What the Buddha Thought

Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Monographs, Richard F. Gombrich, Equinox (2009)

PREFACE

Argues that the Buddha was one of history’s most brilliant and original thinkers.
Aims to introduce the Buddha’s thought and demonstrate that more can be known about him and the coherence of his ideas than is commonly acknowledged by scholars.
Emphasizes understanding the Buddha’s teachings within their historical context, including early brahminical texts, ancient Jainism, and appreciating his use of satire and irony.
Highlights the importance of the Pali Canon as evidential material.
States the Buddha used metaphor but founded his arguments on abstraction, an intellectual breakthrough.
Considers the Buddha’s ethicizing of karma and rebirth a significant civilizational advancement.
Describes karma as a central concept: a process (not a thing), neither random nor wholly determined, applying to all conscious experience except nirvana, and establishing individual responsibility.
The book is based on the Numata Lectures delivered at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, in autumn 2006.
Intended for both experts in the field and a wider public interested in Buddhism, assuming some basic familiarity with the Buddha’s teachings.
The book’s title is a homage to the late Ven. Dr Walpola Rahula, aiming to supplement his work, particularly by offering a historical perspective and clarifying the concept of nirvana.
Advises that the book is best read sequentially as its arguments are cumulative.
Provides a brief guide to its chapters: initial focus on karma, then historical backgrounds (brahminical, Jain), key concepts in relation to Upaniṣads, a case study on love and compassion, methodology, core philosophical ideas (fire, causation, cognition, nirvana), and finally, the Buddha’s intellectual style and a review of karma’s centrality.
Acknowledges significant intellectual debts, especially to Joanna Jurewicz for her work on the Ṛg Veda and dependent origination, and Sue Hamilton for insights on the Buddha’s focus on experience.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

LANGUAGES

Sanskrit (S) is an Indo-European language native to India, related to English, with its oldest texts (Vedas) dating back to the second millennium BC, initially transmitted orally and first written in the third century BC.
Prakrit refers to Indian languages derived from Sanskrit; the oldest extensive Indian inscriptions (Emperor Asoka, mid-third century BC) are in Prakrit.
Pali (P) is a Prakrit language, close to what the Buddha spoke, and is the language of the Theravada Buddhist sacred texts (Pali Canon), some of which are the oldest evidence for Buddhism.

BASIC DATA ON BUDDHISM

The Three Jewels

Buddhism is defined by the ‘Three Jewels’ or ‘Three Refuges’: the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, in which Buddhists place their trust.
Buddha (S/P) is a title meaning ‘Awoken’ or ‘Enlightened’; his family name was Gotama (P). Buddhists believe he re-founded Buddhism, with other Buddhas existing in other times/places.
Dhamma (P) or Dharma (S) is what the Buddha taught, considered the law of the universe. It represents Buddhism as a system of ideas, while sāsana (P) or śāsana (S) refers to Buddhism as a historical phenomenon or ‘dispensation’.
Sangha (S/P) means ‘community’, most commonly referring to ordained monks, nuns, and novices. It can denote the entire monastic community or a local one and is governed by rules called the Vinaya (S/P).

Fundamental texts

The Pali Canon, called Tipitaka (‘Three baskets’) in Pali, consists of:
- Vinaya Pitaka: Rules for the Sangha, including the pātimokkha (P)/prātimokṣa (S) (disciplinary codes for monks and nuns).
- Sutta Pitaka: Texts (sutta/sūtra) containing teachings, often in a narrative setting, with the main collection being the four Nikāya.
- Abhidhamma Pitaka: ‘Higher teachings’ presented systematically and literally; early schools differ in their abhidhamma.
‘Early canonical texts’ generally refer to most of the Vinaya Pitaka, the four Nikāya, and some verse texts from the Sutta Pitaka.

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND

Time

The Buddha died around 405 BC, aged eighty; earlier scholarly dating of 483 BC is considered too early.
Emperor Asoka, instrumental in spreading Buddhism, ruled from c. 269 to c. 231 BC.

Space

The Buddha was born into the Shakyas tribe near the modern India-Nepal border.
He lived and taught in north-east India, in areas now known as Bihar and eastern UP.

The Buddha lived during the emergence of India’s first cities, larger states (mostly monarchies), and increased trade.
Brahmin leadership was contested by new political and mercantile classes who supported heterodox teachers (those not accepting Veda authority), including Mahāvira, who taught Jainism.

Brahmin religion and society

Brahmin ideology proposed a hierarchical ‘caste system’ with four strata (varna): brahmins (top), nobility (kṣatriya), vaiśya (traders by Buddha’s time), and śūdra (artisans/labourers), with outcastes below.
Early brahmin religious literature, the Veda (‘knowledge’), is in ancient Sanskrit and includes genres like the Ṛg Veda (oldest hymns) and the Upanisads (latest stratum), with the Bṛhad-āranyaka Upaniṣad known to the Buddha.

Kinds of Buddhism

The two main Buddhist traditions today are Theravada and Mahayana.
Theravada (‘Doctrine of the Elders’) regards only the Pali Canon as authoritative and is dominant in South and Southeast Asia.
Mahayana (‘Great Path’ or ‘Great Vehicle’) arose around the beginning of the Christian era, venerates many other texts, and is dominant in East and Central Asia.

Chapter 1 - INTRODUCTION

The author is motivated by admiration for the Buddha, considered a great thinker, and exasperation at common misunderstandings of his teachings.
The Buddha’s ideas are valuable for global education and fostering a more civilized world.
While admiring the Buddha, the author does not identify as a Buddhist and disagrees with some of his theories.
Despite the diversity of Buddhist traditions, they can be traced back to the Buddha himself.
Misunderstandings of Buddha’s teachings arose because he infused old terms with new meanings, often using metaphor and irony.
A key example of misunderstanding is equating Buddha’s teachings with the Upanishads, overlooking his unique refutations.
The Buddha often addressed different questions than his contemporaries, leading to varied interpretations like realist Abhidharma and idealist Vijñānavāda.
Translation difficulties, particularly into Chinese, contributed to mystical interpretations like Zen, which the author finds partially problematic.
A successful interpretation must explain both the Buddha’s original ideas and how they led to various historical interpretations.

MISUNDERSTANDING AND PSEUDO-PROFUNDITY

The author is exasperated by the common view that Buddha’s ideas are inherently complex and difficult, believing them to be powerful yet graspable when properly understood.
Traditional interpretations often lacked historical context, which is crucial for understanding statements.
The author employs a historical method to reconstruct this context.
Viewing the Buddha solely as a religious teacher can hinder appreciation of his intellectual contributions.

TERMINOLOGY AND CLARITY

While Buddhism can be taught in any language without foreign terms, fully grasping texts requires understanding the original language.
Key Buddhist terms are abstractions with no precise equivalents in other languages, making translation problematic.
The Pali Canon contains the oldest extensive evidence of Buddha’s ideas; Pali is closely related to the language Buddha spoke.
For expounding Indian Buddhism, Sanskrit terms can often be used, but comparison should be with late Vedic Sanskrit, contemporary to the Buddha.

THE BUDDHA’S USE OF METAPHOR

The Buddha’s discourses (suttas) are predominantly delivered with pariyāya, meaning indirectly through metaphor, allegory, or parable.
This contrasts with abhidharma texts, which are presented as literal.
The modern expositor’s task is to decode this figurative language to present the Buddha’s intended literal meaning.
Ignoring these metaphors leads to a loss of essential meaning.

SKILL IN MEANS

The Buddha’s use of metaphor is linked to his Skill in Means (upāyakauśalya), his ability to adapt teachings to his audience.
Similar to Socrates, he often began by eliciting others’ views, then agreeing before reinterpreting their terms.
A prime example is redefining ‘karma’ (physical action) as ‘intention’.
The Buddha’s compassion was expressed through his preaching, and his wisdom provided the Skill in Means for effective communication.

DECODING AN IDEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE

Literal translations of Buddhist concepts can be obscure (e.g., “no self, but self is five aggregates”).
Clear explanation requires exploring terms’ semantic ranges and uses in plain English.
The doctrine of No Self (anātman/anattā) is central; understanding it as “no unchanging self” avoids confusion.
This doctrine applies to all experienced phenomena: “Nothing in the world has an unchanging essence.”
The Buddha focused on experience (“what we can normally experience”) rather than ontology.
This connects to the First Noble Truth: dukkha (life as normally experienced is unsatisfactory).
The three hallmarks of existence are anicca (impermanent), dukkha (unsatisfactory), and anatta (no unchanging self/essence), which are interlinked.
All things are processes, with change being non-random (nothing exists without a cause).
The term saṃkhārā may approximate the concept of ‘process’.

KARMA AS PERSONAL CONTINUITY

The doctrine of No Soul does not negate personal continuity or moral responsibility; Buddhism affirms strong personal continuity through rebirth based on moral deserts.
This continuity spans infinite lives, beginningless but endable with nirvana.
The Buddha’s own Jātaka tales (stories of past lives) illustrate this.
Life consists of five upādāna-khandha (aggregates/processes): physical interactions, feelings, apperceptions, saṃkhārā (mental processes including volitions), and consciousness.
Intention is the most important aspect of saṃkhārā and determines the moral value of actions.
Intentions become propensities, shaping character and destiny.
Karma is conditioned but not strictly determined, allowing for free will and moral responsibility.

INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY AND RESPONSIBILITY

Ethical value resides in intention, making individuals autonomous and their conscience the final authority.
Individuals possess free will and are fully responsible for their actions and moral condition across lifetimes.
Ritual is ethically neutral and has no soteriological value; moral practices are emphasized.
The Buddha redefined ‘ritual’ to mean ethical intention, thereby challenging caste-based ethics.
‘Purifying action’ (puñña kamma) leads to rewards and involves purifying the mind, linking morality to meditation.

WHY HAVE I STARTED HERE?

The author began with ‘No Soul’ and ‘karma’ because these core concepts are often misunderstood in isolation.
The Buddha’s original audience had different preconceptions (e.g., belief in rebirth and a transmigrating entity) than modern readers.
While the Buddha traditionally began with the Four Noble Truths (starting with dukkha), the author chose a different entry point to address modern misunderstandings first.
The ideas presented form a coherent system, though many topics require further elaboration.

SUMMARY: DID ONE PERSON REALLY THINK OF ALL THIS?

The author dismisses skepticism about the historical Buddha and the possibility of knowing his original teachings.
It is argued that the coherence of Buddhist ideology points to a single, remarkable founder—the Buddha.
The Buddha’s ideas, while original, were influenced by contemporary thought; understanding this historical context is crucial for accurate interpretation and avoiding common misinterpretations.

The Buddha linked karma (intentional action) with rebirth, viewing it as a cause-and-effect system where good actions yield good effects and bad actions yield bad effects for the doer.
These effects are not rewards or punishments from a divine entity but outcomes of a natural law, likened to agriculture where a seed (action) yields a ‘fruit’ (result) after a time lag.
Karma serves as a theodicy, explaining seemingly unjust suffering (e.g., suffering babies, triumphant rogues) by attributing it to actions in past lives.
For karma to function ethically, it must exist between determinism (no free will) and randomness (actions without consequences); the Buddha condemned determinist doctrines.
A sutta in the Samyutta Nikāya identifies eight causes for feelings, with karma being the eighth, suggesting it’s an explanation when medical or common-sense reasons are absent.
The Buddha intended karma as a moral exhortation, guiding present behavior (“How should I behave?”).
A common misinterpretation is to view karma retrospectively (“This is the result of my karma”), leading to fatalism, contrary to the Buddha’s intent.
The Buddha’s response to Moliya Sivaka implied medical conditions have medical causes, distinct from karmic ones, raising questions about karma’s role in theodicy for conditions like a child born with AIDS.
Karma is understood to operate on a grand scale (e.g., determining birth and death) and acts as the “cause behind causes,” meaning other causes (like medical ones) are manifestations of karma.
Practically, as observed in a Sinhalese Buddhist village, people try various remedies for misfortune; if all fail, bad karma is cited as the reason.
The Buddha cautioned unenlightened individuals against overthinking karma’s workings, as it could lead to madness, though enlightenment brings the ability to see karma in action.
The teaching of individual responsibility was unusual, as most societies attributed events to external forces; its acceptance was likely due to prevailing material conditions.
Buddhism emerged during India’s second urbanization, characterized by agricultural surplus, trade growth, city-states, and new social classes.
This era likely featured a higher proportion of people relatively free from oppression, making the idea of individual responsibility plausible.
Buddhism particularly appealed to new social classes like traders and self-employed individuals, including free peasants and farmers with private property.
The “gahapati” (householder), typically a land-owning head of a respectable family (often vaiśya), sometimes involved in business, was a key lay supporter.
Archaeological research indicates that a new class of landed farmers, benefiting from advancements like large hydrological systems, were significant supporters of early Buddhism.
The rise of monetization fostered individualism and independence from traditional social ties and deities, aligning well with the karma theory.
The organization of the Buddhist Sangha (monastic community), modeled on tribal republics with seniority-based ranking and no single head, reflected the doctrine of individual responsibility.
The success of the karma teaching stemmed from its resonance with the experiences of many, especially heads of households controlling economic resources.

