“Scholars seem to agree that the biography found in the Ariyapariyesanā represents a more primitive version of the story which is likely to predate the more elaborate version.”
There doesnt seem to be a strong compelling reason to accept this theory more than other ones. First off the the Ariyapariyesanā sutta doesn’t recount the Buddha's period of austerities before his Awakening. It also doesn’t tell of how the group of five attended him during that period and later left him when they thought he had abandoned those practices. But at the end of the sutta the Buddha makes reference to those events as though they would be already known by his listeners. From this one could draw the conclusion that the suttas that do describe those events are actually earlier and they also included the more fantastical accounts of the Buddha's going forth.
One things which has not been mentioned is relevance of context when reading the suttas. The Buddha was addressing a specific person or group and his teaching was tailored to them specifically. As is always the case in the Buddha's autobiographical accounts in the canon they are designed to convey a lesson, in this case the difference between a noble and ignoble search.
Comparing suttas and holding them up as to scrutiny when they seemingly depict different historical accounts really is doing the Buddha's teaching's a great disservice as they were never intended for that purpose. The Dhamma is taught for the "the elimination of all view-positions, determinations, biases, inclinations, & obsessions; for the stilling of all fabrications; for the relinquishing of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding." Just because an idea can be logically inferred from the Dhamma does not make that idea valid or useful (the misapprehension of the Dhamma by Arittha for instance). The Buddha pointed to the dangers of a limited empirical understanding when he talked about contemplatives who have had experience of just arising when they draw the conclusion that the 'world' is eternal and only this is true and nothing else.
Having said yourself that we will probably never know which is the original story how can it then be said that it provides insight into how the legend of Buddha grew? Conversely if the Ariyapariyesanā isn’t the earlier version then shouldn’t one consider other reasons why there are these disparities between the accounts?
One possibility which you seem to have overlooked, but which is also quite reasonable, is that his 'weeping parents' are Śuddhodana and Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī (not Maya who is said to have died not long after the Buddha was born on some accounts).
Maya and Gautamī were sisters and were both married to Śuddhodana. Also it is also said that Gautamī raised the Buddha as her own son. It is reasonable to assume that she would have had a fairly strong maternal bond towards the Buddha and the Buddha would have considered his step-mother to be as much his maternal parent as Maya (if not more so). In addition it is also said that Gautamī was first married to King Śuddhodana but when she was unable to produce an heir he then was married to Gautamī. Further evidence of the parental bond between the Buddha and Gautamī is hinted at when Ananda requested ordination for women when he appeals to the Buddha partly based on all she has done for the Buddha as his step-mother.
Being selective in highlighting certain 'facts' and ignoring others in making conclusions and presenting it as empirical fact does not stand up – it is at best speculative. It shows the dangers of the empirical method when it is held up to be free from bias of the one presenting the evidence.
Asking for a “for an honest confrontation with history, rather than a dishonest collusion with either tradition or secular humanism” is a doubtful aim when one is selective in which facts are relevant to an agenda of establishing a reasonable and true history of the Buddha and Buddhism. Whilst the scientific and empirical method as an idea is a worthy pursuit, as equally as important is how the person uses that method to back up there own views and biases. Looking back at the history of science and those who championed its cause there are many cases where the 'facts' have been overturned by newer discoveries because the scientists involved held certain views, had biases or limited understanding which only yielded limited truths not universal ones.
It's surprising how often people I disagree with come on with these really vehement arguments the next week.
You seem to be labouring under a misapprehension about what I am saying. I am saying that the account of the Buddha's going forth as recounted in the ariyapariyesanā sutta is less elaborate that the other version. It stands to reason that a less elaborate story predates to a more elaborate one, though it need not be a direct predecessor. You seem to be talking about something else entirely!
I'm deeply aware of the importance of context and I often go to a great deal of trouble to reveal the context of my subjects - as I did most recently with the Kālāma Sutta, hunting out the other retellings of the story. You don't say how the issue of context is relevant to the point I make here. And frankly I don't think it makes any difference in this case.
Your next misapprehension seems to be the failure to distinguish "original" from obvious developments. To say that one story is clearly a development of another, and that they are both in all likelihood rather later than the lifetime of the Buddha is perfectly legitimate. I do not consider any text we currently have to be original - especially given that the Pāli Canon is an edited translation of some unknown earlier collection of centuries old oral tradition. In this context "original" is probably meaningless, whereas development is not. Clearly the two versions are not simply parallels!
I did consider other reasons for the disparities between the two versions, but I decided that they did not convince me. This is a blog not a book or a thesis and I just write what seems most relevant - though over the last 6 years I have built up a body of textual translation and commentary which is quite substantial - 243 posts and about 275,000 words! (about 5 or 6 books' worth). In other words this post also exists in a context. I try to give pointers to relevant earlier posts where there are major cross-overs or I have made a point at length earlier. There are several in this post. I can only suggest that you follow them.
The only evidence that both sisters married Suddhodana are the biographical narratives. This kind of literalism seems to dog your comments. Is that story even canonical? I can't find any reference to it.
