Yes. Although he is saying "I am a Brahmin" not "I am Brahmā"; i.e. "I am a priest", rather than "I am God". The Buddha quite often describes the ideal Buddhist as a true Brahmin, though as it turns out this is the only canonical passage where the Buddha refers to himself as a Brahmin.
It's not easy to see how the opening paragraph relates to the rest of the text. Having declared himself a Brahmin, the subject changes to to giving.
The passage goes on to echo Ṛgveda 10.90 The Puruṣa Sūkta, when he says that the bhikkhus are born from his mouth, born from the dhamma; just as the Brahmins say they are born from the mouth of Brahmā etc. I mention this in next week's post.
I see that this phrase is quoted 5 times in the Milindapañha [215, and 225 (x4)] and it might be interesting to follow up what Milinda and Nāgasena made of it. A quick look at the Pāli suggests that Milinda is rightly asking Nāgaensa to explain how the Buddha can say he is a Brahmin, when everyone knows he is the khattiya (rāja). Nāgasena appears to answer with stock Buddhist definitions of what a Brahmin is, which is what I happen to be studying at present!
Thanks for that. Jayarava
Monday, August 23, 2010
s said...
I read the whole post (it's great!) but where does the last paragraph comes from? IMHO it makes no sense, even as exaggeration for humour.
"To those people who claim that Buddhism is a religion which tolerates all views this must come as a shock. […] There are times when the Buddha of the Pāli Canon makes Richard Dawkins seem like an appeaser." Really?!
The attitude of Buddhism (and other Indian religions) is very much tolerant. (Compare it to, say, Islamic imperialism and aggressive Christian proselytization.) Merely criticizing the ideas of other religions, or going about "subverting them and making fun of people who held them" do not count as intolerance; any more "tolerance" of the kind you imagine, and it would effectively mean not holding your own views at all.
S. I see the distinction you are making. Yes, we suffer fools gladly by comparison.
But then again Japanese Imperialism had the full backing of the Buddhist establishment, as did the Sri Lankan campaign to subjugate their Hindu countrymen...
It's like a standard complaint that some Christians make about Dawkins and the other "Four Horsemen": "You guys are always criticizing us, which means that you're intolerant." In other words, tolerance of someone's religious beliefs is equated with agreeing with them.
The Japanese imperialist and Sri Lankan type of Buddhism is not just being critical of another religion as a set of ideas or beliefs; it's taking up arms and crushing or violently subduing a group of living human beings. I would think that most of us would say that that's not what the Buddha taught us to do, by a long shot, and it's certainly not what Dawkins and his atheist supporters are about.
This also applies to the current problem of tolerating Islam in the U.S. and other countries, but I won't spell out the details, since I think they are obvious.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
s said...
You're right; good point with those examples. Wherever religion gets linked with power, it's quite likely to be abused. A claim that followers of Buddhism or Buddhist religious establishments are inherently more tolerant would be false, since well, humans are humans everywhere.
The difference is that the teachings of the Buddha don't come with an inherent notion of Buddhism as a monolithic entity with a mandate to spread itself. One may wish to teach others, and even criticize their views in a debate, but ultimately, if they don't see the light, you just (possibly decide they're idiots and) leave them in peace, respecting their right to follow their own ideas. (The same is true of Jainism, Hinduism, etc., in theory.) It is in this sense that it's tolerant — compared to religions with a built-in expansionist mission, that think of "unbelievers" as "heathen" or infidels or enemies. :-)
But I guess I'm saying obvious things, so I'll stop.
Actually this is a good point, well made. The word 'tolerant' was a poor choice on my part. Perhaps I meant 'accepting' - that Buddhists allow you to make your own decisions on what to believe, but they do not necessarily accept that your view is correct.
I had in mind to criticise the "all is one" thinking that I meet so often. The idea that what all the different religions teach is all the same - viz some of the recent posts on Buddhist Geeks about so-called "Christian Buddhism".
I believe Dawkins goes a little further than criticising and suggests that Christianity is a bad thing altogether (I must be clear that I only know about him by reputation - not a reputation I find attractive enough to spend precious time reading his books - I don't need to know that someone else thinks Christianity is a bad idea).
