The Ordination of Women in Buddhism, Old Facts & New Fables

MacBeth vs. MacDuff.

One of the recurrent issues in my own writing is the misconception that "crazy theories" come from the fringes: on the contrary, in Buddhism, the craziest theories can (and often do) come from the pinnacle of prestige, influence and academic authority (sometimes from the centers of religious authority, too).  I dealt with this question generally in my (still-unpublished) lecture, "The Opposite of Buddhism", and I discussed a (stunning) particular example in my earlier work on the "standard misinterpretation" of the 12 links of "dependent origination".

English speakers often work from a false assumption that what is "central" is conservative and reasonable, and what is "fringe" is radical, original, creative, and more likely to be unreasonable.  That may be true of some areas of scholarship, but I can tell you (and I must warn you) that Buddhism isn't one of them.  There is plenty of craziness at the center of the halls of power (and there isn't much power in those halls).

Often enough, however, what academic publications provide is a certain style of obfuscation for just how crazy these theories may be.  In the case of my critique of a theory proposed by Bhikkhu Pāsādika, I honestly think that the theory was refuted simply by writing it out clearly; in other words, as soon as the obfuscation was removed, any reader could see for themselves just how far-fetched it really was.

Below is an alert that I sent out to colleagues several years ago (as an e-mail), about a genuinely crazy theory propounded on the origin of the ordination of women in Buddhism.  I'm not really offering a critique of it here, but simply (1) pointing out that the theory exists, (2) warning the reader about all of the obfuscation, and then (3) restating what the theory really is without that obfuscation.  As with Bhikkhu Pāsādika's theory about a "materialist conspiracy" re-writing portions of the canon, I think that this "feminist conspiracy" theory is (likewise) so far-fetched that nobody could really take it seriously.  However, none of these theories come from the fringes: this stuff is all being published from the pinnacle of power and privilege, with the imprimaturs of wealthy institutions stamped onto the flyleaves.

-----Begin quotation (May, 2010)-----
It would be difficult to imagine how anyone would know that an exciting new article was published by Hinuber in an obscure journal called ARIRIAB in 2007.

In fact, even if you did stumble upon the ARIRIAB website, you would not be able to guess that this article is available for download as part of ARIRIAB-11.PDF, as there's no list of authors, and the files are scanned images (i.e., not searchable as text).  Resultantly, this is a nearly-hidden gem, and I will be so gauche as to send out a fan-club letter alerting my colleagues to its existence:

http://iriab.soka.ac.jp/orc/Publications/ARIRIAB/index_ARIRIAB.html

Now, even if you see the article, and even if you start reading it,
you might well miss its hypothesis:

Hinuber "dramatizes" the article, by delaying the revelation of his
own thesis until the latest stage possible.  Although this approach has
its advantages, the main defect is that you get an easily readable
opening, followed by a lengthy digression into the details of K.R.
Norman's mis-translation of a single passage from the Vinaya in the
middle portion of the essay (and, I think, there's some joy taken in
Hinuber outdoing K.R. Norman in this respect) --alas, I think many
non-specialist readers will simply give up at this point.

However, in the last act of the drama, the article returns to subjects
of mainstream interest that deserve a broader audience than they
are likely to find (hidden away in the pages of ARIRIAB).  Partly by
sheer co-incidence (e.g., an unpublished thesis that I read some years
ago) I happened to be already familiar with most of the passages that
Hinuber draws together here, but (1) many readers will not be, and (2)
some readers will only be familiar with this stuff as re-phrased (and
indirectly alluded to) in the most evasive and obsequious terms
possible.

As suddenly as MacDuff declaring that he was born of no mortal woman,
the last act takes yet another dramatic turn (terminating in a
footnote) as Hinuber decides to take the further step of concluding
that the ordination of female Buddhist monks took place AFTER the
Buddha's death (whereas, formerly in the article, he had merely
suggested that it took place very late in the Buddha's life) --a
reasonably radical change in interpretation of familiar facts (and,
frankly, I wonder if Hinuber didn't add this just to startle his
audience).

The real value of this article, for the larger number of reasons, will be that it draws together the material on the status of women during the lifetime of the Buddha without the usual evasions of what the primary source texts actually say.  In one of the very last footnotes, Hinuber draws attention to the fact that, at a minimum, the women's ordination was neither equal to the men's, nor simultaneous with it --nor was the women's ordination merely a few years after the men's.

Additionally, for those who do not already know it, the middle portion of the argument (that will be difficult for non-specialists to follow) does demonstrate (with some new examples, and some old) just how fragmentary the Vinaya now is --and how many peculiar influences (from Jainism, at least) were able to creep in (both doctrinally and
linguistically) before the canon was closed.

While I am very pleased at my own sheer luck in discovering this
article, others will not be so lucky (and it would be even more
difficult to find if English were not my first language, etc.) --and
this reminds me of my long-ago proposed project to start some sort of
annual newsletter on new publications on/in Theravada Countries (so
that all scholars in related fields at least have a list, perhaps with
a few articles and illustrations to brighten it up).
-----End of quotation (May, 2010)-----

The replies I received from this notice (at the time) were very much along the lines of, "You can't possibly be serious!" --and I then had to reiterate that this is certainly not a theory that I support myself.

From my perspective, this theory that there were zero ordained female monks during the Buddha's lifetime, and that they were instead falsely added into the canon at a later date (as part of a "feminist conspiracy", so to speak) is completely crazy.  It would require an absurd series of assumptions, and would undermine the same textual sources that the theory relies on to support itself as (presumed) historical evidence.  Such an interpretation would be entirely created and sustained by a series of "self-fulfilling-prophecies" of the most absurd kind (discarding evidence of female monks existing during the lifetime of the Buddha, and grossly reinterpreting other evidence, etc.).  Nevertheless, this completely crazy theory passes the highest levels of peer review, receives the highest levels of institutional support, and is supposed to be taken very seriously, etc., etc., just as with so many examples from the 19th and 20th centuries.

In contrasting the 21st century to the 19th: change is an objective fact, but "progress" is merely an ideology.

It is has never been the case that "the center" had a monopoly on virtue, nor that "the fringes" had a monopoly on crazy theories.  There's a great scarcity of virtue all around, and there's a great deal of corruption, nepotism, incompetence, and sheer stupidity at "the center" everywhere I've been (and I've been almost everywhere).

Buddhist Philosophy 08, Dissent from the Top

Suppose someone formed their opinion of Buddhism based solely on the articles on this blog (a scenario only slightly stranger than meeting someone whose opinion of Buddhism is based entirely on Kung-Fu movies… and yet much less common).  The question might then be asked, "Given all of this supernatural material in the canon (that you complain about other western interpreters selectively ignoring, etc.), why does anyone think of these texts as records of specific historical events at all?"

In a roundabout way, questions of that kind do reach me.  I received an utterly unexpected response from an established, PhD-wielding, career academic (specialized in Buddhism) who felt that my work supported his own conclusion that the Pali canon contained no description of the Buddha as an historical figure at all, nor (in his opinion) did the texts depict him as a human being.  This was both astounding and hilarious, as I then had to provide this professor with a link to one of my prior articles in reply: I had already written "The Buddha was Bald" to discuss the descriptions that we have in the Pali canon that do indeed make the Buddha seem like a normal human being (with nothing supernatural about his appearance, etc.).  I have never heard back from that professor again (the Socratic method is dead, apparently).

The question of whether the the Buddha is described as natural, supernatural, or alternating between the two, is a fairly narrow issue; we have a broader problem in questioning his status as an historical figure (in any of the texts, or in accordance with any possible archaeological evidence, etc.).  Even so, the latter question is still narrower than the universal problem of why anyone regards any of the ancient texts as "real historical evidence" (as opposed to religious fables), and why other texts in the same canon are disregarded (as mere fables).  In effect, modern interpreters end up selectively disregarding some texts, while insisting on the importance of others.

One of the great ghosts haunting "popular philology" is the criterion of embarrassment.  This is not a technical concept: its origin is in a book that sold in airport lobbies, and it was neither narrowly defined by academics nor by religious authorities.  If you look around the internet for debates employing the term, you'll find that they both demonstrate a diversity of (implicit) definitions of what it means, and you'll also see that the authors (often enough) debate amongst themselves the problem of how exactly this criterion should be used.

Given that the term is legitimately contestable in its meaning, it is easier for me to give an example of how it applies to Buddhist studies than to define it.  Mahā-Moggallāna was one of two monks who were expected to inherit the leadership of Buddhism (as a then-new religion) at the time of the Buddha's death; this didn't happen.  Despite the fact that both of these monks were younger than the Buddha, they both pre-deceased him; and Mahā-Moggallāna was reportedly murdered.

Modern icons depicting Moggallāna & Sāriputta (source).

The texts concerning Mahā-Moggallāna are full of the magical and the supernatural, and the events surrounding his death are further embellished upon in the commentaries.  Modern readers tend to regard the death of Mahā-Moggallāna as an historical fact, even if they regard all of the stories told about it as mythology.  How is that possible?  If your only evidence is myth, why would you suppose that you have evidence of anything other than mythology?

Well, there is this dubious thing called the criterion of embarrassment: in general, modern readers suppose that the untimely death of both of the monks who had been appointed to inherit authority was a subject of "embarrassment" (in the peculiar sense that it required further explanation and justification).  Even if the myths are largely fiction, modern readers tend to suppose that the reason for creating the myth was real: the supposition is that a story needed to be invented to "explain away" an inconvenient fact.  However, this whole attitude remains one of supposition.