There is a perfectly good word for aunt in Pāli (mātuccha) and for second wife (dutiyikā) and other terms for complex family relationships. However the story teller chose the compound matāpita - which simply means "mother and father". The story teller understood this to be the appropriate term, though others were available; and crucially other story tellers did not use this compound. I could also have mentioned that the parents are nameless though this is a bit tenuous; and I could have mentioned that 'māyā' is probably simply a corruption of matā (i.e. mother), but it was already a long post. Notice that I do not argue from the Buddha's point of view as you attempt to do. I do not because I cannot. Why you do is something you need to explain.
Ironically you argue as though the traditional narrative is a priori a factual history to disprove my argument that we cannot treat the traditional narratives as factual histories. This is hardly convincing.
I don't think the charge of being selective with facts is relevant. We are all selective with facts. You've just been selective with facts also. I have a limited about of space. I'm writing a blog post, not an encyclopedia. I did my job as a blogger to highlight what I thought was relevant - I focussed on the words of a short paragraph and showed how it conflicted with other longer more elaborate narratives.
Also I did not, as you suggest, present this particular argument in terms of empirical facts. I presented it in terms of reasonable doubts based on contradictions in traditional accounts. My conclusion was that the life story of the Buddha has clearly been changed - which calls into question the way the history of Buddhism is presented. I could have made a stronger case if I had used something like the Buddhacarita or Lalitavistara which introduce even more elaborate changes.
This post was not about facts, but about doubts. You failed to grasp that, and came out swinging, but you completely failed to connect because you accuse me of using methods I don't actually employ, and of coming to conclusions that I have not come to. This post was never about empiricism, it was about apparent contradictions which are not easy to resolve - and you engaged with those contradictions by falling back on tradition. So your whole argument rests of a tautology - the texts are true because the texts say that they are true, and we agree because we believe what the texts tell us. My question is why? I could have cited Professor Greg Schopen as I have done in the past - he notes that in every case where archaeological evidence might have corroborated some aspect of the traditional accounts of Buddhism, it has in fact contradicted tradition.
Alex, these fervent, and long, comments don't seem to get us anywhere. I've spent 17 or 18 years listening to this kind of thing. You don't seem to be paying enough attention to see what my method really is, or what my purpose is. Nor where my heart rests. So you aren't effective in critiquing the method or the conclusions. Your points are off the wall, your reasoning flawed and I get the distinct impression that it's starting to get personal. I don't really enjoy this level of mere bickering.
I understand that you find my conclusions troubling. In a way that's good, because I think more Buddhists need to allow themselves to experience doubt and to ask awkward questions. I'm sorry if that causes you discomfort but the obvious answer is to stop reading - there are thousands of other blogs, mostly more popular than mine, and I'd rather preach to the converted to be honest.
I don't see much point in continuing this particular discussion. Though you have prompted me to gather my thoughts on fundamentalism for next week.
"In writing on this subject, critically and even polemically, I ask readers to opt for an honest confrontation with history, rather than a dishonest collusion with either tradition or secular humanism. The former blinds us and leaves us mired in eternalistic superstition, and the latter urges us to lives of nihilistic mediocrity."
How does secular humanism (mark the word "humanism" urge us to "lives of nihilistic mediocrity"?
Of all the points in what I wrote I am amused to find that you wish to take up that one! It was a bit of off-the-cuff hyperbolic generalisation, and is admittedly probably quite hard to justify.
Let's see if I can improve on it. I am concerned that secular humanists offer no vision of human beings going beyond suffering. By not setting their sights on such radical transformation they eliminate the possibility of achieving it, and for all that I am critical of fundamentalism I see no reason not to believe in this possibility, especially if one defines suffering in the right way (as per the Salla Sutta which I have commented on already). In that kind of view the best we can hope for is a kind of equilibrium; we not only reject the goal, but we don't take up the practices that will help us achieve it.
Perhaps secular humanism is the wrong label for what I had in mind. Could you suggest another?
I will be saying more next week under the rubric of near and far enemies of Buddhism.
Out of curiosity, I looked up the passage you are referencing in the Chinese parallel (Madhyama-Agama No. 204). It is essentially the same as the Pali ... except that it specifies the age of 29. But it says "... my mother and father wept and my friends were not happy, but I shaved my head and donned the kasaya robes ..." I would suppose you haven't been the first reader in history to ask these questions.
Now that's what I call a fantastic blog comment! Thanks so much for taking the time to look up the Chinese, this is very helpful. If was younger and had the energy I would liked to have learned Chinese to explore just this kind of parallel.
少童子 definitely implies a child. I suppose it depends somewhat on how old he was when he delivered the line. A seventy year old might refer to himself as a boy at 29. But you are right, it feels like an insertion that interrupts the passage otherwise.
So it would seem that the Pāli text and the original that the Chinese had agree on these small but crucial details.