KARMA THEORY’S BEARING ON SOCIETY AND COSMOLOGY

An ethicized karma transforms the universe into an ethical arena where beings are positioned according to their moral deserts.
In Theravādin cultures, this means power and goodness are correlated, increasing as one moves up the cosmic hierarchy (gods are more powerful and virtuous than humans, who are above animals and demons).
Demons are seen as rational enforcers of karmic justice, not arbitrarily malevolent.
While this view logically solves the problem of theodicy, its implication of no undeserved suffering can be harsh, leading to later Buddhist developments that obscured this strict law.
The ethicization of eschatology (teachings about the end times/afterlife) leads to its universalization, making distinctions of gender, age, and social class irrelevant as ethics are based on universal values of right and wrong located in the mind.
Buddhism, like mercantile wealth, was achieved rather than ascribed by birth, appealing to those who didn’t fit neatly into the brahminical varna system.
The Buddha’s insight that local customs were man-made conventions (nomos) rather than natural law (phusis), possibly influenced by awareness of diverse cultures, contributed to Buddhism’s adaptability.
Buddhism’s detachment from specific communities, localities, shrines, or hearths made it highly transportable, suiting mobile populations like traders and spreading along trade routes.
The general nature of Buddhist vows, such as “not to act wrongly in respect of sense desires,” allowed adaptation to varied social mores.
Making individual conscience the ultimate authority is liberating but requires a sanction; the universal law of karma, ensuring good is rewarded and evil punished, provides this.
“Right view” (sammā ditthi), the first step on the noble eightfold path, is precisely the acceptance of this law of karma.
Although the Buddha sometimes stated he had no “views” (dittthi) concerning metaphysical speculation, the “right view” of karma’s efficacy was fundamental to his public teaching.
While the Buddha encouraged using one’s own judgment, belief in the law of karma (and consequently rebirth) was a foundational tenet he relied upon and expected followers to accept as a leap of faith, representing his unique formulation of the doctrine.

Chapter 3 - THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE KARMA DOCTRINE IN BRAHMINISM

This chapter outlines earlier Indian ideas of rebirth and karma in Brahminism that influenced Buddhist teachings.
Traditional scholarship believed the Ṛg Veda lacked rebirth concepts, with these ideas first appearing in early Upanisads like the Bṛhad-āranyaka and Chāndogya, notably in the ‘five fire wisdom’ (pañcāgnividyā) detailing three post-death paths for men.
The origin of the rebirth idea in Brahminism was debated, with theories suggesting it came from kṣatriyas or non-Aryan indigenous populations.
Recent research by Joanna Jurewicz indicates the Ṛg Veda (X.16.5) does refer to rebirth, where the deceased returns from the ancestors (in the sun) via rain and barley, aligning with Gananath Obeyesekere’s model of non-ethicized rebirth in small-scale societies.
Obeyesekere’s model describes rebirth as movement between this world and an ancestral world, determined by funeral rites rather than ethics; ethicization, where karma affects rebirth, arises in larger, more complex societies.
Rebirth in the Ṛg Veda involved oscillation between two worlds, was not linked to karma (good or bad actions), and had no envisaged end.
The ethicization of rebirth introduced a binary cosmology: this world as the sphere of action (karmabhūmi) and the other world as the sphere of experiencing results (bhoga-bhūmi).
Indian soteriologies (Brahminical/Hindu, Jain, Buddhist) added the concept of escaping the cycle of rebirth (samsāra) through liberation (mokṣa/mukti).
Ethicization led to ideas of heaven and hell, with Indian religious systems often including a third option: complete escape from the cycle.
A significant distinction in Indian thought is that Buddhism and Jainism separated ethics from ritual, making only morality relevant for soteriology, whereas Brahminism and Hinduism did not fully disentangle them, with ‘karma’ primarily referring to ritual action.
The underlying Hindu model largely remains a binary cosmology where moral actions lead to heaven or hell, followed by a return to earth; escape from rebirth is considered the ultimate, though difficult, goal.
Early Jainism also followed a binary pattern but viewed all karma as inherently bad because most actions involve injury to living beings. Karma weighs down the life monad (jiva), preventing liberation. Jain doctrine emphasized ascetic restraint to avoid further rebirth, with death leading either to a hellish/animal existence or to mokṣa.
Buddhism ethicized the entire universe, holding all sentient beings morally responsible for their rebirth based on their good and evil deeds. Some scriptural passages, however, retain relics of the older binary model. Denying the existence of this world and the other world (and thus karmic consequences) is considered ‘wrong view’. Gods and beings in hell are sometimes seen as exceptions to active moral agency, reflecting the older binary cosmology.
The Bṛhad-āranyaka Upanisad (BĀU) shows a development of these ideas:
- Early passages depict a binary cosmology (the self, ātman, travels between this world and the other) without explicit mention of karma.
- The first mentions of karma link good/bad outcomes to good/bad actions (karma), and describe an attached individual following their actions to another world and then returning.
- It introduces the possibility of escape from rebirth: a person without desires, whose only desire is the self, attains Brahman and is not reborn. This implies that a good action is one performed without desire.
The ‘five fire wisdom’ (pañcāgnividyā), found in both BĀU and Chāndogya Upanisad, provides a more detailed ethicized account of rebirth (though not using the word ‘karma’):
- It describes three groups:
  1. Those with esoteric knowledge (and renunciates/ascetics): ascend to the worlds of Brahman and do not return.
  2. Those who perform sacrifices, give gifts, and practice austerities: travel via the moon, become food for gods, and are eventually reborn on earth through rain, food, and conception, continuing the cycle. The Chāndogya version adds that rebirth quality (e.g., into a Brahmin or outcaste womb) depends on “pleasant” or “foul” behavior.
  3. Those ignorant of these paths: become worms, insects, or snakes (Chāndogya: “tiny creatures revolving here ceaselessly”).
This third group, likely the largest, may represent those who do not receive proper Brahminical funeral rites.
The chapter emphasizes the significant shift from the Brahminical understanding of karma as ritual action to the Buddhist concept of karma as intention. Brahmin ‘punya karma’ (purifying rite) was redefined by the Buddha as meritorious action, with morally good intention as the sole criterion.

MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM

Brahmin speculative thought centered on the idea of a systematic correspondence between the human individual (microcosm) and the universe (macrocosm), sometimes including the sacrifice as an intermediary mesocosm.
Understanding these correspondences (upaniṣad being one term for such a correspondence) constituted esoteric knowledge.
This led to the search for a central principle common to both microcosm and macrocosm, with various schools identifying it with elements like water, air, or fire.
Ātman, likely related to ‘breath’, served as the Sanskrit reflexive pronoun (‘self’) and was reified as the essential core of each living individual.
Brahman was the term more often used for the vital principle of the macrocosm (universe), also sometimes referred to as ātman.
The core teaching of the Upanisads involved the equation of the individual ātman with the universal ātman (Brahman), summarized in the gnostic formula “I am brahma” (ahaṃ brahmāsmi), the realization of which was salvific. This implies that all individual ātmans are fundamentally identical.
In Jainism, the vital principle in each individual is termed ‘jiva’ (life), not ātman.
Brahman (neuter gender) in the Upanisads signifies ultimate reality, the single, immanent spirit pervading the universe and individuals, characterized by being, consciousness, and bliss, and existing beyond all dualities.
Brahmā (masculine gender) is the creator god, often equated with Prajāpati (‘Lord of Progeny’), who transcends the world, in contrast to the immanent neuter Brahman. Brahmā can be seen as a personification of the abstract principle brahman.
The phonetic ambiguity of ‘brahma’ in the phrase “ahaṃ brahmāsmi” (it could be neuter brahman or masculine Brahmā) is considered crucial for understanding why Buddhist soteriology diverged from Upaniṣadic thought.

Chapter 4 - JAIN ANTECEDENTS

The Buddha and Mahāvīra were contemporaries in Rājagṛha; Mahāvīra was younger but died before Buddha.
Early European Indologists initially mistook Jainism for an offshoot of Buddhism due to similarities.
Jainism is split into Digambara (monks go naked) and Śvetāmbara (monks wear white garments), a division likely developed gradually.
Both Jainism and Buddhism posit their main figures (Mahāvīra, Buddha) not as founders but as “re-founders” in a lineage of spiritual leaders (Tirthamkaras in Jainism).
Modern scholars accept Mahāvīra as a reformer of pre-existing Jain-like beliefs, with Pārśva acknowledged as a preceding Tirthamkara.
Mahāvīra is thought to have insisted on monks going naked, a practice possibly not followed by Pārśva’s community.
Evidence for early Jainism is scarce; surviving texts are hard to date, and the Digambara and Śvetāmbara traditions disagree on the authenticity and completeness of the original canon.
Jains initially faced challenges in preserving texts due to their solitary, itinerant lifestyle, contrasting with the Buddha’s organized Sangha.
Śvetāmbaras later distinguished monk vocations: jina-kappa (solitary ascetics, now obsolete) and thera-kappa (monks preserving scriptures), a distinction mirrored in Theravada Buddhism.
Buddhist Pali Canon texts offer significant evidence for early Jainism, often predating the Jain schism.
Core Jain teachings likely predating Mahāvīra include:
- Saṃsāra: The perpetual cycle of rebirth for all living beings.
- Liberation: The desirable escape from the suffering inherent in saṃsāra.
- Ethicized cycle: Rebirth quality determined by the moral quality of actions (karma).
- Hylozoism: The belief that all matter contains sentient life (jiva).
- Karma’s binding nature: Actions attract dust-like particles that weigh down the jiva, keeping it in saṃsāra.
The Jain principle of ahimsā (non-violence) stems from hylozoism, as almost any activity can harm jivas.
Early Jain doctrine viewed all physical activity as inherently harmful and binding, leaving no room for meritorious action. Asceticism, culminating in self-starvation, was the ideal for renunciates.
The Buddha redefined karma as intention, allowing for a concept of good karma as a vital part of spiritual progress, contrasting with early Jainism.
Jain texts, like the Sūyagadanga Sutta, argue against the Buddhist view that intention is necessary for an action to be evil, asserting that injury is culpable regardless of motive.
The Buddha’s “Middle Way” explicitly condemned extreme austerities, likely referencing Jain practices.
Scholarly work has often overlooked Jainism as an older tradition that influenced the Buddha.
Jainism likely developed the first ethicized karma theory, though it initially focused only on eliminating bad karma.
The Buddha accepted Jain concepts of saṃsāra, the goal of liberation, and the ethical basis for achieving it, but rejected hylozoism (denying sentience to plants and inorganic matter).
The Buddha reacted against certain Jain practices (e.g., nakedness, begging without bowls) to distinguish his monastic community.
Public expectations shaped by Jain renunciates influenced Buddhist monastic rules, such as the establishment of the rains retreat (to avoid harming plants and small creatures) and rules against destroying plants.
The Buddha’s statement, “For people think there is life in a tree,” is interpreted as a nuanced response accommodating both Jain beliefs in jivas in trees and popular beliefs in tree deities.
Jain influence on the Buddhist Sangha is suggested by:
- The establishment of an Order of nuns, possibly predating the Buddhist one, with evidence from the Thera-theri-gāthā of Jain nuns converting.
- The Buddhist term pātimokkha (confessional ritual) likely being influenced by the Jain padikkamana (confession to a teacher), though Buddha made it a communal, fortnightly event.
- The Buddhist technical term āsava (corruptions/influxes) likely borrowed from Jainism, where it describes how karma (as physical particles) “flows in” and adheres to the soul. Buddha reinterpreted its meaning.
- The Buddhist term ñāṇa-dassana (knowing and seeing, for enlightenment) possibly adopted from Jainism where ‘knowledge’ and ‘insight’ are distinct components of liberation.
- The Buddhist title arahat/arhant (enlightened one, “worthy”) possibly derived from the Jain arihanta (“killer of enemies”), with Buddhism favoring the “worthy” interpretation.