Many people who don't use the term "criterion of embarrassment" nevertheless share in this basic attitude toward textual evidence (and many people complain that the word "embarrassment" itself is poorly suited to the meaning of the phrase, and is an unwanted distraction, etc.).  The point here isn't that ancient Buddhists were embarrassed by the death of Mahā-Moggallāna itself; rather, the assumption is that modern readers can infer that the invention of the myth served as a type of compensation for a real historical event (and that we can further infer what that real event was that the authors are compensating for).  It all seems so obvious and yet it is really very dubious.

Was Mahā-Moggallāna really murdered by Jains?  If we have a myth stating that he was, couldn't this text reflect tensions between the two religions (Buddhism vs. Jainism) at the time of the myth's authorship, rather than recording a prior historical event?  Can we really "selectively disregard" supernatural elements of a story (that would tend to categorize it as myth) simply because there are other elements that seem (to us, with modern eyes) to indirectly reflect real events?

Could it be, conversely, that these myths cover over something completely different that we can't guess at from the mere supposition that something is concealed?  Human nature being what it is, we might say, at least hypothetically, that there could have been a power-struggle to determine who inherited the control of the religion around the time of the Buddha's death.  As such, it could be that the myth isn't concealing the "inconvenient fact" of Mahā-Moggallāna's death, but, instead that the "convenient fact" of death itself was the myth.

If we started from the skeptical assumption that Mahā-Moggallāna might not have been dead prior to the Buddha, we would then interpret the written myths as offering an explanation of his absence (i.e., exclusion) from power thereafter.  That would be wholly speculative; however, the problem with the criterion of embarrassment is that every theory it supports is wholly speculative.

Monks on pilgrimage (in 2010) to Moggallāna's hometown.

We cannot reduce the degree of speculation even if we employ Occam's razor: there is absolutely no reason why the simplest available explanation for the invention of a myth would be more true than a convoluted one.

Unlike the pure sciences (or even the medical sciences), neither mythology nor history are susceptible to Occam's famous principle: the simplest explanation for why Napoleon went to war with Russia may be utterly false (his real reasons may have been extremely convoluted, etc.) and the simplest explanation for various myths that have been made up about the ensuing war may also be false (propaganda isn't counted as one of the pure sciences).  Given that we're looking at an uncertain mix of mythology and history, "the principle of parsimony" is doubly misleading.

Unlike the laws of physics, we're investigating a story that intentionally conceals something: the motives of the authors may be complex, and we don't even know to what extent they regarded themselves as writing fact, fiction, or a mixture of the two.  In the 21st century, if we were to speculate as to the inspiration for a particular song's lyrics, the simplest explanation has no reason to be more true than a convoluted one.  In looking for historical facts that may be masked within a work of art, simplicity need not correlate to accuracy (although simplicity may make our analysis seem more logical, our conclusions are not any less speculative for that reason).

Returning to the question that opened the essay: why does anyone regard any of this stuff as historical evidence of anything at all?  Well, as a broad aesthetic tendency, I think that most of us (i.e., modern readers) really do share in the mentality of the criterion of embarrassment, and the canonical texts offer us various critical and self-critical remarks about the (imperfect) development of early Buddhism that seem all-too-easy to believe in.  It isn't the case that all of the monks in the canon are paragons of virtue; instead, we have many acrimonious dialogues preserved in which the monks disagree about philosophy, or, sometimes, accuse one-another of ethical lapses and moral misconduct.  There is no real reason why we should regard a story about a bad monk as more historically real than a story about a good monk; however, we should be aware of this tendency of thought that elects to do precisely that.  We tend to treat texts as factual if they contain criticism, self-criticism, conflict, and explanations for what seem to be "inconvenient facts"; we tend to regard the absence of these things (in an otherwise grandiose narrative) as mythical.

If the canon described everyone as levitating and radiating magical beams all the time, etc., nobody today would believe any of it, nobody would really be interested in it, and the whole canon would probably be thought of as quite boring, in contrast to the human drama of other ancient sources, such as the myth of Heracles.  However, the canon does preserve very down-to-earth reflections on the state of the religion, alongside the supernatural narratives (and sometimes mixed in with them indifferently).  This is the sense in which Buddhism is (frankly) more interesting than the myth of Heracles: the religion was intensely aware of its own corruption from the outset, and it was intensely concerned about the misunderstanding of its own philosophy even within its first group of core followers.  The canon preserves a record of many of those concerns (debates, complaints, remonstrations, etc.) --although these are not separate from the mythological material in the texts themselves, and they definitely do not comprise an "earlier stratum" whereby anyone could/should disregard the mythological material as "later strata".  More fundamentally, we should admit to ourselves that we have no clear "criterion" as to what may be called a myth anyway (nor of how/why anything would be separated out as a non-myth); instead, readers just operate on the basis of their own sentiment, and something like the criterion of embarrassment.

Returning to the question of who inherited power at the time of the Buddha's death, I would look very briefly at the example of Mahā-Kassapa.  Whereas the two monks appointed to inherit power did not do so (reportedly due to their untimely demise), Kassapa was the man who actually did take over control of the religion.  Was he appointed to do so from the Buddha's death-bed?  No, reportedly, he wasn't present.  However, as the myth goes (in the MPNS), the fact that he was intended to take over the leadership was indicated magically by the fact that the wood stacked up for the Buddha's funeral-pyre refused to burn until Mahā-Kassapa arrived to attend the funeral.  No, I'm not making this up.  The question is, who did, and why?

Mahā-Kassapa statue rediscovered in 2011.

Yes, theoretically, it is possible that this is an actual historical event, but I don't think that anyone alive today interprets the text in this manner (not even the most pious of monks, and I've met many).  Conversely, if the point of the myth were to legitimate the power of Mahā-Kassapa, the question deserves to be asked: why didn't someone simply fabricate a decision on the part of the Buddha (on his death-bed) saying that Kassapa should take over control of the religion?

It may also be noted that the wood on the pyre does not speak with its own voice: another important monk, Anuruddha, offers the explanation that the gods were preventing the fire from alighting until Kassapa could arrive.  Again, it is tempting to imagine that this myth preserves Anuruddha's support for Mahā-Kassapa inheriting power, and that it is indirectly depicting the fact that Anuruddha wanted to delay the funeral proceedings until Kassapa and his supporters could arrive to advocate for his leadership.  However, we don't know this: it is speculation of the crudest kind.

The inscription from the shattered statue.

Mahā-Kassapa isn't even mentioned in the text (the MPNS) until after the Buddha's death; he enters the narrative with the description of his absence, explained in reference to this issue of the funeral-pyre remaining mysteriously flame-retardant.

Conversely, Sāriputta, one of the two monks who definitely was appointed to inherit power, is mentioned in the same text as speaking to the Buddha shortly prior to the Buddha's death --yet more than 3 months before, apparently (when the Buddha is still in Nalanda).  So, incongruously, we have the Buddha praising the wisdom of Sāriputta as part of the Buddha's death-narrative, and then Sāriputta simply disappears from the story, with no mention of the fact that he was supposed to take over the leadership, nor any statements of the Buddha's disappointment that this wouldn't happen.  Sāriputta isn't mentioned again (neither as alive nor dead nor dying), nor is he present at the funeral, nor is his absence at the funeral mentioned as significant.  Meanwhile, Mahā-Moggallāna isn't mentioned even once in the whole story, although he was the other man appointed to inherit the leadership, and he allegedly died subsequent to Sāriputta, but still prior to the Buddha.

In terms of the chronology, wasn't Sāriputta supposed to be dead all along?  In retrospect, we are supposed to believe that both Sāriputta and Mahā-Moggallāna died just a few months before the Buddha's own funeral, and that news of this shocking turn of events reached the Buddha, and yet their deaths aren't mentioned within the same text.  If all of those deaths transpired in such rapid succession within the last three months of the Buddha's life, why would there be absolutely no mention of such an important drama in the midst of the very myth that details the last three months of the Buddha's life?

These were the two "chief disciples", who were supposed to be in command after the Buddha's death; are we expected to imagine that their own deaths are simply omitted as unimportant from this narrative?

It seems almost irresistible to imagine that we can unravel what the myth means, and also what it conceals.  The truth is that we can't.  We don't know whether or not it was written to conceal anything, and we can never verify what it is concealing in particular.

If these myths were written to serve a simple political purpose, Mahā-Kassapa would instead be mentioned in the Buddha's final orations, and he would be unambiguously named as the intended successor throughout the canon (but he isn't).  Instead, the canon preserves an incongruous and ambiguous situation at the time of the Buddha's death, despite the mythological and grandiose tropes that are built into the narrative.  Nobody who studies the Pali canon as a whole could have the sense that Mahā-Kassapa's accession was obvious or uncontroversial.  We're left with fragments of many strange controversies, and that inescapable feeling that we're looking at an imperfect record of real historical events, even though we're only looking at myths that we suppose to very indirectly reflect those events.

Thai patrons re-sacralize the fragment in India (2012).

Within the Pali canon, Mahā-Kassapa emerges as a very interesting and very human character (who deserves to be written about at greater length than I would do here).  Mahā-Kassapa offers us some of the most striking examples of "dissent from the top" within the canon: he complains very directly about what he perceives to be wrong and corrupt within the religion.  This, also, tugs at our sense of the criterion of embarrassment: although we really have no evidence at all, the nature of the complaints themselves just seem so human, and so believable, that we easily take them as indirect evidence of something actual.