I wonder about an older Indian man referring to himself as a child at 29. I wonder for two reasons. Firstly because the ancients had much clearer rites of passage, it was literally a time when men were men.
And secondly precisely because we lack effect rites of passage this confusion of the ages, this refusal to be what age we are or to acknowledge what age others are (be it old, middle-aged or young) seems peculiar to Western societies.
A masterful application of good old Occam's razor. Really, an aesthetic metaphor is more apt: a beautiful, elegant application.
At Tractatus 3.328, Wittgenstein writes: "If a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless. That is the meaning of Occam's razor."
As you yourself say, myths, stories, imaginative renderings, and the like can--and as we all know do--carry great "meaning-making" force. But I think a sub-text to what you write in this post is that much of what committed Buddhists take as "signs" of historicity--of fact, of biography, etc.--are, in an important sense, "not necessary." Taking them as such, in fact, might even constitute a kind of refusal to engage the mythic cues. Not colluding with pre-fabricated versions of things, as you say in the last paragraph, forces the practitioner to (repeatedly and perpetually) figure out for him/herself just what is necessary (and in what sense) and what isn't.
If I understand you correctly you are suggesting that a literal reading of history obscures the mythic context of the stories, and renders them meaningless. And I think I would agree with that. If we mistake the purpose of such stories - treat myth as history, or vice versa - then we lose the meaning.
We are in a dilemma. It is not that we do not need such myths. We do need them. Logic and reason may change our minds, but seldom our hearts. Revolutions are not fought on the basis of ideas (alone at least). So we have these myths, that, like music, dive under the radar of intellect and speak to our hearts. The dilemma is that we either take the European Enlightenment to it's apotheosis and make a religion out of reason; or we swing to the Romantic end of the scale and deify emotion and sentiment itself. Neither extreme is very helpful.
My polemic is more or less the only way I can see to respond to literal or fundamentalist reading of the Buddhist scripture as history. By savaging the history of those who take everything as history, we may make a space for myth to co-exist as myth.
I should say that none of this polemic makes me feel any less of a Buddhist. More so if anything. Buddhism cannot escape the deconstructive tendencies of Buddhism. I've been reading David Chapman's blog lately - and he writes wonderfully about how and when Buddhism as we know it was invented. This questioning and deconstruction allows us to be more of what we seek to become - free of views (amongst other things).
I have a sneaking suspicion that early Buddhism might have been at least in part a schismatic sect of Jainism. Having the Buddha leave home a year before the Mahavira did might thus have been a bit of sectarian one-upmanship, as with the shorter time the Buddha took to achieve enlightenment (six years versus the Mahavira's twelve).
Re: mātāpita - I once had the opportunity to ask Bhikkhu Bodhi about this word and its implication that the Buddha's mother was not dead at the time of his homeleaving, and he opined that it should be read as a conventional phrase and not as evidence of Māyā's survival, given a lack of any corroborating texts. For what it's worth.
Re: the Buddha's hairstyle, there is apparently a story that 108 snails crawled on to his head to keep him cool as he strove for enlightenment - http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/i/iconography-of-the-buddha/
A sutta that pairs well with the Ariyapariyesanā story is AN 3:39, which gives a very believable account of the Buddha's thinking before he left home, thinking that might be the seed of the "four sights" legend.
The period of austerities described in some texts is very similar to the extremes that Jains, but also Ājivakas and other sāmaṇas, resorted to. His first teachers were certainly sāmaṇas not brāhmanas. Gombrich has made it clear that Jainism was an influence - both doctrinally, and in how the saṅgha was organised. That two religious groups in India were in competition is entirely believable - and in fact I've cited textual evidence for it occurring throughout the first era of Indian Buddhism (from the Buddha to ca. 1200AD.) That Buddhism was a schism from Jainism is certainly more plausible that that it arose out of Brāhmanism (which is still put about).
Re Bhikkhu Bodhi: well, he would say that wouldn't he. ;-)
I've heard the snail-hair theory before, from one of my Indian Buddhist friends. Quite amusing, if a bit disgusting. I see it as a post-hoc explanation for why a bald guy is depicted with hair. It highlights the dissonance, don't you think?
Thanks for the reference, I'll go read it. I've always imagined that the four-sights legend pre-dated the Buddha which is why he personally doesn't appear in most of the versions. People were leaving home seeking the deathless for some generations before our boy.
Monday, July 25, 2011
[Image]I'VE ALREADY WRITTEN quite a lot on the confusion surrounding the name of the Buddha, and concluded that we don't really know what his name was. More recently I was pondering the Buddha's biography and considering the two different accounts of his going forth: the familiar elaborate version in which a princely man aged 29 who leaves behind wealth, status, wife, child, and family; and the shorter, less detailed, and probably less familiar story found in the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta [MN 26], but corroborated in other places. Scholars seem to agree that the biography found in the Ariyapariyesanā represents a more primitive version of the story which is likely to predate the more elaborate version. It's a given that the life stories of famous people tend to become more elaborate with time, not less, especially post-mortem. I'm sure many Buddhists will be surprised to discover that there are two different stories, as the more elaborate version is usually presented as a more or less factual, historical account.