SUMMARY

The Buddha experienced and ultimately rejected extreme ascetic practices, akin to those of the Jains, before his Enlightenment, advocating instead a “middle way.”
The Buddha’s core insight was that what truly matters occurs in the mind, leading him to reject practices (Jain austerities, brahmin rituals) focused on external actions.
Jainism likely ethicized and universalized karma before the Buddha, but early Jainism lacked a concept of good karma and offered little for householders.
The Buddha’s significant innovation was making ethical value dependent on intention rather than solely on the overt action.
Later Jain doctrine evolved to include meritorious action, good rebirth, and the significance of intention, possibly influenced by Buddhism.
Jainism conceptualized karma as physical particles, a form of “naïve literalism,” whereas the Buddha’s approach to abstraction, while sometimes crude (e.g., mind as a sixth sense), was distinct.
The author argues that Jain influence on the Buddha’s thought and practice (regarding rebirth, karma, non-violence, and Sangha organization) has been underestimated, even though Buddha significantly developed and altered these doctrines.

Chapter 5 - WHAT DID THE BUDDHA MEAN BY ‘NO SOUL’?

The author posits that the doctrine of karma and self-responsibility is central to the Buddha’s thought, rather than just the First Noble Truth (‘everything is suffering’) or ‘No Soul’.
Comparing Buddha’s ideas to Western philosophies like Stoicism or Hume can obscure their original meaning by detaching them from their historical Indian context.
The Buddha communicated using terms familiar to his audience, primarily from brahminical traditions and early Upaniṣads (Vedānta), sometimes agreeing and sometimes critiquing them.

GIVEN TRANSMIGRATION, WHAT IS IT THAT TRANSMIGRATES?

Ancient Indian philosophy grappled with what exists, how we know, and what continues from one life to another.
The Ṛg Veda suggests existence and consciousness originate together, a foundational idea for Vedānta where ontology and epistemology are linked.
The concept of a ‘ghost’ – a disembodied yet perceptible spirit of a deceased person – is a common cultural understanding of what might persist after death.
A ‘soul’ is often conceived as the vehicle for a dead person’s characteristics, present during life, with varying interpretations (e.g., Plato’s transmigrating entity vs. Aristotle’s formal cause).
Translating the Buddhist concept of anattā as ‘no soul’ can be misleading, as it might suggest a denial of continuity, whereas Buddhism upholds karma as the principle of continuity.
Jainism proposed the jiva (‘life’) as the transmigrating entity, to which karma (reified as physical dirt) clings.
Sāmkhya philosophy described the puruṣa as the conscious self that transmigrates and must be purified for liberation.
Brahmins eventually viewed the ātman as distinct from the empirical self and uninvolved with karma.

ĀTMAN/BRAHMAN IN THE BĀU

The dissociation of karma from a transmigrating entity in brahminical thought evolved in stages.
The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (BĀU) distinguishes between the bodily self (śārīra ātmā) and the self of knowledge (prājñena ātmanā) during dying.
Upon death, the ātman (self) is described as exiting the body and becoming pure awareness (vijñāna), likened to a caterpillar moving to a new foothold.
The BĀU states the ātman is brahman and comprises everything (sarva-maya), presenting a pantheistic view where brahman is the world itself.
Later, Śaṅkara advocated a monistic view: brahman is indescribable (‘not thus, not thus’), and everything else, including individuality, is an illusion.
Brahman is understood as existence and consciousness, a concept rooted in the ‘Creation Hymn’; salvation involves returning to this primeval conscious nature.
Truth (satya) is equated with existence (sat); realizing one’s identity with brahman is to make that truth real, especially at death.
Brahman is considered bliss because, as pure existence, it lacks nothing, and suffering arises from lack.
The mechanism of rebirth in the BĀU is linked to life-breath (prāna) and consciousness, but not clearly detailed.
Later traditions introduced the ‘subtle body’ (liṅga śarīra or sūkṣma śarīra) as the carrier of karma, also associated with magical powers.

THE BUDDHA’S RESPONSE

The Buddha, meaning ‘the awakened one’, achieved Enlightenment by ‘seeing things as they are’ (yathā-bhūta-dassana), emphasizing wide-eyed awareness.
He rejected the Upaniṣadic hierarchy of conscious states (waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep, merging with brahman), with the Pali Canon saying little about dreaming and stressing wakefulness.
The Buddha showed no interest in equivalences between microcosm and macrocosm.

WHAT WE EXPERIENCE, AS AGAINST WHAT ‘REALLY’ EXISTS

The Buddha accepted ‘being’ as the opposite of ‘change’ but rejected its reification, considering the view of ‘being’ as a fixed category to be a fetter.
He did not search for a single, underlying essence in the world or in living beings.
His approach was pragmatic, focusing on the urgent problem of escaping suffering (samsāra) rather than on abstract metaphysical theories.
He emphasized understanding our experience of the world (loka) as an ever-changing, causally conditioned process, a “stream of consciousness.”
The Buddha used ‘loka’ (world) to refer to the world of conscious beings and their experiences, rather than the physical world as a receptacle.
He taught that the world, its arising, its cessation, and the path to its cessation are to be found within “this very fathom-long carcase with its perception and its mind.”

THE BUDDHA’S ANSWER TO ‘BEING, CONSCIOUSNESS, BLISS’

The Buddha agreed with the Upaniṣads that the world as normally experienced is constantly changing and therefore characterized by dukkha (unsatisfactoriness, suffering), which is his First Noble Truth.
He acknowledged that one could experience the opposites of change and dukkha, and this experience, nirvana, would lead to liberation from rebirth.
The Buddha rejected statements like ‘I am brahman’ because:
- He viewed ‘being’ and ‘existence’ as processes, not static entities.
- Consciousness was also seen as a dynamic process.
- Consequently, he rejected the concepts of ātman and brahman which were based on static notions of being and consciousness.
- He dismissed microcosm/macrocosm equivalences, including the ātman/brahman identity.
- The ambiguity of brahman (e.g., as a Creator involved in change) compromised its purity as ‘being’.
He preferred negative language to describe nirvana and emphasized individual responsibility for liberation, without needing a concept of ‘God’.
The Buddhist response to the Upaniṣadic ‘being, consciousness, bliss’ is the ‘three hallmarks’ of phenomenal existence: impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and absence of self (anattā).
Anattā originally meant ‘is not ātman’ (the self), referring to living beings, rather than ‘does not possess a self/essence’. Over time, it became an expression of the Buddha’s anti-essentialism.

IMPERMANENCE

A famous verse attributed to Sakka upon the Buddha’s death highlights that “compounded things are impermanent, of a nature to arise and pass away,” a principle central to Buddhist understanding of existence.
The Buddha taught that the five khandhas (aggregates) and all compounded things (saṃkhata) are characterized by arising, passing away, and changing while they exist.
The author suggests the Buddha meant things arise, eventually cease, and change in between, critiquing the later commentarial interpretation of distinct phases (arising, duration, passing away) which led to an atomistic view of time.

ANCESTORS AND GHOSTS

Traditional Indian ideas about death, such as offerings to ancestors (pitaras), persisted even after new doctrines like rebirth were introduced.
The Buddha, while considering rituals generally meaningless, permitted lay followers to continue mortuary rites (śrāddha/saddham).
The Buddhist category of ‘hungry ghosts’ (peta/preta, meaning ‘departed’) emerged, often understood as recently deceased relatives in a state of suffering, awaiting merit from rituals for a better rebirth.
The term for the ‘realm of the departed’ (petti visayo) in Pali also puns on the ‘realm of the fathers’ (paitrya).
The concept of a ‘mind-made’ (manomaya) body capable of magical feats, similar to the brahminical ‘subtle body’, exists in Buddhism, though the Buddha deprecated the use of such powers.
A text mentioning a gandhabba (a spirit) being necessary for conception might have served as a concept of a karma-carrier for less sophisticated audiences.
The Buddha likely approached the existence of gods and petas pragmatically: if people experienced them, he did not deny it, but kept the focus on attaining nirvana.
The author doubts that the elaborate cosmology found in the Pali Canon originated directly from the Buddha himself.

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN EMOTION AND UNDERSTANDING

The Buddha reframed basic philosophical questions:
- Instead of ‘What exists?’, he asked ‘What do we experience?’, answering with processes.
- The answer to ‘What continues from life to life?’ was karma, understood as a process of ethical intention.
Escape from rebirth requires understanding the transience of phenomena, which makes them unsatisfying, and thereby coming to terms with impermanence.
This involves both controlling emotions and training the intellect, the goals of Buddhist meditation.
The Buddha synthesized two prevailing approaches to life’s problems:
- The Upaniṣadic ‘intellectualist’ view (problem is lack of understanding).
- The Jain ‘emotionalist’ view (problem is desire; solution is self-control).
He taught that passion blinds clear seeing, and lack of clear seeing allows emotions to control us. This integrated approach proved versatile and enduring.

Chapter 6 - THE BUDDHA’S POSITIVE VALUES: LOVE AND COMPASSION

This chapter aims to illustrate several dimensions of the Buddha’s thought and teaching, with one being of central importance.
The author’s method, to be detailed in the next chapter, will be demonstrated here to show its effectiveness.
The author’s approach has several main features:
- It is historical, understanding the Buddha’s message within its historical context.
- It argues that ethics are central to the Buddha’s thought, often substituting for ritual and metaphysics.
- It highlights the Buddha’s extensive use of metaphor and capacity for abstraction, such as transforming the physical Jain concept of karma into the abstract concept of intention.
- It considers the dimension of sophistication (or lack thereof) in the Buddha’s teachings, which overlaps with metaphor and abstraction.

SOPHISTICATION

Sophistication in religious understanding involves interpreting literal depictions (e.g., God as an old man in a garden) metaphorically, as representations of abstract concepts (e.g., heaven as a blissful state of mind, God as a transcendent principle).
While traditional Christianity often conveyed literal images of God, modern Christian leaders encourage more abstract and sophisticated interpretations, viewing earlier personifications as metaphors.
Hinduism has historically accommodated coexisting sophisticated (abstract Brahman) and less sophisticated (creator-god) views of a supreme deity.
When engaging with brahmins, the Buddha addressed their references to brahman as a creator-god, reflecting a less sophisticated view, a debating tactic that acknowledged their perspective and was consistent with certain scriptural interpretations familiar to him.

THE FOUR BOUNDLESS STATES

The Buddha highly commends four states of mind: kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity.
Buddhaghosa illustrates their relationship using an analogy of a mother with four sons: wanting a child to grow up, an invalid to get well, one in youth to enjoy it long, and not being bothered by one busy with their own affairs.
These states are also termed ‘the boundless’ and ‘brahma-vihāra’.
‘Vihāra’ means ‘a place to stay’; ‘brahma-vihāra’ means ‘staying with brahman’, referencing the brahminical goal of salvation.
The Bṛhad-āranyaka Upaniṣad describes gnosis (realizing ‘I am brahman’ - the unity of individual and universal essence) leading to joining brahman at death.
The nature of ‘joining brahman’ (fusing with a neuter principle or meeting a god Brahman) is ambiguous and depends on the inquirer’s sophistication.
The Bṛhad-āranyaka mentions a journey to “the worlds of brahman” (brahma-lokän), where ‘brahma’ can be neuter, masculine, or plural. The Chändogya Upaniṣad refers to ‘brahma’ (neuter singular) without ‘worlds’.
The Tevijja Sutta is the key text for the four brahma-vihāra.
The Buddha redefined ‘tevijja’ (three knowledges) from the three Vedas to knowledge of former births, others’ rebirths, and elimination of corruptions.
In the Tevijja Sutta, the Buddha explains to two young brahmins the way to ‘companionship with Brahma’.
He describes the path as renunciation, moral conduct (open to all), and then pervading all directions with kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.
These thoughts are characterized as ‘extensive, magnified, boundless, without hatred or ill will’.
Each of these four states is a ‘release of the mind’ (ceto-vimutti), where no bounded karma remains, leading to companionship with Brahmās (plural). A monk living thus may join Brahmā (singular, masculine) at death.
Gnostic soteriology involves gnosis in life ensuring final salvation at death, similar to Buddhist nirvana.
The Buddha presented ‘liberation of the mind’ (vimutti, escape from rebirth) to the brahmins, targeting the sophisticated brahmin ideology of joining the infinite brahman through gnosis to escape finite karma.
The Buddhist monk’s boundless, ethicized consciousness emulates and surpasses the brahmin gnostic, transcending finite karma.
‘Joining brahman at death’ is a metaphor for the nirvana following an arahant’s death, and ‘the way to the brahma-world’ is Upaniṣadic language for nirvana in this life.
Later commentators misunderstood this, taking ‘ceto-vimutti’ metaphorically and ‘joining Brahmā’ literally, believing the monk was reborn in Brahma’s realm.
This misunderstanding stemmed from unfamiliarity with the Bṛhad-āranyaka Upaniṣad and the concept not fitting the standard Buddhist pattern of morality, concentration, and understanding (paññā).
The brahma-vihāras are not traditionally seen as ‘understanding’ (paññā), which is defined as seeing phenomena as impermanent, unsatisfactory, and devoid of essence.
Alex Wynne notes that in the Dīgha Nikāya’s Sīla-kkhandha, the Tevijja Sutta substitutes the practice of boundless states for the four jhāna found in other suttas in that section.
The Buddha skillfully reinterpreted brahminical terms like ‘staying with brahman’ to guide individuals to his teachings, similar to his redefinition of karma as intention.

