Overview of early Buddhist Transformative Spirituality (1)
In the present interpretation, all sutta teachings essential to the practice of early Buddhist transformative spirituality can be understood as elaborations on three basic concepts, represented as follows by three Pali terms, followed by the English equivalents I will use in these essays
Upadana, “Clinging” or “Attachment”
Anicca, “Impermanence”
Dukkha, “Distress”
The most common descriptions of the nibbana-ideal in the suttas is that it is “the cessation of dukkha,” and “the cessation of upadana/Clinging.” More precisely, nibbana is the cessation of dukkha brought about by the cessation of upadana. Thus “liberation,” another synonym for nibbana in the suttas, means primarily liberation from upadana and dukkha.
In what follows, I will often use the Pali terms involved here, in order to emphasize to English-speaking readers that these are technical terms with special meanings in the context of early Buddhist teachings. Relying only on English translations of these terms will often give the wrong impression. For example, sometimes the context makes it appropriate to translate upadana by the English word “Attachment.” But simply equating upadana with the English word “Attachment” will often lead to mistaken understandings. Using Pali terms, although requiring some additional work on the part of readers, serves as a useful reminder that thinking about early Buddhist spirituality requires entering into a specialized and unfamiliar context, requiring familiarity with an unfamiliar vocabulary. When I do use English words like Attachment, I will capitalize them to remind the reader that I am using this as a technical term with special meanings, not identical with all the associations evoked by the English word “attachment”
This said, the three terms above present the early Buddhist analysis of the basic problems affecting normal human ways of life. That is:
Normally, each individual develops a way of life in which that person becomes inflexibly dependent on the continued existence of certain circumstances to provide that person with a sense of self-worth and meaning in life. Typical examples in the modern world are: Close family and friends, a particular job and career, positive recognition by significant others, material possessions and a certain level of material comfort. Normally, individuals become Attached to, or “Cling to” those circumstances they have become dependent on in this way. Inflexible Clinging to particular conditions of these kinds are what is meant by upadana “Clinging.
If there were any conditions in the world that could be relied on to remain stable and permanent, upadana/Clinging would cause no problems. The fact that no such stable and unchanging conditions exist–this is the relevance of the doctrine of universal Impermanence, anicca.
These ideas summarize the way in which the three core concepts Clinging, Impermanence, and dukkha are related to each other:
In a world where all conditions a person might become Attached to are Impermanent, inflexible clinging to any particular conditions in the world inevitably makes a person vulnerable to deep Distress, Dukkha.
The story of Kisa Gotami.
These three central concepts, Clinging-Impermanence-dukkha, understood in relation to each other, are very well illustrated in a story from later Buddhist tradition. It is the story of Kisa Gotami, “Frail Gotami,” a young woman born into a very poor family.
[She was born] at Savatthi in a poor household, and she was called Gotami. But she was so lean and frail that they called her Kisa Gotami, “Frail Gotami.”
When she entered her husband’s home they scornfully called her “daughter of a lowly house”; but then when a son was born to her they started respecting and honoring her.
But when her son was of an age to run up and down, while playing one day he fell and died: then great sorrow came upon her. And she said to herself: “Formerly I was scorned: but when I got a son I was honored. But now these folk will want to take my son and throw his body away.”
So in her great sorrow she took the dead body on her hip and roamed the town, going from door to door and asking “ Give medicine for my boy .” But people mocked her and asked “ Of what use is medicine?”
Then a certain wise man said to her “Good woman, go to the fully Enlightened One, and ask of Him a medicine for your child.” So she went to the Master and said: “Lord, give me a medicine for my child.” The Master, replied: “ Go to the town, enter in to every house, and beg a little mustard seed in from a house where no one has ever died.”
“Yes, Lord” she replied with joy. Entering the town she went to the very first house and said: “I need a little mustard seed as medicine for my child. If in this house no one has died, give me a little mustard seed.” But they answered: “Who can count the number of all the people who have died here in this house.”
And so went to the second and third house asking the same thing, and was unable to get what she asked for.