Whether or not the Ariyapariyesanā version is the original story we will probably never know. But it provides a valuable insight into how the legend of the Buddha grew after his death. The process is no different from other saintly figures in other cultures and times. It's a case of the medium is the message: the common outlines of hagiographies tell us more about human nature than the content of such stories tell us about the historical Buddha. I want to look at just one paragraph from this earlier, less elaborate biography and draw out the implications it has for our stories about the Buddha. So kho ahaṃ, bhikkhave, aparena samayena daharova samāno susukāḷakeso, bhadrena yobbanena samannāgato paṭhamena vayasā akāmakānaṃ mātāpitūnaṃ assumukhānaṃ rudantānaṃ kesamassuṃ ohāretvā kāsāyāni vatthāni acchādetvā agārasmā anagāriyaṃ pabbajiṃ. [M i.163] At a later time, though still only a boy, with much black hair, in the first stage of life, and endowed with youth and good fortune; with my mother and father unwilling, tearful and wailing, I cut off my hair and beard, donned brown robes, and went forth from home, into homelessness. I don't think it's overstating things to say that this is one of the most important biographical passages in the whole canon, because here much of what we think we know about the Buddha is contradicted.
Let's begin with his age. The text reinforces his young age with several terms: dahara, yobbana and paṭhama vaya. The word dahara means 'little, a young boy, a youth'. Buddhaghosa glosses it with taruṇa 'a tender young age, esp. a young calf'. The second word, yobbana, also means 'a youth'. The phrase paṭhama vaya means in 'the first stage of life', as opposed to middle age and old age. However the text also says he shaves off hair and beard (kesa-massuṃ ohāretvā) and this is common to all of the various narratives of the Buddha's going forth. Unless this is simply a stock phrase the youth must have passed puberty, and had a year or two to grow a beard. But not much more: if we were to describe a grown man as 'a boy' or 'a youth' it would seem awkward at best. I think we could say that this is describing a youth of 15 or 16. The tradition later made him 29, which is into middle-age by the standards of the day. Why 29? I don't think anyone knows, but it is interesting that the Jain leader, Mahāvīra, an elder contemporary of the Buddha, is described as a prince of Magadha who left home aged 30.
Something which is noticeable for being absent here is any mention of wife and child. The youth here is apparently not married. His parents weep and wail as he leaves, but not his wife. In my opinion the whole story of a wife and child is a later fiction, as is everything associated with them, including stories about Rāhula (who calls their child 'fetter'?). Many people are disturbed by the idea that the young bodhisatta left behind a wife and child. Of course had they existed they would not have been trapped in a neurotic nuclear family like most of us, but would have been part of a large extended family, and if we believe the stories they were wealthy and privileged. They were certainly not alone, nor destitute, and Gotama's role in the raising of his infant, and in the day to day life of his wife would most likely have been minimal in any case. I've never had a problem with young aspirant leaving wealth and family to pursue the deathless, because in the story he returns liberated and frees his family from suffering forever. One must take the story as a whole. But this whole story is a probably a fiction anyway.
Another interesting thing about this passage is that his mother and father -- mātāpita -- are unwilling witnesses to his leaving. He doesn't sneak out at night, there is no servant, no horse, none of the rich symbolism of later times. Notice in particular that his mother is present. The Buddha's mother seems not to have died in childbirth in this account. The stories of her death were presumably part of some important legendary strand that is not unlike the sanctity attached to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Though early Buddhists rejected most notions of Brahmanical ritual purity this is not true of later Buddhists. For example in the eighth century Śāntideva wrote: 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? [Bodhicaryāvatā ch8 8 v.59; translation by Skilton & Crosby] This reflects Brahmanical notions of the polluting nature of bodily fluids, which with the Brahmanisation of the subcontinent, became pan-Indian concerns. The Buddha himself is shown to mock the Brahmins for this attitude in the Agañña Sutta (DN 27.4). He says their creation myth (Ṛgveda 10.90) which tells that the Brahmins were born from the mouth of Brahmā is a lie, since they were born in the usual way -- with all the implications of ritual pollution that entailed in the Brahmins own belief system. So in the later stories the Buddha is not born from his mother's (polluted and polluting) vagina covered in amniotic fluid and other nasty substances, but miraculously and pollution free from her side. And then she, rather too conveniently, dies and is transported to heaven where she can not cast any doubt on the sanctity of the Buddha himself. One is reminded of those 1950's and 60's American sitcoms that featured a family without a mother, ostensibly to play down the subject of where children come from. If indeed this represents a Brahmanical spin, then we can observe that the Brahmanisation of India was not completed until after the reign of Aśoka, ca. 2nd century BCE, about 150 years after the most likely date Buddha's death, which may give us a limit for dating these stories.
