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The Origins of Good and Evil and the Challenge of Theodicy in the Buddhist Tradition

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The Origins of Good and Evil and the Challenge of Theodicy in the Buddhist Tradition The Origins of Good and Evil and the Challenge of Theodicy in the Buddhist Tradition Robert E. Buswell Jr. Acta Koreana, Volume 22, Number 2, December 2019, pp. 215-229 (Article) Published by Keimyung University, Academia Koreana For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/756403 [ Access provided at 1 Oct 2021 20:11 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] ACTA KOREANA Vol. 22, No. 2, December 2019: 215–230 doi:10.18399/acta.2019.22.2.001 The Origins of Good and Evil and the Challenge of Theodicy in the Buddhist Tradition ROBERT E. BUSWELL JR. The origins of good and evil and the problem of theodicy present a special set of challenges in Buddhism, which is relatively less concerned with consideration of first causes than are monotheistic religions. Buddhism focuses less on the issue of why evil and its incumbent suffering are present in the world and more on the question of how to respond to that evil. This emphasis on soteriology over metaphysics is seen in the characteristic invocation of pragmatic criteria for the evaluation of doctrines and practices; the recurrent motif of the Buddha as therapist rather than theorist; and the pervasive influence of the meta-theory of upāya (expedients or stratagems). This article will examine the soteriological dimension of the broader Buddhist response to evil and explore ROBERT E. BUSWELL JR. ([email protected]) is Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies and Director of Center for Buddhist Studies, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). * This article is an edited transcript of a keynote address delivered to the North American Korean Philosophers Association at its “Special International Conference on Korean Philosophy, Religion, and Spirituality, Good and Evil in Korean Philosophy, Religion, and Spirituality: Korean Ideas and Their Global Implications” (June 14-15, 2018). I am especially grateful to the hosts, Professor Edward Chung and his colleagues in the Asian Studies Program at the University of Prince Edward Island, as well as the North American Korean Philosophers Association and its president, Jin Y. Park, and vice president, Halla Kim, for their generous invitation to address the conference in the spectacular setting of Prince Edward Island. I would also like to thank the Korean Studies Promotion Society (KSPS) of the Academy of Korean Studies and its then-director, Dr. Jong Myung Kim, for generously supporting the conference. I refer in the title to the “Buddhist tradition” rather than specifically the “Korean Buddhist Tradition” because I seek to move between South and East Asian Buddhism in order to demonstrate both the continuities and disjunctions between two of the great linguistic and cultural traditions of Buddhism. After a lifetime of studying Korean Buddhism, I continue to believe that taking a broad, transcontinental approach to Buddhism offers the best hope of understanding what is distinctive about the Korean contributions to this religious tradition. 216 Acta Koreana, Vol. 22, No. 2, December 2019 some of the explicit examinations of the problem of a Buddhist “theodicy” in later Mahāyāna monistic ontologies, which are explored in Korean Buddhist materials: viz., if the mind is innately enlightened or inherently pure, whence do ignorance or defilements arise? Keywords: theodicy, evil, Korean Buddhism, tathāgatagarbha, no-thought Understanding the nature of good and evil and the challenge of theodicy presents a special set of problems in Buddhism. Buddhism is generally unconcerned with first causes. Its emphasis is less on the question of why are evil and suffering present in the world and more on a pragmatic inquiry into how best to respond to that suffering. Because of its emphasis on soteriology and epistemology rather than metaphysics and ontology, Buddhism offers a more practical response to such questions, instead of speculative flights of philosophical fancy. This tendency is seen, as Robert Gimello and I noted in the introduction to our Paths to Liberation volume, on the characteristic invocation of pragmatic criteria for the evaluation of doctrines and practices; the recurrent motif of the Buddha as therapist rather than theorist; and the pervasive influence, especially in Mahāyāna Buddhism, of the meta-theory of expedients (Skt. upāya, C. fangbian, K. pangp’yŏn 方便) (Buswell and Gimello 1992, 3–4). The Buddhist tendency to affirm soteriology above all else is well illustrated in the famous “simile of the arrow” from the Maluṅkyasutta (C. Jianyu jing, K. Chŏnyu kyŏng 箭喻經).1 In this scripture, the monk Maluṅkyasutta queried the Buddha about a litany of fourteen standard existential questions commonly asked of teachers and philosophers in ancient India to ascertain their philosophical point of view, such as is the universe eternal or not eternal, infinite or finite; are the soul and the body the same or different; does an