Very timely Jayarava, Thank you! A few months ago I started reading the Skilton and Crosby translation of the Bodhicāryāvatara. Since I only study this when my mind is completely open and I have time for quiet reflection, I have not yet gotten to the passages you reference. Speaking as a lifelong seeker, but one who is fairly new to in-depth study of Eastern ways (the Tao is next ;-o) I, too, would have been put off by those passages, especially as a woman.
But thanks to your essay and insight, I will continue my study with an open mind, absorb the whole and not be 'distracted' by this small part. Thanks again, heidi
As with many translations of early text, I am left to wonder if literal translation confuses some of the original meanings.
I have had conversations with women who were upset about the Buddha’s advice in one translation to his monks to look on a woman as a “bag of filth”. This was given as a technique to suppress sexual arousal. Some of the new translations of the Pali text find that he gave his nuns the same advice regarding men.
Historically, most of the early text has been translated by men making it possible that some of the original meaning has been omitted either inadvertently or to protect their paternal dominance.
The Buddha originally seemed to have wanted to give male and female followers equal status but the popular culture at the time did not see this as possible.
He knew that his message was too important to have it mired in this controversy, he allowed for at least a symbolic separation between monks and nuns.
I am not sure what to make of the passages you reference and look forward to doing a little follow up reading and reflecting.
The idea that it was simply a practice designed for suppressing sexual desire has been suggested to me. And the context is the chapter on meditation. However I think these phrases strike a harsh note, and they go one a little bit too long and say a little too much. The obvious obsession with the polluting effects of bodily fluids is the give away. "Nourished by filth" is the key phrase for me.
Why the focus on the body and it's fluids as filthy, as making one filthy by contact with them, when it is the desire which is problematic?
Compare this with the contemplation of the body in the satipaṭṭhāna practices. There is no sense of the body being filthy there.
I've noticed with some Pali passages in this vein that they interrupt the narrative and appear to have been rather ineptly inserted by some later editor - presumably a bhikkhu. Do you have a reference for "bag of filth" in Pali? I would like to check the text and the words used, and compare them to the Sanskrit.
In an earlier post on women I point out the case of Bhaddā Kundalakesa in the Therigatha (107-111). Professor Gombrich has suggested, and I agree, that this shows that the Buddha originally made no distinction between men and women. Her ordination was simply "ehi bhaddā". It also shows that the Jains allowed female ascetics before Buddhists - ie it was socially acceptable at the time, and that the idea that it wasn't came later.
Recent research - which I hope to give an account of soon - suggests that Jains, Ājivakas and other śramaṇas were the dominant religious force in the region and that Brahmin values would not have had much sway until after Aśoka. This suggests that when we see notions of ritual impurity in Buddhism that it comes from the time after Aśoka.
Anyway let me know if you have any more thoughts on this.
It is curious regarding the “filthy” references to body fluids. I agree that they seem a bit harsh given the context of accepting things as they are. We certainly do not have much control over these bodily functions. I believe the Buddha spoke of mindfulness even while defecating although I cannot recall the specifics.
India did not have a written language during the time of the Buddha. With the subsequent spread of Buddhism throughout Asia, it is not unimaginable that some translations inject a form of “Puritan” Buddhism to fit the belief system of the translator.
Each time an ancient text is translated into a different language, it is possible that words with exact meaning do not exist also leading to some problems.
My mind is ‘awhizz’ with curiosity. I will let you know if I can find some old notes on the bag of filth reference.
(apologies if this is a double-post, feel free to remove if so)
Jayarava - an excellent article. I wonder though if Śāntideva is really saying that "the body or it's substances as intrinsically impure or foul."
It seems that Śāntideva was using these lines explicitly in an attack on kāmā (sensual desire) which runs from stanzas 40-85? If you put it in this context it is no longer about the body per se, but about kāmā (which for most of us finds its easiest object in the body of the opposite sex).