Finally observe that when he leaves the bodhisatta dons robes (vatthāni) which are brown (kāyāsa). It's well known that the wanderers of the day would stain the cloth of their simple robes with dirt to make them unattractive to bandits. The samaṇas who didn't go naked did not originally wear elaborate robes, or use expensive fabrics (unlike many Buddhist monks these days) but the cheapest cloth, or even rags, stained with dirt. The word kāyāsa means 'brown', but is often interpreted as 'yellow'. I think the latter is because of the brightly coloured robes that many modern Theravādins wear. PED links kāyāsa to Sanskrit śyāma 'dark' which can mean anything from black to dark blue or green; or śyāva 'dark brown, brown'. Neither of which suggest yellow, orange or red! There is a direct cognate kāṣāya but PED says this is a Sanskritisation of a Pāli word, and in any case it also means 'brown, or reddish-brown'. So the word means 'brown, dark', except in the context of bhikkhu's robes. Which suggests that changes in the colour of the robes lead to the change in meaning of the word in this specific context.
Though it is not related to this particular text, there is another little oddity about the way we see the Buddha. All of the early literature describes the Buddha as having a shaved head, and cutting of his hair and beard, as I have already mentioned is a central part of all of the Buddhist biographies of the Buddha. And yet more or less all images of the Buddha show him with tightly curled hair. Eisel Mazard goes into this puzzling discontinuity in some depth in an essay entitled The Buddha was Bald. I think Mazard makes a mountain from a mole hill (he seems to see depicting the Buddha with hair as a sinister conspiracy to defraud us), but it does confirm that the popular conception of the Buddha has changed over time, and that earlier versions of his life story get over-written.
So this 'man', who's name we are unsure of, was probably a 16 year old, unmarried youth when he left his (still living) mother and father, against their wishes. And this is not so far fetched really. Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), with whom there are other biographical parallels, was this age when he left his home to go forth. Sangharakshita was about this age when he had his first mystical experiences also, and had be been living in India at the time might have wandered off at that point (as it was he had to wait 6 years to go forth aged 22.).
It's probably meaningless to talk about the "historical Buddha". I forget now where I first came across the distinction, but I like to see the information we do have as pertaining to the traditional or legendary Buddha. The historical Buddha is lost in the mists of time, though it seems very likely that the traditional Buddha is based on an historical person. Another important character, the mythic Buddha, is a product of our imaginations - which is not a criticism, or a pejorative. I think myth -- a word I use in the same spirit as Joseph Campbell -- is very important and significant aspect of our traditions. Myths are vital for a living spiritual tradition. I've written about how a much later figure went from being an historical figure, to a legendary one, and finally attained to the mythic dimension as a kind of Avalokiteśvara-like figure who intercedes to ensure one gets into the pureland. (see: Kūkai: Buddhist Hero of Japan.)
Reginald Ray's book Buddhist Saints in India documents the way that the Buddha's life story became the archetype for stories of later Buddhist saints, with the biographical details being recapitulated throughout history. And indeed the same thing has happened in other world religions. There is no reason to think this process began with the Buddha, or that the biographies that have come down to us are not influenced by his predecessors even if they are even less clearly visible than he himself is.
Across cultures saints often share common features. It would be interesting for instance to compare the Buddha with St. Francis of Assisi. This is not to devalue the methods of Buddhism, or of religion generally. Though I am not in favour of superstition, I think there are remarkable people who rise above the ordinary concerns of the rest of us: saints, for want of a better word. And these people leave us with a legacy of alternatives to: "the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." (Hobbes. Leviathan. Chap. 13, para. 9).
In writing on this subject, critically and even polemically, I ask readers to opt for an honest confrontation with history, rather than a dishonest collusion with either tradition or secular humanism. The former blinds us and leaves us mired in eternalistic superstition, and the latter urges us to lives of nihilistic mediocrity. One of the main ideas communicated by the biography of the Buddha is that we do not have to accept either common superstitions or the general consensus; nor do we have to accept ourselves as we are, as limited and earth bound. We can be free. However the confrontation with history can be painful as it challenges our beliefs and calls into question aspects of our religious faith. I think in the end this makes us stronger, and forces us to focus less on belief and ideology, and more on practical matters, i.e. on doing the practices. Everything changes, and it seems very likely indeed that the stories we tell of the Buddha have changed too.
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Close this window Jump to comment form“Scholars seem to agree that the biography found in the Ariyapariyesanā represents a more primitive version of the story which is likely to predate the more elaborate version.”
There doesnt seem to be a strong compelling reason to accept this theory more than other ones. First off the the Ariyapariyesanā sutta doesn’t recount the Buddha's period of austerities before his Awakening. It also doesn’t tell of how the group of five attended him during that period and later left him when they thought he had abandoned those practices. But at the end of the sutta the Buddha makes reference to those events as though they would be already known by his listeners. From this one could draw the conclusion that the suttas that do describe those events are actually earlier and they also included the more fantastical accounts of the Buddha's going forth.