The four boundless states are love (mettā), compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity.
Canonical texts lack discussion on the qualitative relationship between these four states, though some attempt to rank them.
‘Mettā’ (love/kindness) is non-erotic love; the author uses ‘love’ and ‘kindness’ interchangeably.
Kindness and compassion are considered almost the same, despite Buddhaghosa defining compassion as feeling for those suffering; Theravada emphasizes kindness, Mahayana compassion, with no substantive difference.
Empathetic joy, sympathizing with others’ happiness, is distinctive to Buddhism and linked to the concept of transferring merit.
The relationship between love, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity is considered puzzling.
The ideal is for love and compassion to be unselfish and free of attachment, similar to the professional detachment expected of doctors.

OTHER TEXTS EXTOLLING KINDNESS AND COMPASSION

The claim that love or compassion can be salvific challenges Theravadin tradition.
The Metta Sutta (Text on Kindness) advocates for universal kind thoughts.
- It is used in Buddhist meditation and recited daily by Sri Lankan schoolchildren.
- It encourages loving all beings as a mother loves her child.
- Its conclusion suggests that developing boundless loving thoughts leads to ‘divine living’ and escape from rebirth (nirvana).
- The poem implies kindness is salvific, alongside other virtues like insight and self-control.
Dhammapada stanza 368 states that a monk dwelling in kindness and faith in Buddha’s teaching may attain ‘the peaceful state’ (nirvana).
- The use of ‘may attain’ (optative) does not diminish the claim of kindness being salvific, especially as a Mahāvastu version uses the indicative (‘will attain’).
Another canonical text features the Buddha teaching the importance of kindness by reinterpreting a Brhad-āranyaka Upaniṣad passage, turning brahmin metaphysics into universal ethics: because everyone loves themselves, one should not harm others.

THE TRADITIONAL, LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF THE TEVIJJA SUTTA

Buddhist tradition literally interpreted the Tevijja Sutta, positing that practicing the brahma-vihāras leads to rebirth in the Brahma world, but not higher.
This literalism shaped Buddhist cosmology, establishing the Brahma world as a part of the universe.
Buddhaghosa, while adhering to canonical views, emphasized that these four states perfect a Buddha’s qualities, being fundamental for a ‘Great Being’ by prioritizing others’ welfare and maintaining impartiality.
Brahma-worlds are super-heavens, above deva-worlds (sphere of desire).
The author suggests the concept of brahma-worlds and the “non-returner” (anägämi) originated from the Buddha’s didactic use of brahmin cosmology, particularly the Bṛhad-āranyaka Upaniṣad’s idea of not returning after reaching brahma-loka.
If a monk practicing kindness is reborn in a brahma heaven, the “liberation” mentioned in the Tevijja Sutta cannot be full nirvana, leading to the concept of a temporary, inauthentic liberation.

CONCLUSION

The Buddha taught that love, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity are direct paths to nirvana.
Early Buddhists misunderstood the Tevijja Sutta, thereby “missing the boat” on this direct path.
While non-aggression (ahimsā) was central, it is a negative virtue; love (mettā) was sometimes defined merely as the absence of hatred, rendering it somewhat “bloodless.”
Later traditions, like Mahayana, emphasized compassion through stories of Buddha’s self-sacrifice and the bodhisattva path.
The author speculates that these later developments to give Buddhism “more heart” might have been unnecessary if the Tevijja Sutta’s message about the salvific power of these emotions had been correctly understood.

Chapter 7 - ASSESSING THE EVIDENCE

A BOGUS SUBJECT

Students are often incorrectly taught that “methodology” is a subject they must learn before research and explain in their write-ups.
“Methodology” is merely a more impressive term for “method”; there is no distinct subject of methodology.
The methods used in research must depend on the specific particulars of the case, not on a general study of methods.
There are no guaranteed shortcuts or paths to success in research.
Max Perutz noted that Crick and Watson solved DNA structure through apparent idleness, illustrating there’s more than one way to do good science, and that creativity arises spontaneously.
E. H. Gombrich’s “method” involved collegial help, and he avoided imposing a specific approach on his students.
Violin teacher Dorothy DeLay’s method was described as having “no method.”

CONJECTURE AND REFUTATION

Universal principles like truthfulness, honesty, and hard work apply to all research methods.
A key research principle is Karl Popper’s “conjecture and refutation”: knowledge advances by proposing conjectures and testing them against evidence.
The origin of a conjecture does not determine its value.
The idea of forming conjectures only after assessing all evidence (induction) is flawed, as one can never access all relevant evidence.
A single counter-example can refute a hypothesis, though the refutation itself can be refuted.
Scholars should not avoid extrapolation (“going beyond the facts”), as “facts” themselves are theories, and extrapolation is necessary for advancing knowledge.
“Facts” or “data” are theories that can become more probable but never finally certain.
The idea of a single, eternally correct translation is fallacious.
All knowledge in empirical subjects is provisional, not final, but this is not relativism, as knowledge demonstrably advances.
The provisional nature of theories should be seen as exciting.

COPING WITH SCEPTICISM

Facile scepticism towards ancient texts is unscholarly; sources should be considered innocent until proven guilty.
The author experienced this when his proposed date for the Buddha was met with general dismissal rather than scrutiny of his complex evidence.
While absolute proof from ancient chronicles is impossible, disbelieving detailed, consistent accounts implies a conspiracy by their authors to mislead.
The author’s theory on the Buddha’s date is presented as having a better chance of being correct than others.
The “hermeneutic of suspicion” applied to ancient texts is criticized as a “hermeneutic of laziness.”
The initial working hypothesis should be that a text is telling the truth; reasons must be provided for disbelief or doubt.
Dismissing texts a priori eliminates the subject of study.
The author’s position is to accept what texts say as an initial working hypothesis, then investigate where the tradition might be incorrect.

IS THERE BETTER EVIDENCE FOR THE EARLIEST BUDDHISM THAN THE PALI CANON?

Some scholars favor inscriptions over texts, but inscriptions are also texts.
Inscriptions offer known origins and datability, but only Asokan inscriptions relate to Pali canonical material, and these post-date the Buddha.
Art, architecture, and non-Buddhist texts from the Buddha’s era or shortly after provide no direct evidence about him.
Early Jain literature references Buddhist ideas, but dating is imprecise.
While Buddhist ideas influenced brahminical thought (e.g., Bhagavad-Gītā), this doesn’t specify influence from the Buddha himself versus later followers.
Knowledge of the Buddha’s teachings relies on Buddhist texts, primarily the Canon.
The Pali Canon is complete; many texts also exist in Chinese translations (from Indian languages, not usually Pali).
The Vinaya (a canonical part) survives in Pali, four Chinese versions, a Buddhist Sanskrit version, and a related Tibetan version.
The Tibetan Kanjur is less crucial for evaluating the early canon due to few old sutta translations.
Recently discovered Gandharan manuscripts (possibly 2nd century AD) of suttas are unlikely to alter current views of the Buddha.
Comparisons between Pali, Gandharan, and Chinese versions reveal mostly trivial differences (e.g., text arrangement, sermon locations), not significantly altering interpretations of Pali texts.
Chinese versions sometimes omit obscure Pali expressions and may have slightly longer doctrinal lists, possibly due to abhidhamma influence.

THE PALI CANON AS WRITTEN EVIDENCE

The Pali suttas and Vinaya are considered the oldest evidence for early Buddhism.
Most surviving Pali manuscripts date from the 18th-19th centuries (Sri Lanka, Burma) or 16th century (Thailand).
Burmese grammarians standardized Pali in the 12th century, influencing subsequent manuscripts.
The oldest known Pali manuscript (c. 800 AD, from an older original) shows language largely consistent with later versions.
The relatively recent date of manuscripts raises reliability questions, yet to be fully resolved by scholarship.
Textual reliability is supported by extensive repetition within the Canon and quotations in commentaries.
Concerns focus on minor details rather than major textual or doctrinal changes.
Sri Lankan chronicles state the Pali Canon was first written down in Sri Lanka in the 1st century BC.
This act of writing helped stabilize the Canon and define its contents.
The suttas and vinaya rules have consistently remained within the Canon.

THE EARLIEST ORAL TRADITION

The trustworthiness of oral transmission before writing is crucial for historical understanding of the Buddha.
Sermon texts are typically narrations featuring the Buddha or a leading monk.
Tradition attributes the formulation of sermon texts to the ‘First Council’ (a communal recitation) shortly after the Buddha’s death.
Ānanda recited the suttas, and Upāli recited the Vinaya, which were then rehearsed by attending monks, initiating oral preservation.
All Buddhist traditions agree on such an event, despite differing details.
Not all early canonical texts were finalized at the First Council; some mention later figures or events like the Second Council (c. 60 years after the First).

THE CREATION OF STABLE TEXTS

Texts recited at the First Council likely existed in some form beforehand.
An example is the Atthakavagga, recited by a monk to the Buddha, indicating its early collection and arrangement.
The Pali sermon corpus is vast and highly repetitive.
Sermons were divided into four collections, with monks and nuns specializing in memorizing specific parts.
The Buddhist Sangha’s oral preservation methods likely mirrored the brahminical tradition for Vedic texts.
Brahmins, and similarly Buddhists, often preferred oral transmission over writing even after its invention.
Vedic texts show remarkable consistency despite millennia of oral transmission.
Early Buddhist texts likely aimed for verbatim preservation, with little improvisation.
A ‘text’ (like a sutta) became fixed when memorized and transmitted.
The ‘First Sermon’ (Dhamma-cakka-pavattana) likely reflects topics the Buddha discussed (Middle Way, Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path).
The current version of the First Sermon contains technical terms (e.g., nibbāna, pañc’ upādāna-kkhandhā) that would have been unexplained to the initial audience.
The systematized structure of the First Sermon, especially its latter half, suggests later refinement, possibly influenced by abhidhamma.
The extant version of the First Sermon probably dates from around the Second Council, as it is found in the Vinaya Khandhaka and the Saṃyutta Nikāya.
An earlier, simpler version likely existed, based on collective memory of the Buddha’s initial teachings.

PERICOPES

The Pali Canon’s repetitiveness stems from its composition using pericopes (standardized textual blocks), characteristic of oral literature.
Numbered lists also aided memory in oral transmission.
Pericopes were sometimes inserted inappropriately by text compilers.
An example is a specific nine-word phrase that makes sense in its original context (Sangārava sutta) but appears problematic and misinterpreted in other canonical texts.
Commentaries on this misplaced pericope offer struggling and discrepant explanations.
This demonstrates that neither the canonical nor commentarial traditions are perfectly homogeneous or infallible.
While commentaries are the first reference for interpreting canonical texts, critical judgment must be maintained.

THE COMMENTARIES

Commentaries on Buddha’s sermons and Vinaya are largely attributed to Buddhaghosa, active in Sri Lanka in the early fifth century AD.
Buddhaghosa also authored “The Path to Purity” (Visuddhi-magga), a highly authoritative summary of Theravada Buddhist doctrine.
The authorship of all commentaries by Buddhaghosa is debatable; he explicitly cited older, now-lost Sinhala commentaries.
These older Sinhala commentaries were likely closed in the second century AD.
Tradition suggests the core of these commentaries dates back to the First Council and was introduced to Sri Lanka by Mahinda in the mid-third century BC.
It is also traditionally believed that the commentaries were written down alongside the Canon in Sri Lanka in the first century BC, probably in Sinhala.
The Theravadin tradition of exegesis, preserved in Pali, claims an unbroken lineage from current texts back to the Buddha’s time (around 800 years).
While the lineage’s existence is plausible, it is improbable that the commentaries remained unchanged over eight centuries of transmission, translation, and editing.
There was no cultural inhibition against altering the commentaries, as they were not considered the Buddha’s direct words.

SHORTCOMINGS OF THE COMMENTARIES

The exegetes homogenized and systematized the Buddha’s message, influenced by the brahminical principle that revealed texts had only one meaning. This is termed ‘sanskritization’.
There was excessive literalism, where too much significance was ascribed to normal expressions, a failing the Buddha warned against.
The commentaries largely lost the memory of the Buddha’s historical context, particularly the influence of early brahminical scriptures like the Bṛhad-āranyaka Upaniṣad, which is crucial for understanding the full dimension of his message.
These three shortcomings—homogenization, literalism, and ignorance of the Vedic background—are prevalent in both ancient and modern scholarship.

