I'm not sure if it's the frustrated eternalism that accounts for the enthusiasm for rebirth and karma eschatologies in "the West." (I believe in 'scare' quotes when the words are scary.) Or at least it's not that only.
I tend to think it may be the heavy inculcation of, and subsequent psychological addiction to, guilt.
Not that you don't find regret / remorse / contrition in Buddhism (kauk.rtya/'gyod-pa, among the mental states that may or may not be obstructive or conducive to the Path [I do believe in using those capitals]). And what would all those confession rituals and recitations be for?
Guilt makes us very special people. We "westerners" love that inner gloating about how we will be made to pay for what bad things we've done. It connects past and future for us like a super-glue: I did this bad thing, this bad thing will happen to me when dad gets home...
Anyway, as always, enjoyed following your lines of thinking. I'd like to know how you find the energy to post every week. Are you using something? Do you imagine you will be punished if a Friday goes by without putting one up there?
I'd associate the concept of remorse with the words hrī and apatrapya.
Why is it a Path rather than a path? Sounds like eternalism to me :-) There isn't only one anyway - Buddhism is paths. I don't believe in absolutes, let alone Absolutes.
Your take on guilt doesn't accord with my experience, or my acquaintance with Catholics. Anyway eternalism is part of that same world view so it can't really be separated out and eliminated.
(1) What you claim is the Buddha's real eschatology (but lost), reminds me of variants of Christian eschatologies or Kingdom Theologies: One which is an other-worldly Heaven and the other is to transform our present world into a Heaven.
(2) Is Obeyesekere's book written concerning both Hindu and Buddhist thought, or is the Buddhist stuff your addition in this post?
(3) I must admit, I am a great skeptic of classic "East-West" idealizations. I wonder if in India, there aren't many Indians who take comfort in rebirth like Westerners do. I suspect people have similar tendencies all over the planet.
Having lived in Asia, as soon as their is affluence, people clamor for longevity and youthfulness. The only reason you may not see it in poorer populations is that other basic needs drown it out. I don't this it is an East-West thing.
Well that point about a possibly lost metaphor is specifically about how the word brahmavihara is interpreted and as far as I can tell has little or nothing to say about the "Buddha's real eschatology", which I also do not mention btw.
So it seems to me here that we are seeing your mind at work, not mine. ;-)
That's what I'm saying to you. That capitalizations do not in any way imply eternalism or absolutes. Capitalization is an important tool we have in English (so what if many other languages don't have it?), a potent tool of expressiveness / rhetoric (used for all sorts of personifications, for example) that we would be foolish to do away with them. Path, Vehicle, Enlightenment, Enlightened One and the like are used in a very special ways in Buddhism (and are highly respected, which is another thing), and initial capitalizations are so much better than scare quotes here.
Last I heard Mahâyâna theorists recognize three very different Paths. With many sub-variations. So what's to prevent from using the capital in the plural? Nothing. "Absolutely" nothing.
Btw, why DO you capitalize the 'w' in Western Buddhist? Hypostasization? Indeed.
I'm the last person to accuse of creationism or eternalism or absolutism. Really.
Now you've got me going, and I'll be too late for my therapeutic blasphemy session.
I'm already feeling guilty about sending this comment. And I'm also very sorry for missing the hri. You're right, and shame on me.
I will concede that it is this mind we may see at work! ;-)
Are there Buddhist sects which indeed do embrace a metaphorical interpretation of brahmavihara? Or are you saying most Buddhists just conveniently ignore it because their literal understanding makes it not fit their theology?
The words are not used in "very special ways" - they are sometimes used idiosyncratically, often ambiguously (dhamma is a bane to any translator!), but largely as the dictionary defines them, with perhaps some distinctive connotations which are entirely supported by context. If you mention "the path" [quotes, not scare quotes; definite article] in the context of a discussion on Buddhism, then I know pretty much what you mean, and you don't need to impress me with the specialness of the Buddhist path (after all I'm an ordained Buddhist and have made life-long vows to follow the Buddhist path - I'm unlikely to forget). I think it's basically insecurity on the part of a tiny minority religion in a Christian world where they capitalise religious texts on a pre-17th century model. We shouldn't buy into their world view.
It's quite interesting that the Romanised editions of the Pāli canon do not capitalise beyond the first word of each sentence: in the text I'm working on at the moment I find bhagavā, bhagavatā, bhante, dhammaṃ, dhammavinaye, ariyānaṃ, ariyadhammassa, ariyasāvako, etc. There's no need for capitals as we know what they mean, and if we are Buddhists then we understand the significance. I'm not a great one for flag waving - it's a bit unseemly, especially in a Buddhist.
Who knows what Mahāyānavāda says about paths? Not me. Don't know, and frankly don't care. But I do know they wrote in Sanskrit using a variety of Brahmī based scripts, many of which I can read, and they did not use capital letters because they did not have any. Half the time they didn't bother with sentence breaks!
I'm inconsistent on my capitalisation of Western. But I vaguely understand that when referring to the culture rather than the direction, then West is a proper noun, and by convention is capitalised. The West is in the west only to some extent, as I myself was born 175 degrees east of Greenwich, and 38 degrees south of the equator (diametrically opposed to western Europe), and even sometimes claim not to be a Westerner at all, but a South-Easterner. I'm not a western Buddhist in the sense that I now live in the west of Europe, though I do; but a Western Buddhist in the sense that I am a member of that culture which takes in North America, most of Europe, and the many of the former colonies of the above (including my former home Aotearoa New Zealand), but largely originates in western Europe. When I say I am a Western Buddhist I name my culture, not advert to my direction in space.
Perhaps I'll have a rule about capitals in comments...
Best Wishes Jayarava
Friday, October 15, 2010
gruff said...