Finally she came to the realization, “In all this town this must be the way of things. This the Buddha must have seen out of compassion for me.” So her sorrow was greatly lessened, and she was finally able to go and lay the body of her son in the village burial field.
She then sang this verse:
This is no law for village or for town,
No law for any single family.
Through all the world of gods and of men
This law holds good: All is impermanent.
So saying she came back to the Master, who said to her: “Have you found the mustard seed, Gotami?”
“Done is the business of the mustard seed, Lord,” she said, and asked to be ordained a nun.
Then went away to where the Sisters lived, was ordained, and not long after… became famous in the practice of the homeless life. — (From Buddhist Stories, translated by F.L. Woodward, Adyar, India, 1925 (1994), p. 32-36.)
This story illustrates very well a complex of ideas that receive most emphasis and elaboration in the Pali suttas. First, it shows how and why a person’s mind can become inflexibly locked in to a need for the world to be a certain way. When Gotami became mother of a son, this gained her respect from her in-laws that they had previously denied her. This not only fulfilled a deep psychological need she had, but she became so inflexibly attached to this particular way of fulfilling this need that she refused to even acknowledge the reality of the turn of events that robbed her of this way of fulfilling it.
The image of Gotami carrying around the dead corpse of her son asking for medicine to bring him back serves as a very extreme example dramatizing the contrastive mentality that accompanies what early Buddhism calls upadana, “Attachment,” or “Clinging.”
“Contrastive mentality” here refers to a mindset that does not fully see, accept, and adapt to actually existing circumstances for what they are. This mentality only sees the contrast between circumstances that actually exist, and different circumstances a person expects to exist, and needs to exist, because she has become inflexibly dependent on them to fulfill a deep need she has.
The Gotami story illustrates such a contrastive mentality in a very extreme form. Gotami’s desperate need to maintain the status that being mother-of-a-son provided her, caused her to lapse into unreality, refusing to accept the finality of her son’s death, now inescapably thrust upon her.
“Wasted emotional energy resisting uncontrollable change,” is another phrase helpful in describing the reaction of a person in the grip of such a contrastive mentality due to upadana. That is, the Buddhist ideal is not pure passivity in the face of all difficult life-circumstances. In some circumstances it lies within a person’s power to resolve difficult problems that have arisen, and in this case, Buddhism should not prevent a person from actively seeking such a resolution. But sometimes, inflexible Clinging will cause a person to continue to focus all her attention on and obsess about the frustrating character of a situation. Since nothing can actually be done in the situation, such obsessive preoccupation serves no positive purpose. This is what I mean by “wasted emotional energy resisting uncontrollable change.”
Finally, upadana/Clinging can be described as a futile attempt to stop or control the flow of change in the world. This happens when, because a person has become inflexibly dependent on some particular condition of the world, she wants to stop this particular condition from passing out of existence and being replaced by some other condition. This again is dramatically illustrated in the story of Gotami, who wanted so desperately to maintain her status as mother-of-a-son and prevent this status from ceasing to exist due to her son’s death.
I speak here of a “deep psychological need” a person might have, that might cause her to Cling to some particular condition of the world that fills that need. This need can take several forms, but the Gotami story illustrates one of its main forms that I will focus on in this chapter, which might be called the need for external validation. This is a need for something in the world to serve as a basis for self-esteem and a sense of meaning in life–a sense that one is a worthwhile person leading a meaningful life.
Clinging, Impermanence, and dukkha as mutually defining.
The story of Kisa Gotami also helps illustrate a point made earlier: how these three core concepts described above are mutually defining. Each can only be understood properly by understanding its relation to other concepts in this core complex of ideas.
For example, the general meaning of the Pali word dukkha is “suffering.” But the “suffering” relevant in the Buddhist context is not just any kind of suffering. It is that kind of deep emotional Distress, illustrated in the Gotami story, which results from changes in the world to which a person has been inflexibly Clinging as an essential source of external validation. It is therefore the kind of dukkha, or “suffering” that might plausibly be eliminated by eliminating this inflexible Clinging. For example, dukkha here cannot refer to the kind of physical pain due to a knife or bullet wound. Reducing or eliminating Clinging cannot prevent this kind of suffering. This is why I think “Distress” is a better English translation of dukkha, more suited to describe that kind of psychological “suffering” that might result from change in something a person is Clinging to.