But yes more broadly there is a tendency to equate tolerance with ascent - as I said to 'S' (above) this is kind of what I had in mind when adding that last paragraph: the idea that one can be both a Christian and a Buddhist because in the end all religions are about the same things.
I think it's obvious that the Buddhist Geeks author who wrote two posts on the subject of so-called "Christian Buddhists" felt that by disagreeing with him and his proposition that the other detractors and I were being intolerant. Whereas I felt I was making serious points about the differences between the two: especially that the similarity exist only at the level of ethics, which from a Buddhist point of view is the least significant aspect of the teaching, whereas the motivation to be ethical, the aim of ethic, the very conception of the universe we live in could scarcely be more different!
I contradict myself to some extent I suppose, because previously I have argued on this blog that it doesn't matter what you believe as long as it manifests in virtue - on the basis that my mother is a fundamentalist Christian and not at all a bad person; Whilst many of my Buddhist friends believe in ghosts and other supernatural entities and still manage to embody Buddhist virtues.
Love your blog (as you may be able to tell). I expect it'll be my primary entertainment for weeks!
You said, "My finding so far is that no Brahmin appears to espouse the kinds of views about ātman/brahman that we would associate with the Upaniṣads." It's interesting, isn't it, that "our Brahmins" (the ones that appear in the suttas) don't really talk about atman, though they do make reference to Brahma in the place where Pajapati once stood (that is, they are of his mouth &c) so by the time of the Buddha/suttas Brahma was spoken of outside of closed Vedic circles as The One. I get the feeling when Brahmins talk of Brahman they are speaking as do the educated Christians I know, who speak of God as more of a representation of a principal rather than of the long-bearded character of childrens' tales. Yet when the Buddha encounters Brahma, it's clearly the cartoon character version he deals with.
I have read somewhere -- I think it was in the Bronkhorst -- the suggestion that it may well have been another culture within society that came up with the concept of cyclic rebirth (samsara) and that the Vedic literature only picked it up later and sort of back-filled it into their corpus. I wonder if this might also be true of the concept of atman as eternal soul, as well. Certainly it looks to me as though when the Buddha is pointing out the foolishness of eternalist and annihilationist views, it's the heretics he talks to, not the Brahmins. The Brahmins still seem to have been dealing primarily with correspondence / causation / bad puns / ritual / creation of a loka to hang out in after death. The situation is certainly not simple, and all the hands and minds that have shaped the canon over time make it a challenge to sort out.
As for the Buddha's sense of humor, how can a sequence like the one in MN 120 *not* be humorous:
"Oh, that on dissolution of the body, after death, I might reappear in the company of well-to-do nobles!" He fixes his mind on that...[and gets it] "...of well-to-do-brahmins!" "...in the company of the gods of heaven..." "...the gods who wield power..." "...the Brahma of a Thousand worlds..." "...the Brahma of Five Thousand..." "...the Brahma of Ten Thousand..." "...the Brahma of a Hundred Thousand..." "...the gods of Radiance...the gods of Streaming Radiance...the gods of Glory...the gods of Limited Glory...the gods of Immeasurable Glory..." (okay I'll stop now but he goes on for several more, and EVEN includes the jhanas after that...)
You can almost hear the Dangerfield-esque drum bump that goes with the punch line: "'Oh, that by realizing for myself with direct knowledge, I might here and now enter upon and abide in the deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom that are taintless with the destruction of the taints!' and by realizing for himself with direct knowledge, he here and now enters upon and abides in the deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom that are taintless with the destruction of the taints. Bhikkhus, this bhikkhu does not reappear anywhere at all." I mean, there weren't four different Brahmas, the whole *point* of Brahman was The Oneness, so isn't that a clue to the joke? Could the man have held an audience through long sermons without the leavening of humor? But religious sorts don't want their founders cracking wise, which also may account for some of the confusion in our understanding.
And then you said, "To those people who claim that Buddhism is a religion which tolerates all views this must come as a shock."