Congratulations on getting the piece in the JBE, as well. I look forward to reading it, as well as your coming account of dominant religious forces at the time of the Buddha.
I'm certainly open to some other explanation your your whizzy mind comes up with one! Meanwhile many of my friends have joined the Facebook campaign against the banning of pictures of mothers breastfeeding their babies - so perhaps my claim is not as straightforward in the contemporary world as I have made out! Breast apparently are considered harmful to see by some people - guess who they might be :-)
Yes. And the lines I quote are from the chapter on meditation, which may well contextualise them as simply aimed at kāmā. At the time I was told pretty much what you have said. My impression is that Śantideva sometimes takes an argument to extremes to make his point, and others have argued that this is typical hyperbole on his part. Also his audience was typically said to be male monastics.
Even allowing for these points, which I do, I still find the tone of the passages very harsh, violent even. Hearing them read in a long retreat - about 12 or 13 weeks in - I felt as though I was being assaulted!
In a sense part of what I want to do is challenge the wholesale use of such a text. I don't think this kind of sentiment is appropriate to me, and I have had several other members of the Order tell me off the record that they had a similar experience.
Did you read my other essay on superstitions that have crept into Buddhism? That is also part of the context of the text.
One of my other correspondents mentioned a similar kind of approach in Pali and it may be interested to see if the sentiments and the words used are similar - a project for the future when my Sanskrit is better!
I read your other article on superstition in Buddhism and, as you say there, the superstitions "are embedded in our canons of scripture..." which makes me wonder if they 'crept' in or have always been there (including hints of disdain for the body at times).
Hi Jayarava, It's over the top, yes, but it's Shantideva! I'm not saying I think the passages are super groovy or anything. They are disturbing. But it seems to me like they are part of consistently hyperbolic expression of the bodhisattva ideal, or of anatta, letting go even of the last thing about ourselves we will cling to, the last refuge...& in a way it goes against Hindu ideals of purity because it's saying EVERYONE'S body is foul. I do not find it inspiring, but I do find it kind of interesting, also peoples' various reactions. I do not take it literally in the same way that I do not take literally "Beings are numberless, I vow to save them"...
Recall that the Buddha lived in the 5th century BCE, and that the suttas were carried in memory for centuries. There are clear signs of development in the canon of texts, and also of editing. Keep in mind also that the texts have all been translated into Pāli or Sanskrit. If we take the most extreme view - that of Dr Greg Schopen - then the canon wasn't fixed, or at least there is no evidence that it was fixed, until the 5th century CE - towards the end of the glorious Gupta Empire which was very definitely Hindu in its religious orientation. 1000 years. Plenty of time for ideas to creep in. Even if we took the most conservative view - that of the texts themselves - the canon was written down in the first century BCE - still 300 years, and the textual evidence for change and editing remains.
Glad at least one colleague has commented. And your view seems to represent that of some others I've had this conversation with. Treat the text as hyperbole, not to be taken literally.
Which is fine as far as it goes, but doesn't satisfy me either intellectually or emotionally - it doesn't address that you and I both find the verses, not just uncomfortable or awkward, or challenging... but disturbing
No text should be taken literally. But of course we do, don't we? Or at least we take them seriously. Collectively we revere the text, and it's very much a part of the Order's curriculum. We mark the text as significant and important, as profound even. And we draw on it for one of our definitive rituals. It's not a trivial text and therefore not one to be lightly set aside.
Are the passages I quote above really in the same category as the Bodhisattva Ideal I wonder? On the one hand you may be correct to say that we shouldn't take the Bodhisattva Ideal too literally (note the qualification) but where do you draw the line? Aren't we just watering it down until we find something comfortable? On the other hand the verses I quote have none of the merits of the Bodhisattva Ideal - I can't imagine them being positive, and I know several other people who find them disturbing and unhelpful. Where does this leave us?
The idea that by taking the notion of ritual purity to an extreme in order to make it appear ridiculous has more merit as an argument. There is precedent for it in Pāli texts. But it's not a common interpretation of the passages is it?