Upadana/Clinging, is not just anything that might be called “attachment” in English. It is only that kind of Clinging that might make a person vulnerable to Dukkha because of universal Impermanence.
These requirements can be met if we define upadana as inflexible Clinging to some particular condition in the world that an individual feels she needs for external validation of herself as a person. This gives rise to inflexible expectations that she can continue to rely on such conditions not to change–a desire to stop the flow of change in the world at least when it comes to these particular conditions.
This understanding of upadana/Clinging determines the particular significance that anicca/Impermanence has in early Buddhist teaching. That is, Clinging gives rise to inflexible emotional expectations of enduring sameness or predictability, lack of change, in those particular conditions a person has become dependent on for her sense of self-worth and meaning in life. The universal Impermanence of all conditions in the world is what makes these expectations unrealistic. To the extent that a person has developed inflexible emotional expectations that these conditions can be relied on not to change, to this extent this person lives in an emotionally “illusory” world.
This is not an intellectual illusion – nearly everyone intellectually realizes that conditions in the world are subject to change. It is an emotional illusion in that people develop deep emotional expectations of enduring and reliable sameness in those conditions they have become deeply dependent on. This point is illustrated in the Gotami story by the fact that the Buddha did not just teach her a doctrine about Impermanence for her intellectual acceptance. He gave her an exercise allowing the truth of Impermanence to emotionally sink in. She had to “real-ize” and internalize the truth about Impermanence, make it a real and effective part of her worldview, changing also her fundamental way of relating to the world.
That is, the more normal way of creating a satisfying life for oneself is either to try to find some satisfying set of conditions that can be relied on not to change, or else to try to control important conditions so as to prevent them from changing. This means that, in the more normal case, people relate to the world on the basis of a rather optimistic and hopeful attitude, optimistic that some conditions can be found in the world, or created and controlled in the world, that will provide enduring satisfaction.
(Note that, if Impermanence is understood in this way, what is essential to Buddhist teaching is the Impermanence of all potential objects-of-Clinging. For example, suppose there might exist some small lump of matter in the far reaches of the material universe that has lasted eternally in the past and will exist eternally in the future. This might appear to violate the Buddhist doctrine of universal Impermanence, but this would have no practical significance, because no one living on earth is likely to Cling to this small lump of matter as a source of self-validation. )
Early Buddhist pessimism.
This practical understanding of universal Impermanence, affecting everything a person might Cling to, determines also the significance of early Buddhist emphasis on the dukkha-causing character of the world out there. Here we come to the extremely pessimistic attitude toward the world out there that is undeniably central to the early Buddhist worldview. The suttas urge aspiring Buddhists to regard its dukkha-causing character as the most significant feature of the world out there.
When you look at the world out there, do not think positive thoughts – that the world out there offers many opportunities for meaningful involvements. Instead, when you look at the world out there, think Impermanence and think dukkha. The world as normally experienced is a trap and a lure, always promising more than it can actually deliver.
One sutta passage (SN 47. 7. [148]; Bodhi 2000, 1633-34; kindle 29872) offers a helpful image here. Imagine a troop of monkeys living in some region of a mountain forest so dense and remote that it is inaccessible to hunters who might want to trap and kill the monkeys. This is home-territory for the monkeys, and they are safe so long as they do not range out of their home territory. But sometimes the monkeys are tempted to range out of their home range, and venture into less dense forest regions more accessible to hunters, and thus much more dangerous for the monkeys.
The message: You might find the outside world an alluring place, and be tempted to try to find satisfaction and meaning in life by some particular involvements in or connections to this world. But everything in the world out there is Impermanent, and potentially dukkha-causing for anyone who pins her hopes on the world in this way. It is a dangerous place. Do not allow yourself to be drawn into this dangerous territory.