Fascinating post. Good point about rebirth being seen as desirable in the west. Dependent origination too is often explained as "we are all one" positive thinking, when in the Buddha's usage it is pure suffering.
Dear Jayarava, I sometimes read your impassioned metaphysical comments on Buddhism. I am impressed by your interpretation of rebirth as 'echatological" phenomenon. I would be interested in your comments on Jain theory of rebirth. Permit me to give a link to my "The Rise, Decline And Renewals Of Sramanic Religious Traditions Within Indic CivilisationWith Particular Reference To The Evolution Of Jain Sramanic Culture And Its Impact On The Indic Civilization" http://www.herenow4u.net/index.php?id=cd769 I keenly await your comments in the spirit of Royal Society's motto: "Accept nothing on authority".
Bal Patil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_Patil My translation of Dr.L. Alsdorf’s German Beitraege zur Geschichte von Vegetarismus und Rinderverehrung in Indien (History of Vegetarianism and Cow Veneration In India) published (Routledge, London) History of Vegetarianism and Cow-Veneration | Indologica, in Feb.2010 edited by Dr. Bollee.Participant and speaker in the 7th Jaina Studies Workshop on Jaina Law and Jaina Community, Centre for Jaina Studies, SOAS, University of London, Bal Patil’s English translation of Dr.Ludwig Alsdorf’s French Les Etudes Jaina, Etat Present et Taches Futures (Jaina Studies Present State and Future Tasks edited by Dr.Willem B. Bolle, (2006) Jaya Gommatesa! Foreword by Dr Colette Caillat, (2006, Mumbai). Jainism: An Eternal Pilgrimage by Bal Patil, Ed. By Tony Whittington, all the three published by Hindi Granth Karyalay, Mumbai
I hope my comments are not metaphysical given that I am trying to be critical of metaphysics and argue for a pragmatic approach to Buddhism, and life.
I know next to nothing about Jainism, let alone the details of their ideas about rebirth.
It's not my interpretation of rebirth as an eschatology - which in any case is simply a description of any belief in life after death - but that of Obeyesekere's interpretation which I am parroting.
considering the very high level of discourse above, pls pardon my rather simplistic question.
you have referred to how modern western buddhists are sometimes expected to take rebirth literally as a physical phenomenon.
my question is: while reading ancient texts, how do you react when you find something which you can't possibly believe.
i often find myself contemptuous or vary of reading a person's work when the author makes 'fanciful' claims. and its not always easy to discern if that 'fanciful' claim was metaphorical or plainly a statement of belief. ofcourse its highly presumptuous of me to call anything 'fanciful' because the author is clearly knowledgeable in that discipline, but makes a remark which we in 21st century may have learnt to be untrue.
my question essentially is, how did you learn to trust the wisdom of the ancient authors without nitpicking from our scientific knowledge acquired thru modern schooling?
I think this is a good question and one that we all must come to terms with. The important thing to get right at the beginning is not to take what you are reading literally. Literalism creates an unhelpful polarisation between true and false: and this kind of unhelpful polarisation characterises contemporary religious debates from both theists and atheists. As Buddhists we can provide a third way, a middle way ;-)
If we keep in mind that people write with lots of different purposes. It may be that we write to try to convey truth, but equally we might be trying to entertain. In a text aimed at entertaining how does an assessment of truth help us to understand it?
My understanding is that the Pāli texts are often using an entertaining story to encourage us to consider our experience in a particular way in order for us to learn something about experience generally.
I don't think that texts are aimed at stating absolute truths. After all the Buddha frequently seems to be denying existence and non-existence are relevant to our project. So does truth exist? Or does it arise in dependence on causes?
In a sense all claims to knowledge are fanciful, all abstract statements are metaphorical, all statements of belief are just opinions.
One learns to trust the wisdom of ancient authors only by putting their instructions to the test, through lived experience. And even then one may find that it doesn't all work for you personally, or that it works but in a different way than what is talked about. The thing is that you can't be certain about the unknown until you have experienced it for yourself.
Just as a virgin may read about sex, may view sexual images, and may spend a lot of time thinking about sex, but they will not know for themselves until they try it. But then they find that each sexual experience is unique, that knowing it once is not to know everything about it, or to completely encompass all of the possibilities. Sex is something that unfolds over a life-time of sexual activity, that is enriched by other life experiences. One never knows it all at any given time. And this is true of all experience. So we have to ask whether it is meaningful to ask questions like "what is sex?"; or "what is the truth of sex?". Now change the word "sex" in this paragraph for "spiritual life", or any other kind of experience: meditation, enlightenment, whatever.
One needs to be acutely aware of the limitations of science on the one hand, and of the power of the method on the other. Science cannot tell us much about our experience because it defies external observation - the subjective is more or less invisible. On the other hand science embodies Karl Popper's observation that nothing can be conclusively proved and that a hypothesis can only ever be disproved - though the caveat is that some knowledge while entirely provisional is clearly useful.
And this brings me to my oft repeated mantra that what is useful or helpful can be more important to me than what is true. Factual truth clearly has value in the sense that deception is usually unhelpful; but in terms of living the spiritual life we need to be focussed on what helps us to grow; to be kind, generous, and clear; and what helps to liberate us from suffering. We need to make sure that we value the imagination, as well as the mathematics of physics - most of which came out of the imagination anyway!
So yes, a good question and one that I am happy to keep coming back to. Looking for truth in Iron-Age Indian texts may be unwise, but looking for useful methods for examining experience is quite a good idea since Buddhists were and still are the best in the world at this.
ah, yes. i have observed and enjoyed the playful remarks/stories in Pali texts thru your posts.