One thing I really hate is people doing things to "get a reaction", so I'm loathe to think of the text as being positive because it provokes reactions. Incest provokes reactions too, but we don't endorse it or laud it in our texts. There are no end of things to react to and reactions to them. Do we need this one?
Thanks for responding. Jayarava
Sunday, January 11, 2009
[Image]
While on my ordination retreat we studied the Bodhicāryāvatara by Śantideva. This is a core text for the Western Buddhist Order, and also a favourite of the Dalai Lama. It is a Mahāyāna work from probably the 8th century, written according to legend at the great monastery at Nalanda. The theme is the path or conduct (carya) of the bodhisattva and the text is structured around the six perfections. The text is celebrated for the anuttara pūja incorporated into the first few chapters which contains beautiful and elaborate evocations and offerings, but also for the relentless deconstructive arguments of Śantideva. In many ways it is the epitome of late Indian Mahāyāna.
At the same time as studying the Bodhicāryāvatara we were reciting verses from it in our evening puja, and during those pujas we had readings from the text as translated by Andrew Skilton (aka Dharmacari Sthiramati) and Kate Crosby. The readings were very evocative. However at one point I was struck by a series of images which seemed quite out of place. In the chapter on Meditation we find a number of references to the body, and particularly to the bodies of women (the audience for the text having been monastic men). It goes on at some length, and the translators assure us that the language is quite as coarse as they portray it in the translation. Let me quote you a few passages to give an idea:
50. Taking no pleasure from silky pillows stuffed with cotton because they do not ooze a dreadful stench, those in love are entranced by filth.
52. If you have no passion for what is foul, why do you embrace another, a cage of bones bound by sinew, smeared with slime and flesh
53. You have plenty of filth of your own. Satisfy yourself with that! Glutton for crap! Forget her that pouch of filth!
59. If you have no passion for what is foul, why do you embrace another, born in a field of filth, seeded by filth, nourished by filth?
60. Is it that you do not like a dirty worm because it's only tiny? It must be that you desire a body likewise born in filth, because it is formed from such a large amount.
61 Not only are you disgusted at your own foulness, you glutton for crap, you yearn for other vats of filth!
(pages 92-93 of Skilton and Crosby)
Hearing these words I found myself reeling. My first reaction was that this kind of sentiment did not belong in our puja, that this kind of language did not belong in our devotions; that in fact this was not the kind of Buddhism I signed up for. Several years have done nothing to change this opinion. In fact I have become more clear that hatred of this type, hatred towards the body, has nothing to do with the Buddhism I practice.
Sue Hamilton follows the development of Buddhist attitudes to the body in his book Identity and Experience. The Constitution of the Human Being According to Early Buddhism. She shows that the earliest texts were in fact quite neutral towards the body. The attitude was analytical - one examined the experience of being embodied dispassionately to see that this was a conditioned experience like any other. There is none of the harping on impurity that we find later. Hamilton associates the subject of purity with Buddhaghosa, but I don't think the great commentator could have been an influence on Śantideva. It had to have been a more general movement.
I have already written about my concerns over ritual purity manifesting as superstition in Buddhism. Where these ideas operate in Buddhism I think we have to see them as having infiltrated from surrounding Hindu culture. In a paper I've had accepted for publication in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics I argue that the Buddha rejects notions of ritual purity and substitutes instead the idea of ethical purity. Concern with ritual purity was quite general during the Buddha's time with Brahmins and Jains finding it a concern. Everyone has technical terms indicating a 'return to purity' for instance - pratikramana, paṭikaroti etc. It is therefore possible to see Buddhism as a path of purity (visuddhimagga) but only in the ethical sense. Brahminical purity was intrinsic to people by birth, and to actions and substances by their nature. Ethical purity on the other hand depends largely on intention (cetana) - the motivation behind actions of body, speech, and mind are what make an action pure or impure. However it would be unusual to find this particular distinction - the usual one would be kusala/akusala i.e. competent/incompetent.