One of the most interesting complaints offered to the Buddha was in the Saddhammapatirūpaka-suttanta (SN, PTS vol. 2, p. 223–4) where Mahā-Kassapa laments the decline of the religion, still within the lifetime of its founder (see the Pali text displayed in the first illustration).  In the past, he complains, the number of rules was few, but the number of monks who became properly trained was many; now, by contrast, there are many rules, but few of the monks are really becoming accomplished in the training.  This is dissent from the top: one of the foremost monks (and the one who eventually took over the leadership of the religion) is complaining that the rules don't work.  Buddhism is a religion built on rules: the complaint against the (prolix) monastic code from one of its foremost proponents is significant.  The fact that the canon preserves dissent of this kind (mixed in with supernatural narratives and all the rest of it) is even more significant.

This is a religion that preserved dissent as part of its bible (including some of the reasons that would-be converts stated for rejecting the teaching of the Buddha, the words of ex-monks who formerly accepted but later rejected the teaching, as well as the arguments of rival philosophers who criticized the Buddha).  As in the case of Mahā-Kassapa, we even have evidence of dissent from the top.

So, "is this stuff historical evidence of anything at all?"  In general, people answer that question in accordance with their own evaluation of human nature: although it is easy to imagine that a religion would invent myths to glorify itself, it simply seems difficult to imagine that they would invent myths to criticize themselves (within their own canon).  Conversely, there is absolutely no distinction between myth and historical fact within the texts (of "the core canon", as I choose to put it) and we need to be keenly aware of the subjective and emotional nature of the decisions we make in disregarding some texts as fictional, and in historicizing others.

Buddhist Philosophy 07, No Soul, Not Selfless Persons

The Buddha's teaching that there is no soul has absolutely nothing to do with our modern (English) sense of the word "selflessness"; although there are other teachings related to generosity, caring for the sick and poor, and so on, the "no soul" doctrine does not even mean that an ideal Buddhist (like Queen Mallikā, below) would care about others more than herself/himself.  As you're about to see, it isn't a doctrine of self-sacrifice, nor of self-abasement.

I'm not using my own translation here, but instead directly quoting the (freely-distributed) translation of Bhikkhuni Uppalavanna.

[Pali:] Sāvatthiyaŋ
[Uppalavanna:] The origin is in Sāvatthi.

[Pali:] Tena kho pana samayena rājā pasenadi kosalo mallikāya deviyā saddhiŋ uparipāsādavaragato hoti. Atha kho rājā pasenadi kosalo mallikaŋ deviŋ etadavoca: atthi nu kho te mallike ko cañño attanā piyataroti?
[Uppalavanna:] At that time king Pasenadi of Kosala was in the upper storey of [the] palace.  Then king Pasenadi of Koslala asked queen Mallika: "Mallika, is there anyone dear to you, more than your self?"

[Pali:] Natthi kho me mahārāja ko cañño attanā piyataro. Tuyhaŋ pana mahārāja atthañño koci attanā piyataroti? Mayhampi kho mallike natthañño koci attanā piyataroti.
[Uppalavanna:] "Great king, there is no one dear to me, more than my self. Is there anyone dear to you, more than your self?" [He replies:] "Mallika, to me too, there is no one, more dear than my self."

[Pali:] Atha kho rājā pasenadi kosalo pāsādā orohitvā yena bhagavā tenupasaṅkami. Upasaṅkamitvā bhagavantaŋ abhivādetvā ekamantaŋ nisīdi. Ekamantaŋ nisinno kho rājā pasenadi kosalo bhagavantaŋ etadavoca: idhāhaŋ bhante mallikāya deviyā saddhiŋ uparipāsādavaragato mallikaŋ deviŋ etadavocaŋ: "atthi nu kho te mallike ko cañño attanā piyataro"-ti. Evaŋ vutte bhante mallikādevī maŋ etadavoca: "natthi kho me mahārāja ko cañño attanā piyataro. Tuyhaŋ pana mahārāja atthañño koci attanā piyataro"ti. Evaŋ vuttāhaŋ bhante mallikaŋ deviŋ etadavocaŋ. "Mayhampi kho mallike natthañño koci attanā piyataro"ti.
[Uppalavanna:] Then king Pasenadi of Kosala descended from the upper storey of his palace approached the Blessed One [i.e., the Buddha], worshipped, sat on a side and said to the Blessed One: "Venerable sir, I was in the upper storey of the palace with queen Mallika, and I asked her, whether there was anyone dear to her more than her self and she said, great king, there is no one dear to me, more than my self and she aksed me, whether there was anyone dear to me, more than my self. I replied that to me too, there was no one, more dear than my self."

[Pali:] Atha kho bhagavā etamatthaŋ viditvā tāyaŋ velāyaŋ imaŋ gāthaŋ abhāsi:
[Uppalavanna:] Then the Blessed One knowing the deep meaning, said this stanza that moment.

[Pali:] Sabbā disā anuparigamma cetasā
Nevajjhagā piyataramattanā kvaci,
Evaŋ piyo puthu attā paresaŋ
Tasmā na hiŋse paraŋ attakāmoti.
[Uppalavanna:] "Searching through out [sic] the directions, someone,
More dear than the self could not be found anywhere
The self, in general is dear to all,
Therefore those who love the self should not hurt others."
[Source: SN Vol. 1, Kosala S. (#3), Bandhanavaggo (#1), Mallikāsuttanta (#8), PTS p. 75.]

The characters in the dialogue appear a few times in the core canon (and were apparently popular enough to be reinvented in later, post-canonical literature).  Mallikā appears in the scriptures as a paragon of Buddhist virtue, whereas her husband is more skeptical, more impious, and he continues to carry out animal sacrifices despite the injunctions of his wife's religion.

King Pasenadi ("artist's impression", from Wikipedia).

In another dialogue with this same royal couple, the husband scolds the wife for unthinkingly concurring with whatever the Buddha says; it's an all-too-human scene, still easy to imagine across the gap of more than two thousand years. (MN No. 87, Piyajātika-suttanta)

Those who have been reading my articles for some time may expect me to now discuss problems of translation, or to question the meanings of the particular words.  I'm not going to do that.  In this case, I'm simply going to point out that "the problem of interpretation" is that so many people have selectively disregarded canonical material of this kind entirely.  The best translation imaginable won't help anyone, if the evidence is overlooked, and I'm inclined to use someone else's translation whenever my audience is likely to be so shocked by the text as to accuse me of simply making it up.

This short passage from the canon will (admittedly) challenge many people's assumptions about what Buddhism "is" (or is supposed to be), and what "no soul" should mean.  I've already written long articles dealing with the fact that the Buddhist doctrine of the 12 links of "dependent origination" doesn't say what people pretend it says, and that "breathing meditation" isn't at all what people think it is.  Well, now you've got the shortest article possible warning you that the theory of "no soul" isn't what you've been taught to believe it is, either.

For many of my readers, the short quotation I've presented above may contradict sermons you've heard from a variety of modern masters, from a variety of traditions (Mahayana and Theravāda alike).  For others, it may recall passages that you're familiar with in the Dhammapada.

The Dhammapada is one of the few texts that is still widely read, and, notably, "the self" is certainly not used as a dirty word in its verses; on the contrary (just as in the suttanta I've quoted above) we find that a positive value assigned to the self is taught to be reciprocal with the compassion that we're supposed to have for others as, e.g., in the opening of the 10th chapter, the Daṇḍavagga.  There's a similar sentiment throughout the 12th chapter (the Attavaggo) where Nārada's translation has a somewhat amusing footnote to clarify that the positive sense of "the self" described here should be understood as only meaning the body, personality, and mind, "or life flux" (i.e., not the soul, as there is no soul, etc.).  The same Pali word is used in these positive references to the "self" [atta] that is used elsewhere to fulminate against the existence of the soul.  For those of you who have been reading the Dhammapada for many years, this may be a teaching about "the self" that you've had in plain sight, but never considered in reference to "no soul"; they're two sides of the same doctrine.

In both the Mallikā-suttanta (above) and in the Dhammapada, the positive value attributed to the self is the basis for having compassion for others; this is (frankly) the exact opposite of Schopenhauer's (all-too-influential) insistence that we have compassion despite the self (by "piercing the illusion of the individual self", etc.).  Regrettably, these ideas from 19th century Germany have been more influential than the ancient Buddhist texts in establishing modern assumptions of what Buddhism is supposed to be.

To trump one 19th century German philosopher with another, plenty of people reading the suttanta quoted above would think that it had more in common with the philosophy of Max Stirner than it does with Buddhism.  Stirner taught that compassion didn't arise from conflating oneself with others, nor from regarding the self as unreal (illusory, etc.), nor from unifying people in some shared abstraction (be it religious or secular), but instead from accepting one's own "egoism" and appreciating the depth of one's own alienness from others.  As you may have guessed, this was less popular than Schopenhauer's transcendental approach to the subject of compassion; in the century that followed, it was also less popular than Stirner's self-appointed nemesis, Karl Marx (who, at the time of Stirner's death, reviled him as the man who wanted to lead all of Europe into a madhouse with his philosophy… an insult that, in retrospect, seems to have been more apt for Marx's Communism).  Although Schopenhauer became a powerful, distorting influence on Buddhist studies, there were at least a few western Buddhists who were instead devotees of Max Stirner (including, notably, Alexandra David-Néel).