"what is useful is more important than what is true" is a good suggestion. will keep that in mind.
and i guess, looking for methods of experience will be somewhat beyond my current interests. but will keep that in mind too.
to clarify where my question came from: i currently read philosophy, more to visualize ancient india than with immediate spiritual goals. maybe that'll change.
@ Jayarava Your last comment to balaji was great. Your gentle reminder of that point in your posts have been instructive to me. Well said. I am still letting it sink in.
I wonder, though, about your last sentence:
"but looking for useful methods for examining experience is quite a good idea since Buddhists were and still are the best in the world at this."
that seems a huge, empiric truth claim which I sure you have not tested (nor could, in the Popper sense almost) :-) Also, do you really feel their aren't Hindu, Jain, Jewish or even Christian techniques that are equally good.
An individual practitioner's ideology, as you said, must be viewed metaphorically and realizing the practitioner holds a complex web of methods for their life, it is hard to tell how they serve that mind. All to say, that last sentence seemed ironically Religio-centric and out of keeping with all the rest that you said.
I'm a Buddhist, and not a Buddhist for no reason! I'm not a spiritual virgin. I don't pretend to neutrality on Buddhism - it is quite explicitly my view. I'm not claiming to be objective either. I'm an intensely religious, highly religio-centric, person, who has been ordained into a Buddhist Order. A full-time spiritual practitioner, who just happens to write about Buddhism in a critical way. Don't mistake me for an agnostic, or (worse) a relativist, just because I am comfortable discussing the weaknesses of traditional approaches to Buddhism.
"Also, do you really feel their [sic] aren't Hindu, Jain, Jewish or even Christian techniques that are equally good."
It's not necessary to test every method individually, though I have of course tested some of them. Just as a mathematician does not test every single possible solution to a problem in order to prove a theorem, but finds the principle that underlies it and shows that all possible solutions must conform to that principle.
The underlying principle, the first principle, here is dependent-arising. I have enough experience of the working with this principle to be confident that this is the most fundamental and valuable principle when it comes to understanding the problem of suffering and what to do about it (which is really all we Buddhists should be talking about!). Any technique which is not rooted in dependent-arising, which does not acknowledge dependent-arising, cannot be as useful for the project of understanding and over-coming suffering as one that does. If it is about anything, then my blog is about precisely this!
All of those systems of thought that you mention specifically entail some aspect which denies the overarching applicability of dependent-arising. Their methods are based on some other principle (e.g. God's will). Ipso facto I don't think they are as useful as Buddhism. In general they also have entirely different aims from Buddhism, so when you ask "aren't they equally as good" I'd have to ask "good at what?".
Popper's falsifiability is based on precisely this kind of inductive logic. He comes to the conclusion that any epistemology based on observation can only ever be provisional, not on the basis of testing every claim to knowledge, but on understanding the underlying principle. It suffices to show that one black swan exists to illustrate the principle which through inductive reasoning is seen to be universally applicable to all forms of knowledge. Popper's is a philosophical position which cannot have been applied to every case in advance in order to be shown to be true, and indeed is open to being disapproved by a counter example (and theists might say that God himself is that counter example). This is not to say that provisional knowledge is not useful at all - look at Newton's equations which we know to be mere approximations these days, but are incredibly useful. Spiritual strategies based on principles other than dependent-arising can come up with injunctions to be ethical for instance, which is useful as far as it goes, but not an end in itself. But they go no further towards the same goals as Buddhism precisely because their goals are different.
Coincidently I am writing something about my philosophical approaches for Friday. It is a response to the charge (often levelled at me) that I am materialist. Then next week I attack the notion that Quantum Mechanics has any relationship to Buddhism.
(1) Who is Jayarava (a) I understand that you are a Buddhist, and a committed one. But I wasn't aware of your "highly religio-centric" quality. But I am now.
(b) I do not think I mistook you for an agnostic nor a relativist and don't feel I am either -- but I may not be use the terms 'correctly'.
(2) The Foundation: "Dependent Arising" Concerning "Dependent Arising": I think I understand it, but I probably don't because I have heard Buddhist correcting other intellectual Buddhists on this issue so it doesn't sound simple. But my present lay understanding is that nothing exist independently and permanently -- the self being such also. It is habitually expecting otherwise that leads to much suffering. If that is the understanding, it has informed my view of life for the last 30 years (albeit it pathetically so). And I have know it much more deeply than intellectually -- but I have yet to post about that.
So I will stop here before going on, to check in with you about "Dependent Arising". Then I can move on in response to the rest of your fine comment. -----------
Oh yeah, but three side-notes:
(3) What do you mean by "full-time spiritual practitioner"?
(4) I think it is unfortunate that "[sic]" is a homophone for the English word "sick". It adds to the potential of the nuance of ridicule when quoting someone who you are debating. Although I am sure that was not your intent.
Apparently "sic" is an English adverb meaning "intentionally so written" from the Latin adverb sic which means "so".
Maybe you could us a Pali/Sanskrit word like "Tathata" meaning "suchness" which would have positive connotations. Then you could abbreviate it like this: [ttt]! :-)
(3) Your upcoming posts sound fascinating ! I have always found distasteful,inaccurate and desperate the way spiritual groups grasp at quantum mechanics !
I've written about my views on dependent-arising many times - the last time to confess I don't understand it! LOL. When Sāriputta said he thought it very straight-forward the Buddha admonished him not to talk like that :-) Many whole books have been written on the subject also. The short answer is "things arise in dependence on causes" and the long answer ensues when you try to explain what is meant by "things", and "dependence" and "causes"; though "in" and "on" appear to be fairly straight-forward I wouldn't stake my life on it.
No disrespect intended with [sic] it was simply your typo not mine. I think the Sanskrit/Pāli equivalent would be [iti] originally meaning 'thus', and now used to mark quotations.