So there is no justification for seeing the body or it's substances as intrinsically impure or foul. Śantideva describes the body as for instance a "pouch of filth", or as "born in a field of filth, seeded by filth, nourished by filth". The fact is that the religion in which human bodily fluids (including here even mother's milk! ) are seen as polluting is Hinduism. I think the contrast here between western attitudes and caste Hindu Indian attitudes is made very stark by the reference to milk. In Indian the milk of the cow, even bovine shit and piss, are seen by caste Hindus as intrinsically pure and holy, whereas the milk of a woman is foul. If there was ever a traditional idea that we needed to reject this is it. Shit is a disease vector and we rightly avoid handling it, but mother's milk? We see mother's milk as a highly beneficial substance because it bestows health and vitality on the infant. There is no better nutriment for a human infant than its own mother's milk. Mother's milk is a symbol of virtue and vitality in the West. The full breasts of a lactating woman are ancient symbols for fertility and prosperity in our culture.
So on the retreat I took a little stand and made my point to everyone there. I don't think I argued the case well back then, it was a heartfelt reaction rather than a thought out position. I'm hoping that this more thought out essay will make the point more effectively. It's important in the WBO because we have a large number of people from backgrounds in Indian which are these days called Dalit (perhaps a third of our order). I can understand why they want to distance themselves from the former label applied to them and their peers. Fifty years ago they would have been called untouchable because caste Hindu considered their mere touch to be ritually pollutting. People were untouchable on the whole because of the family/community they were born into. Widows also became untouchable on the death of their husbands as is poignantly portrayed in the film Water by Deepa Mehta.
The practice of untouchability was outlawed when India became independent largely due to the efforts of the great leader Dr B R Ambedkar, although it has not disappeared from India where Dalits are regularly persecuted and sometimes killed. Dr Ambedkar along with hundreds of thousands of his followers became Buddhists, and these people make up the bulk of the Indian wing of the WBO (although I think the WBO is quite a small part of the greater Ambedkarite movement). As such I think we contemporary Buddhists, especially we FWBO Buddhists, have a special duty to identify and root out ancient prejudices, and especially any notions of ritual impurity.
A person and their body is as only pure or impure as their actions, they cannot be born impure, nor be made impure by contact with supposedly impure substances. There is no reason for describing the body as impure: it runs counter not only to the spirit of Buddhism, but to the politics of fighting oppression in India. I hope that this essay generates some interest and discussion amongst my colleagues.
~~oOo~~
Further reading:
Hamilton, Sue. 1996. Identity and Experience: The Constitution of the Human Being According to Early Buddhism. London: Luzac Oriental.
Mason-John, Valerie. 2008. Broken Voices: Untouchable Women Speak Out. India Research Press
Padmasuri. 1997. But Little Dust: Life Amongst the 'Ex-Untouchable' Buddhists of India[Image][Image]. Birmingham: Windhorse.
12 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formVery timely Jayarava, Thank you! A few months ago I started reading the Skilton and Crosby translation of the Bodhicāryāvatara. Since I only study this when my mind is completely open and I have time for quiet reflection, I have not yet gotten to the passages you reference.
Speaking as a lifelong seeker, but one who is fairly new to in-depth study of Eastern ways (the Tao is next ;-o) I, too, would have been put off by those passages, especially as a woman.
But thanks to your essay and insight, I will continue my study with an open mind, absorb the whole and not be 'distracted' by this small part.
Thanks again,
heidi
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Hi Heidi
Thanks for your comments. I try to do my bit, eh :-)
Jayarava
Saturday, January 03, 2009
As with many translations of early text, I am left to wonder if literal translation confuses some of the original meanings.
I have had conversations with women who were upset about the Buddha’s advice in one translation to his monks to look on a woman as a “bag of filth”. This was given as a technique to suppress sexual arousal. Some of the new translations of the Pali text find that he gave his nuns the same advice regarding men.