One things which has not been mentioned is relevance of context when reading the suttas. The Buddha was addressing a specific person or group and his teaching was tailored to them specifically. As is always the case in the Buddha's autobiographical accounts in the canon they are designed to convey a lesson, in this case the difference between a noble and ignoble search.
Comparing suttas and holding them up as to scrutiny when they seemingly depict different historical accounts really is doing the Buddha's teaching's a great disservice as they were never intended for that purpose. The Dhamma is taught for the "the elimination of all view-positions, determinations, biases, inclinations, & obsessions; for the stilling of all fabrications; for the relinquishing of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding." Just because an idea can be logically inferred from the Dhamma does not make that idea valid or useful (the misapprehension of the Dhamma by Arittha for instance). The Buddha pointed to the dangers of a limited empirical understanding when he talked about contemplatives who have had experience of just arising when they draw the conclusion that the 'world' is eternal and only this is true and nothing else.
Having said yourself that we will probably never know which is the original story how can it then be said that it provides insight into how the legend of Buddha grew? Conversely if the Ariyapariyesanā isn’t the earlier version then shouldn’t one consider other reasons why there are these disparities between the accounts?
One possibility which you seem to have overlooked, but which is also quite reasonable, is that his 'weeping parents' are Śuddhodana and Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī (not Maya who is said to have died not long after the Buddha was born on some accounts).
Maya and Gautamī were sisters and were both married to Śuddhodana. Also it is also said that Gautamī raised the Buddha as her own son. It is reasonable to assume that she would have had a fairly strong maternal bond towards the Buddha and the Buddha would have considered his step-mother to be as much his maternal parent as Maya (if not more so). In addition it is also said that Gautamī was first married to King Śuddhodana but when she was unable to produce an heir he then was married to Gautamī. Further evidence of the parental bond between the Buddha and Gautamī is hinted at when Ananda requested ordination for women when he appeals to the Buddha partly based on all she has done for the Buddha as his step-mother.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Being selective in highlighting certain 'facts' and ignoring others in making conclusions and presenting it as empirical fact does not stand up – it is at best speculative. It shows the dangers of the empirical method when it is held up to be free from bias of the one presenting the evidence.
Asking for a “for an honest confrontation with history, rather than a dishonest collusion with either tradition or secular humanism” is a doubtful aim when one is selective in which facts are relevant to an agenda of establishing a reasonable and true history of the Buddha and Buddhism. Whilst the scientific and empirical method as an idea is a worthy pursuit, as equally as important is how the person uses that method to back up there own views and biases. Looking back at the history of science and those who championed its cause there are many cases where the 'facts' have been overturned by newer discoveries because the scientists involved held certain views, had biases or limited understanding which only yielded limited truths not universal ones.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Alex,
It's surprising how often people I disagree with come on with these really vehement arguments the next week.
You seem to be labouring under a misapprehension about what I am saying. I am saying that the account of the Buddha's going forth as recounted in the ariyapariyesanā sutta is less elaborate that the other version. It stands to reason that a less elaborate story predates to a more elaborate one, though it need not be a direct predecessor. You seem to be talking about something else entirely!
I'm deeply aware of the importance of context and I often go to a great deal of trouble to reveal the context of my subjects - as I did most recently with the Kālāma Sutta, hunting out the other retellings of the story. You don't say how the issue of context is relevant to the point I make here. And frankly I don't think it makes any difference in this case.
Your next misapprehension seems to be the failure to distinguish "original" from obvious developments. To say that one story is clearly a development of another, and that they are both in all likelihood rather later than the lifetime of the Buddha is perfectly legitimate. I do not consider any text we currently have to be original - especially given that the Pāli Canon is an edited translation of some unknown earlier collection of centuries old oral tradition. In this context "original" is probably meaningless, whereas development is not. Clearly the two versions are not simply parallels!
I did consider other reasons for the disparities between the two versions, but I decided that they did not convince me. This is a blog not a book or a thesis and I just write what seems most relevant - though over the last 6 years I have built up a body of textual translation and commentary which is quite substantial - 243 posts and about 275,000 words! (about 5 or 6 books' worth). In other words this post also exists in a context. I try to give pointers to relevant earlier posts where there are major cross-overs or I have made a point at length earlier. There are several in this post. I can only suggest that you follow them.
The only evidence that both sisters married Suddhodana are the biographical narratives. This kind of literalism seems to dog your comments. Is that story even canonical? I can't find any reference to it.
There is a perfectly good word for aunt in Pāli (mātuccha) and for second wife (dutiyikā) and other terms for complex family relationships. However the story teller chose the compound matāpita - which simply means "mother and father". The story teller understood this to be the appropriate term, though others were available; and crucially other story tellers did not use this compound. I could also have mentioned that the parents are nameless though this is a bit tenuous; and I could have mentioned that 'māyā' is probably simply a corruption of matā (i.e. mother), but it was already a long post. Notice that I do not argue from the Buddha's point of view as you attempt to do. I do not because I cannot. Why you do is something you need to explain.
Ironically you argue as though the traditional narrative is a priori a factual history to disprove my argument that we cannot treat the traditional narratives as factual histories. This is hardly convincing.