DISCREPANCIES

Employing an alert eye to spot discrepancies in the Pali Canon is necessary, but caution is needed as obscurities are not always discrepancies; difficult readings are often original.
A word or expression fitting one textual context better than another can indicate the latter is the original, helping establish relative chronology for sections of texts.
The Mahāparinibbāna Sutta juxtaposes earlier and later material, exemplified by the two different accounts of the Buddha’s meditative states at death, suggesting the simpler version (four jhānas) is older.
Exegetes tend to homogenize tradition, reluctant to admit that a venerated figure like the Buddha might have changed their mind over a 45-year teaching career.
The Buddha likely changed the formulation of his teachings, for instance, from the Noble Eightfold Path culminating in Right Concentration to a threefold sequence of morality, concentration, and wisdom; attempts to harmonize these are contorted.
Some inconsistencies in the Buddha’s formulations might be due to different metaphors (e.g., the path as a sequence versus morality and understanding as mutually enhancing) and can be a sign of authenticity.
Stratifying canonical material based on content and the logical sequence of ideas is plausible, even if formal linguistic criteria are less reliable due to textual reworking.
When flatly contradictory statements are attributed to the Buddha (e.g., on omniscience), it may be possible to reason which is authentic.
The evolution of a doctrine can sometimes be traced, allowing for hypotheses about which ideas came first.
The author acknowledges that views can change with new understanding, suggesting this also applied to the Buddha.

Chapter 8 - EVERYTHING IS BURNING: THE CENTRALITY OF FIRE IN THE BUDDHA’S THOUGHT

This chapter explores the Buddha’s response to Vedic fire-related ideas and practices, and how this focus potentially led to his key philosophical concept of substituting non-random processes for objects.
It illustrates how the Buddha repurposed brahminical religious terms for his own teachings.

FIRE AS THE CENTRAL METAPHOR IN THE BUDDHA’S SOTERIOLOGY

The Buddha’s third sermon, the ‘Fire Sermon’ (Āditta-pariyāya), declares that ‘Everything… is on fire.’
‘Everything’ encompasses the totality of experience: the five senses plus the mind, their objects, operations, and resultant feelings.
These components of experience are described as being on fire with passion, hatred, and delusion.
Nirvana (P: nibbāna), meaning ‘to cease to burn’ or ‘go out’ like a flame, is the solution to this state, referring to the extinguishing of these three fires.
The three fires (passion, hatred, delusion) are a reinterpretation of the three Vedic householder fires, which the Buddha used to symbolize worldly life.
The Buddha reinterpreted the Vedic fires metaphorically: the eastern fire (āhavanīya) as parents, the western (gārhapatya) as household/dependents, and the southern (daksināgni) as holy individuals worthy of offerings, thus giving them a positive meaning of support.
The fire metaphor is used both negatively (equated with passion, hatred, delusion) and positively.
Nibbāna (negative meaning: ‘going out’) and nibbuti (positive meaning: ‘bliss’) refer to the same Buddhist goal, though etymologically distinct.
The Buddha’s engagement with fire symbolism was ambivalent, as shown by his performing fire miracles to convert brahmin fire-worshippers, where he was called Angirasa, linking him to the fire god Agni.
The original connection of the three fires metaphor to Vedic ritual was later forgotten in Buddhism, with passion, hatred, and delusion becoming known as the ‘three poisons’ in Mahayana.
The term ‘five upādāna-khandhā’ (often ‘aggregates of grasping’) conveys a similar message to the Fire Sermon, using the same fire metaphor.
The five khandhas (form, feelings, apperceptions, volitions, consciousness) are components of all experience, not just a living being.
Upādāna means both ‘attachment/grasping’ (abstract) and ‘fuel’ (concrete, for a fire).
The term upādānakkhandha is proposed to mean ‘blazing masses of fuel’, linking to the fire metaphor and nibbāna.
A Saṃyutta Nikāya text (SN II, 84-5) illustrates this: a bonfire (aggi-kkhandha) kept blazing with fuel (upādāna) is compared to the ‘mass of suffering’ (dukkha-kkhandha) sustained by ‘clinging’ (upādāna); removing fuel extinguishes the fire, just as removing clinging ends suffering (nibbāyeyya).
The two kinds of nirvana relate to this metaphor: sa-upādi-sesa (nirvana in life) means a residue (sesa) of fuel (upādi = upādāna, i.e., the khandhas) remains but is not burning; an-upādi-sesa (nirvana at death) means no fuel remains.

FIRE IN VEDIC THOUGHT

Vedic religion featured positive worship of fire and fire sacrifices, with earthly fire equated to the sun, both vital for life.
Fire, personified as the god Agni, could symbolize all that is sacred and was worshipped as the purohita (chief priest).
Fire also represented consciousness, the essence of life, with the Ṛg Veda not strictly separating literal and metaphorical interpretations of this link.
Vedic thought used elements like fire not just as subjects of thought but as means of thinking.
The Gāyatrī (or Sāvitrī) verse, recited daily, links the sun (Savitr) to the animation of thoughts.
Agni is identified with Savitr and described as a cause of mental activity, experienced as ‘mental heating’ or a ‘fiery creative principle.’
Agni can represent both the subject and the object of cognition.
A cosmogonic myth (Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 2.2.4.1ff) depicts Prajāpati creating Fire (Agni) as an ‘eater of food’; to prevent being eaten himself, Prajāpati creates milk and plants as fuel for Agni.
The relationship “Soma is the food, Agni the eater” (BĀU 1.4.6) highlights this appetitive nature.
Jurewicz interprets Prajāpati’s creative act as the eating part (subject of cognition) and the eaten part (object), with their identity confirmed in the act of eating.

FIRE AS A MODEL FOR APPETITIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

The Mahā Taṇhā-Sañkhaya Sutta (MN 38) uses fire as an analogy for consciousness, particularly its appetitive nature.
The sutta refutes monk Sāti’s ‘evil view’ that a single, unchanging consciousness transmigrates, asserting instead that consciousness arises from causes.
The Buddha compares consciousness to fire, stating it is classified or named according to its causal condition (e.g., eye consciousness from eye and forms, just as a stick fire is from sticks).
This contrasts with the Upaniṣadic view of consciousness as inherent and not necessarily of an object; the Buddha emphasizes consciousness is always consciousness of something, separating ontology from epistemology.
A passage where the Buddha asks “Monks, do you see that this [neuter] has come into being?” is hypothesized to refer to a physical fire lit or present before the audience, not just abstract consciousness.
The sutta introduces four kinds of ‘food’ (āhāra) that sustain beings: physical food, contact (phasso), intention (mano-saṃcetanā), and consciousness. All four are said to originate from thirst (taṇhā).
Consciousness is presented as a ‘food’ that fuels existence, arising from thirst, highlighting its undesirable, appetitive quality.
The analogy with fire provides a model for how consciousness can be a dynamic, object-seeking process without a guiding ‘seeker’ or soul, drawing on Vedic concepts of fire’s nature.

ETHICIZING CONSCIOUSNESS

In the five khandha framework, volition (cetanā, part of the fourth khandha) carries ethical quality (karma), while consciousness (viññāna, the fifth khandha) is ethically neutral.
This contrasts with the Vedic-influenced view where consciousness (like fire) has inherent will/appetite. The Buddha’s analysis separates consciousness from volition.
The Mahā Taṇhā-Sañkhaya Sutta presents a tension: consciousness is described as appetitive (arising from thirst, hence ethically problematic) yet is also listed as a ‘food’ alongside intention (mano-saṃcetanā), which is related to ethical volition.
This apparent contradiction may stem from an attempt to integrate the inherited Vedic concept of an appetitive consciousness with the Buddha’s distinct ethical analysis where consciousness per se is neutral.
The Buddha’s primary aim was to ethicize experience, necessitating a component for ethical evaluation (intention/volition).

THE FIVE KHANDHA ARE PROCESSES

Both the ‘Fire Sermon’ and the doctrine of the five khandhas categorize objects of sense perception (sights, sounds) alongside the senses themselves (seeing, hearing) as being ‘on fire’.
The ‘Fire Sermon’ implies that senses and their objects cease to exist when they are no longer ‘on fire’.
The five khandhas are understood as five sets of processes that fuel continued existence in saṃsāra through grasping or appetite.
The term ‘khandha’ is suggested as a shortened form of ‘aggi-kkhandha’ (mass of flame), implying five fires burning fuel, not just heaps of fuel.
These ‘fires’ are processes, not static things, reflecting the Vedic idea that fire is both subject and object.
The Buddha’s uses of the fire metaphor include:
1. Consciousness is like fire: appetitive, can cease without an external agent when fuel (causes) is exhausted (derived from Vedic thought).
2. Consciousness is inseparable from its object, just as fire is from what burns; subjective and objective experience are interdependent.
3. Experience consists of processes, not static things; consciousness and its objects are in unceasing change (a key philosophical insight).
4. These processes are non-random and causally conditioned.
5. The Buddha ethicized Vedic thought: the ‘fires’ are emotional (passion, hatred) and intellectual (delusion), fueled by egotism and belief in an unchanging self.

THE NEW VIEW OF CONSCIOUSNESS HAS KNOCK-ON EFFECTS

If consciousness is ‘on fire’, liberation might imply its elimination, as suggested by the ‘Fire Sermon’ and the five khandha concept.
However, liberation from delusion (one of the fires) requires awareness, creating a tension with the idea of eliminating consciousness.
The Buddha resolved this by separating volition (carrying ethical charge) from consciousness, so the ‘three fires’ came to represent negative volitions rather than all consciousness.
Two perspectives on liberation emerged: elimination of consciousness versus purification of consciousness and character.
These perspectives may reflect a distinction between meditation practices the Buddha learned (samatha) and his own original insights (vipassanā).
Samatha (‘calming’) meditation leads to decreased mental activity, culminating in states like saññā-vedayita-nirodha (‘cessation of apperception and feeling’), a temporary trance not considered nirvana by Theravadin orthodoxy.
Vipassanā (‘insight’) meditation, considered original to the Buddha, leads to nirvana, an irreversible, conscious state of ‘seeing things as they are’.
Some canonical texts suggest an older view where cessation of apperception and feeling might have been seen as the ultimate goal.
In this older view, consciousness was likely seen as appetitive (like fire) and something to be extinguished for enlightenment, aligning with how consciousness functions in some descriptions of dependent origination.
The Buddha’s radical teaching emphasized ethical action (karma via cetanā) as the path to purification, but older ideas about appetitive consciousness (e.g., ālaya-vijñāna) persisted in later Buddhist thought.

AN ANALOGY WITH PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY

The Buddha’s philosophical contribution includes substituting processes for static ‘things’, exemplified by the five khandhas as causally conditioned processes.
This idea may have arisen from observing fire as a process, not a thing or deity.
A striking similarity exists with the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (a probable contemporary), known for “Panta rhei” (“Everything flows”) and the idea that one cannot step into the same river twice, indicating a world of constant flux and processes.
Heraclitus considered fire the fundamental element from which everything originates and to which it returns.
Just as the Buddha responded to Upaniṣadic ideas of an eternal reality, Heraclitus likely responded to Parmenides’ view of an unchanging reality.
While direct influence is not suggested, it is noteworthy that fire also inspired a vision of a world in perpetual change in ancient Greece.

Chapter 9 - CAUSATION AND NON-RANDOM PROCESS

The Buddha’s most famous idea among ancient Indian followers was “the dharmas which arise from causes” (ye dhammā hetu-pabhavā), often inscribed on terracotta plaques.
This is encapsulated in the verse: “The Tathāgata has spoken of the cause and cessation of the dhammas which arise from causes; such is the teaching of the great renunciate.”
‘Dhamma’ in this context refers to constituents of reality or components of experience.
Experience consists of processes that are neither random nor rigidly determined; all except one (nirvana) have causes.
Nirvana, the extinction of passion, hatred, and delusion, is the unique uncaused dhamma, having neither origin nor cessation.
The verse reportedly converted the Buddha’s chief disciples, Sāriputta and Moggallāna.
Sāriputta’s realization upon hearing the verse was “whatever is of a nature to arise is all of a nature to pass away.”
This same realization is attributed to Koṇdañña, the first convert, after the First Sermon.
The author suggests this description of Enlightenment was retrospectively applied to the first five disciples, as the First Sermon’s content (Middle Way, Four Noble Truths, Noble Eightfold Path) doesn’t directly align with this specific realization.
By the Second Council, the Buddha’s analysis of reality in terms of causal process was considered his most significant discovery.