I think I won't say much more about myself on the blog - already said more than I usually do these days. It's not that kind of blog.
OK, I will read your post on DA when I get home, but I gather by what you are saying, I may not be far off though probably far more ignorant than Sariputta.
So my question is: What type of mental activities can help someone to stop clinging selfishness. Can Bhakti methods do this and thus though the practitioner knows nothing of DA, the brain unties those expectations through their Bhakti practices.
I won't elaborate more, I am sure you get my drift -- it is a generic drift.
My interest here is in Buddhist ideas and practices. We seem to have drifted very far from the topic of the post, which I think we need to come back to, or give it a rest.
I looked at the DA article -- it is way over my head. To many mention of things I don't understand. I will use understandings I have read in a dozen of beginner books and wiki if I need to catch up.
Monday, October 18, 2010
[Image]The word eschatology derives from the Greek eschato 'last' and refers to belief systems related to the destiny of individuals and groups, especially after death. Last week [see Brahmā the Cheat] I drew attention to Gananath Obeyesekere's fascinating book on rebirth eschatologies - Imagining Karma - published by the University of California Press (2002).[Image] This week I want to look more closely at his ideas. By comparing various belief systems around the world Obeyesekere teases out the essential features of belief in rebirth, and then looks at Buddhist, Amerindian, and Greek belief systems in light of these generalities.
The simplest form of rebirth is a usually unending cycling between this world and another world. Richard Gombrich (who has collaborated with Obeyesekere in the past) has highlighted the work of Polish Sanskritist Joanna Jurewicz which shows that contrary to prevailing views there is evidence of just such a belief system in the Ṛgveda: the brahmin goes to the world of the fathers for a period after death and then returns to this world. Jurewicz identifies a single verse in a late hymn which appears to confirm a belief in this kind of rebirth. The late timing suggests that the idea comes not from the group who wrote the Ṛgveda, but rather than the they picked it up after they had been in India for some centuries. [1]
The simplest form of rebirth eschatology is not moral, rebirth is not dependent on behaviour and so the other world is not differentiated, and this kind of rebirth is the commonest around the world. As soon as morality is introduced into the picture the other world bifurcates into a place of reward, and a place of punishment. In this model good deeds cause one to be reborn in heaven for a period until the merit of the previous life is exhausted, when one returns to this world. This morality need not be ethical. For instance in the morality of brahmins one's destination after death was dependent on proper ritual behaviour, not on ethical behaviour. Just as for centuries Hindu morality focussed on doing one's duty, rather than on one's behaviour more generally (a central theme in the Bhagavadgīta).
A further development occurs when the rebirth destination in this world (as opposed to the other world) is determined by morality in the previous life. This is roughly the situation of the rebirth theories in the early Upaniṣads: Bṛhadāranyka (BU), Chāndogya (CU), and the Kausitaki (KauU). [2] The 'doctrine of the fires' maps out a relatively complex set of possibilities. On death the one who has understood the identity of ātman and brahman goes to the gods and then onto brahman and does not return [3]. The one who has carried out the sacrifices (i.e. a brahmin who follows the pre-Upaniṣadic religion) goes to the world of the fathers and is eventually reborn as a human (which is the old simple cycle). The third possibility is for everyone else and they are reborn as a śudra or an insect - they don't have an account for the other classes, or any women.
The ethicization of rebirth changes the model substantially into what Obeyesekere calls a karma eschatology - something which appears to be unique to India. This is where one's ethical actions (karma) determine one's next rebirth (though confusingly karma meant ritual action to the brahmins). Although there are hints at an ethical rebirth in BU, the idea is first found fully articulated amongst the śramaṇa groups. Some scholars have taken this to mean that the idea originated amongst śramaṇas and was only later adopted by brahmins, and argue that BU especially shows this absorption in process of happening since it presents different patterns of rebirth. The fact that the ideas about rebirth are presented by kṣatriyas in BU and CU helps to reinforce this interpretation.
In earlier models rebirth was an endless cycle, which came to be called saṃsāra - meaning 'continues to go on'. This idea must have persisted into the Buddhists period even though middle Vedic period texts like the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (ca 8th-6th century BCE) mention the possibility of escape from the cycle of 'redeath' as it is called there. We know this because many of the Buddha's teachings are given in terms of an escape from saṃsāra, where saṃsāra is precisely this beginningless, endless cycle of birth and death. Buddhists were not the only group teaching an escape from saṃsāra, and this seems to have been one of the most important religious paradigms both at the time, and subsequently. In the early Upaniṣads, as I have mentioned, escape from the cycle was conceived of in terms of 'going to brahman', or 'union with brahman': brahmasahavyata. I have discussed one of the Buddhist responses to this belief in the Kevaddha Sutta in an earlier post. Here we find the Buddha claiming: I know Brahmā, and Brahmā's domain, and the way leading to Brahmā's domain.The result was not to deny the escape from saṃsāra in terms of the path to brahman, but to adopt and adapt it. At present I do not think the very distinctive nature of the brahmavihāra meditations with respect to other styles of Buddhist meditation has received sufficient attention. This may be because later Buddhists lost sense of the metaphor and read brahmavihāra as literally being reborn in Brahmā's world, i.e. as not leading to freedom from liberation, despite the related description cettovimutti being applied to it. My reading of the texts, following Gombrich, is that the Buddha clearly used brahmavihāra as a synonym for nibbāṇa.