I don't think the charge of being selective with facts is relevant. We are all selective with facts. You've just been selective with facts also. I have a limited about of space. I'm writing a blog post, not an encyclopedia. I did my job as a blogger to highlight what I thought was relevant - I focussed on the words of a short paragraph and showed how it conflicted with other longer more elaborate narratives.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Also I did not, as you suggest, present this particular argument in terms of empirical facts. I presented it in terms of reasonable doubts based on contradictions in traditional accounts. My conclusion was that the life story of the Buddha has clearly been changed - which calls into question the way the history of Buddhism is presented. I could have made a stronger case if I had used something like the Buddhacarita or Lalitavistara which introduce even more elaborate changes.
This post was not about facts, but about doubts. You failed to grasp that, and came out swinging, but you completely failed to connect because you accuse me of using methods I don't actually employ, and of coming to conclusions that I have not come to. This post was never about empiricism, it was about apparent contradictions which are not easy to resolve - and you engaged with those contradictions by falling back on tradition. So your whole argument rests of a tautology - the texts are true because the texts say that they are true, and we agree because we believe what the texts tell us. My question is why? I could have cited Professor Greg Schopen as I have done in the past - he notes that in every case where archaeological evidence might have corroborated some aspect of the traditional accounts of Buddhism, it has in fact contradicted tradition.
Alex, these fervent, and long, comments don't seem to get us anywhere. I've spent 17 or 18 years listening to this kind of thing. You don't seem to be paying enough attention to see what my method really is, or what my purpose is. Nor where my heart rests. So you aren't effective in critiquing the method or the conclusions. Your points are off the wall, your reasoning flawed and I get the distinct impression that it's starting to get personal. I don't really enjoy this level of mere bickering.
I understand that you find my conclusions troubling. In a way that's good, because I think more Buddhists need to allow themselves to experience doubt and to ask awkward questions. I'm sorry if that causes you discomfort but the obvious answer is to stop reading - there are thousands of other blogs, mostly more popular than mine, and I'd rather preach to the converted to be honest.
I don't see much point in continuing this particular discussion. Though you have prompted me to gather my thoughts on fundamentalism for next week.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
"In writing on this subject, critically and even polemically, I ask readers to opt for an honest confrontation with history, rather than a dishonest collusion with either tradition or secular humanism. The former blinds us and leaves us mired in eternalistic superstition, and the latter urges us to lives of nihilistic mediocrity."
How does secular humanism (mark the word "humanism" urge us to "lives of nihilistic mediocrity"?
Monday, July 04, 2011
Hi Thill,
Of all the points in what I wrote I am amused to find that you wish to take up that one! It was a bit of off-the-cuff hyperbolic generalisation, and is admittedly probably quite hard to justify.
Let's see if I can improve on it. I am concerned that secular humanists offer no vision of human beings going beyond suffering. By not setting their sights on such radical transformation they eliminate the possibility of achieving it, and for all that I am critical of fundamentalism I see no reason not to believe in this possibility, especially if one defines suffering in the right way (as per the Salla Sutta which I have commented on already). In that kind of view the best we can hope for is a kind of equilibrium; we not only reject the goal, but we don't take up the practices that will help us achieve it.
Perhaps secular humanism is the wrong label for what I had in mind. Could you suggest another?
I will be saying more next week under the rubric of near and far enemies of Buddhism.
Monday, July 04, 2011
Out of curiosity, I looked up the passage you are referencing in the Chinese parallel (Madhyama-Agama No. 204). It is essentially the same as the Pali ... except that it specifies the age of 29. But it says "... my mother and father wept and my friends were not happy, but I shaved my head and donned the kasaya robes ..." I would suppose you haven't been the first reader in history to ask these questions.
T01n0026_p0776b01║愁憂慼。無穢污無上安隱涅槃耶。我時年少
T01n0026_p0776b02║童子。清淨青髮。盛年年二十九。爾時極多
T01n0026_p0776b03║樂戲。莊飾遊行。我於爾時。父母啼哭。諸親
T01n0026_p0776b04║不樂。我剃除鬚髮。著袈裟衣。至信．捨家．
T01n0026_p0776b05║無家．學道。護身命清淨。護口．意命清淨。我
T01n0026_p0776b06║成就此戒身已。欲求無病無上安隱涅槃。
T01n0026_p0776b07║無老．無死．無愁憂慼。無穢污無上安隱涅槃
T01n0026_p0776b08║故。便往阿羅羅伽羅摩所。問曰。阿羅羅。
Monday, July 04, 2011
Hi Charles
Now that's what I call a fantastic blog comment! Thanks so much for taking the time to look up the Chinese, this is very helpful. If was younger and had the energy I would liked to have learned Chinese to explore just this kind of parallel.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Monday, July 04, 2011
Running this through Google translator is hilarious as usual. But some phrase seem to make sense:
"我時年少童子 when I was a young boy."