I realize that this discussion will be upsetting for many Buddhists who have been hearing the exact opposite of what the scriptures actually say (about "no self" as "selflessness") over and over again for decades.  Please don't attack me for being the one to draw attention to the text here: I didn't write the canon, I'm merely reading it.

Based on the evidence of the texts themselves, some of these doctrines were unpopular in ancient India as well.  The other sutta briefly mentioned above (the Piyajātika-suttanta) uses the same word for the beloved (piya, translated with the comparative suffix as "more dear", above) to argue that misery arises from regarding others as beloved (with attachment to one's own family providing most of the examples).  It is interesting that negative reactions to these sermons have been recorded in the canon at all, given that the Buddhist canon is, understandably, pro-Buddhist in its bias; but the authors evidently thought that the reasons some laypeople and monks stated for rejecting the Buddha's teaching were also important to record.  Part of what makes texts like the Piyajātika-suttanta so interesting is that they also show that certain aspects of the Buddha's teaching were shocking to his contemporaries, and that his new religion was rejected outright by some who could have otherwise have been his followers.  Even in ancient India, many of these ideas were "a hard sell"; they weren't what a popular audience wanted to hear.

Unlike Schopenhauer, Stirner, Marx, or even Socrates, the Buddha's teaching does involve rejecting your own family, including both family obligations and ties of affection; it includes the rejection of both wealth and caste status (be it high or low) in a culture that cared intensely about both, from the cradle to the grave.

As is fairly well known in Buddhist studies, the religion's challenge to "filial piety" caused a thousand years of controversy in China, where even shaving your head was considered an offense against your ancestors when Buddhism arrived and started seeking converts.

Many modern attempts to reconcile Buddhism with "family values" aren't any more sophisticated than China's struggle of more than a thousand years ago: Buddhism really is an eremitic philosophy, and it really does argue against "family values", and argues for the renunciation of family, caste and clan interests, to take instead a lonely road to a lonesome death.  That philosophy was hard to sell in ancient India, and in medieval China, and it's still hard to sell today.  In general, the modern doctrine of "selflessness" (interpreting "no soul" as meaning some kind of generosity) is instead bound to some notion of being a good person, while retaining all of your family status and wealth (or even increasing it).

The positive value of the self (in the context of the Buddha preaching compassion for others, on the basis of the value one ascribes to oneself) is one important aspect of the doctrinal definition of Buddhism.  I'm not presenting my opinion on the matter here, and I'm not discussing a matter of opinion: it is a matter of what the canon plainly says.  Perhaps it is because westerners are seeking the esoteric in Buddhist ethics that they're frustrated by the simplicity of what the Buddha actually says on these matters.

As we're speaking of compassion, I would invite my readers to imagine (with some compassion) how strange it must be for me to be alive in the 21st century, as one of the only men who can read Pali for himself, and as one of an even smaller number who is willing to let the texts speak for themselves.  Unfortunately, I'm aware that my contemporaries are more likely to attack me (with no compassion) for having dared to point this out.  Should any religion be so uncomfortable with the bare facts of what its own canon (and its own philosophy) states so plainly?

[Addendum, Dec. 13th, 2012: a colleague wrote in to inform me that Steven Collins offers his own opinion on the same Pali text (quoted above) on page 72 of his book Selfless Persons.  Given the title of my article, there may be some confusion on this point: please note that my own article was not written as a rebuttal to Collins.  I had not read the book in question at the time of authorship, and I have not read it now; however, I infer from my colleague that there is some interesting contrast to be made between myself and Collins on this point.]

Buddhist Philosophy 06, When Primary Sources Aren't Primary Enough

[Contemporary Taiwan; source/photographer unknown]

Someone could start a blog dedicated to discussing controversies in Buddhist studies from over 100 years ago.  Sometimes, I feel like I'm the one who did.  However, today's subject is merely 98 years old --and yet it still is news.

The 1914 thesis of L.A. Waddell is both interesting in itself, and interesting for the incidental issues it raises in passing.  It raises questions about how we know (and how we think we know) anything about Buddhist philosophy.

The 14th suttanta of the Dīgha Nikāya is apparently named the Mahāpadāna Sutta: if you look it up (on paper, or digitally) that's likely to be the name you'll see.  If you check the Dictionary of Pali Proper Names, that's the name listed for that suttanta, and there's no explanatory note suggesting that it might be otherwise.

Back in 1914, this man Waddell suggested that it could be otherwise, employing evidence that wasn't really new at the time, and yet still seems new today: "…the texts used for the preparation of the Pali Text Society's edition of this book do not warrant the use of "[Mahā-]apadāna" decidedly, as adopted by the editors.  […] [Of the four manuscripts consulted to establish the title] two (S.t. and K., i.e., Singhalese and Kambojan) read 'Mahāpadāna", but an equal number read 'Mahāpadhāna', [emphasis original] namely MSS. S.ed. and B.m., i.e., [another] Sinhalese and [also a] Burmese manuscript…". (p. 668)

The reader may be forgiven if they now ask, "Well, so what?  What's the difference between -d- and -dh- (ဒ vs. ဓ) in this one word, in this one title?"  As we will see in a minute, if we run roughshod over these sorts of differences, our understanding of whole words and sentences is soon enough quite shoddy.

The -dh- spelling (padhāna, equating to Sanskrit pradhāna) Waddell proposes for the title entails a completely different word from the -d- spelling (apadāna, equating to Sanskrit avadāna, and, in the case of this particular title, the presence or absence of the first vowel (a) is masked by the prefixed mahā-).  Waddell proceeds to point out (p. 670) that we have even more interesting questions surrounding the use of this word padhāna elsewhere that have been "run roughshod" over, in the translation of Buddhist texts.

In the dictionary produced by R.C. Childers (1872–5) this word padhāna is understood as meaning "exertion".  Waddell quotes for us the instructive example of the line chabbassāni mahā-padhānaŋ padahitvā, translated by Childers as, "having spent six years in strenuous efforts".  If you clicked on the link to the range of meaning for the Sanskrit pradhāna, you may well have noticed that it has a long list of meanings, but "exertion" isn't one of them.

Waddell proceeds (p. 671) to state bluntly that this is entirely wrong in his view: padhāna has been mixed up with an etymologically unrelated padhana (and it is the latter only that should have this meaning related to striving and exertion).  Right or wrong, this analysis has been ignored by the Dictionary of Pali Proper Names (as mentioned above), and also by the PTS Dictionary (that offers more-or-less the same definition as Childers: "exertion, energetic effort, striving, concentration of mind").  The possible existence of a separate word (or etymology) with a short a (padhana) is not mentioned in the PTS Dictionary.

Waddell then tries to reconstruct the meaning of padhāna with the same sort of methods that people regard uneasily in the work of K.R. Norman: he offers comparative reference to philosphical usage in historically-subsequent sources in Sanskrit (some Hindu, some Buddhist).  However, he is not entirely without evidence from within the Pali corpus of texts: does it really make sense to read padhāna as "exertion" in compound words such as padhāna-bhumi, padhāna-ghara or padhānaniyangaŋ? (p. 672)

R.C. Childers… nobody's perfect.

The coincidence of Pali padhāna with Sanskrit pradhāna doesn't mean that the two would have exactly the same meaning in any specifically Buddhist context (and the Sanskrit use of the word itself has a wide range of meanings for us to consider, in contrast to the PTS Dictionary); however, the connection is enough to make "exertion" seem dubious.  In the Hindu context, pradhāna is an "epithet for the Supreme Brahmanical god" (p. 673) and can have a number of other meanings in specific philosophical contexts.  Any number of meanings might make sense for its Buddhist application, but it seems difficult to imagine how "exertion" came to be presumed as the default for every instance within the canon (aside from the direct influence of the pioneering efforts of R.C. Childers to scrape together a dictionary from a box of manuscripts, and a bunch of conversations with Buddhist monks).

Whether or not you agree with Waddell's analysis, we have here already a set of reminders of just how tenuous our connection to primary sources may be: the correct spelling of the title of one suttanta (in the PTS edition) looks like it was decided by a coin toss between two spellings (equally represented in four sources) and a whole series of concepts (tied into the religion, philosophy and meditation of Buddhism) seem to predicated on a dubious reading of the same word that he suggests may have been overlooked in that title (pradhāna).  Waddell could be wrong, but, if so, the significance of the warning wouldn't change much: our assumptions about these texts are tenuous, and real difficulties can be obscured by the seeming-certainty of dictionary definitions.  Small but important distinctions can also disappear in under the hands of European editors (d vs. dh, and a vs. ā) --and, thus, primary sources start to become secondary, as they reflect the active interest (and revisions) of a modern author.

Also, explicitly enough, the article reveals the tension that surrounds the (white, western, English-language, 20th century) revalorization of the canon: Waddell is willing to get to grips with the plain fact that (as he says) "the compilers of this Pāli canonical book did not regard the Buddha as a mere man." (p. 674, emphasis in the original)  Already, in 1914, Waddell was dealing with an articulated agenda (amongst his contemporaries) to discount supernatural material in the Buddhist canon as if it were confined to later "accretions" (i.e., to assert that they are not found in the most ancient part of the Pali canon, where European rationalism was expected to be vindicated, etc.).  Of course, it would be convenient for anyone with a bias opposite to Waddell's to be able to treat the various compound words including padhāna as having something to do with exertion ("hard work") rather than something analogous to the concept of [Sk.] pradhāna in either Hindu polytheism or in Sāṃkhya cosmology.

