The Buddha's Way to Human Liberation, a Socio-Historical

Part I PRELIMINARIES It is difficult for one of different views, of a different persuasion, under different influences, with different pursuits and diffe@rent training to know whether the Dhamma I teach is different or not. Siddhattha Gotama (D.I. 187) 1 2 INTRODUCTION CONTENT AND METHOD The title The Buddha's Way - A Socio-Historical Approach encapsulates the theme of this study and the method adopted to explore it.1 The Buddha's Way is often understood and explained as a path to private salvation, ideally to be realized in solitude, away from the everyday concerns of ordinary men and women. If this is true, how can one explain Magga – the Way, the Fourth Noble Truth, which is one of the most social of moralities? None of the eight 'limbs' or features of the Way suggests that they were exclusively or primarily intended for persons who had renounced the household life. Right Livelihood is included as an integral and indispensable feature of the Path to Human Liberation. This makes the right order- ing of economic and political relationships a central, not peripheral, concern of Dhamma practice. Thinking this through, I began to question the validity of the view that the Indian ethos, including early Buddhism, is essentially 'other-worldly' or 'spiritual' and that its central preoccupation is with salvation of separate indiviuals from cosmic existence. The Social Elan of Early Buddhism As I studied and reflected on the teachings and practices of the first Buddhists it became increasingly clear that Buddhism has a radical core which challenges and goes against the conventional ideas and values of society. The Buddha’s Way was not given as a means to private salvation from cosmic existence. In fact, as we shall see in Chapter 10, the assumption of binary oppositions such as cosmic/metacosmic 1 According to the generally accepted dating, the Buddha was born in 564 and died in 484 BCE. Not all scholars are in agreement about this dating. 'The Date of the Buddha' according to Heinz Bechert (1991) remains an open question. Since it has been difficult for historians to give an exact chronology to ancient Indian texts, it is impossible, Romila Thapar points out, to be precise or dogmatic as to when particular events or changes took place (1984: 17). Precise dating is not of crucial importance to this study since its focus is on social trends and the interaction between changing social and personality structures. I use “The Age of the Buddha” in a broad sense to cover a period from around the mid-first millennium BCE to the reign of Emperor Asoka (3 BCE). The signifcance of certain features seminally present in The Buddha’s Day, e.g., amoral theories of statecraft and the Brahmanic philosophy of language, are discussed in the light of their later fuller elaborations, Kautilya’s Arthasastra and Panini's Astaddhyaya, both generally traced to 4 BCE. In this perspective, things, beings and events are seen as “creative continuities”. 3 is incompatible with the Buddha’s epistemology. Buddhism began as a collective movement for the moral transformation of society. Its ethics are intrinsically com- munitarian in character. The Buddha gave his movement organisational form in a Fourfold Community consisting of men and women; renouncers and householders. Sharing the values of a common Dhamma2 was both the bond and the hallmark of self-governing communes – sanghas – which made up the Catudissa Sangha or ‘The Sangha of the Four Directions’. The popular orientation of Dhamma preaching and the targeting of social abuses by the first preachers captured the imagination of the people and attracted a large following of men and women from all strata of society. Due to their prestige among the people, the mendicant teachers soon attracted the patronage of the rich and the powerful which eventually led to a change in the relationship between the renouncers and householders. A decisive factor which brought about this change was the granting, by kings and landed proprietors, of entire villages together with their inhabitants to the community of ‘renouncers’ and the subsequent consolidation of monastic landlordism. Thus, while the term bhikkhu-ni continued to be used for the renouncers, its signification shifted from ‘mendicant’ to ‘cenobite’. The transition from wandering teachers to a settled order occurred very early and the stages of this transformation can be traced through a diachronic reading of the Vinaya Pitaka which contains the rules and regulations laid down for the mendicant order.3 The Vinaya Pitaka reflects the face of Bud- dhism as it “has thus become through action” – yathabhutham kammam – to use the Buddha’s diagnostic phrase. But if one delves beneath the surface of the text, information can be ferreted out which shows another dynamic at work in the early community. Then, as down the centuries, mendicant teachers, less visible in texts, seem to have continued the campaign for social reform. Ideas become a social force when they capture