Historically, most of the early text has been translated by men making it possible that some of the original meaning has been omitted either inadvertently or to protect their paternal dominance.
The Buddha originally seemed to have wanted to give male and female followers equal status but the popular culture at the time did not see this as possible.
He knew that his message was too important to have it mired in this controversy, he allowed for at least a symbolic separation between monks and nuns.
I am not sure what to make of the passages you reference and look forward to doing a little follow up reading and reflecting.
Thanks for a thought provoking article.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
The idea that it was simply a practice designed for suppressing sexual desire has been suggested to me. And the context is the chapter on meditation. However I think these phrases strike a harsh note, and they go one a little bit too long and say a little too much. The obvious obsession with the polluting effects of bodily fluids is the give away. "Nourished by filth" is the key phrase for me.
Why the focus on the body and it's fluids as filthy, as making one filthy by contact with them, when it is the desire which is problematic?
Compare this with the contemplation of the body in the satipaṭṭhāna practices. There is no sense of the body being filthy there.
I've noticed with some Pali passages in this vein that they interrupt the narrative and appear to have been rather ineptly inserted by some later editor - presumably a bhikkhu. Do you have a reference for "bag of filth" in Pali? I would like to check the text and the words used, and compare them to the Sanskrit.
In an earlier post on women I point out the case of Bhaddā Kundalakesa in the Therigatha (107-111). Professor Gombrich has suggested, and I agree, that this shows that the Buddha originally made no distinction between men and women. Her ordination was simply "ehi bhaddā". It also shows that the Jains allowed female ascetics before Buddhists - ie it was socially acceptable at the time, and that the idea that it wasn't came later.
Recent research - which I hope to give an account of soon - suggests that Jains, Ājivakas and other śramaṇas were the dominant religious force in the region and that Brahmin values would not have had much sway until after Aśoka. This suggests that when we see notions of ritual impurity in Buddhism that it comes from the time after Aśoka.
Anyway let me know if you have any more thoughts on this.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Thursday, January 08, 2009
It is curious regarding the “filthy” references to body fluids. I agree that they seem a bit harsh given the context of accepting things as they are. We certainly do not have much control over these bodily functions. I believe the Buddha spoke of mindfulness even while defecating although I cannot recall the specifics.
India did not have a written language during the time of the Buddha. With the subsequent spread of Buddhism throughout Asia, it is not unimaginable that some translations inject a form of “Puritan” Buddhism to fit the belief system of the translator.
Each time an ancient text is translated into a different language, it is possible that words with exact meaning do not exist also leading to some problems.
My mind is ‘awhizz’ with curiosity. I will let you know if I can find some old notes on the bag of filth reference.
Friday, January 09, 2009
(apologies if this is a double-post, feel free to remove if so)
Jayarava - an excellent article. I wonder though if Śāntideva is really saying that "the body or it's substances as intrinsically impure or foul."
It seems that Śāntideva was using these lines explicitly in an attack on kāmā (sensual desire) which runs from stanzas 40-85? If you put it in this context it is no longer about the body per se, but about kāmā (which for most of us finds its easiest object in the body of the opposite sex).
Congratulations on getting the piece in the JBE, as well. I look forward to reading it, as well as your coming account of dominant religious forces at the time of the Buddha.
Best wishes,
Justin Whitaker
Friday, January 09, 2009
I'm certainly open to some other explanation your your whizzy mind comes up with one! Meanwhile many of my friends have joined the Facebook campaign against the banning of pictures of mothers breastfeeding their babies - so perhaps my claim is not as straightforward in the contemporary world as I have made out! Breast apparently are considered harmful to see by some people - guess who they might be :-)
Friday, January 09, 2009
Hi Justin,
Yes. And the lines I quote are from the chapter on meditation, which may well contextualise them as simply aimed at kāmā. At the time I was told pretty much what you have said. My impression is that Śantideva sometimes takes an argument to extremes to make his point, and others have argued that this is typical hyperbole on his part. Also his audience was typically said to be male monastics.