We now have our attention drawn to three very different words, that look very similar in Romanized transliteration, and that some sources (editions, translations and dictionaries) may not be willing to admit exist as three separate words at all: apadāna, padhāna, and padhana.

There's nothing conclusive about Waddell's analysis of the issue: it reads like the start of a conversation that is still very worthwhile, circa 100 years later.  Part of the problem (today) is that people regard dictionary definitions as conclusive (and as having great finality) simply because they are published in the form of a dictionary entry (with all the connotations of the word "definitive" haunting the reader).  Dictionary entries, too, should be regarded as a single moment in a still-ongoing conversation.

"…the future of the 'Anthropology of Buddhism' will be dharma-tourism decorated with quotations from Foucault."  E. Mazard, 2009.  [Photo by Darren Donahue]

I have no idea, incidentally, if K.R. Norman or anyone else has since written an article investigating this specific issue; I asked one colleague before posting this short notice if he had heard of any recent publications on the matter ("recent" meaning "from the last 50 years", perhaps).  Posting informal articles of this kind is about the only method I have to find out (from others) if they know of more progress on an obscure issue of this kind.

Of course, it shouldn't be obscure: the word padhāna appears hundreds of times in the core canon, often in the midst of long compound words that evidently had a more precise meaning in the minds of their ancient authors than they do in the minds of their modern readers today.  It isn't a trivial matter at all, and there's no reason to assume that this word had the same meaning in various contexts (and in various compound words) throughout the canon.

Even if we only shift our understanding of the word by a few degrees, it would change our translation of (e.g.) the debate between Buddhists and Jains preserved in the Devadaha suttanta (MN no. 101).  What exactly should we assume about the meaning of this word, in a context that involves both Buddhist and Jain doctrines?  Should we totally disregard the denotations and connotations that the word has in Hindu and Sanskrit sources in such a context?  Does the translation "exertion" really make sense here at all?  That seems to be a conversation worth having.

Padhāna appears conjoined with samādhi in many phrases that modern readers care about, under the heading of "meditation"; it also appears in passages that make modern readers uncomfortable, under the heading of the "supernatural powers" that monks are supposed to acquire.  It is easy for a translator to run roughshod over its meaning in translating long compound words like chanda-samādhi-padhāna-saṅkhāra-samannāgataŋ (found, e.g., in MN no. 77, and elsewhere).  Given that this phrase is used in explaining the acquisition of "supernatural powers" (iddhi) it wouldn't be surprising if the word meant something more than just "hard work" --but, conversely, insisting on the Childers/PTS translation only might be convenient for a translator trying to make the passage seem more mundane.


A Bibliography of Just One Entry:
L.A. Waddell.  1914.  "The So-Called 'Mahapadana' Suttanta and the Date of the Pali Canon".  Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Jul., 1914, p. 661-680.

Buddhist Philosophy 05, Traditionalism and Translationism

I've only seen one critique of K.R. Norman in print, and the author was K.R. Norman himself.

As I have recently mentioned the paucity of criticism of Bhikkhu Bodhi's translations, a colleague reminded me that the scarcity of thought directed toward K.R.N.'s translations is no less dire.

In 2004, however, K.R.N. wrote a retrospective evaluation of his own translation of the Sutta-Nipāta (a collection of poems located in the KN, and usually given the confusing abbreviation of "Sn", not the same as "SN").  The article is unusual article for the genre, in that K.R.N. offers some evaluation of his own prior work, as well as reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of the array of primary and secondary sources now available, including what could be called "his competition" (i.e., other translators who have worked on the same text in the years before and since).

"The aim of my [1984] translation [of the Sutta-Nipāta], as of those I have made of the Theragāthā and Therīgāthā (Elders' Verses I & II, London, 1969, 1971) was to produce a literal, almost word-for-word, translation which I hoped would, when considered alongside the original Pāli, adequately convey my understanding of the original speakers' words, i.e. to give the meaning of the text as it was intended by the original speakers, or as it was accepted by the first hearers.  This is not necessarily, therefore, the meaning it had for the later commentaries…" (p. 72)

If there ever were a crowd of Pali scholars gathered into one room, sharp gasps of astonishment might be heard in response to the last sentence there (although, as it happens, I completely agree with K.R.N. on this point myself).

In this 2004 essay, K.R.N. presents a shrewd argument: he demonstrates that several scholars claiming that they follow the interpretation of the commentaries do not, in fact, practice what they preach.  Instead, in the process of editing and translating, these same translators sometimes diverge from and contradict the commentaries (when they see the latter's interpretation to be wrong) and sometimes misrepresent the commentaries, as a way of misrepresenting themselves.  This pokes holes in the premise that the commentarial "layer" is entirely consistent with the (more ancient) primary source --and it also erodes the translators' claims to represent (in English) some kind of continuous religious tradition.

Although K.R.N. does not explicitly state this in his article (and, really, he should spell it out more clearly) the underlying contest here concerns the vague claim to "traditional authority" made by his rival translators.  K.R.N. quotes the the introduction to N.A. Jayawickrama's 2001 translation of the Sutta-Nipāta, where we are ominously told that any departure from the commentaries "can result in micchādiṭṭhi — heresy — from the orthodox point of view". (p. 70)  Jayawickrama's work is recent enough that it could have been influenced by (and built upon) the earlier work by K.R.N., but, in effect, Jayawickrama boasts that this is not the case, because he instead devotes himself to following the commentaries entirely, and eschewing any "…arbitrarily emended readings on the grounds of metre or parallel versions seen in versions posterior to Pali." (p. 70)  That may be as clear as mud, but what Jayawickrama is saying is that he's throwing away the conclusions of K.R.N. (as the merely "arbitrary" machinations of a secular academic!); he is also suggesting that you should trust his own translation because it is a more consistent expression of the commentarial tradition.

The type of metrical and etymological analysis that clutters up K.R.N.'s work may seem "arbitrary" (as Jayawickrama complains), but it isn't; it is simply evidence presented in a form that's hard to understand.  Conversely, the choice to disregard an explanation of a word because it relies on metrics or etymology would really be arbitrary.

The commentaries do provide evidence (and K.R.N. also makes extensive use of that evidence) --but the type of evidence involved is just as imperfect, confusing, and susceptible to multiple interpretations as the original text being commented upon.

For example, K.R.N. details some specific instances wherein the translator omits to mention to their readers that the commentary offers more than one explanation; thus, the translator has (covertly) selected one of many options, to then refer to it as "the" commentarial interpretation.  In other cases, K.R.N. points out, the modern translators (falsely) claim that the commentaries are silent about something they are not silent about (but the translator wishes to contradict the commentary without appearing to do so).

There isn't a simple choice to be made between "traditionalism" and some competing "academic" approach.  Many translators invite their readers to imagine that there is such a choice (e.g., the controversy surrounding the "three lifetimes" interpretation of the 12 links, etc.) but this 2004 article by K.R.N. demonstrates that a translator saying "trust me, I follow the commentaries" doesn't have much more force than someone saying "trust me, I wear the robes of a Buddhist monk".

This is considered contentious (sometimes even religiously offensive) by the majority of people who care about Theravāda Buddhist texts.  I here refer to people who "care about" the texts, because, sadly, they're not the same people who actually read Pali: I have seen people explode at the suggestion that the authors of the commentaries were anything less than omniscient --however, in my own experience, people with this attitude do not actually read the primary sources for themselves.  Reading things (in their original language) tends to reveal the extent to which the words we have on paper are merely the work of human hands; in most cases, the authors have no affectation of infallibility, often enough expressing their doubts or offering more than one possibly-correct interpretation, and so on.

When a translator declares his devotion to the commentaries, it offers a false reassurance to the ordinary reader who can't scrutinize the source text.  This article by K.R.N. has many reminders of just how false this reassurance can be.  Certainly, an "ordinary reader" would be at a loss to explain the difference between H. Saddhatissa's (1985) translation of bhūnahu as "slanderous" and K.R.N.'s rendering "abortionist" (p. 81–2).  This is not a subtle difference of interpretation, and the commentary is vague enough for both sides to pretend it supports their case (although, frankly, it would be hard to K.R.N. to be wrong on this one --but he's the guy choosing the examples in this article).

[Yes, I've used this illustration before, and I may be tempted to use it again…]

The article also demonstrates many of the problems with Theravāda studies that make the whole field seem opaque and inaccessible even to the people who are most passionate about it: there's a strange reliance on innuendo and "inside knowledge" that's quite counterproductive (and, in some ways, typically British).  At one point, K.R.N. suggests, archly, that a brief note on a particular word by one of the translators he is surveying "may prove surprising to his readers". (p. 79)  The "surprise" in question requires a comparative knowledge not only of multiple translations, but also of the variations between multiple editions of the (untranslated) Pali; yet also, apparently, we need to know an essay published only in German (Hinüber, 1982–3, "Zum Perfekt im Pāli") in order to detect the problem --or, at least, we need to know K.R.N.'s opinion about it (perhaps stated in a footnote to his own translation).  Such a discovery wouldn't be "surprising" to any of the readers of the poem in question: it would be completely invisible.