DEPENDENT ORIGINATION

The Buddha is credited with discovering causation and its central role in understanding the world, sometimes summarized as “It being thus, this comes about.”
All experiences are viewed as non-random processes subject to causation.
The Buddhist view posits that nothing accessible to normal experience or reason exists without a cause, thereby excluding a first cause or an unmoved mover.
Buddhism presents a “middle way” where the world is a flux of processes, neither random nor rigidly determined, allowing for free will.
The term for being causally determined is pațiccasamuppanna, referring to the doctrine of the Chain of Dependent Origination (pațicca-samuppāda).
The most common form of this chain has twelve links: ignorance > volitions > consciousness > name and form > six sense bases > contact > feeling > thirst > clinging > becoming > birth > decay and death.
The discovery of this chain is considered the Buddha’s salvific gnosis in some texts.
The chain may have originated from the Buddha analyzing suffering by working backward from its end (decay and death) to its root cause (ignorance), a method potentially reflected in the term yoniso manasi-kāra (thinking over the origin).
The Chain of Dependent Origination is acknowledged as profound and difficult to understand, even by early followers, as illustrated by the Buddha’s reprimand to Ānanda.
A problem arises with the chain’s negation for liberation, as it seems to imply the cessation of consciousness, which contradicts other core Buddhist teachings.

JUREWICZ’S DISCOVERY

Joanna Jurewicz proposed that the Chain of Dependent Origination is the Buddha’s critical response to Vedic cosmogony, especially as found in Ṛg Veda X, 129 and the Upaniṣads.
The Buddha’s teachings often respond to pre-existing Indian philosophical ideas.
Vedic cosmogony assumes a correspondence between the macrocosm (universe) and microcosm (human being), with the universe originating from a conscious primordial essence. The Buddha, in contrast, focused on the individual’s experience.
The Buddha used abstract terms for the chain’s links, differing from the metaphorical language common in Vedic texts and his own explanations.
The term nidāna in the Mahā Nidāna Sutta’s title relates to its Vedic use, signifying an esoteric ontological connection.
The first four links (ignorance > volitional impulses > consciousness > name and form) are key to Jurewicz’s interpretation:
- Ignorance (avijjā): Parallels the Vedic initial state of undifferentiated existence/non-existence and unconsciousness.
- Volitional impulses (saṃkhārā): Corresponds to Vedic kāma (desile), the “first seed of mind” initiating creation.
- Consciousness (viññāna): Contrasts with Vedic non-dual consciousness; for Buddha, consciousness is always “consciousness of.”
- Name and form (nāma-rūpa): In Vedas, this marks the Creator’s (ātman’s) self-manifestation and simultaneous concealment. The Buddha used it to denote the psycho-physical organism where consciousness arises. By removing the ātman, nāma-rūpa becomes a factor hindering cognition and deepening ignorance.
Later Buddhist tradition misinterpreted nāma-rūpa by equating it with the five khandhas.
Jurewicz argues the Buddha used the Vedic cosmogonic framework but removed the ātman, rendering the process a meaningless cycle leading to suffering and rebirth, a powerful critique for those familiar with Brāhmanic thought.
This interpretation clarifies the ‘no soul’ doctrine and was previously overlooked because the Buddhist tradition lost familiarity with the specific Vedic texts the Buddha was addressing.

JUREWICZ’S DISCOVERY COMBINED WITH THOSE OF FRAUWALLNER AND HWANG

The apparent contradiction between the chain originating from analyzing suffering (Hwang) and being a response to Vedic cosmogony (Jurewicz) can be resolved.
Erich Frauwallner suggested the twelve-link chain is a composite: an original, shorter chain (perhaps five links starting with “thirst” as the cause of suffering, aligning with the Second Noble Truth) was later expanded.
The Buddha likely first formulated a chain going back to thirst. Separately, he developed a critique of Vedic cosmogony using a similar causal structure, which then naturally connected to the earlier chain.
A possible oversight in combining these was that the negative version (to end suffering) then implied abolishing consciousness to eliminate ignorance.

Avijjā

Avijjā (Pali for ignorance) derives from the verbal root vid (‘to know’).
A homonymous root vid means ‘to find’ or ‘to exist’.
The author suggests avijjā could ambiguously mean both ‘ignorance’ and ‘non-existence’.
This ambiguity would support Jurewicz’s interpretation, linking the chain’s start to the Vedic concept of an initial state where existence and cognition are undifferentiated.

Saṃkhārā

Saṃkhāra is a notoriously difficult term, meaning ‘put together’ or ‘construct’ etymologically.
It can refer to a process or the result of a process (like ‘construction’ or ‘formation’).
When the Buddha states saṃkhārā are impermanent, it means both the processes of construction are ever-changing and the resulting constructions are transient.
“Compounded things” is a common translation, referring to the constructed and therefore impermanent nature of all experienced phenomena (except nirvana).
Saṃkhāra can mean ‘process’, but its ambiguity (also meaning ‘result of a process’) might be why the Buddha didn’t use it straightforwardly to state “everything is process.”
The Buddha adapted the Vedic macrocosm/microcosm idea into a metaphor where the ‘world’ is individual experience.
As one of the five khandhas, saṃkhārā (volitions) represents the karmic process, which is central to Buddhist thought as the dynamic force shaping lives and the key to understanding responsibility.

THREE CORRECTIONS TO ACCEPTED VIEWS

1. Misunderstanding the Chain of Dependent Origination:
- Failure to understand the Chain is largely due to forgetting its historical Vedic context, not its inherent obscurity.
- This led to later scholastic interpretations, such as differentiating hetu (cause) and paccayo (condition) as distinct types of causes, which is anachronistic as they were likely used as synonyms in the original oral texts.
2. Macrocosmic interpretations and Buddhaghosa’s three-lives theory:
- Interpretations viewing the Chain as dealing with the macrocosm are incorrect, though they might echo the Buddha’s critique of a macrocosmic Vedic doctrine.
- Jurewicz’s interpretation renders Buddhaghosa’s complex theory (that the chain spans three lives of an individual) unnecessary.
3. Lateral or future causation:
- The standard understanding of causation is temporal (cause precedes effect).
- Some Buddhist schools (notably Far Eastern, e.g., Hua Yen) developed ideas of simultaneous or even future causation, where all phenomena are interconnected.
- There is no evidence for this doctrine in the Pali Canon.
- The Buddha taught that experienced phenomena (except Enlightenment) are causally conditioned and not independent, requiring a context.
- This does not imply that all phenomena exert direct causal influence on each other.
- Such an interpretation of interconnected causality would undermine the core Buddhist teaching of karma and individual responsibility (“heirs of our own deeds”).

Chapter 10 - COGNITION; LANGUAGE; NIRVANA

The Vedic tradition blended ontology (what exists) with epistemology (what we can know and how).
The Buddha argued against positing a category of ‘being’, substituting the question ‘What exists?’ with ‘What can we experience?‘

COGNITION

Cognition, for the Buddha, starts with the six faculties: the five senses plus the mind.
Each faculty has specific objects; the mind’s objects are dhamma, including ideas and abstractions.
Cognition requires synergy between a sense organ, its objects, and the specific consciousness (viññāṇa) for that sense.
This system is seen as somewhat crude, with the mind-mental consciousness distinction appearing clumsy and ranging the mind with senses rather than superordinate seen as simplistic.
While sometimes called empiricism, this label is questionable as the mind is one of the ‘organs’.
The senses are generally viewed negatively because contact between senses and objects causes desire (pleasure or pain), the root of suffering; hence the recurring theme to ‘guard the doors of the senses’.
The five khandhas are not what we are (ontology) but how we work and cognize (epistemology).
Cognition involves a sense and its objects (rūpa), consciousness (viññāṇa), sensation, and volitions (saṅkhārā), as senses are appetitive.
Saññā (apperception) is the process of identifying a perceived object by naming it, essentially applying language to experience.
Viññāṇa makes the perceiver aware of an object’s presence, while saññā identifies what it is.
The operation of senses can mislead not only morally (causing ‘thirst’) but also intellectually.
According to Noa Ronkin, the cognitive apparatus’s operation is the causal foundation for samsāric experience, with saññā (conceptualization and naming) being fundamental to this process.

THE BUDDHA’S VIEW OF LANGUAGE

The Vedic tradition equated knowing a thing with knowing its name, viewing Sanskrit names as inherent and Sanskrit itself as a blueprint for reality.
This Vedic view led to magical practices (naming as control) and the belief that analyzing words reveals truths, an idea the Buddha ridiculed.
The Buddha fundamentally rejected the central role of Sanskrit in Brahminical ideology.
He prohibited teaching in chandas (Vedic Sanskrit) to prevent focus on archaic form over content.
The Buddha permitted his teachings to be learned sakāya niruttiyā, meaning ‘using the learner’s own mode of expression’, thus allowing local dialects and explanatory glosses.
The Araṇi-vibhañga Sutta advises against insisting on particular local terms, promoting pragmatic language use for wider understanding.
The Buddha’s attitude towards language was pragmatic: its sole purpose was to convey meaning, and anything hindering communication should be discarded.
This pragmatism was rooted in rejecting the Brahminical idea of Sanskrit words as unchanging monoliths corresponding to fixed entities.
If reality consists of processes, not unchanging entities, words cannot have a fixed relationship to it.
All apperceptions (saññā) are considered empty (suñña), meaning impermanent, unsatisfactory, and lacking an unchanging essence.
Every apperception is samkhata (constructed, formed), making both the act of apperception and the object apperceived impermanent and unsatisfactory. This doesn’t deny that something is ‘out there’.
Nirvana is the exception, not being samkhata.
The Buddha concluded that languages are conventional and inherently incapable of fully capturing reality; saññā imposes linguistic categories that distort the fluidity of experience.
Conceptualizing itself involves inaccuracy, termed papañca (verbal differentiation/proliferation that is false).

CATAPHATIC AND APOPHATIC

Major world religions with mystical traditions distinguish between cataphatic (positive, saying what something is) and apophatic (negative, saying what something is not) expression.
The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad’s statement that the ātman is ‘not thus, not thus’ is an early example of apophatic theology.
The Taittirīya Upaniṣad states that words turn back from the bliss of brahman.
A Pali Canon poem (SN I, 15) implies that words turn back from nibbāna.
The Buddha favored apophatic description.
He referred to himself as Tathāgata (‘the one who is like that’), implying his state was beyond verbal description; this term could apply to any enlightened person in the Pali Canon.
The epithet tādi (‘such’ or ‘like that’) was also used for any enlightened person in Pali texts.

INEFFABILITY

The Buddhist tradition’s loss of the original meanings of tathāgata and tādi indicates a non-mystical or anti-mystical stance.
The Buddha considered his Enlightenment experience ineffable—a unique private experience with no publicly available referent.
This ineffability did not mean the truths he discovered were inexpressible or that he could not guide others to similar experiences.
William James identified ineffability as a primary characteristic of mystical experience, whose quality must be directly experienced.
The Buddha’s initial difficulty post-Enlightenment was conveying an experience that transcended language.
The inherent inadequacy of language for such purposes significantly influenced Buddhism.
The Buddha frequently used metaphors to communicate experiences that eluded denotative language.
The prevalence of analogy in a sutta might be a criterion for its authenticity tracing back to the Buddha.

PRACTICAL LIMITATIONS OF THE APOPHATIC APPROACH

There’s a tension between texts where the Buddha claims to have no views (apophatic, referring to reality beyond language) and those where he refers to ‘right views’ (cataphatic, concerning fundamental truths like karma).
The Buddha refused to answer certain speculative questions because they were irrelevant to Enlightenment (pragmatism) and because their linguistic formulation was misleading for truths beyond language.
The later doctrine of two truths reflects this distinction:
- Abhidhamma: conventional truth (e.g., ‘John’) versus ultimate truth (the five components), a reductionist view.
- Nāgārjuna: conventional truth (what language can express) versus ultimate truth (beyond language, inexpressible), continuing the apophatic tradition.
- The Theravada tradition has remained overwhelmingly cataphatic.

NIRVANA

Nirvana is defined as the precise opposite of everything in normal human experience.
The normal world is one of experience, change, becoming, and process, constructed (saṃkhata) by our cognitive apparatus.
Nirvana is unique in that it is not composed (asaṃkhata), exists in its own right, and is; it is the one dhamma not arising from causes.

RAHULA’S LACK OF CLARITY

The author critiques Ven. Dr. Walpola Rahula’s explanation of nirvana as unclear and sometimes self-contradictory.
A distinction is made: Upanisads do not separate ontology (reality) from epistemology (truth), whereas modern thought sees reality as a property of things and truth as a property of propositions.
Rahula’s assertion “Nirvāṇa is not the result of anything… Truth is. Nirvāṇa is” is problematic.
- A distinction should be made between the experience of realization (which is a result of a process/path) and the thing realized (which pre-exists). Nirvana itself is not a result of the path to its realization.
- Stating “Nirvana is truth” is confusing in English, stemming from Sanskrit/Pali satyam/saccam meaning both ‘truth’ and ‘reality’.
It’s crucial to distinguish the act of realizing salvific gnosis from the content of what is realized.
A further distinction is needed between having an experience (present) and having had it (past); enlightened individuals can describe positively what it feels like to have attained nirvana, even if the moment of attainment is beyond words.

