali suttas into English.  For example this from a section called “Terminology and Clarity”:

One of my teachers, the Ven. Dr Walpola Rahula, was given to saying that one could teach Buddhism to a non-Buddhist audience in their own language without using any foreign words at all.  I agree.  And yet at the same time I have always held that if one wants fully to grasp the meaning of a Buddhist text, one needs to read it in the original language…

[He then goes on to point out that the words explaining a “system of ideas” are not as concrete as nouns like “nose, tree, cup” and even “cup” comes with context – my coffee cup looking quite different from one that holds tea in China.  He finishes this thought and goes on:] …Nevertheless, once the word ‘cup’ is used in a context, it is often no problem to convey what it refers to with enough precision to serve the needs of communication.

The translation of abstractions is much more problematic.  This is not just because the terms do not have precise equivalents in foreign languages, though in the case of abstractions the ambiguities and semantic range of a term may well baffle translators and those dependent on their translations….

… The meaning of Buddhist texts is never going to be clear to us if we stick to reading word-for-word translations, or exegesis which clings closely to such translations….

But how huge might be the influence of the translators’ understanding of the underlying meaning on end results of their translations? What words do we choose, and why?  Even a word as vague and insubstantial as “supermundane” has a wide range of synonyms, all of which give it a different twist:

  • abstract
  • bodiless
  • deep
  • difficult
  • eternal
  • fundamental
  • high-flown
  • ideal
  • intangible
  • intellectual
  • mystical
  • nonmaterial
  • profound
  • supernatural
  • theoretical
  • transcendental
  • universal

are just some from Thesaurus.com.  What different spins of meaning do we get from calling the second “Right View” “mystical” or “difficult”?  We have probably seen this word translated in texts as “eternal” and “profound” as well as “transcendental” but maybe “bodiless” and “intellectual” and “non-material” are what’s meant, in a sutta about the supports for meditation, “Right Concentration”?

My short foray into translating failed to convince me that the translations I see of “The Great Forty” (MN 117) have found the full meaning of its teaching, but continuing to read, in this case a bit of A.K. Warder’s “On the Relationship Between Early Buddhism and Other Contemporary Systems” (available for a fee at jstor.org) while I waited for the Gombrich book to arrive, shifts me back from “I don’t think the Buddha taught karma as part of his path” toward “Surely he was truly an agnostic.” In this section Warder is talking about the competing heretical philosophies of the day:

Whereas the Ajivakas as determinists were concerned with exact analysis and prediction, and the Jainas with the detailed compensation and elimination of the undesirable tendencies, the Buddhists saw their release from suffering as a simple relinquishing or transcending of all tendencies or categories whatsoever. Penance was unnecessary to wear out bad karma, knowledge of the causation of suffering sufficient to turn the suffering person away from the cause of his troubles even in ‘serious cases ‘ of bad karma; a good teacher could thus effect the sudden release of many people who otherwise might have gone on in ignorance transmigrating according to past karma and building up more undesirable tendencies for the future. Hence the obscurity of the meanings of the terms did not matter and the primary interest was directed to an overall picture of the Universe…

This caused me to think of the end of the Kalama sutta, in which the Buddha argues that the current views don’t really matter, because you have assurance that by following his path, “if” karma is an actual Law of the Universe, you’re covered; if it is not, well, you’ve reduced your suffering in this life; if the Universal Law requires that you are punished for evil actions, with this path  you won’t be doing those acts; if that is not the Law, you’ll still have led a good life.  Maybe the Buddha really didn’t know which set of Laws ruled, maybe he simply knew that it didn’t matter, since his path had every which way covered.  Maybe that’s why he included karma and rebirth in his teachings, since it was the predominant view and it was a good enough path (though not as good at relieving suffering as having no views at all) and just maybe, given the difficulty of translating from words that were left vague in the first place, we have not yet got a precise understanding of what the Buddha actually taught.  I know I don’t.