The contention (alluded to above as "surprising") concerns a sequence of letters that shows up in the Sinhalese [BJT] edition as -tvā ajjha-, but in other editions as -tvājjha-.  K.R.N. reads the -jjha- as obscuring a lexical -ja-, and this is not surprising in itself (it is even less surprising if you've studied traditional grammar, such as Kaccāyana).  The insinuation is that "his readers" should be surprised that Jayawickrama has dared to disregard K.R.N.'s conclusion on this point.  The whole controversy is stated in such an involuted and unclear matter that it is difficult to share the presumption that the more recent translator intentionally disregarded the work of the earlier one, and I wonder how few people alive today can even follow the controversy as it was here restated in 2004.  K.R.N. is providing evidence, but it is presented in a form that's difficult to read, and difficult to even see the significance of.

There is one other (unstated but obvious) area of competition between K.R.N. and his "rival" translators.  Although K.R.N.'s argument about (or against) commentarial traditionalism is both shrewd and strong, he admits that Jayawickrama's "translation is clear and easy to read". (p. 84)  He also praises Saddhatissa's translation for containing many "splendid phrases". (p. 72)  K.R.N.'s own work, by contrast, is barely comprehensible to other specialists, and his lack of influence on later translators (including Jayawickrama) may reflect the difficulty that people have in following his writing (be it translation or explanation).  That's a type of rivalry that has nothing to do with commentarial authority, nor religious authority, nor even with the strength of philological evidence: if you can't express your conclusions in a way that others find convincing (or at least clearly comprehensible) then your work will fall silent.  In general, the paucity of criticism of K.R.N.'s translation may reflect this peculiar "silence" (despite the hardbound covers and institutional imprimatur that mark his work out on the library shelves).

Unlike Bhikkhu Bodhi, I don't have the impression that K.R.N. is widely read by Buddhist monks or laypeople, and his publications are rarely reacted to by the general public or --relatively speaking-- by other specialists.  I say "relatively speaking" because K.R.N. has, in fact, published a significant percentage of all of the new research on Theravāda Buddhism in the last 50 years --and yet I neither see much criticism of it, nor other reactions to it of any kind.

To the best of my knowledge, K.R.N.'s first language is English, and yet he manages to produce translations that are nearly incomprehensible, even to other native speakers of English.  This is a subject that deserves criticism elsewhere, partly because the process of that criticism might draw out the useful observations (embedded in K.R.N.'s research) into some form that would be more easily understood by specialists and non-specialists alike.  If (if!) the objective of translation is to render a text that can be understood without comparative reading of the primary source, we may say that the leading edge of K.R.N.'s research still leaves us very far away from that goal.

Vague claims of the same kind that K.R.N. has quoted from Jayawickrama's introduction can be found in many English books on Buddhism (from informal pamphlets to hardbound tomes) with the insinuation being that textual scholarship is inimical to "tradition".  There are very few advocates for the opposite point of view, i.e., that textual scholarship itself is the tradition.  Sometimes monks engage in textual scholarship; sometimes non-Buddhist laypeople (like K.R.N.) engage in textual scholarship; however, what transpires on both sides of that equation is the entire substance of the tradition --not something that detracts from it.

[A Bibliography of just one entry:]
K.R. Norman.  2004.  "On Translating the Sutta-Nipāta."  Buddhist Studies Review, Vol. 21, No. 1.

Buddhist Philosophy 04, The Trouble With Transcendence, Critique of Bhikkhu Bodhi 02

The format of debate shifts speakers away from their most-familiar definitions, to make the contrast between themselves and their opponents clear.  Some percentage of the Buddhist canon is stated in the form of debate, and the attention of modern scholars tends to be directed to those debates more than to material of other kinds, for the simple reason that the contrast makes both sides easier to "see".  I'm now turning to an article that Bhikkhu Bodhi wrote criticizing Prof. Asanga Tilakaratne for the same simple reason: the contest draws Bhikkhu Bodhi into making many statements of his own convictions to delineate what his own philosophy is (in contrast to something it is not).

In some ways, B.B.'s thematic direction (writing in 1996) shows a striking continuity with his article of fully 20 years prior (written in 1976, discussed in a prior article).  However, he is now stating his case much more clearly, and he links his argument to his preferred primary sources more directly.

Tilakaratne has argued that nirvana is not transcendental (lit. "non-transcendental").  In Theravāda Buddhism, this claim could be very controversial, or not controversial at all, depending on how the word transcendental is defined.  We should be clear that the English word "transcend" is no more magical than "ascend" or "descend".  Our prefix "trans-" does not lend anything supernatural to the meaning of "transact", nor "transfix"; nevertheless, this one word "transcendent" seems to conjure up connotations that cannot be explained by the combination of the word's parts.

B.B. and Tilakaratne agree inasmuch as they both reject the possibility that Buddhism supports the type(s) of transcendence found in (i) [mono-]theism, (ii) Hindu mysticism, non-dualism, monism, and so on.  They also reject (iii) attempts to impose some of these ("non-dualistic") notions onto Buddhism, in books that seemed important at the time (e.g., T.R.V. Murti's theories --and, yes, I'm just barely old enough to have read Murti's work while I was in university).  However, B.B. disagrees with Tilakaratne on transcendence in certain other senses of the term.

The cloud hanging over this issue derives from Immanuel Kant (d. 1804), John Locke (d. 1704) and Baruch Spinoza (d. 1677) first and foremost --sources that are neither ancient nor Asian (nor especially relevant to Buddhism).

The idea that the transcendent is "the opposite of" the immanent is very European (and very Judeo-Christian) in its origin and function.  The profound dread surrounding the opposition of the transcendent to the immanent derives entirely from the English words involved (and the German, Latin, etc.) --which is to say, they do not result from any difficulties in translating the Pali, and don't have obvious correlates in Pali vocabulary.

I don't mean to state any of this in an overly harsh or castigating manner, however, if I did not frankly state this problem's European "heritage", there would be a misleading impression that this (modern) debate about transcendence-vs.-immanence is continuous with a debate found in the canon.  Without the European template, would this debate be important in Buddhist philosophy at all?  Well, B.B. does find a foothold for the transcendental debate in a short passage found in the post-canonical Visuddhimagga --and I think that B.B.'s article tries to understate the influence that this source (p. 507-509, PTS ed.) has on his thinking on the subject.  Very reasonably, B.B. acknowledges that it is post-canonical, reflecting a later period of Buddhist philosophy, and (thus) is not really authoritative (nor definitive) in the same way as (canonical) primary sources.  As you'd expect, the actual debate in the Visuddhimagga's (medieval Sinhalese) context has almost nothing in common with the "transcendental" categories of Europe in general (nor Spinoza in specific); there's a generalized mismatch of cultural assumptions.

If you're reading the Pali canon directly, the answer to the problem of what nirvana "is" primarily has to be understood in relation to (and as the result of) a form of monastic training --and, on this subject, we have a huge quantity of repetitive instructions and exhortations in the ancient texts.  Working from these sources, the simplest definition of nirvana would be "the result of this monastic training, if correctly performed/achieved" --and, in a practical sense, it would rarely be necessary to say more than that.  However, more nuanced definitions do arise in specific contexts, for specific purposes; for example, the Buddhist notion of nirvana is sometimes contrasted to another religion's notion in the context of debate.  Whereas the instructional materials are almost consistent to a fault (and are hardly lacking in repetition) there is more diversity in those context-specific definitions that seem to focus on one aspect or another, to prove one point or another.  Those materials are produced by debate, and they certainly give us the material for yet more debate in the centuries to come.

For the moment, my point is merely that this whole question of transcendence devolves from Europe's centuries of wrestling with the question of the immanence of god, and it been applied to Buddhism with an unseemly substitution of nirvana for god and an expectation of profound results.

Have the results been profound?  Well, we have this interesting "discourse" between B.B. and Tilakaratne, at least.  I don't think that any of the followers of Spinoza today consider Theravāda Buddhism a challenge to their philosophy, nor, vice-versa, do any Theravāda Buddhists respond to Spinozism as a challenge.  The interaction between these things is fairly artificial and academic, whereas other (ongoing) clashes between Buddhism and its detractors (Islamic, Hindu, Christian, Communist, etc.) are very palpable --and demonstrated through the burning of books or, sometimes, people.

[A razed temple in Bangladesh, 2012. Photo credit and rights: A.M. Ahad.]

B.B. sets out to defend the notion "of Nibbāna as a state utterly beyond the conditioned world" (p. 165) against Tilakaratne's pragmatism.  He sets out the claim that Tilakaratne has made an "acutely narrow selection" of primary source texts, and suggests that the Pali canon contains texts ignored by Tilakaratne that would instead favor B.B.'s position.

Tilakaratne's assertion is that merely-empirical reality is the domain of both saṃsāra and nirvana; in other words, nirvana is part of our experience of reality and is not something completely different from it.  What would be meant by "completely different" here?  It would be something transcendent to the mundane reality, and impossible to perceive (or comprehend) through empirical means for that same reason.