the imagination of the masses. We know that the Buddha Dhamma did. Did it also become a social force for the moral transformation of society? The answer must be an unambiguous yes when one considers the views and practices of the first Buddhists discussed at length in Chapter 16. This without doubt was the case during the lifetime of the Founder. There is sufficient but seldom foregrounded evidence in the Theravada Canon to justify this assertion. The Buddha's basic principle of explanation is Conditioned 2 Henceforth the term Buddha Dhamma, rather than ‘Buddhism’ will be used with reference to what I consider, for reasons explained below, the Buddha’s authentic and unique legacy. The connotation of Dhamma has to be understood according to the context of its usage. However, the equation of Dhamma (Dharma Sk) with ‘inherent nature’ in Brahmin theory was rejected by the Buddha (See Chapters 9 to 11). 3 See Sukumar Dutt (1962) Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India. There is no indication that the Buddha took up permanent residence in a monastery. He remained a wandering mendicant teacher and died as he had lived, ‘on the way’. 4 Co-arising. He declared that it was an universally valid principle (Chapter 9). The history of the Community he founded is no exception to this Law. History shows us that changes in social conditions have invariably given rise to changes in ideas, practices and social institutions. The shift of emphasis from the building up of a sharing and caring community to the salvation of separate individuals from the ills of the world, may be reflective of the change in the social existence of the renouncers who had come to terms with status quo of society.4 The Myth of the Separate Individual The radical thrust of the Buddha’s Teaching is based on his realisation that ‘the individual’ is a fiction of human craving. His decision to found a community of compassion and sharing was the practical expression of his conviction that individualism is the principal obstacle to human happiness, Individualism places limits on love and if Buddhism is an attempt to deal with what it sees as the disease of individualism, and is primarily a method of eliminating these limits, as Tagore realized, then it will entail a concern with the social and political dimension (Ling 1985:122). The Buddha’s insight into the fictional character of ‘the individual’ was not the result of a mystical experience. It was the outcome of methodological procedures which, he stated, could be verified by any intelligent person (Chapter 9). He char- acterised discourses which assume that a person's identity is based on a unique share of the human essence inherent in each single and separate individual, as puggalavada. ‘Puggala’ means 'individual' and its adjectival form puggalika means belonging to a single person, individual, separate (PED). The Buddha diagnosed the average person’s delusion he/she is a unique being with an extra-historical origin and destiny, as puthujjana consciousness. Puthujjana means 'people' as separate individuals. Puthujjana consciousness or 'common' sense is the collective delusion like one is a unique and separate individual. Mainstream Buddhism reinforces this belief by holding that each person as a separate individual is subjected to myriads of rebirths. Theologies and philosophies of individualism – puggalavada, from the Buddha’s point of view, are learned elaborations of a deluded world-view which scholars share with the uninformed masses. The Buddha laid the founda- tion for a profound schizoanalysis by disclosing that normal consciousness is a pathogenic condition because it imagines that each person is a spirit/matter or psycho/somatic doublet. It turns the living person into a schizoid being. In so far 4 See Romilar Thapar’s Ethics, Religion, and Social Protest in Ancient Indian Social History (1984a) and Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya’s Buddhism: Radical Sociology Passes into its Op- posite, in Religion and Society (1987). 5 as individuals labour under this delusion, from the early Buddhist point of view – sabbe puthujjana unmattaka – “every average person is deranged.” Consistent with anatta dhamma – theory of no-self – I have made a con- scious attempt not to slip into the ‘methodological individualism’5 which underlies most expositions of the Buddha’s Teaching. Despite the radical implications of anatta, Lankan Buddhist scholars, monks as well as householders, generally tend to discuss the human condition with reference to separate individuals. The real self is understood as an 'identity consciousness' temporarily lodged in a mortal body and going through endless rebirths in a myriad life forms. The Buddha unravelled the individual as an ever changing pattern of synergies which he distinguished as ‘mental’ and ‘physical.’ These forces, the Buddha realised, exceed what individuals regarded as ‘their own' - their bodies, perceptions, feelings, life-activities and consciousness.

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