WAYS OF USING THE TERM ‘NIRVANA’

Experiencing salvation (Enlightenment):
- This is an experience beyond words, aligning with mystical traditions and the Upanisads.
- While all experience is hard to capture fully in language, Enlightenment is uniquely so.
- It is communicated through metaphors like ‘waking up’ or ‘fires of passion being extinguished’.
State after experiencing Enlightenment:
- One can describe the feeling of this state, e.g., as ‘cool’ and ‘comfortable’ (nibbuta).
- The experience of Enlightenment is considered irreversible and unforgettable.
Content of Enlightenment:
- Although the initial experience is indescribable, its content can be discussed.
- It has a ‘noetic quality’ (James), perceived as an insight into profound truth.
- The Buddha referred to it as ‘seeing things as they are’ (yathā-bhūta-dassana).
- Its content can be indicated by describing it as the opposite of all normal experience.
Death of an enlightened person:
- The term ‘nirvana’ also refers to this, specifically parinirvāna.
- Since enlightened individuals are not reborn and cannot report on their death experience, this aspect is purely apophatic.

NEITHER EXISTING NOR NOT EXISTING

A misconception, partly from Nāgārjuna’s paradoxes and Chinese Buddhism, suggests the Buddha taught a middle way between being and non-being.
This originates from the Kaccāyana-gotto Sutta, where the Buddha states he preaches neither ‘everything exists’ (sabbam atthi) nor ‘nothing exists’ (sabbam natthi).
The Buddha’s actual teaching here is the middle way of Dependent Origination, which is ‘right view’ (sammā ditthi).
This teaching presupposes that ‘existence’ is defined as unchanging existence, contrasted with process or change.
The Buddha was reiterating that everything in our experience is process and causally conditioned.
Ignoring the context of this statement has led to misinterpretations of Buddhism as flouting logic, which is poor historical understanding.

Chapter 11 - THE BUDDHA’S PRAGMATISM AND INTELLECTUAL STYLE

TO WHAT EXTENT AND IN WHAT SENSE WAS THE BUDDHA A PRAGMATIST?

The Buddha’s teaching goal was entirely pragmatic, likening himself to a physician (Dhamma as medicine, Sangha as nurses).
The Four Noble Truths are argued to follow a medical model: diagnosis, cause, cure, and treatment.
The Buddha described himself as a surgeon removing the arrow of craving.
His Dhamma is both descriptive (how things are) and prescriptive (how to see and act accordingly).
The Buddha was idiomatically a pragmatist; his teachings are considered factually true, and they work because they are true (not true because they work).
Pragmatic benefit (“ought”) is always linked to factual truth (“is”).
His teaching has one flavor: liberation.
A key approach to understanding Buddhist practices is to ask how they lead to diminishing negative mental states and increasing positive ones.
The Pali Canon focuses on practical guidance (Vinaya for monastic life, Sutta Pitaka for attaining nirvana through ethics and meditation), with underlying ideas often needing to be inferred.
The Buddha stated he explained only what was necessary for liberation (Four Noble Truths), like a handful of leaves compared to a forest.

WAS THE BUDDHA OMNISCIENT?

The Buddha denied constant, complete knowledge, stating he possessed the “threefold knowledge”: recalling former births, seeing beings’ rebirths by karma, and destroying corruptions (liberation).
Theravāda tradition interprets this as potential omniscience: the Buddha could access any knowable thing but not all simultaneously.
The Pali Canon presents varied perspectives: the Vinaya doesn’t portray him as omniscient, while texts like the Mahā Sihanāda Sutta suggest extraordinary, beyond-human insights.
Other enlightened beings (arahants) also possessed abilities like recalling past lives.
The author suggests a pragmatic view: the Buddha was concerned with knowledge relevant to nirvana, not omniscience for its own sake.
The author now believes the Buddha had a coherent structure of thought underpinning his pragmatic advice, even if not explicitly presented as such.

THE BUDDHA’S STYLE OF EXPOSITION

The Buddha employed “Skill in Means,” adapting his message to his audience.
He viewed language as a practical tool for communication.
While skilled in debate, he mostly presented his own views, favoring analogies and appeals to common sense (e.g., raft and snake similes).
His sermons are rich in analogies, similes, and metaphors, reflecting the idea that language can only point to truth.
The suttas’ style is markedly different from the declaratory style of Vedic literature and the later didactic solemnity of Upanishads.
His personal style in the Pali Canon contrasts with Mahayana sūtras, where he is often depicted as glorified and speaking ex cathedra.

THE SPIRIT IN WHICH THE BUDDHA WISHED HIS TEACHING TO BE TAKEN

In the Kālāma Sutta, the Buddha advised listeners to test his teachings against their own experience, not to accept them on trust.
He stated he would only speak what was true and beneficial, even if disagreeable, but not what was true and agreeable if unbeneficial.
He condemned theorizing without practical value, especially metaphysical speculation.
He focused on analyses of experience (cognitive psychology).
He left certain metaphysical questions (e.g., about the world’s eternality, the soul, a tathāgata after death) unanswered because they were not beneficial for attaining nirvana, unlike the Four Noble Truths.
Some unanswered questions were based on misleading terms or false premises.
The Buddha often reframed questions or showed they were wrongly put (vibhajja-vādo: arguing after making distinctions).
His approach to questions was pragmatic: some answered directly, some by analysis, some by counter-question, and some set aside.
The raft simile illustrates that teachings are a means to an end (nirvana) and should not be clung to after their purpose is served.
The Buddha warned against literalism (pada-parama), valuing understanding over mere recitation or memorization of words.

ETHICAL PRAGMATISM

The Buddha’s ethics have a strong pragmatic dimension.
The universal karma doctrine was both rational and practically valuable in a changing society, fostering trust.
While not purely instrumental, he sometimes emphasized that honesty is the best policy, detailing practical advantages of morality (wealth, good reputation, ease in company, peaceful death, good rebirth) and disadvantages of immorality.
Immorality is linked to carelessness (pamāda).
Diligence or attentiveness (appamāda) was praised as accomplishing goals in this life and the next.
The pragmatic nature of his ethics may have limited the development of complex ethical theory; unresolved dilemmas are rare in the Canon.
“Kusala” (good) also means “skillful,” implying that doing good is a matter of practical intelligence.
Moral values were often contextualized; he would analyze a situation rather than apply absolute rules rigidly (vibhajja-vādo).

MEDITATION PRAXIS

Meditation (bhāvanā) means “development” or mental training.
It was systematized into calming (samatha) to discipline emotions and insight (vipassanā) to sharpen understanding, with calming as a preparation for insight.
This formulation succeeded an earlier pairing of awareness (sati) and concentration (samādhi) from the Noble Eightfold Path.
Initial prescriptions for awareness and concentration might have aimed at cultivating basic mental discipline, given the educational context of the time.
The Buddha encouraged using imagination in meditation (e.g., visualizing body parts, corpse decomposition).
Bhāvanā includes the use of reason, with mental training intended to improve overall thinking.

THE VINAYA: A PRAGMATIC LEGAL SYSTEM

The Vinaya’s existence suggests it was initiated by the Buddha, establishing a long-lasting monastic institution.
Rules were pragmatic, aimed at increasing believers, Sangha’s welfare, members’ purity, and benefiting non-believers, often prompted by lay dissatisfaction.
The Vinaya developed by addressing problems as they arose (trial and error, or “conjecture and refutation”).
It functions as a case-law system, with rules formulated to address specific incidents; the first offender was not guilty as the rule didn’t yet exist.
Later generations continued this pattern of rule-making.
The process of rule creation is illustrated by the establishment of rules for novices (sāmanera):
- Initial rule against ordaining those under twenty due to their inability to endure hardships.
- Rule against admitting those under fifteen, later modified to allow boys capable of “shooing crows.”
- Rule against a single monk taking on two novices after an incident of sexual misconduct.
- Establishment of the novice admission ceremony (Three Refuges).
- Rule requiring parental permission for ordination, following Suddhodana’s plea.
- Modification allowing a competent monk to educate multiple novices.
The Vinaya reflects the Buddha’s pragmatic and compassionate character.

THE PRACTICAL COROLLARY OF CONJECTURE AND REFUTATION

The Vinaya’s trial-and-error method of rule creation is akin to Karl Popper’s “piecemeal engineering” – fixing problems as they arise.
This reflects a fundamental aspect of the Buddha’s approach: addressing what is going wrong rather than starting with grand theories.
The Buddha’s starting point of suffering is practical: religion addresses what is “broken.”
This approach emphasizes eliminating error and learning from mistakes, similar to Popper’s philosophy.
In socio-political terms, this means focusing on eliminating causes of unhappiness.
The Buddha typically presented negatives first, with positives emerging as corollaries, a style that may have influenced Indian philosophical presentation (stating opponent’s view first).

NEGATIVE FORMULATIONS CAN MISLEAD

The Buddha’s ethics are largely expressed through negative formulations (e.g., precepts as abstentions).
Even “ten good deeds” are based on abstaining from bad deeds.
While many interpreters have presented these positively (e.g., “non-carelessness” as diligence), the negative framing can be limiting.
The tendency towards negative presentation may have unfortunately influenced later interpretations, such as the Abhidhamma defining love as “lack of hatred,” a bloodless concept that doesn’t capture the depth of teachings on friendship.

This chapter details the Buddha’s use of satire, particularly against Brahmins and their doctrines.
It also explores how the Buddha repurposed Brahminical terms, using them as social metaphors to articulate his own teachings.

THE REPRESENTATION OF BRAHMINS

Buddhist popular literature, like the Vessantara Jātaka, often depicts brahmins unfavourably, with characters like Jūjaka embodying vices such as lust, cruelty, and avarice.
The Pali Canon, while more nuanced, strongly criticizes brahminical practices, especially animal sacrifice; a canonical poem links the brahmins’ greed and introduction of sacrifices (notably of cows) to moral decline and the advent of diseases.
The Buddha’s fundamental criticism was that brahmins did not adhere to their own stated ideals.
He redefined key brahminical terms (e.g., ‘brahmin,’ ‘nahātaka,’ ‘veda-gu,’ ‘sottiya,’ ‘ariya’) through wordplay, associating them with spiritual attainments and the overcoming of negative mental states, rather than birth or ritual.
In an encounter with a ‘snooty’ (huhuńka) brahmin, the Buddha defined a true brahmin by seven moral and spiritual characteristics, reinterpreting terms like ‘vedanta-gu’ (perfection of knowledge) and ‘vusita-brahmacariyo’ (lived the holy life) in a Buddhist context.
The narrative where Brahmā, the supreme brahminical god, implores the Buddha to teach signifies the Buddhist assertion of its teachings’ superiority over brahminism.

SATIRES OF BRAHMIN SACRED TEXTS

The Brahmajāla Sutta satirizes brahminical creation myths, presenting a story where Brahmā deludedly believes himself to be the creator, likely parodying creation accounts in texts such as the Bṛhad-āranyaka Upaniṣad.
The Buddha’s statement in the Mahā Taṇhā-Saṇkhaya Sutta, “Monks, do you see that this [neuter] has come into being?”, possibly alludes to and mocks the use of deictic pronouns in Upanishadic creation narratives.
The Aggañña Sutta offers a large-scale parody of Vedic creation myths and the origin of the caste system.
- It presents an account of world origins and societal development, which, despite traditional interpretations, is likely satirical given the Buddha’s usual discouragement of such speculation and his teachings on causation.
- The sutta employs humorous etymologies, mocking Upanishadic linguistic explanations, to explain the origins of words (e.g., ‘ahū vata no’ – ‘We’ve had it’) and social classes, for instance, redefining ‘ajjhāyaka’ (Vedic teacher) as ‘non-meditator’.
- It critiques brahmin claims of inherent purity and divine origin (from Brahmā’s mouth, alluding to the Puruṣa-sūkta) by pointing out their human birth and associated impurities.
- The Buddha asserts that enlightenment confers the highest status, regardless of birth, and reappropriates the “born of Brahmā’s mouth” formula for his followers, stating they are “born of his mouth, born of the Dhamma.”
- The aetiological myth within the sutta attributes the current state of the world and society to moral failings, particularly greed and laziness.