This seems obviously and deliberately intended as a direct affront and a challenge to the more optimistic view of the world that probably comes more naturally to most people. Most people probably regard this optimism as a healthy, good and admirable attitude to take to the world. But the early Buddhist radical critique of this normally positive and optimistic attitude toward the world is an essential part of the challenge it obviously intends to present, a challenge to fundamentally change one’s whole way of being in the world and relating to the world. Softening it, in the interest of making it more acceptable, would also amount to lessening the challenge that early Buddhism intends to present, to strive for radical change in one’s whole attitude toward the world.
Some Problems.
On the other hand, the above discussion also raises some important problems for the present attempt at a critical and rational reconstruction of early Buddhism.
For example, this pessimism about the world is itself a problem, especially in the light of the Buddhist claim that achieving the radical change that Buddhism advocates, raises one’s life to the highest level. By itself, mere pessimism about the world could lead to mere withdrawal. Ceasing to seek for meaning through connections and involvements with the world, could mean leading a merely meaningless life. It could amount to become an “empty fortress,” well-defended against hurt, but empty inside with nothing going on. No one would regard this as a realization of mankind’s highest possibilities. I will call this the “nihilist” understanding of early Buddhism.
A second problem is the truth problem: Is Buddhist pessimism about the world based on “the truth” about the world? Does Buddhist revelation reveal to us the One Truth about the world?
On the one hand, it does seem true that all conditions in the world are changeable and Impermanent. And it does seem true that inflexible Clinging to any particular conditions makes a person vulnerable to Distress when conditions change. But there exist after all many true facts about the world. Why select these particular truths about Clinging, Impermanence, and Distress, and take these alone as the sole predominating basis, the One Truth determining one’s whole attitude toward the world?
Consider for example the line from Tennyson: “Better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all.” In other words, it is true that deep love puts a person at risk of painful loss. But the line from Tennyson quoted here urges a conclusion different from the conclusion Buddhism draws: Forming a deep love-connection with another is an important source of meaning in life, one of the main ways in which people find meaning in their lives. The risk of loss is just a price one must pay for forming those connections, and it is worth it. It is hard to deny that this also is an admirable attitude to take to such love-connections.
Here we have two sorts of problems requiring further discussion.
One is the problem that many descriptions of the Buddhist ideal in the Pali suttas allow for a “nihilist” understanding, ceasing to seek meaning-fulfillment in the external world, but as a result leading a meaningless life.
A second problem is one that may have occurred to some readers in connection with the Tennyson quote cited above. There is certainly some truth to the Buddhist pessimistic view of the world as only the site of Dukkha. But this isn’t this one-sided? Isn’t there also some truth to a contrasting view, “Better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all.”
Here I want just to indicate a general solution I will argue to these two problems, leaving fuller discussions until later.
Outline of Solutions.
My solution to the second problem described above is to treat extreme Buddhist pessimism about the world as part of the Buddhist “worldview.” A worldview is a particular way of viewing the world – not the one true way of viewing the world, but the world as seen from a certain perspective. Here, Buddhist extreme pessimism about the world shows how the world looks from the perspective of a person wholeheartedly and single-mindedly devoted to achieving a particular ideal.
For reasons that will become clear later, this ideal itself is not easy to explain in positive terms. But a positive explanation is necessary to avoid the problem of “nihilist” Buddhism described above, Buddhism as withdrawal into a meaningless life.
I think that the best positive description of nibbana can be given by first observing that most individuals seek to create a meaningful life for themselves through meaningful connections to others, and engaging in pursuits that give important purpose to their lives. Buddhists belonged to a subculture of meditators in ancient India who found through meditation an alternative and opposite way of fulfilling man’s quest for meaning completely within themselves. “Meditation” here involves setting aside time to sit still, cutting off all involvement with the external world, and forcing oneself to be alone with one’s own being. What these meditators found was that cutting oneself off from usual connections to and involvements with the world would not be merely boring. Regular and prolonged of this kind of meditative practice could lead to states of mind experienced as very blissful and deeply satisfying. A contemporary Hindu writing describes this as “A self…. satisfied in the Self” (See Bhagavad Gita 6.20). Samadhi is one Pali term used in the suttas to refer to this blissful experience at meditation.