"Buddhism" covers not just what the Buddha taught, but what adherents came to believe about their religion over time, and the Dalai Lama, as the foremost example of a Buddhist trend-setter, certain is tolerant. How we see the Buddha's level of tolerance varies, I think, by who he is talking to and what he is talking about. He is certainly tolerant and downright respectful of other beliefs when talking to kings. My analysis of MN 117 (in several lengthy posts on my blog) seems to indicate he fostered others' beliefs in other views as skillful enough means that they became confused with his own teachings. I maintain that he saw other systems in terms of a moral arc, so that how much suffering the dogmas caused determined how he responded to them.
Thanks for another inspiring post!
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
[Image]Professor Richard Gombrich has been at the fore-front of pointing out that late Vedic beliefs are parodied in the Buddhist scriptures. [1] He has demonstrated in a series of erudite articles that the Buddha must have known the body of teachings that underlie the early Upaniṣads - especially the Bṛhadāranyka (BU) and Chāndogya (CU). This is not to say that these actual texts would have been known to him, because most scholars believe them to be later distillations anyway (rather like the Buddhist texts), but that the beliefs we read in them were known. What kinds of evidence do we have for this thesis? I've been researching what kinds of views we find in the mouths of Brahmins in the Pāli texts and hope at some point to publish the results. My finding so far is that no Brahmin appears to espouse the kinds of views about ātman/brahman that we would associate with the Upaniṣads. However we do find something like those views being put into the words of Brahmā (i.e. God) himself for instance in the Kevaddha Sutta. [2]
In the BU 1.4.10 we find this passage (Olivelle's translation) In the beginning this world was only brahman, and it knew only itself (ātman), thinking: "I am brahman." As a result it became the whole. Among the gods, likewise, whosoever realized this, only they became the Whole. It was the same also among the seers and among the humans. Upon seeing this very point, the seer Vāmadeva proclaimed: "I was Manu, and I was the sun." This is true even now. If a man knows "I am Brahman" in this way, he becomes this whole world.Anyone interested in the Sabba Sutta should pay close attention to this verse as this is also the context for that sutta - Olivelle's 'Whole' is a translation of Sanskrit sarvaṃ = Pāli sabbaṃ - but for this essay I want to draw attention to the phrase "I am brahman": ahaṃ brahmāsmi. This is seen by Vedic believers as a kind of credo. It sums up the path according to the sages of the Upaniṣads which is that the realisation that you are brahman is the highest realisation. In this realisation one becomes this whole world (sa idaṃ sarvaṃ bhavati).
In the Pāli Kevaddha Sutta the householder Kevaddha approaches the Buddha to encourage him to perform some miracles and thereby attract followers. The Buddha says that not how he operates. How he does operate is spelled out in the long passage that is repeated in all 13 of the first of the Dīgha Nikāya suttas, but this segues into a story of a monk who, desiring to know where the elements cease without remainder. In order to answer the question he attains super human states of consciousness in meditation and visits the realms of the various devas, moving up the scale until me meets Brahmā himself. Posed the question Brahma can only reply: "ahamasmi, bhikkhu, brahmā mahābrahmā abhibhū anabhibhūto aññadatthudaso vasavattī issaro kattā nimmātā seṭṭho sajitā vasī pitā bhūtabhabyānan" ti.
"I am, bhikkhu, Brahmā, Great Brahmā, unconquered conqueror, omnipotent, Lord over all, maker and creator, the highest, controller of the cosmic order, and father of all beings past, present and future."Note that Brahmā doesn't answer the question. It turns out that he doesn't know the answer, but has to keep up appearances because the other gods believe it is true that Brahmā is the omnipotent creator. He takes the monk to one side to explain this and point him back in the direction of the Buddha.