enlightened person exist after death, or not, etc.? The Buddha steadfastly treated all these “indeterminate” (avyākṛta) questions as being “wrongly framed” (Pāli ṭhapanīya) and refused to answer them as posed, deeming them as “not tending to edification” and irrelevant to authentic religious practice: “They are not connected with the goal; they are not fundamental to the religious life. They do not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, direct knowledge, self-awakening, liberation. This is why they are undeclared by me.”2 The Buddha then proceeds to tell the simile of the arrow: would a man wounded by a poisonous arrow refuse treatment until he knows who shot the arrow that wounded him; where his assailant was from; from what fiber the bowstring was made; what kind of feathers were used on the shaft, and so forth? Of course not, the Buddha says; by the time these questions were resolved, the man would have died. Similarly, the question of why evil exists may not tend to edification; instead, the question that demands an answer is: What do people do right now about the evil and reactive suffering they are currently facing? 1 See specifically theCū ḷa-Maluṅkyasutta; Majjhimanikāya no. 63, Madhyamāgama no. 221: (Foshuo) Jianyu jing/(Pulsŏl) Chŏnyu kyŏng (佛說)箭喻經, T 26:1.801a-805c; T 94:1.917b–918b. 2 For these indeterminate questions, see Buswell and Lopez (2014, 87 q.v. “avyākṛta”). Buswell: The Origins of Good and Evil 217 This lack of interest in first causes is pervasive across Buddhism and creates special challenges in how to address the issue of theodicy in the religion. Theodicy becomes an issue that monotheistic religions, such as the Judeo-Christian tradition, inevitably must face, since they are forced to justify the goodness and omnipotence of God in the face of apparently intractable or unwarranted suffering. To frame the issue very basically: if God is good, why would he allow evil to exist in the world? Or, even more simplistically, why do bad things happen to good people? One solution that Western religions taught to resolve this problem was the doctrine of original sin. As Philo of Alexandria (c. 20–50 BCE) notes: “It is within ourselves… that the treasuries of evil are located; with God are those of good only” (Winston 1981, 179). Such an answer would seem utterly alien to Buddhism, which has no monotheistic component and retains little or no soteriological or arbitrative role for supernatural beings. Indeed, it is for this very reason that scholars have questioned whether Buddhism can even be considered to address the issue of theodicy. It was Max Weber who first proposed that the semantic range of the term could be expanded to refer to any sort of inexplicable or unwarranted suffering that might occur; theodicy thus becomes the rationale by which that suffering was explained. From such a broader, non-theistic perspective, we may then presume Buddhism might be able to offer an explicit response to the issue of theodicy, since it describes in great detail the etiology of suffering and evil and a detailed treatment plan for responding to those afflictions.3 Even so, given the foundational soteriological orientation of earlier mainstream Buddhism, the tradition does not struggle with theodicy anywhere near to the extent as have Western monotheistic religions. But as later Mahāyāna strands of Buddhism began to develop more explicitly monistic types of ontologies, Buddhism does begin to face issues that seem to have parallels with theodicy.4 Indeed, it is in East Asia, including Korea, that a Buddhist response to theodicy receives one of its most sustained and inspired analyses. Buddhism and the Origin of Evil Buddhism, like most religions, has created myths to offer explanations for the etiology of particularly thorny problems, of which the origin of evil is one of the most intractable (Ricoeur 1967). One way we thus might begin to explore the Buddhist attitude toward evil is first to examine one of its myths concerning the incipiency of the human race, the Discourse on Origins (Skt. Aggaññasutta, C. Xiaoyuan jing, K. Soyŏn kyŏng 小緣經, Dīghanikāya no. 3 See Max Weber’s discussions of theodicy, salvation, and rebirth, in the relevant chapters in (Weber 1963). For a recent philosophical discussion of this issue of suffering across traditions (including Confucianism, but unfor- tunately not Buddhism) (Samuelson 2018). 4 Much of my thinking that follows on how to treat the issue of theodicy in an East Asian context has been stimulated by Peter Gregory’s groundbreaking article (Gregory 1986). 218 Acta Koreana, Vol. 22, No. 2, December 2019 27, Dīrghāgama no. 5).5 This myth was not widely discussed in Western scholarly literature until the current generation, perhaps because it seemed too superstitious to early scholars of Buddhism, who were enthralled by what they perceived to be Buddhism’s positivistic stance. The Buddhists deploy this myth specifically to counter the pretensions of brahman priests in India that they represent the highest of the four traditional social classes: priests (brahman), warriors (kṣatriya), merchants (vaiṣya), and peasants (śudra).
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