In the ideal case also, these experiences of meditative bliss would not occur as isolated occurrences leaving everyday life otherwise unchanged. They would result rather in an enduring transformation, lasting beyond times set aside for meditation. The meditator would return to everyday life with fundamentally changed attitudes. As I would put it, he would have found a way of satisfying man’s quest for meaning completely within himself. Finding this way of fulfilling man’s quest for meaning quite independent of any connections to the external world, would free a person from Attachment to, and dependence on, any particular conditions in world felt as essential sources of self-esteem and meaning in life. In terms introduced in the introduction, such a transformation will amount to the achievement of a superlative kind of ethical/existential excellence, worthy of being regarded as what finally matters, the Supreme Good in human life.I will have more to say below about this fundamental transformation in a person’s way of being in the world and relating to the world, how it might manifest itself in everyday situations, and why it is something deserving of our highest admiration. My main point at present is that what I describe here is an important aspect of the achievement of nibbana. This is the main way I would give positive content to the Buddhist nibbana-ideal, a remedy for nihilist interpretations that might seem to be invited by the tendency in the suttas to describe nibbana in purely negative terms as the cessation or absence of Clinging and Dukkha.
So imagine then an individual wholeheartedly and single-mindedly devoted to this ideal of finding fulfillment within. One can see that, from the perspective of such a person, the tendency very deeply ingrained in normal human psychology to seek sources of meaning through connections to the world out there, is the chief obstacle, drawing one’s attention to meaningful possibilities offered by the world, away from the unfamiliar and much more difficult task of finding meaning within one’s own being. This I think is one way of accounting for such one-sided and fierce denunciations of Attachments to particular ever-changing conditions in the world, as only a source of Distress, pain, and frustration. For aspiring Buddhists, the instinctive desire to find sources of meaning in the world out there, and Attachment to sources of meaning once found, is the Enemy Within, a powerful psychological force drawing one’s attention away from the one always-reliable source of meaningful fulfillment within oneself. This is why this attraction must be so strongly and emphatically countered by the pessimistic view of the world so prevalent in the suttas.
This then explains the positive basis for the pessimistic, negative aspect of the early Buddhist message. Single-minded devotion to this alternate and opposite way of fulfilling man’s quest for meaning, is the positive basis for casting normal sources of meaning-fulfillment in an exclusively negative light. The suttas tend to present this as the One True way of viewing the world, seeing the world “as it [really] is” (yatha bhutam, a phrase frequently used in the suttas.) This is a kind of absolutist claim characteristic of almost all premodern thinkers — the claim to represent the one true and valid way of seeing the world, excluding the validity of any other way.
But here is a problem: Modern study of many cultures and religions of the world has given us today much more awareness of, and appreciation for, the great diversity that exists, and has existed, among cultures and religions of the world. Early Buddhists had no such awareness, which made it much easier for them to see the Buddhist path as the one and only Truth Path.
I think this sort of claim can no longer be supported by good reasons today, given our knowledge and appreciation of cultural and religious diversity. In this light, I advocate regarding the particular kind of ethical/existential excellence (fulfillment within) discovered by Buddhists and others in ancient India, as one kind of ethical/existential excellence. This acknowledges the possibility that there are other kinds of ethical/existential excellence fundamentally different from the Buddhist ideal, but equally deserving of our highest admiration.
This is the solution I propose to what I think is the obvious one-sidedness of the Buddhist worldview mentioned above, its exclusive focus on problems connected with external involvements, ignoring also their positive possibilities. This does not represent the One Truth about the world, the one objectively true picture of the world as it is in itself. It is part of the early Buddhist “worldview,” representing the world as seen from the particular perspective of a person wholeheartedly and single-mindedly devoted to a very particular kind of ethical/existential excellence.
The Four Noble Truths.
Some of the main implications of the points made in discussions above can be summarized in the form of a commentary on the so-called Four Noble Truths. Sutta passages listing the four noble truths most commonly introduce them by saying that the Buddha or someone else “understood as it really is”:
1.This is dukkha
2.This is the cause of dukkha
3.This is the cessation of dukkha
4.This is the path to the cessation of dukkha.