If the Buddha Taught Karma and Rebirth, He Also Taught Ritual Sacrifice (and that the world exists just as we believe it to be)

October 8th, 2009 . Posted in Bhikkhu Bodhi, Bhikkhu Nanamoli, causality / non-causality, kamma, MN 117 Great Forty, nihilism, non-action, Rebirth, Richard F Gombrich, Suttas, Thanissaro Bhikkhu | 5 Comments »
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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.

*~*~*~*

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.[↩]

Not the sharpest tool

September 30th, 2009 . Posted in Intro to SB, meditation (concentration), monkey mind, youtube | No Comments »
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Because, for me, meditation tends to a bit of a grind, I’ve set the title of my most recent upload to youtube to poke a little fun at how dull it can be. I have to push myself to “sit” and I often blame those background-running cognitive processes (also known in popular Buddhist parlance as “monkey mind”) for sabotaging my best intentions. It’s a conspiracy theory! Those processes have self-protecting memes that don’t want me to sit and learn how to let go of my egocentric notions, so they are going to keep telling me I have better things to do. Sometimes, those thoughts seem a little nuts. Sometimes, they seem quite logical. Ah, duality.

Anyway, here is a link to a text file that has the instructions for simple breathing meditation as given in the video.

Instead of Buddhism, Try Critical Thinking

September 23rd, 2009 . Posted in Critical thinking, responses to comments | 6 Comments »
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The very first comment I’ve gotten on the talks posted to youtube was left soon after I put up SB002: Why Skeptical Buddhism? The writer questions the value of the choice of looking deeply into Buddhism when instead “one would be better served by honing critical thinking skills and general skepticism.”  An interesting criticism.

My first response is to ask a question: “How does one best hone critical thinking skills and general skepticism?”  Is it simply by sitting quietly alone, or going on long walks, or looking silently at life passing by and thinking, thinking, thinking about it?  Will that sharpen up critical thinking, and help us see reasons for skepticism?  It might, for some.

Next question: “Is there a faster way to improve our critical thinking skills and provide firmer ground for our skepticism?” Perhaps by studying the philosophies and methods of other critical thinkers and skeptics?  Allowing them to teach us?  Taking courses?  Discussing critical thinking with others?  Maybe taking a class on The History of Skepticism would provide some perspective.

It seems to me that most of us would agree that finding wise teachers, and discussing the issues that concern our critical, skeptical minds is going to serve us to better in honing our critical thinking skills, as well as give us much-needed context and the balance of others’ points of view as well.  Better than what?  Better than turning our backs on wise teachers, and discourse with alert and thoughtful companions.

Which is, in part, what Skeptical Buddhism offers: At least one wise teacher (though dead), and very likely more than one if we seek out prospective teachers with our critical-thinking skills activated; historical perspective; modern perspective; and a community of people actively seeking wisdom more than answers. It seems to me that “delving deeply into the teaching of Buddhism” is one quite valid path – if I devote a lot of time to it that doesn’t mean I’ve closed myself off to other paths. I listen to Point of Inquiry podcasts, and read philosophy and social theory, and even take long walks and think, think, think.

I devote a lot of time to the practice of the Buddhist path in part because of the wise teachers, in part because of contact with thoughtful and supportive peers, but also in part because Buddhism offers something that reading books, taking classes, discussing with others, and spending a lot of time considering things critically does not offer: a set of skills I can practice that gives me actual experience  in how all that philosophy fits into my particular life, skills that improve my ability to carry out the commitments I wish to make based on my understanding of the world as it is, and the place I would like to have in it.

An example* of the difference between “honing critical thinking skills and general skepticism” and “delving deeply into the teachings of Buddhism” is the difference between understanding that I shouldn’t speak in anger, in the heat of the moment, to my kids, and being able to actually refrain from doing so because I both understand the reasons for keeping my mouth shut and have the skill set to support it.

I imagine a question coming in out of the ether asking why, then, I can’t just take the skill set out of Buddhism, and leave its philosophy behind, and that way I can stick to critical thinking and separately practice the mechanics formerly part of “Buddhism”.