So the Buddhist idea of an escape from saṃsāra was not original. What was original was how the Buddha defined 'this world' and what escaping from it meant. I have explored the former in my post What the Buddha meant by World, and clearly his definition of 'the world' as the world of experience, has profound implications for eschatology. What we are escaping from is not necessarily birth and death in the sense of physical rebirth, and physical death. Indeed the Buddha often couched his eschatological teaching in terms of escape from the experience of disappointment (dukkha). It allowed the Buddha and other arahants to say they were liberated, that they had "done what needed to be done" in their own lifetimes, without the necessity to die first (an innovation on the Brahmin conception at least!). Heaven, dwelling with Brahmā (brahmavihāra), is available here and now, according to the Buddha.
Historically Buddhists seem to have taken on existing cosmologies with some adaptation, but with a tendency to reify them for rhetorical effect. Although the Buddha defined 'this world' in terms of experience, the 'other world' became a series of actual places where one could be reborn: the brahmaloka in particular was brought within saṃsāra. This seems to have been a wrong turn, and has left us with a confused picture of cosmology and rebirth. Tradition asks us to believe quite literally in rebirth and in the various realms. The spirit in which the Buddha claimed to know Brahmā and the way to companionship with Brahmā - as a metaphor for escaping saṃsāra - has been lost. One result has been the ongoing polarisation about whether or not we Western Buddhists should believe in rebirth. On the contrary Chögyam Trungpa has spoken of the six realms as psychological metaphors rather like the Jungian archetypes, and this sits better with the idea of 'world' as experience, than more traditional realms for actual rebirth. [4]
One of the weird things about rebirth and karma eschatologies has been the enthusiasm for them in the West. For the Indian repeated rebirth and redeath is a curse to be escaped from. In the popular imagination of Western culture, rebirth seems an attractive proposition. We actually want to be reborn. What this tells us is that westerners in general see rebirth in terms of personal continuity. This is what the Pāli texts call 'having a pernicious view' (pāpakaṃ diṭṭḥigataṃ). When nibbāṇa is presented in terms of the end of personal continuity, I think something baulks in the Western psyche. It suggests that despite living in hedonistic and nihilistic times, that underlying this is a frustrated eternalism. Having given up on the prospect of eternal life somewhat reluctantly because of the accompanying baggage, we are drowning our sorrows. Perhaps this is also why western culture is so obsessed with youth, so mired in the Peter Pan Syndrome.
It is unlikely that Obeyesekere's book will appeal to the mass market, or even to most Buddhists. The ideas are complex, even if well presented. Complex ideas are difficult to popularise, especially in our 'sound bite' culture. However the more that we understand about how the early Buddhist presentation of the Dharma was conditioned by the time and place of its articulation, the better we will understand how to adapt it to our own times. The aspects of the Dharma that are simply cultural will stand out better, allowing us to grasp more clearly the principles which are applicable in our own context.
Notes Jurewicz's original paper was: Jurewicz, J. ‘Prajapati, the Fire and the pañcagnividya’. In: Balcerowicz, P., Mejor, M. (Eds.) Essays in Indian Philosophy, Religion and Literature.[Image] Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass 2004, s.45-60. A revised version of her conference paper from the 14th World Sanskrit Conference, July 2006, on this subject is on the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies website: Jurewicz, J. The Rigveda, 'small scale' societies and rebirth eschatology. 2006.KauU contains a later reworking of ideas found in BU and CU.I have pointed out that this idea is missing from the Pāli texts. The omission is significant, but so far not much commented upon in the academic literature. One scholar who has also noticed this is Dr Brian Black of Lancaster University, watch for a series of forthcoming publications from him. See Trungpa's commentary in Trungpa, Chogyam and Freemantle, Francesca (trans.). The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo.[Image] Shambala, 1975. (link is to the new edition)
image: Monks stand waiting for a confession as a martyr is tortured on the wheel. Taken from How Stuff Works, ultimately from Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
23 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formDear J,
I'm not sure if it's the frustrated eternalism that accounts for the enthusiasm for rebirth and karma eschatologies in "the West." (I believe in 'scare' quotes when the words are scary.) Or at least it's not that only.
I tend to think it may be the heavy inculcation of, and subsequent psychological addiction to, guilt.
Not that you don't find regret / remorse / contrition in Buddhism (kauk.rtya/'gyod-pa, among the mental states that may or may not be obstructive or conducive to the Path [I do believe in using those capitals]). And what would all those confession rituals and recitations be for?
Guilt makes us very special people. We "westerners" love that inner gloating about how we will be made to pay for what bad things we've done. It connects past and future for us like a super-glue: I did this bad thing, this bad thing will happen to me when dad gets home...
Anyway, as always, enjoyed following your lines of thinking. I'd like to know how you find the energy to post every week. Are you using something? Do you imagine you will be punished if a Friday goes by without putting one up there?
Yours,
D
Friday, October 15, 2010
Hi Dan
I'd associate the concept of remorse with the words hrī and apatrapya.
Why is it a Path rather than a path? Sounds like eternalism to me :-) There isn't only one anyway - Buddhism is paths. I don't believe in absolutes, let alone Absolutes.
Your take on guilt doesn't accord with my experience, or my acquaintance with Catholics. Anyway eternalism is part of that same world view so it can't really be separated out and eliminated.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Friday, October 15, 2010
@ Jayarava
Excellent! A few thoughts:
(1) What you claim is the Buddha's real eschatology (but lost), reminds me of variants of Christian eschatologies or Kingdom Theologies: One which is an other-worldly Heaven and the other is to transform our present world into a Heaven.
(2) Is Obeyesekere's book written concerning both Hindu and Buddhist thought, or is the Buddhist stuff your addition in this post?
(3) I must admit, I am a great skeptic of classic "East-West" idealizations. I wonder if in India, there aren't many Indians who take comfort in rebirth like Westerners do. I suspect people have similar tendencies all over the planet.
Having lived in Asia, as soon as their is affluence, people clamor for longevity and youthfulness. The only reason you may not see it in poorer populations is that other basic needs drown it out. I don't this it is an East-West thing.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Do I use the words 'real eschatology' or 'lost'? I hope not. I hate it when I have to argue with myself!