The conflict between this and the age of 29 is apparent here. A man of 29 is hardly a young boy.
父母啼哭 father (父) and mother (母)crying.
Monday, July 04, 2011
少童子 definitely implies a child. I suppose it depends somewhat on how old he was when he delivered the line. A seventy year old might refer to himself as a boy at 29. But you are right, it feels like an insertion that interrupts the passage otherwise.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
@Charles
So it would seem that the Pāli text and the original that the Chinese had agree on these small but crucial details.
I wonder about an older Indian man referring to himself as a child at 29. I wonder for two reasons. Firstly because the ancients had much clearer rites of passage, it was literally a time when men were men.
And secondly precisely because we lack effect rites of passage this confusion of the ages, this refusal to be what age we are or to acknowledge what age others are (be it old, middle-aged or young) seems peculiar to Western societies.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Warm greetings, Jayarava,
A masterful application of good old Occam's razor. Really, an aesthetic metaphor is more apt: a beautiful, elegant application.
At Tractatus 3.328, Wittgenstein writes: "If a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless. That is the meaning of Occam's razor."
As you yourself say, myths, stories, imaginative renderings, and the like can--and as we all know do--carry great "meaning-making" force. But I think a sub-text to what you write in this post is that much of what committed Buddhists take as "signs" of historicity--of fact, of biography, etc.--are, in an important sense, "not necessary." Taking them as such, in fact, might even constitute a kind of refusal to engage the mythic cues. Not colluding with pre-fabricated versions of things, as you say in the last paragraph, forces the practitioner to (repeatedly and perpetually) figure out for him/herself just what is necessary (and in what sense) and what isn't.
Thanks for the post.
Glenn
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Hi Glenn,
If I understand you correctly you are suggesting that a literal reading of history obscures the mythic context of the stories, and renders them meaningless. And I think I would agree with that. If we mistake the purpose of such stories - treat myth as history, or vice versa - then we lose the meaning.
We are in a dilemma. It is not that we do not need such myths. We do need them. Logic and reason may change our minds, but seldom our hearts. Revolutions are not fought on the basis of ideas (alone at least). So we have these myths, that, like music, dive under the radar of intellect and speak to our hearts. The dilemma is that we either take the European Enlightenment to it's apotheosis and make a religion out of reason; or we swing to the Romantic end of the scale and deify emotion and sentiment itself. Neither extreme is very helpful.
My polemic is more or less the only way I can see to respond to literal or fundamentalist reading of the Buddhist scripture as history. By savaging the history of those who take everything as history, we may make a space for myth to co-exist as myth.
I should say that none of this polemic makes me feel any less of a Buddhist. More so if anything. Buddhism cannot escape the deconstructive tendencies of Buddhism. I've been reading David Chapman's blog lately - and he writes wonderfully about how and when Buddhism as we know it was invented. This questioning and deconstruction allows us to be more of what we seek to become - free of views (amongst other things).
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Jayarava,
Some comments on your post:
I have a sneaking suspicion that early Buddhism might have been at least in part a schismatic sect of Jainism. Having the Buddha leave home a year before the Mahavira did might thus have been a bit of sectarian one-upmanship, as with the shorter time the Buddha took to achieve enlightenment (six years versus the Mahavira's twelve).
Re: mātāpita - I once had the opportunity to ask Bhikkhu Bodhi about this word and its implication that the Buddha's mother was not dead at the time of his homeleaving, and he opined that it should be read as a conventional phrase and not as evidence of Māyā's survival, given a lack of any corroborating texts. For what it's worth.
Re: the Buddha's hairstyle, there is apparently a story that 108 snails crawled on to his head to keep him cool as he strove for enlightenment - http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/i/iconography-of-the-buddha/
A sutta that pairs well with the Ariyapariyesanā story is AN 3:39, which gives a very believable account of the Buddha's thinking before he left home, thinking that might be the seed of the "four sights" legend.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Hi Swanditch
The period of austerities described in some texts is very similar to the extremes that Jains, but also Ājivakas and other sāmaṇas, resorted to. His first teachers were certainly sāmaṇas not brāhmanas. Gombrich has made it clear that Jainism was an influence - both doctrinally, and in how the saṅgha was organised. That two religious groups in India were in competition is entirely believable - and in fact I've cited textual evidence for it occurring throughout the first era of Indian Buddhism (from the Buddha to ca. 1200AD.) That Buddhism was a schism from Jainism is certainly more plausible that that it arose out of Brāhmanism (which is still put about).
Re Bhikkhu Bodhi: well, he would say that wouldn't he. ;-)
I've heard the snail-hair theory before, from one of my Indian Buddhist friends. Quite amusing, if a bit disgusting. I see it as a post-hoc explanation for why a bald guy is depicted with hair. It highlights the dissonance, don't you think?
Thanks for the reference, I'll go read it. I've always imagined that the four-sights legend pre-dated the Buddha which is why he personally doesn't appear in most of the versions. People were leaving home seeking the deathless for some generations before our boy.
Monday, July 25, 2011