But notice how he starts his answer. If we leave out the 'bhikkhu' he says: ahamasmi brahmā. Compare this to the Sanskrit: ahaṃ brahmāsmi. That the Pāli is a reference to the BU, or at least to the body of teaching recorded in that text, is clear. Although the BU was not written down for many years after the Buddhist texts, the scholarly consensus is that BU represents a body of teachings that predate the Buddha by several centuries. Given the flexibility of syntax in the two languages we are looking at the same statement. Exactly the same except that the Sanskrit has an ambiguity - brahmāsmi can be read as brahma asmi or brahmā asmi i.e. as the neuter or masculine. The first is the abstract universal essence of the cosmos that manifests as ātman in the individual; the second is the masculine creator god. The first usage in BĀU 1.4.10 is the context of a neuter pronoun 'it' (tad), while the second is in the context of a masculine pronoun 'him' (sa), so both senses could be being used here! Gombrich observes that the Buddha has selected the less abstract, and therefore less sophisticated, of the two, i.e. Brahmā as creator god, and that this helps to contribute to the overall sense of this being not just a polemic, but a parody. Johannes Bronkhorst has been very critical of Gombrich's interpretation of this kind of reference as evidence of the Buddha's sense of humour, [3] but personally I think this example is funny. On the one hand the realisation "I am Brahmā" encapsulates the highest goals of religion; and on the other the statement is just an egotistical and deluded claim with no basis.
The ideal of union with Brahmā (brahmasahavyatā) is also found in the Tevijja Sutta (DN 13) where we find the Buddha informing some hapless Brahmins Vāseṭṭha and Bhāradvaja [4] that though there own teachers are ignorant of the way leading to this goal, that: brahmānaṃ cāhaṃ, vāseṭṭha, pajānāmi brahmalokañca brahmalokagāminiñca paṭipadaṃ I know Brahmā, Vāseṭṭha, and Brahmā's domain, and the way leading to Brahmā's domain. The Buddha then teaches the meditations we have come to know as the brahmavihāra 'dwelling with Brahmā', though the name is not used here. Brahmavihāra is actually a synonym of brahmasahavyatā. It would be like walking into a Christian church and asking "How many of your priests have been face to face with God? None? I have, and I can tell you how to be in His presence. You don't have to die and go to heaven, you can dwell in heaven right now!" - and teaching the mettābhāvanā! I've often wondered what would happen if we took the Buddha's approach to theistic religion. Forget about opposition and proving that God exists, but just roll with it and teach Buddhism in Christian terms. I think most of us are too afraid of losing our religion, and perhaps lack confidence in our methods, to even try this. And, of course, it would require one to be truthfully in that state of dwelling with God (brahmavihāra). But it is what the Buddha appears to have done.
To those people who claim that Buddhism is a religion which tolerates all views this must come as a shock. Not only did the Buddha not tolerate wrong views, he actively went about subverting them and making fun of people who held them. There are times when the Buddha of the Pāli Canon makes Richard Dawkins seem like an appeaser.
Notes Professor Gombrich's contribution is summed up in his book What the Buddha Thought[Image]. References to his individual papers can be found there. The observations I make here has been observed by him previously, but I'm putting them in my own words. also Kevaṭṭa Sutta. Dīgha Nikāya 11. PTS D i.211. Translation that follows is mine. Pāli text from CST.Especially in his book Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India.These two show up in various retellings of this story at e.g. DN 13, MN 98, and Sn 3.9. I haven't yet done a detailed comparison, but I'm working on it. image: Brahmā from adishakti.org
10 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formInteresting enough in Brāhmaṇa-sutta (Iti 101) the Buddha says: “Ahamasmi, bhikkhave, brāhmaṇo...”
Monday, August 23, 2010
Hi Piotr
Yes. Although he is saying "I am a Brahmin" not "I am Brahmā"; i.e. "I am a priest", rather than "I am God". The Buddha quite often describes the ideal Buddhist as a true Brahmin, though as it turns out this is the only canonical passage where the Buddha refers to himself as a Brahmin.
It's not easy to see how the opening paragraph relates to the rest of the text. Having declared himself a Brahmin, the subject changes to to giving.
The passage goes on to echo Ṛgveda 10.90 The Puruṣa Sūkta, when he says that the bhikkhus are born from his mouth, born from the dhamma; just as the Brahmins say they are born from the mouth of Brahmā etc. I mention this in next week's post.