Seems to me you need to read the book. :-)
Friday, October 15, 2010
:-)
"This may be because later Buddhists lost sense of the metaphor" -- Jayarava
Indeed, midway through your fine post I actually put Obeyesekere's book on my Amazon list! You read my mind. Thanks.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Hi Sabio
Well that point about a possibly lost metaphor is specifically about how the word brahmavihara is interpreted and as far as I can tell has little or nothing to say about the "Buddha's real eschatology", which I also do not mention btw.
So it seems to me here that we are seeing your mind at work, not mine. ;-)
Friday, October 15, 2010
Dear J,
That's what I'm saying to you. That capitalizations do not in any way imply eternalism or absolutes. Capitalization is an important tool we have in English (so what if many other languages don't have it?), a potent tool of expressiveness / rhetoric (used for all sorts of personifications, for example) that we would be foolish to do away with them. Path, Vehicle, Enlightenment, Enlightened One and the like are used in a very special ways in Buddhism (and are highly respected, which is another thing), and initial capitalizations are so much better than scare quotes here.
Last I heard Mahâyâna theorists recognize three very different Paths. With many sub-variations. So what's to prevent from using the capital in the plural? Nothing. "Absolutely" nothing.
Btw, why DO you capitalize the 'w' in Western Buddhist? Hypostasization? Indeed.
I'm the last person to accuse of creationism or eternalism or absolutism. Really.
Now you've got me going, and I'll be too late for my therapeutic blasphemy session.
I'm already feeling guilty about sending this comment. And I'm also very sorry for missing the hri. You're right, and shame on me.
Yours,
D
Friday, October 15, 2010
I will concede that it is this mind we may see at work! ;-)
Are there Buddhist sects which indeed do embrace a metaphorical interpretation of brahmavihara? Or are you saying most Buddhists just conveniently ignore it because their literal understanding makes it not fit their theology?
Friday, October 15, 2010
@Sabio
Read this: http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2007/03/buddha-and-lost-metaphor.html
This particular point is one made by Prof Richard Gombrich which as far as I know has not been given any significance in any living tradition.
Friday, October 15, 2010
@Dan.
The words are not used in "very special ways" - they are sometimes used idiosyncratically, often ambiguously (dhamma is a bane to any translator!), but largely as the dictionary defines them, with perhaps some distinctive connotations which are entirely supported by context. If you mention "the path" [quotes, not scare quotes; definite article] in the context of a discussion on Buddhism, then I know pretty much what you mean, and you don't need to impress me with the specialness of the Buddhist path (after all I'm an ordained Buddhist and have made life-long vows to follow the Buddhist path - I'm unlikely to forget). I think it's basically insecurity on the part of a tiny minority religion in a Christian world where they capitalise religious texts on a pre-17th century model. We shouldn't buy into their world view.
It's quite interesting that the Romanised editions of the Pāli canon do not capitalise beyond the first word of each sentence: in the text I'm working on at the moment I find bhagavā, bhagavatā, bhante, dhammaṃ, dhammavinaye, ariyānaṃ, ariyadhammassa, ariyasāvako, etc. There's no need for capitals as we know what they mean, and if we are Buddhists then we understand the significance. I'm not a great one for flag waving - it's a bit unseemly, especially in a Buddhist.
Who knows what Mahāyānavāda says about paths? Not me. Don't know, and frankly don't care. But I do know they wrote in Sanskrit using a variety of Brahmī based scripts, many of which I can read, and they did not use capital letters because they did not have any. Half the time they didn't bother with sentence breaks!
I'm inconsistent on my capitalisation of Western. But I vaguely understand that when referring to the culture rather than the direction, then West is a proper noun, and by convention is capitalised. The West is in the west only to some extent, as I myself was born 175 degrees east of Greenwich, and 38 degrees south of the equator (diametrically opposed to western Europe), and even sometimes claim not to be a Westerner at all, but a South-Easterner. I'm not a western Buddhist in the sense that I now live in the west of Europe, though I do; but a Western Buddhist in the sense that I am a member of that culture which takes in North America, most of Europe, and the many of the former colonies of the above (including my former home Aotearoa New Zealand), but largely originates in western Europe. When I say I am a Western Buddhist I name my culture, not advert to my direction in space.
Perhaps I'll have a rule about capitals in comments...
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Friday, October 15, 2010
Fascinating post. Good point about rebirth being seen as desirable in the west. Dependent origination too is often explained as "we are all one" positive thinking, when in the Buddha's usage it is pure suffering.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Dear Jayarava,
I sometimes read your impassioned metaphysical comments on Buddhism. I am impressed by your interpretation of rebirth as 'echatological" phenomenon. I would be interested in your comments on Jain theory of rebirth. Permit me to give a link to my "The Rise, Decline And Renewals Of Sramanic Religious Traditions Within Indic CivilisationWith Particular Reference To The Evolution Of Jain Sramanic Culture And Its Impact On The Indic Civilization" http://www.herenow4u.net/index.php?id=cd769
I keenly await your comments in the spirit of Royal Society's motto: "Accept nothing on authority".