What does it mean to understand dukkha itself as a central part of the Buddhist worldview (the first noble truth)? Discussions above have explained why it is important for the aspiring Buddhist to see the world out there only in its dukkha-causing aspect – the extreme pessimism about the world constantly emphasized in the suttas.
Other sutta passages explain the second noble truth by identifying tanha “Craving” or upadana “Clinging” as “the cause of dukkha.” But actually, dukkha has two causes, Clinging and Impermanence. Buddhism urges us to treat these two causes differently.
A good Buddhist should accept Impermanence as a salient and unavoidable fact about the world;, and give up the optimistic illusion that is the basis for our attempts to find something permanently reliable, or control some conditions in the world so as to make them permanently reliable.
On the other hand, dukkha has a second internal/psychological cause, Clinging, which is controllable and avoidable. The fact that dukkha has this second, controllable internal/psychological cause, is what goes commonly unrecognized in ordinary human life. That is, we generally pay attention to individual episodes of distress only when they occur as individual episodes. The distress I feel on losing my job appears to me something that is caused by job-loss itself, which has just now occurred at this moment in time. One part of the Buddhist revelation is that this distress has another deeper psychological cause that has been building up over time unnoticed. When I got the job I experienced only gladness, and I enjoyed most aspects of the job itself. What Buddhism reveals is something I was generally unaware of: That I gradually became deeply dependent on having this particular job because it fulfilled a deep need I had for external validation, making me feel I was a worthwhile person leading a meaningful life.
This is one important revelatory truth that early Buddhism has to teach us: That dukkha has an internal cause built into normal human psychology, but which is controllable because It is a controllable part of human psychology, rather than part of the world out there that we cannot control.
What this means also is that there is not a fixed and unalterable connection between Impermanence and dukkha. The Impermanence of the world is not a cause of dukkha for the Enlightened and the unenlightened alike. The Enlightened person still lives in a world where all conditions are changeable and Impermanent. But because she has ceased to Cling inflexibly to any particular condition in the world, Impermanence and change have ceased to be causes of deep Distress.
This explains the third noble truth, “the cessation of Dukkha.” It is indeed important to the Buddhist worldview to see Dukkha as pervasive and the most salient characteristic of the world out there. But it is also important to the Buddhist worldview to see Dukkha as a removable part of the world out there. It is possible to live life in a world free of Dukkha. One way of removing Dukkha is implicit in the second noble truth: If Clinging is the cause of Dukkha, then the cessation of Dukkha can be brought about by ceasing to Cling inflexibly to any particular conditions in the world.
“The cessation of upadana “Clinging” is one of the most common descriptions of nibbana in the suttas. But we have also seen that this description of nibbana in negative terms as the absence of Clinging, leaves this open to the nihilist understanding of Buddhism – cutting off dependence on conditions in the world to give meaning to one’s life, but as a result leading a meaningless life. Avoiding this requires giving some positive content to the nibbana ideal. Some aspects of the fourth noble truth about “the path to the cessation of dukkha” help indicate the nature of this positive content.
This fourth noble truth about the path is usually identified with a list of eight elements “the eightfold path,” often repeated in the suttas.
- Right view
- Right resolve
- Right speech
- Right conduct
- Right livelihood
- Right effort
- Right mindfulness
- Right (meditative) concentration
The eightfold path is really an attempt to lay out in a very succinct way a total life-program for an aspiring Buddhist. Not all of these eight elements are essential for understanding early Buddhist transformative spirituality.
It is the eighth and final item on this list, the achievement of samadhi, deeply satisfying mental peace and bliss at meditation that concerns us in the present context. I explain this above as an internal fulfillment of man’s quest for meaning. This is what gives positive content to the nibbana-ideal. In the ideal case, this experience of fulfillment-within also transforms a person’s whole relation to the world, by relieving this person from the need to find sources of meaning through involvements in the external world, which in the Buddhist worldview are only sources of dukkha.
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