I see that this phrase is quoted 5 times in the Milindapañha [215, and 225 (x4)] and it might be interesting to follow up what Milinda and Nāgasena made of it. A quick look at the Pāli suggests that Milinda is rightly asking Nāgaensa to explain how the Buddha can say he is a Brahmin, when everyone knows he is the khattiya (rāja). Nāgasena appears to answer with stock Buddhist definitions of what a Brahmin is, which is what I happen to be studying at present!
Thanks for that.
Jayarava
Monday, August 23, 2010
I read the whole post (it's great!) but where does the last paragraph comes from? IMHO it makes no sense, even as exaggeration for humour.
"To those people who claim that Buddhism is a religion which tolerates all views this must come as a shock. […] There are times when the Buddha of the Pāli Canon makes Richard Dawkins seem like an appeaser."
Really?!
The attitude of Buddhism (and other Indian religions) is very much tolerant. (Compare it to, say, Islamic imperialism and aggressive Christian proselytization.) Merely criticizing the ideas of other religions, or going about "subverting them and making fun of people who held them" do not count as intolerance; any more "tolerance" of the kind you imagine, and it would effectively mean not holding your own views at all.
Friday, August 27, 2010
S. I see the distinction you are making. Yes, we suffer fools gladly by comparison.
But then again Japanese Imperialism had the full backing of the Buddhist establishment, as did the Sri Lankan campaign to subjugate their Hindu countrymen...
Friday, August 27, 2010
It's like a standard complaint that some Christians make about Dawkins and the other "Four Horsemen": "You guys are always criticizing us, which means that you're intolerant." In other words, tolerance of someone's religious beliefs is equated with agreeing with them.
The Japanese imperialist and Sri Lankan type of Buddhism is not just being critical of another religion as a set of ideas or beliefs; it's taking up arms and crushing or violently subduing a group of living human beings. I would think that most of us would say that that's not what the Buddha taught us to do, by a long shot, and it's certainly not what Dawkins and his atheist supporters are about.
This also applies to the current problem of tolerating Islam in the U.S. and other countries, but I won't spell out the details, since I think they are obvious.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
You're right; good point with those examples. Wherever religion gets linked with power, it's quite likely to be abused. A claim that followers of Buddhism or Buddhist religious establishments are inherently more tolerant would be false, since well, humans are humans everywhere.
The difference is that the teachings of the Buddha don't come with an inherent notion of Buddhism as a monolithic entity with a mandate to spread itself. One may wish to teach others, and even criticize their views in a debate, but ultimately, if they don't see the light, you just (possibly decide they're idiots and) leave them in peace, respecting their right to follow their own ideas. (The same is true of Jainism, Hinduism, etc., in theory.) It is in this sense that it's tolerant — compared to religions with a built-in expansionist mission, that think of "unbelievers" as "heathen" or infidels or enemies. :-)
But I guess I'm saying obvious things, so I'll stop.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Hi S
Actually this is a good point, well made. The word 'tolerant' was a poor choice on my part. Perhaps I meant 'accepting' - that Buddhists allow you to make your own decisions on what to believe, but they do not necessarily accept that your view is correct.
I had in mind to criticise the "all is one" thinking that I meet so often. The idea that what all the different religions teach is all the same - viz some of the recent posts on Buddhist Geeks about so-called "Christian Buddhism".
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Jayarava
Sunday, August 29, 2010
@JonJ
I believe Dawkins goes a little further than criticising and suggests that Christianity is a bad thing altogether (I must be clear that I only know about him by reputation - not a reputation I find attractive enough to spend precious time reading his books - I don't need to know that someone else thinks Christianity is a bad idea).
But yes more broadly there is a tendency to equate tolerance with ascent - as I said to 'S' (above) this is kind of what I had in mind when adding that last paragraph: the idea that one can be both a Christian and a Buddhist because in the end all religions are about the same things.
I think it's obvious that the Buddhist Geeks author who wrote two posts on the subject of so-called "Christian Buddhists" felt that by disagreeing with him and his proposition that the other detractors and I were being intolerant. Whereas I felt I was making serious points about the differences between the two: especially that the similarity exist only at the level of ethics, which from a Buddhist point of view is the least significant aspect of the teaching, whereas the motivation to be ethical, the aim of ethic, the very conception of the universe we live in could scarcely be more different!