Bal Patil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_Patil
My translation of Dr.L. Alsdorf’s German Beitraege zur Geschichte von Vegetarismus und Rinderverehrung in Indien (History of Vegetarianism and Cow Veneration In India) published (Routledge, London) History of Vegetarianism and Cow-Veneration | Indologica, in Feb.2010 edited by Dr. Bollee.Participant and speaker in the 7th Jaina Studies Workshop on Jaina Law and Jaina Community, Centre for Jaina Studies, SOAS, University of London, Bal Patil’s English translation of Dr.Ludwig Alsdorf’s French Les Etudes Jaina, Etat Present et Taches Futures (Jaina Studies Present State and Future Tasks edited by Dr.Willem B. Bolle, (2006) Jaya Gommatesa! Foreword by Dr Colette Caillat, (2006, Mumbai). Jainism: An Eternal Pilgrimage by Bal Patil, Ed. By Tony Whittington, all the three published by Hindi Granth Karyalay, Mumbai
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Dear Bal
I hope my comments are not metaphysical given that I am trying to be critical of metaphysics and argue for a pragmatic approach to Buddhism, and life.
I know next to nothing about Jainism, let alone the details of their ideas about rebirth.
It's not my interpretation of rebirth as an eschatology - which in any case is simply a description of any belief in life after death - but that of Obeyesekere's interpretation which I am parroting.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Saturday, October 16, 2010
considering the very high level of discourse above, pls pardon my rather simplistic question.
you have referred to how modern western buddhists are sometimes expected to take rebirth literally as a physical phenomenon.
my question is: while reading ancient texts, how do you react when you find something which you can't possibly believe.
i often find myself contemptuous or vary of reading a person's work when the author makes 'fanciful' claims. and its not always easy to discern if that 'fanciful' claim was metaphorical or plainly a statement of belief. ofcourse its highly presumptuous of me to call anything 'fanciful' because the author is clearly knowledgeable in that discipline, but makes a remark which we in 21st century may have learnt to be untrue.
my question essentially is, how did you learn to trust the wisdom of the ancient authors without nitpicking from our scientific knowledge acquired thru modern schooling?
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Hi Balaji
I think this is a good question and one that we all must come to terms with. The important thing to get right at the beginning is not to take what you are reading literally. Literalism creates an unhelpful polarisation between true and false: and this kind of unhelpful polarisation characterises contemporary religious debates from both theists and atheists. As Buddhists we can provide a third way, a middle way ;-)
If we keep in mind that people write with lots of different purposes. It may be that we write to try to convey truth, but equally we might be trying to entertain. In a text aimed at entertaining how does an assessment of truth help us to understand it?
My understanding is that the Pāli texts are often using an entertaining story to encourage us to consider our experience in a particular way in order for us to learn something about experience generally.
I don't think that texts are aimed at stating absolute truths. After all the Buddha frequently seems to be denying existence and non-existence are relevant to our project. So does truth exist? Or does it arise in dependence on causes?
In a sense all claims to knowledge are fanciful, all abstract statements are metaphorical, all statements of belief are just opinions.
One learns to trust the wisdom of ancient authors only by putting their instructions to the test, through lived experience. And even then one may find that it doesn't all work for you personally, or that it works but in a different way than what is talked about. The thing is that you can't be certain about the unknown until you have experienced it for yourself.
Just as a virgin may read about sex, may view sexual images, and may spend a lot of time thinking about sex, but they will not know for themselves until they try it. But then they find that each sexual experience is unique, that knowing it once is not to know everything about it, or to completely encompass all of the possibilities. Sex is something that unfolds over a life-time of sexual activity, that is enriched by other life experiences. One never knows it all at any given time. And this is true of all experience. So we have to ask whether it is meaningful to ask questions like "what is sex?"; or "what is the truth of sex?". Now change the word "sex" in this paragraph for "spiritual life", or any other kind of experience: meditation, enlightenment, whatever.
One needs to be acutely aware of the limitations of science on the one hand, and of the power of the method on the other. Science cannot tell us much about our experience because it defies external observation - the subjective is more or less invisible. On the other hand science embodies Karl Popper's observation that nothing can be conclusively proved and that a hypothesis can only ever be disproved - though the caveat is that some knowledge while entirely provisional is clearly useful.
And this brings me to my oft repeated mantra that what is useful or helpful can be more important to me than what is true. Factual truth clearly has value in the sense that deception is usually unhelpful; but in terms of living the spiritual life we need to be focussed on what helps us to grow; to be kind, generous, and clear; and what helps to liberate us from suffering. We need to make sure that we value the imagination, as well as the mathematics of physics - most of which came out of the imagination anyway!
So yes, a good question and one that I am happy to keep coming back to. Looking for truth in Iron-Age Indian texts may be unwise, but looking for useful methods for examining experience is quite a good idea since Buddhists were and still are the best in the world at this.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Saturday, October 16, 2010
thanks for the detailed answer.
ah, yes. i have observed and enjoyed the playful remarks/stories in Pali texts thru your posts.
"what is useful is more important than what is true" is a good suggestion. will keep that in mind.
and i guess, looking for methods of experience will be somewhat beyond my current interests. but will keep that in mind too.
to clarify where my question came from: i currently read philosophy, more to visualize ancient india than with immediate spiritual goals. maybe that'll change.
and thanks again for the detailed answer.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
@ Jayarava
Your last comment to balaji was great. Your gentle reminder of that point in your posts have been instructive to me. Well said. I am still letting it sink in.
I wonder, though, about your last sentence:
"but looking for useful methods for examining experience is quite a good idea since Buddhists were and still are the best in the world at this."
that seems a huge, empiric truth claim which I sure you have not tested (nor could, in the Popper sense almost) :-)
Also, do you really feel their aren't Hindu, Jain, Jewish or even Christian techniques that are equally good.
An individual practitioner's ideology, as you said, must be viewed metaphorically and realizing the practitioner holds a complex web of methods for their life, it is hard to tell how they serve that mind. All to say, that last sentence seemed ironically Religio-centric and out of keeping with all the rest that you said.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Hi Sabio,
I'm a Buddhist, and not a Buddhist for no reason! I'm not a spiritual virgin. I don't pretend to neutrality on Buddhism - it is quite explicitly my view. I'm not claiming to be objective either. I'm an intensely religious, highly religio-centric, person, who has been ordained into a Buddhist Order. A full-time spiritual practitioner, who just happens to write about Buddhism in a critical way. Don't mistake me for an agnostic, or (worse) a relativist, just because I am comfortable discussing the weaknesses of traditional approaches to Buddhism.