Even allowing for these points, which I do, I still find the tone of the passages very harsh, violent even. Hearing them read in a long retreat - about 12 or 13 weeks in - I felt as though I was being assaulted!
In a sense part of what I want to do is challenge the wholesale use of such a text. I don't think this kind of sentiment is appropriate to me, and I have had several other members of the Order tell me off the record that they had a similar experience.
Did you read my other essay on superstitions that have crept into Buddhism? That is also part of the context of the text.
One of my other correspondents mentioned a similar kind of approach in Pali and it may be interested to see if the sentiments and the words used are similar - a project for the future when my Sanskrit is better!
Thanks for responding
Jayarava
Friday, January 09, 2009
Hi Jayarava,
I read your other article on superstition in Buddhism and, as you say there, the superstitions "are embedded in our canons of scripture..." which makes me wonder if they 'crept' in or have always been there (including hints of disdain for the body at times).
Justin w.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Hi Jayarava,
It's over the top, yes, but it's Shantideva! I'm not saying I think the passages are super groovy or anything. They are disturbing. But it seems to me like they are part of consistently hyperbolic expression of the bodhisattva ideal, or of anatta, letting go even of the last thing about ourselves we will cling to, the last refuge...& in a way it goes against Hindu ideals of purity because it's saying EVERYONE'S body is foul.
I do not find it inspiring, but I do find it kind of interesting, also peoples' various reactions. I do not take it literally in the same way that I do not take literally "Beings are numberless, I vow to save them"...
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Hi Justin,
Recall that the Buddha lived in the 5th century BCE, and that the suttas were carried in memory for centuries. There are clear signs of development in the canon of texts, and also of editing. Keep in mind also that the texts have all been translated into Pāli or Sanskrit. If we take the most extreme view - that of Dr Greg Schopen - then the canon wasn't fixed, or at least there is no evidence that it was fixed, until the 5th century CE - towards the end of the glorious Gupta Empire which was very definitely Hindu in its religious orientation. 1000 years. Plenty of time for ideas to creep in. Even if we took the most conservative view - that of the texts themselves - the canon was written down in the first century BCE - still 300 years, and the textual evidence for change and editing remains.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Hi Suvarnaprabha,
Glad at least one colleague has commented. And your view seems to represent that of some others I've had this conversation with. Treat the text as hyperbole, not to be taken literally.
Which is fine as far as it goes, but doesn't satisfy me either intellectually or emotionally - it doesn't address that you and I both find the verses, not just uncomfortable or awkward, or challenging... but disturbing
No text should be taken literally. But of course we do, don't we? Or at least we take them seriously. Collectively we revere the text, and it's very much a part of the Order's curriculum. We mark the text as significant and important, as profound even. And we draw on it for one of our definitive rituals. It's not a trivial text and therefore not one to be lightly set aside.
Are the passages I quote above really in the same category as the Bodhisattva Ideal I wonder? On the one hand you may be correct to say that we shouldn't take the Bodhisattva Ideal too literally (note the qualification) but where do you draw the line? Aren't we just watering it down until we find something comfortable? On the other hand the verses I quote have none of the merits of the Bodhisattva Ideal - I can't imagine them being positive, and I know several other people who find them disturbing and unhelpful. Where does this leave us?
The idea that by taking the notion of ritual purity to an extreme in order to make it appear ridiculous has more merit as an argument. There is precedent for it in Pāli texts. But it's not a common interpretation of the passages is it?
One thing I really hate is people doing things to "get a reaction", so I'm loathe to think of the text as being positive because it provokes reactions. Incest provokes reactions too, but we don't endorse it or laud it in our texts. There are no end of things to react to and reactions to them. Do we need this one?
Thanks for responding.
Jayarava
Sunday, January 11, 2009