In the European tradition, this sort of transcendental thing is often said to be god, despite the total lack of resemblance to what you'll find in the Old Testament, and the lack of any connection to revelation in the Biblical sense.  Western transcendentalism leans more toward deism than anthropomorphic theism (although many Christian philosophers have struggled to make the two parts fit together --along with Sufi poets and Jewish philosophers, I suppose).  Among the causes for papal censorship here is this: we have no reason to imagine the supreme abstraction on the other side of the transcendental divide must be a kindly benefactor (with a beard) rather than a mere metaphysical substance.  Or, even if the philosophers decide to call this abstraction a god, it could be an indifferent god, or even a malicious one.  For European intellectuals of the last 300 years, this was not a minor source of consternation, nor a minor source of inspiration: thousands of pages have been filled with speculations expanding on Spinoza's theme.  Notably, in Schopenhauer's case, what awaits our discovery on the other side of the veil is the cruelty of nature in its myriad expressions of "The Will" (and this is, in large part, a hunger to survive and procreate, although, reciprocally, Schopenhauer ends up valorizing kindness, compassion, and asceticism as a sort of antithesis to the almighty and indifferent "Will").  The short-lived religion of Robespierre in France is another significant example, whereby deism was disconnected from the Biblical tradition (although, apparently, it didn't run far after being let off of the leash).

Returning to our Sri Lankan discourse: what B.B. does not tell us is the qualitative difference between the types of text (within the canon) that the two sides use to support their respective views of nirvana.  Tilakaratne can appeal to a range of pragmatic texts (including direct instructions to monks, from the Buddha, as to how nirvana is to be attained, and direct descriptions of how the Buddha himself attained it, etc.) whereas B.B.'s preferred sources are more poetic.  In this, also, B.B. is following the direction of the aforementioned commentarial debate (Vsm 507-509); it relies on (and concludes with) poetic hyperbole quoted from the Itivuttaka and the Udāna.

This weakens B.B.'s position, because it entails that Tilakaratne's explanation does not contradict the sources B.B. cites, but can instead accept them as mere poetry.  Conversely, B.B.'s treatment of the poetic sources as definitive (or, at least, definitively inspirational) raises the question of why these sources he prefers differ so sharply from the large bulk of pragmatic texts (at least entailing the need for some further explanation).

Tilakaratne's case is favored by the working assumption that (1) precise sets of instructions make sense because they're written precisely, whereas (2) devotional poetry is imprecise (and expressive, emotive, etc.) because it is not even attempting to provide the same degree of precision.  The reverse assumption is difficult to argue for: why would the canon's short, vague, poetic statements be more definitive than long, repetitive, detailed lectures and dialogues?  If the pragmatic argument doesn't create a conflict between the two, this is itself an advantage over a transcendentalist argument that does bring the two genres into contradiction.

I infer that B.B. is aware of this issue, as he comments that the Buddha's descriptions of nirvana, "…fit into either of two distinct moulds.  One stresses Nibbāna as the most desirable goal of all: blissful, peaceful, sublime, liberative, secure, the cessation of all suffering.  The other highlights the practical inner work that must be undertaken to attain release from suffering; Nibbāna then becomes [described as] the destruction of craving, the eradication of defilements, [and] the relinquishment of all attachment." (p. 171)  What B.B. has here called two moulds corresponds to the distinction I've drawn between (i) poetic declarations (exalting nirvana as "blissful, peaceful, sublime", etc.) and (ii) the more pragmatic prose (offering instructions, definitions and the details of the "inner work" to be done).  Of course, B.B. uses terms that reflect the greater importance that he places on the first of the two "moulds", and I use terms that reflect my own biases.

The first text cited by B.B. in support of his version of transcendence is stated as MN (PTS) vol. I, p. 435–7.  This is the Mahā-Māluṅkya-suttanta.  The second text is AN PTS vol V, p. 7–10.  This is the Samādhi-suttanta situated within the Ānisaŋsa-vagga.

Bodhi cites both of these on p. 166, and says of them collectively, "These suttas suggest that Nibbāna is indeed a distinct object of knowledge on the basis of which the defilements are destroyed and to which the arahant has special access in an extraordinary sphere of contemplation that the ordinary person can hardly think of without bafflement."

I must ask, (1) do these two cited texts support B.B.'s argument, and (2) even if so, does the argument really challenge Tilakaratne's position?  We would need to put a great deal of emphasis on the "extraordinary sphere of contemplation" for this line of inquiry to be incompatible with Tilakaratne's position.  The reader may also want to know if (3) these sources fit into my own (prejudicial) set of categories, suggesting something of an opposition between the poetic and prosaic sources.

Last things first: this pair of sources that B.B. has cited are prosaic and explanatory texts (unlike B.B.'s preferred descriptions of nirvana in short poems, found in the KN's Sutta Nipata, the aforementioned Udāna, and so on).  So, in this case, my warning does not apply, and I do not evaluate these citations in terms of poetic hyperbole.

I have grave doubts, however, as to the other two questions.

The particular Samādhi-suttanta cited by B.B. seems to offer a conclusion that is not at all transcendental (neither in the sense defined by B.B. in this same essay, nor in the broader European tradition alluded to above).  For the monk who has acquired the correct mental praxis (we are told) there is neither the consciousness of this world in this world, nor is there consciousness of another world in another world, and yet there is nevertheless consciousness (na idhaloke idhalokasaññī assa, na paraloke paralokasaññī assa, saññī ca pana assāti).  That's an interesting philosophy, but it does not support the specific claim that B.B. attributes to the passage in any way whatsoever (i.e., there is no clear connection to B.B.'s assertion, "These suttas suggest that Nibbāna is…", quoted in full above).

The logic of the thing follows a standard (Theravāda) "neither/nor" pattern: the text in full starts with the four material elements, and proceeds through space, thought, etc., telling us the same thing about each (i.e., that there is no consciousness in it) --however, the text does not counterpose anything else/beyond.  The only thing counterposed is consciousness itself.

The text cited offers no contrast to anything transcending the material-and-mental reality (nor is there anything presented as "more real" than this empirical/tangible reality).  A simple transcendental model would instead valorize "the other world" over this world, or at least offer some "true" substance in contrast to the world of appearances.  The Samādhi-suttanta offers no such argument, and no such opposition.  It states that there is no consciousness in earth, air, fire, water, etc. --rather, there is merely consciousness (not existing "in" any of these things, not even in thought, and not in a supernatural "other world").  Although interesting in various ways, there is no obvious support for B.B.'s assertion of nirvana as a transcendental "distinct object of knowledge" to be found in this particular text; it could easily be seen as consistent with Tilakaratne's argument instead.

The other source that B.B. has cited here does not deserve any lengthy consideration in this context: the Mahā-Māluṅkya-suttanta is a morality lecture, about overcoming the orambhāgiya (if you know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink).  We have a huge stack of morality lectures in the canon, but this one seems to have zero salience to B.B.'s argument on transcendentalism.  The suttanta is a somewhat broad-ranging lecture on the orthodox theme of overcoming desire (and the sensual/sensuous category of the "five lower fetters"), but there is no obvious connection to B.B.'s argument here.  This seems so irrelevant that I wonder if an error was made in the citation, and perhaps B.B. had meant to cite the Cūḷa-māluṅkya-suttanta instead (i.e., confusing two similar names?).  The Cūḷa-māluṅkya deals with the recurrent issue of death after nirvana (in contrast to other religions' assumptions about "life after death") but it would take a great deal of imagination to link this to B.B.'s specific argument.

Given that B.B. opened this contest with a bold reproach that Tilakaratne has employed an "acutely narrow selection" of texts to support his argument, the reader is now in a position to complain that B.B. has appealed to some acutely miscellaneous texts.  The salience of the sources he invokes is dubious: if there is some important way in which any of these texts support B.B.'s argument, the burden is on the interpreter to demonstrate it to the audience (and not to leave it up to our imaginations).

However, B.B.'s own interpretation of nirvana as "transcendental" is not quite the same thing as his refutation of Tilakaratne's non-transcendental one.

B.B. proposes a division between "mystical" transcendence and "non-mystical" transcendence.  He agrees with Tilakaratne in asserting that the Buddha's teaching does not contain the usual tropes of the mystics of other religions.  For example, the two authors agree that the Buddha's silence in response to certain questions is not mystical, and should not be construed as a tacit indication of a belief in a transcendental other-reality. (p. 168–9).  B.B. agrees that, "The Buddhism of the Pāli Canon adopts a decidedly non-mystical stance, and in this respect contrasts significantly both with non-dualistic Vedānta and with theism, as Tilakaratne rightly and repeatedly points out." (p. 172)

Very briefly, however, and without even one cited source, B.B. indicates that he interprets asaṅkhatā dhātu as "the unconditioned element", and that he considers this to be "affirming a transcendent reality".

It is conspicuous that B.B. proceeds (after this declaration) to discuss many different sources and subjects in rapid succession, but does not actually discuss (nor cite a single example of) the texts pertaining to the one term that he identifies as "affirming a transcendent reality".  An incomplete list of what B.B. discusses in the pages remaining would be, (i) samādhi, (ii) the status of the arahat after death, (iii) the adequacy or inadequacy of language to express nirvana, (iv) the meaning of the term lokuttara --and yet we somehow never return to this point about the supposed "unconditioned element".

You might think that this would be very important for B.B. to explain, but no, instead, B.B. more-or-less runs away from the claim after announcing it.  We are led to imagine that important facts about this term (asaṅkhatā dhātu) "…are there in the texts, and it seems that it is only by a wilful denial of their explicit content that one can get them to say something other than they appear to be saying." (p. 172)

B.B. does not claim that Tilakaratne is misinterpreting or ignoring these unspecified sources, so we are also left to wonder if Tilakaratne is unaware of the particular texts that B.B. has in mind that are so irrefutable, or if this is something they actually disagree about.