I have recently seen discussion of removing meditation and mindfulness from their Buddhist setting, but those two things alone are shallow, and therefore not enough to actually shift my understanding of myself, the world, and the way I operate in it, not enough to make any great difference in the way I behave.  I know this, because for years I tried those things without quite understanding what it was the Buddha taught except on a distantly theoretical level, and while the theoretical understanding was a fine thing, it didn’t have much effect on me.

It took understanding all the pieces and how they fit, before I was able to make sustained change in my life.  I had to practice seeing the new view for myself, and learn how to focus on seeing how my old view of the world tangled me up and stole my power to do what was right. I had to put the pieces – the total view (philosophy) and the practice (skills) together – before real change happened.

So in my experience, this one is better served by letting Buddhism do what it does best: open my eyes to what it means to be a human, a complex but ephemeral creature interwoven of experience and desires, of regrets and fond memories, of dreams and schemes.  I will let it support me in a moment-by-moment practice of being that human, seeing clearly what’s in my power and what is not, and being awed by the clear view of both.  I will use the teachings as the string around my finger, always reminding me to pay attention because there are so very many assumptions deep in my personal operating system that otherwise I may forget to question.

* which may or may not be relevant to my particular life; I’m not telling

What is Skeptical Buddhism?

September 14th, 2009 . Posted in Buddhist Vocabulary, dhamma, Intro to SB, kamma, youtube | 2 Comments »
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Saturday I was at the library reading stories from the Pali canon, which started out as a bit of a grind.  I had already read several short pieces that lacked the setting and author; most of the suttas start out with the place and players but this whole series of them lacked attribution and setting, and most of them seemed like late additions, so I was frustrated.  Then I came on a wonderful tale — full of holes, but with good bone structure, that is, my imagination could fill in the gaps left by those who had trimmed the tale over the years — and that made the previous hours and hours feel worthwhile.

Somewhere in the middle of working my way through trying to figure out what might really have gone on during this story, I found my thoughts turning over the possibility of an Introduction to Skeptical Buddhism for youtube.  By the time I’d finished with the sutta, I felt I’d done enough work to reward myself by writing the outline for the first talk, which just flowed from brain through fingertips to bits to phosphorescent glows on the screen.  I love it when that happens.

When I got home, I dug into creating the first video and found it was surprisingly easy to do with free tools.  I started with a free teleprompter script called Telekast, then located Microsoft’s Movie Maker which was already on my PC, and, well, you don’t need the whole list (the rest is in the credits at the end of the video anyway).  It was sheer luck that my first attempt ended at just seconds under ten minutes — the opening title and credits brought it right up to ten — because I hadn’t known youtube had a limit.  I’m going to be challenged to do a series in such small chunks; brevity is not in my nature.

This first video introduces my avatar, Star, from Second Life, and then discusses what Skeptical Buddhism is, and (very tentatively) introduces a few Buddhist terms — karma, Buddha, dharma, and sangha.

One of the interesting things about Buddhism, one that gives it a lot of its flavor and mystery, but also adds to confusion for beginners, is the really fluid definition of certain words.  The great teachers out there often tell us that each word has several meanings — dharma, for example, can mean “the teaching, the truth, the body of work under the Buddha’s name, the correct view, the law” and, I expect, a few I have forgotten to include — and we have to figure out from context which one is meant.  But it seems to me in my reading that what’s meant is usually all of those meanings at the same time but with one pushed a little more to the front of the thoughts in any particular usage.  This makes understanding almost impossible for those who are stuck on the context we Westerners have given the terms; a challenge for those who have just begun to understand that “karma” doesn’t mean the same to the Buddha as it does to us; gives a sweet subtlety when we begin to understand it; and, when we really get it,  has the effect of forming threads that bind the whole teaching together in a way that is just stunningly beautiful.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy the first in the series and will come back for more.  SB002 is already rambling around in my brain looking for the path to escape into the real world, so it won’t be long now till there’s another episode up.

Namasté!

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