SATIRIZING THE JAINS

The Buddha also directed playful criticism towards Jains, primarily targeting their practice of extreme and seemingly pointless austerities.
In ‘The Short Sutta on the Blazing Mass of Suffering,’ the Buddha encounters Jains attempting to expunge past karma through prolonged immobility, and through questioning, reveals their ignorance about the specifics of their karma.
He satirically suggests that their intense current suffering implies they must have committed severe past misdeeds like bloodshed, leading to their rebirth as Jain ascetics.
The Kandaraka Sutta distinguishes Jains as self-torturers, contrasting them with kings or wealthy brahmins who, by sponsoring large-scale animal sacrifices, torture both themselves (through preparatory austerities) and others (the sacrificed animals and suffering workforce).

EXTENDED - EVEN PLAYFUL - USE OF ‘BRAHMIN’ AS A METAPHOR

The Buddha’s references to brahmins were not exclusively negative or literal; he also used the term ‘brahmin’ metaphorically and sometimes playfully.
In one sutta, responding to a brahmin’s comment about his well-being, the Buddha states he has access to three kinds of ‘high and big beds,’ which are metaphors for spiritual states:
- The divine bed, attained through practicing the four jhānas.
- The brahmic bed, attained through practicing the four ‘brahmavihāras’ (loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity).
- The noble (ariya) bed, attained by realizing the complete destruction of passion, hatred, and delusion.
This metaphorical hierarchy (noble surpassing brahmic, which surpasses divine) exemplifies the Buddha’s creative and playful application of social terminology.
The Buddha’s appropriation and redefinition of brahminical terms, presented as a call for brahmins to return to their ancient ideals, was likely perceived as highly provocative, suggesting he had significant protection and support.

Chapter 13 - IS THIS BOOK TO BE BELIEVED?

The author presented evidence of the Buddha referencing Upanisadic passages, implying the Upanisads predate him.
A critic argued that Pali texts featuring “the Buddha” could be much later compositions, lacking solid evidence linking them to the historical Gotama.
The critic stated that claiming Upanisads predate Gotama based on Pali sources is to “outrun the evidence.”
The author believes the Buddha’s ideas are coherent and not a random accumulation, contrasting with the critic’s view that the Buddha’s actual ideas are unknowable.

KARMA IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The Buddha’s karma theory replaces ritual with ethics, a departure from Brahminism.
While Jains may have had similar ideas, the Buddha’s treatment of karma was more abstract.
Unlike Brahmin Vedānta which negates individual responsibility, the Buddha’s karma theory establishes it.
Intention became the key criterion for ethical value, promoting equality and individual control over destiny.
Key historical influences on the Buddha’s ideas include:
- Brahminism: Misunderstanding the Buddha’s figurative use of its vocabulary led to misinterpretations, especially regarding the salvific power of love and compassion.
- Awareness of other cultures: This helped the Buddha see the caste system as man-made and reject Sanskrit’s unique status, affirming his message could be conveyed in various languages.

NON-RANDOM PROCESS

Karma is a process: indeterminate (allowing free will) but not random (ensuring cause and effect).
Inspired by Vedic fire, the Buddha saw objects, consciousness, and life as self-generating processes without needing a fixed agent.
Language, with its fixed names, misleads us, as reality is constant change; operating solely through language distances one from truth.
The Buddha experienced reality beyond words, achieving an auto-revelation that ends rebirth and suffering.
Due to language’s inadequacy, analogy and metaphor are used to point the way to this experience.
Buddha’s ideas align with modern cognitive psychology on perception being active, selective, and linked to volition.
Actions interact with the world and affect the actor; the Buddha blurred the line between actor and environment.
Considering soteriology, the Buddha’s view supports realism (an external world exists), crucial for individual karma and nirvana.
Karma is central: intentions shape the individual. It’s the dynamic of continuity through lives, synonymous with samkhārā.
The No Soul doctrine doesn’t negate moral responsibility; Buddha’s theory of it is robust.
The karmic effect of actions, if not in this life, will occur in future lives, making the theory irrefutable.

DEVELOPMENTS TOWARDS AND IN THE MAHAYANA

The doctrine of Transfer of Merit emerged early, mitigating the strictness of individual karmic responsibility.
The less central karma is, the more other Buddhist elements can change.
Mahayana (‘Great Path’ or ‘Bodhisattva-yāna’) is defined by aspiring to salvation as or through a bodhisattva, based on Transfer of Merit.
Claims that Mahayana differs by applying No Self to all entities and stressing altruism more are invalid criticisms of Pali Canon teachings.
The author views Mahayana’s key difference as the glorification and multiplication of Buddhas/bodhisattvas as divine figures, linked to down-playing karma.

BUDDHIST DEVOTION: AN UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE?

The Buddha advised monks to take refuge in themselves and the Dhamma, not appointing a successor.
Glorification of the Buddha likely began in his lifetime.
Founders cannot control all unintended consequences of their teachings.
The “Triple Refuge” formula (Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha) in the Canon expresses emotion.
The author suggests the Buddha’s call for self-refuge was a rebuttal to the already popular Triple Refuge.
The Buddha’s portrayal as godlike probably began during his lifetime.
The Buddha declared ritual useless; the growth of Buddhist rites was an unintended consequence.

BE LIKE THE KĀLĀMAS: FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF

The author laments widespread misrepresentations of Buddhism.
Readers should test the author’s interpretations against the Pali Canon.
Reading translations is better than not reading the texts.
Learning Pali is encouraged as language is integral to understanding the texts.
Despite challenges, resources exist for learning Pali (e.g., Pali Text Society).
A revival in Pali studies could foster unprecedented informed interest in the Buddha’s ideas.

APPENDIX

This appendix discusses five brahminical terms borrowed and adapted by the Buddha, segregated for readers who may wish to skip more technical discussions.

THE BUDDHA’S APPROPRIATION OF FOUR (OR FIVE?) BRAHMINICAL TERMS

The Buddha borrowed and reinterpreted brahminical terminology.
This section discusses five such terms, considered important but not central to the main book, which the Buddha adapted.

i. Brahma-cariyā (see Chapter 6)

Pali form of Sanskrit brahma-caryā, meaning ‘brahma-conduct’, originally the first chaste life-stage for high-caste brahmin boys studying the Veda.
The term evolved to mean ‘chastity’ or total sexual abstinence.
The Buddha used brahma-cariyā in a narrower sense for chastity and in a wider sense for the ‘holy life’ of any Sangha member, which always included chastity.
Occasionally, the Buddha used the term to refer to the goal of the holy life, as a synonym for nirvana.

ii. Samkappa (see Chapter 7)

Sammā samkappa, usually translated as ‘right resolve’ or ‘right intention’, is the second step on the Noble Eightfold Path.
The Sanskrit equivalent, samkalpa, is a technical term in brahminical ritual for a formal statement of intent made before performing a ritual.
The Buddha’s use of samkappa at the outset of the ethical path reflects his substitution of ethics for ritual, where correct mental attitude is a prerequisite.
This interpretation is fitting for the original formulation of the Eightfold Path, but less so for later reformulations where ‘right intention’ is placed differently.

iii. Ekodi-bhāva

The Buddha borrowed this term from Vedānta, similar to his borrowing of āsava from Jain tradition.
In the second jhāna (meditative state), it signifies the attainment of one-pointedness of thought (cittassa ekaggata) after stilling discursive thought.
The author proposes that the Buddhist Sanskrit rendering ekoti is correct, suggesting a feeling (bhāva) that can be verbalized by ‘one’ (eko).
This refers to a sensation of unity, similar to mystical experiences or the Vedāntic concept ‘I am brahman’, with the Buddha borrowing the language to imbue it with new meaning.

iv. Puthujjana

A technical term referring to people who have not yet entered the path to Enlightenment, i.e., they are spiritually at the beginning.
The author argues that the Buddhist Sanskrit pṛthag-jana (from pṛthak, meaning ‘separated, individual’) is a more accurate origin than pṛthu (‘many’ or ‘broad’), as it accounts for the Pali double jj.
‘Separate’ aptly describes someone who lacks a sensation of oneness.
The canonical expression puthu attā (‘separate self’) refers to the common-sense view of the individual, implicitly contrasting with a “non-separate” Upaniṣadic cosmic self.

v. Papañca (see Chapter 10)

The term suggests ‘quintuplication’ since pañca means ‘five’.
While some later Indian philosophies describe cosmic evolution into sets of five, these texts postdate the Buddha, and early Buddhism uses different enumerations (e.g., six senses, four great elements).
The author suggests a possible link to the Bṛhad-āraṇyaka Upaniṣad (1.5.3), which lists five kinds of breath (prāṇa) but states they are all essentially one prāṇa, implying a conceptual multiplication of an underlying unity.
The Buddha may have appropriated brahminical terminology to argue that concepts (multiplicity) do not capture truth, rather than there being too many concepts.
The Buddha did not deny distinctions between processes (like feeling or karma) even while denying clear-cut substances.

What the Buddha Thought

PREFACE

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

LANGUAGES

BASIC DATA ON BUDDHISM

The Three Jewels

Fundamental texts

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND

Time

Space

Social environment

Brahmin religion and society

Kinds of Buddhism

Chapter 1 - INTRODUCTION

MISUNDERSTANDING AND PSEUDO-PROFUNDITY

TERMINOLOGY AND CLARITY

THE BUDDHA’S USE OF METAPHOR

SKILL IN MEANS

DECODING AN IDEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE

KARMA AS PERSONAL CONTINUITY

INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY AND RESPONSIBILITY

WHY HAVE I STARTED HERE?

SUMMARY: DID ONE PERSON REALLY THINK OF ALL THIS?

Chapter 2 - MORE ABOUT KARMA, AND ITS SOCIAL CONTEXT

KARMA THEORY’S BEARING ON SOCIETY AND COSMOLOGY

Chapter 3 - THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE KARMA DOCTRINE IN BRAHMINISM

MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM

Chapter 4 - JAIN ANTECEDENTS

SUMMARY

Chapter 5 - WHAT DID THE BUDDHA MEAN BY ‘NO SOUL’?

GIVEN TRANSMIGRATION, WHAT IS IT THAT TRANSMIGRATES?

ĀTMAN/BRAHMAN IN THE BĀU

THE BUDDHA’S RESPONSE

WHAT WE EXPERIENCE, AS AGAINST WHAT ‘REALLY’ EXISTS

THE BUDDHA’S ANSWER TO ‘BEING, CONSCIOUSNESS, BLISS’

IMPERMANENCE

ANCESTORS AND GHOSTS

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN EMOTION AND UNDERSTANDING

Chapter 6 - THE BUDDHA’S POSITIVE VALUES: LOVE AND COMPASSION

SOPHISTICATION

THE FOUR BOUNDLESS STATES

HOW THE FOUR EMOTIONS ARE RELATED

OTHER TEXTS EXTOLLING KINDNESS AND COMPASSION

THE TRADITIONAL, LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF THE TEVIJJA SUTTA

CONCLUSION

Chapter 7 - ASSESSING THE EVIDENCE

A BOGUS SUBJECT

CONJECTURE AND REFUTATION

COPING WITH SCEPTICISM

IS THERE BETTER EVIDENCE FOR THE EARLIEST BUDDHISM THAN THE PALI CANON?

THE PALI CANON AS WRITTEN EVIDENCE

THE EARLIEST ORAL TRADITION

THE CREATION OF STABLE TEXTS

PERICOPES

THE COMMENTARIES

SHORTCOMINGS OF THE COMMENTARIES

DISCREPANCIES

Chapter 8 - EVERYTHING IS BURNING: THE CENTRALITY OF FIRE IN THE BUDDHA’S THOUGHT

FIRE AS THE CENTRAL METAPHOR IN THE BUDDHA’S SOTERIOLOGY

FIRE IN VEDIC THOUGHT

FIRE AS A MODEL FOR APPETITIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

ETHICIZING CONSCIOUSNESS

THE FIVE KHANDHA ARE PROCESSES

THE NEW VIEW OF CONSCIOUSNESS HAS KNOCK-ON EFFECTS

AN ANALOGY WITH PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY

Chapter 9 - CAUSATION AND NON-RANDOM PROCESS

DEPENDENT ORIGINATION

JUREWICZ’S DISCOVERY

JUREWICZ’S DISCOVERY COMBINED WITH THOSE OF FRAUWALLNER AND HWANG

Avijjā

Saṃkhārā

THREE CORRECTIONS TO ACCEPTED VIEWS

Chapter 10 - COGNITION; LANGUAGE; NIRVANA

COGNITION

THE BUDDHA’S VIEW OF LANGUAGE

CATAPHATIC AND APOPHATIC

INEFFABILITY

PRACTICAL LIMITATIONS OF THE APOPHATIC APPROACH

NIRVANA

RAHULA’S LACK OF CLARITY