To add my own opinion to the matter, there are indeed many things explicitly stated in the canon about nirvana that are avoided through "wilful denial", but I'm not thinking of the same things that B.B. seems to be thinking of.  Throughout the entire canon, for instance, we are assured that nirvana results in superhuman powers, including flight, and radiating flames.  The ability to fly is so much part-and-parcel of nirvana that we find it declared amongst the Buddha's list of super-powers when he is defending his own legitimacy as the founder of the religion.*¹  It also appears, for example, when the monk Ānanda decides to resolve any doubts that he had attained nirvana: he demonstrates the fact by flying (rather than walking) to take his seat at the first council of monks, after the Buddha's death.*²  In one suttanta, we have several of the Buddha's prominent monks demonstrating that they can fly and radiate flames, in a surreal attempt to outdo Brahma; this works, and the story concludes with Brahma being very much impressed at the supernatural powers that the Buddha's students acquire.*³

[Religious conversion through means other than rational debate; 

a mural at Kelaniya.  Photo: Johanan Ottensooser.]

There are many things explicitly stated in these texts that I think people are in "wilful denial" about, but I'm not at all convinced that the significance of asaṅkhatā dhātu is one of them.  If we should reconsider the importance of such terms as asaṅkhatā dhātu, this article from B.B. only provides us with the suggestion that we might do so (and neither evidence nor any conclusions on the matter).

To use radically simpler terms: when we talk about nirvana, are we talking about a transformation of the person, or something that exists separately from the person?

The advantage of Tilakaratne's pragmatism is that is comes down wholly on the side of nirvana being something that people accomplish --and, thus, it is neither a place they go, nor a separate plane of existence, nor an "unconditioned element" (except as poetic hyperbole).  Although I imagine that I would find many things to disagree with in Tilakaratne's work, the danger of B.B.'s approach is that it starts to construct nirvana as a substance, contrasted to the mere appearances of things, in a manner reminiscent of European philosophers such as Locke, Kant, and Schopenhauer.  This possibility is, in fact, objected to in the aforementioned passage of the commentary (Vsm 507-509), where the interlocutor asks if the "permanence" of nirvana is not therefore the same as "the atom" (Ñanamoli's translation).

If we started from the canonical primary sources, I think we would have very different debates about the meaning of nirvana.  The issue of transcendence-vs-immanence imposes a European puzzle onto the Buddhist puzzle-pieces.

Although I myself am bored of typing out the name of Schopenhauer so many times, I'll mention again that he was a massive influence on modern readings of Buddhist philosophy in both the West and the East.  The basic idea that reality is an illusion masking something else (apprehensible through means other than the senses or discursive thought) is very much Schopenhauer's screed.  He started building a metaphysical bridge linking Europe to India by endorsing the abnegation of the will (through asceticism) as one means (although not the only one) of gnosis with this reality-that-lies-beyond-reality.  In many ways, Schopenhauer took the raw materials of European philosophy and used them to re-invent some of the basic principles found in (at least some schools of) Jain and Hindu thought (though he was not an expert in the latter).  The resulting philosophy, however, had much less in common with Buddhism than Schopenhauer himself thought it did (and, I think, many Europeans who "grew up" reading Schopenhauer were eventually disappointed when they graduated to reading Buddhist primary sources).  If you don't want to take my word for it, you can read the meticulous studies by Urs App, who has lately been scraping together the archival evidence of exactly how little Schopenhauer knew about Buddhism.

[Am I the only one surprised that Spinoza doesn't have his own postage stamp?]

Whereas Spinoza and Kant have haunted the minds of many men, it is really from Schopenhauer that we have the expectation that these issues matter to Buddhism, and that Buddhism has something important to teach "us" (Europeans) about the transcendence of the merely-sensory world.  Of course, that expectation is not based on anyone's reading of the Pali canon (neither Schopenhauer's, nor anyone else's).

If we weren't burdened with the influence of European philosophers, we would not even be asking these questions in these terms.  Wouldn't it be more natural for someone to ask how it is that nirvana came to be so strongly linked to the power of supernatural flight rather than dealing with an imaginary and tacit contrast between what is "imanent" and what is "transcendent" in the unstated implications of the text?  A better question might be "natural" vs. "supernatural", or even "human" vs. "superhuman".  Better questions, in general, might be addressed to things explicitly stated in the texts, and not things merely imagined to be indirectly entailed by them.

In the decadent West, people often convert to Buddhism first, and only find out what the religion is later --sometimes many years later.  I continue to meet people who are shocked that "there is a hell" in the Pali canon; some of them converted because they specifically rejected the doctrine of hell that they knew in Christianity.  It is difficult to imagine how these people have been studying Buddhism for so many years without knowing this; there seem to be aspects of both deception and self-deception involved.

[Either a depiction of hell, or else hell itself, at Wat Rong Khun. Photo by Mithun Divakaran.]

There is open "strategizing" amongst Western monks as to which aspects of the religion they should reveal, and which conceal, in drawing outsiders into the religion.  I have encountered (many times) a reasonable but utterly false assumption that Buddhist philosophy could increase its appeal by increasing its resemblance to European philosophies.  Among other flaws in this assumption is the incongruous fact that names like Kant and Schopenhauer actually have less significance in western culture than Buddhism.  Outside of academia, these "big names" in philosophy have neither influence nor renown for new religious movements to siphon.  Considered on the social scale of even the most minor religions, all of Europe's philosophies are failures in the present century: although I've pointed out what extremely small percentages of westerners subscribe to Buddhism (in the U.S. and Canada), there is absolutely no percentage subscribing to (e.g.) the religion established by Auguste Comte, let alone Spinozism.

There is only one reliable result from these "false resemblances" used to entice people into Buddhism: the very same people who respond to such enticements will feel that they have been lied to when they discover how the contents of the canon have been misrepresented to them.  In short, religious authorities discredit themselves, and secular scholars show their lack of reliability, objectivity, or even sanity in the exchange.  Does anyone in the study of ancient Greece try to pretend that the Greeks were perfectly rational and scientific?  Does anyone try to "cover up" the significance of hades, or the supernatural aspects of Heracles?  This is a game that only ends by discrediting all the players.

The article by B.B. was published in 1996, in what was then a moderately-obscure journal called the Buddhist Studies Review.  If you've seen copies of this "old" publication in their original form, you would know that it looks and feels much older than the 1990s: it was produced (in the U.K.) under the patronage of the Franco-Vietnamese Lin-Sơn temple.  It was actually distributed in North America by Charles Prebish himself: on the last page, there's a mailing address to send him the subscription fees at Penn State University.  The journal has the look and feel of a religious pamphlet handed out on street-corners --and the quality of printing and binding is much worse than many of its antecedents circa 1896.

However, the journal was a sort of crossroads where many scholars of the time made defiant statements, perhaps knowing that it was read by their colleagues and contemporaries.  Recently, Prebish has been complaining that he has been too much criticized for an article in the same publication that nobody has actually read (i.e., because the thing is too hard to find a copy of).

The journal's very first issue (1983/4) identifies it as the joint publication of Lin-Sơn and the Pali Buddhist Union, to "further our mutual aims".  The journal eventually became the dominion of a for-profit company ("Equinox Publishing, U.K.") --and it still exists as such today, with no resemblance to its founding format and mandate.  If you look around the internet, you'll find that (aside from citations to this same journal) there is not much of a trace that the Pali Buddhist Union ever existed; I do not know if they're still a registered charity today.

As marginal and poorly-printed as such a publication may have been, it is dismaying to see that we have nothing like it in 2012.  There should now be more debate of the kind that sparked between B.B. and Tilakaratne --not less.  There should be more publications willing to deal with controversy, and to provide editorial oversight and standards for it.

One of the lessons to be drawn from this example is that Bhikkhu Bodhi (like the vast majority of mere mortals) does need an editor.  This article was in dire need of an independent mind checking the citations, and questioning the author as to whether or not he is really stating his case in a way that the reader could understand.  The role of the editor is not the same as the peer-reviewer: professional editors check facts, question the salience of citations, and ask authors to explain themselves more clearly (or propose clearer ways to state the case), in a sort of Socratic dialogue.  That process was missing from the Buddhist Studies Review in the 1990s --and, it deserves to be said, it is missing from this website today.  The absence of the editorial process is more significant than the absence of paper in the new (and increasingly digital) production of knowledge.


Endnotes.
¹ [See, e.g., the Pāthika-suttanta (24th in the DN, first page of vol. 3 for both PTS and BJT).  Here, the Buddha is defending his legitimacy against aspersions from an ex-devotee (who had since converted to a rival religion/philosophy) and provides a very long list of his miracles and super-powers in his own defense.  This has resulted in some discomfort amongst modern commentators (and not westerners only) who would prefer to sweep anything supernatural under the rug; note that the summary provided by Malalasekera's Dictionary of Pali Proper Names (under Pātika [sic?], rather than Pāthika) is evasive in the extreme.]

² [I am thinking of the story as told in the Mhv chapter 3.]

³ [This is the Aparādiṭṭhi-suttanta, found in the SN's Kokālikavaggo starting PTS vol. 1, p. 136 (i.e., found several pages after that), BJT vol. 1, p. 260.]

A Bibliography of Just One Entry:
Bhikkhu Bodhi.  1996.  "Nibbāna, Transcendence and Language".  Buddhist Studies Review, Vol. 13, No. 2.  London (?), U.K. ISSN 0265-2897