I contradict myself to some extent I suppose, because previously I have argued on this blog that it doesn't matter what you believe as long as it manifests in virtue - on the basis that my mother is a fundamentalist Christian and not at all a bad person; Whilst many of my Buddhist friends believe in ghosts and other supernatural entities and still manage to embody Buddhist virtues.
Thanks for commenting.
Jayarava
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Love your blog (as you may be able to tell). I expect it'll be my primary entertainment for weeks!
You said, "My finding so far is that no Brahmin appears to espouse the kinds of views about ātman/brahman that we would associate with the Upaniṣads." It's interesting, isn't it, that "our Brahmins" (the ones that appear in the suttas) don't really talk about atman, though they do make reference to Brahma in the place where Pajapati once stood (that is, they are of his mouth &c) so by the time of the Buddha/suttas Brahma was spoken of outside of closed Vedic circles as The One. I get the feeling when Brahmins talk of Brahman they are speaking as do the educated Christians I know, who speak of God as more of a representation of a principal rather than of the long-bearded character of childrens' tales. Yet when the Buddha encounters Brahma, it's clearly the cartoon character version he deals with.
I have read somewhere -- I think it was in the Bronkhorst -- the suggestion that it may well have been another culture within society that came up with the concept of cyclic rebirth (samsara) and that the Vedic literature only picked it up later and sort of back-filled it into their corpus. I wonder if this might also be true of the concept of atman as eternal soul, as well. Certainly it looks to me as though when the Buddha is pointing out the foolishness of eternalist and annihilationist views, it's the heretics he talks to, not the Brahmins. The Brahmins still seem to have been dealing primarily with correspondence / causation / bad puns / ritual / creation of a loka to hang out in after death. The situation is certainly not simple, and all the hands and minds that have shaped the canon over time make it a challenge to sort out.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
As for the Buddha's sense of humor, how can a sequence like the one in MN 120 *not* be humorous:
"Oh, that on dissolution of the body, after death, I might reappear in the company of well-to-do nobles!" He fixes his mind on that...[and gets it]
"...of well-to-do-brahmins!"
"...in the company of the gods of heaven..."
"...the gods who wield power..."
"...the Brahma of a Thousand worlds..."
"...the Brahma of Five Thousand..."
"...the Brahma of Ten Thousand..."
"...the Brahma of a Hundred Thousand..."
"...the gods of Radiance...the gods of Streaming Radiance...the gods of Glory...the gods of Limited Glory...the gods of Immeasurable Glory..." (okay I'll stop now but he goes on for several more, and EVEN includes the jhanas after that...)
You can almost hear the Dangerfield-esque drum bump that goes with the punch line: "'Oh, that by realizing for myself with direct knowledge, I might here and now enter upon and abide in the deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom that are taintless with the destruction of the taints!' and by realizing for himself with direct knowledge, he here and now enters upon and abides in the deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom that are taintless with the destruction of the taints. Bhikkhus, this bhikkhu does not reappear anywhere at all." I mean, there weren't four different Brahmas, the whole *point* of Brahman was The Oneness, so isn't that a clue to the joke? Could the man have held an audience through long sermons without the leavening of humor? But religious sorts don't want their founders cracking wise, which also may account for some of the confusion in our understanding.
And then you said, "To those people who claim that Buddhism is a religion which tolerates all views this must come as a shock."
"Buddhism" covers not just what the Buddha taught, but what adherents came to believe about their religion over time, and the Dalai Lama, as the foremost example of a Buddhist trend-setter, certain is tolerant. How we see the Buddha's level of tolerance varies, I think, by who he is talking to and what he is talking about. He is certainly tolerant and downright respectful of other beliefs when talking to kings. My analysis of MN 117 (in several lengthy posts on my blog) seems to indicate he fostered others' beliefs in other views as skillful enough means that they became confused with his own teachings. I maintain that he saw other systems in terms of a moral arc, so that how much suffering the dogmas caused determined how he responded to them.
Thanks for another inspiring post!
Tuesday, September 07, 2010