"Also, do you really feel their [sic] aren't Hindu, Jain, Jewish or even Christian techniques that are equally good."
It's not necessary to test every method individually, though I have of course tested some of them. Just as a mathematician does not test every single possible solution to a problem in order to prove a theorem, but finds the principle that underlies it and shows that all possible solutions must conform to that principle.
The underlying principle, the first principle, here is dependent-arising. I have enough experience of the working with this principle to be confident that this is the most fundamental and valuable principle when it comes to understanding the problem of suffering and what to do about it (which is really all we Buddhists should be talking about!). Any technique which is not rooted in dependent-arising, which does not acknowledge dependent-arising, cannot be as useful for the project of understanding and over-coming suffering as one that does. If it is about anything, then my blog is about precisely this!
All of those systems of thought that you mention specifically entail some aspect which denies the overarching applicability of dependent-arising. Their methods are based on some other principle (e.g. God's will). Ipso facto I don't think they are as useful as Buddhism. In general they also have entirely different aims from Buddhism, so when you ask "aren't they equally as good" I'd have to ask "good at what?".
Popper's falsifiability is based on precisely this kind of inductive logic. He comes to the conclusion that any epistemology based on observation can only ever be provisional, not on the basis of testing every claim to knowledge, but on understanding the underlying principle. It suffices to show that one black swan exists to illustrate the principle which through inductive reasoning is seen to be universally applicable to all forms of knowledge. Popper's is a philosophical position which cannot have been applied to every case in advance in order to be shown to be true, and indeed is open to being disapproved by a counter example (and theists might say that God himself is that counter example). This is not to say that provisional knowledge is not useful at all - look at Newton's equations which we know to be mere approximations these days, but are incredibly useful. Spiritual strategies based on principles other than dependent-arising can come up with injunctions to be ethical for instance, which is useful as far as it goes, but not an end in itself. But they go no further towards the same goals as Buddhism precisely because their goals are different.
Coincidently I am writing something about my philosophical approaches for Friday. It is a response to the charge (often levelled at me) that I am materialist. Then next week I attack the notion that Quantum Mechanics has any relationship to Buddhism.
Do keep up the comments and questions :-)
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Monday, October 18, 2010
Hey Jayarava,
(1) Who is Jayarava
(a) I understand that you are a Buddhist, and a committed one. But I wasn't aware of your "highly religio-centric" quality. But I am now.
(b) I do not think I mistook you for an agnostic nor a relativist and don't feel I am either -- but I may not be use the terms 'correctly'.
(2) The Foundation: "Dependent Arising"
Concerning "Dependent Arising": I think I understand it, but I probably don't because I have heard Buddhist correcting other intellectual Buddhists on this issue so it doesn't sound simple. But my present lay understanding is that nothing exist independently and permanently -- the self being such also. It is habitually expecting otherwise that leads to much suffering. If that is the understanding, it has informed my view of life for the last 30 years (albeit it pathetically so). And I have know it much more deeply than intellectually -- but I have yet to post about that.
So I will stop here before going on, to check in with you about "Dependent Arising". Then I can move on in response to the rest of your fine comment.
-----------
Oh yeah, but three side-notes:
(3) What do you mean by "full-time spiritual practitioner"?
(4) I think it is unfortunate that "[sic]" is a homophone for the English word "sick". It adds to the potential of the nuance of ridicule when quoting someone who you are debating. Although I am sure that was not your intent.
Apparently "sic" is an English adverb meaning "intentionally so written" from the Latin adverb sic which means "so".
Maybe you could us a Pali/Sanskrit word like "Tathata" meaning "suchness" which would have positive connotations. Then you could abbreviate it like this: [ttt]! :-)
(3) Your upcoming posts sound fascinating ! I have always found distasteful,inaccurate and desperate the way spiritual groups grasp at quantum mechanics !
Monday, October 18, 2010
Many questions!
I've written about my views on dependent-arising many times - the last time to confess I don't understand it! LOL. When Sāriputta said he thought it very straight-forward the Buddha admonished him not to talk like that :-) Many whole books have been written on the subject also. The short answer is "things arise in dependence on causes" and the long answer ensues when you try to explain what is meant by "things", and "dependence" and "causes"; though "in" and "on" appear to be fairly straight-forward I wouldn't stake my life on it.
No disrespect intended with [sic] it was simply your typo not mine. I think the Sanskrit/Pāli equivalent would be [iti] originally meaning 'thus', and now used to mark quotations.
I think I won't say much more about myself on the blog - already said more than I usually do these days. It's not that kind of blog.
Cheers
Jayarava
Monday, October 18, 2010
OK, I will read your post on DA when I get home, but I gather by what you are saying, I may not be far off though probably far more ignorant than Sariputta.
So my question is: What type of mental activities can help someone to stop clinging selfishness. Can Bhakti methods do this and thus though the practitioner knows nothing of DA, the brain unties those expectations through their Bhakti practices.
I won't elaborate more, I am sure you get my drift -- it is a generic drift.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Hi Sabio
My interest here is in Buddhist ideas and practices. We seem to have drifted very far from the topic of the post, which I think we need to come back to, or give it a rest.
Regards
Jayarava
Monday, October 18, 2010
I looked at the DA article -- it is way over my head. To many mention of things I don't understand. I will use understandings I have read in a dozen of beginner books and wiki if I need to catch up.
Monday, October 18, 2010