Madness and Possession in Pāli Texts Steven Collins

BSRV 31.2 (2014) 195–214 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (print) 0256-2897 doi: 10.1558/bsrv.v31i2.195 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (online) 1747-9681 Madness and Possession in Pāli Texts STEVEN COLLINS DEPARTMENT OF SOUTH ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CIVILIZATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO [email protected] ABSTRACT In the context of contemporary interest in the use of Buddhist meditation practices in modern psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy, this article offers a preliminary survey of a subject hith- erto almost completely unstudied: madness in Premodern Pāli texts. (Possession, especially but not only by Māra, who is both a deity and a phenomenological reality, is regarded by the Pāli tradition as a kind of madness.) Using story-literature as well as doctrinal and jurisprudential texts, the article aims to collect together material on three ways in which the ideas and behaviours of madness are used: (i) the literal-pathological, (ii) in comparisons (‘as if’ mad), and (iii) in the metaphorical-evaluative sense where it is alleged that every- one who is not enlightened (or at least on the Path to it) is ‘mad’. It is centered around an eightfold classification of madness given in the commentary to a Jātaka story, the Birth Story about Darīmukha (Ja III #378, III 238–246). Keywords madness, possession, Pāli, pathology Introduction Many religious traditions, within Buddhism and elsewhere, know of such figures as the Holy Fool, Divine Madman, Crazy-Wise One, etc. The Theravāda tradition of Pāli texts, by contrast, has none of this: literal, pathological madness is found, and is only found at the opposite end of the mental spectrum to Enlightenment. Madness is often used as a metaphorical trope, to characterize all unenlightened people as, to that extent and for that reason, mentally unwell. As the Buddha is alleged to have said: © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2014, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX 196 Steven Collins Monks, there are two kinds of illness. Which two? Bodily illness and mental illness [kāyiko ca rogo cetasiko ca rogo]. People are found who can claim to enjoy bodily health for one, two, three, four, and five years; for ten, twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty years; and even for a hundred years or more. But apart from those whose taints have been destroyed [aññatra khīṇāsavehi]1 it is hard to find people in the world who can claim to enjoy mental health even for a moment. (A II 142–43, trans. Bodhi 2012, 522) As is well-known, there has been a great deal of talk and activity in contemporary psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy about Buddhist-derived practices such as mindfulness (sati) and insight meditation (vipassanā), not merely in self- help manuals and ‘pop’ psychology, but also among serious scientists. One good example of the latter is Segal, Williams and Teasdale’s Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression (2002). Opinions differ, of course, on the question of how far these practices as forms of contemporary medical treatment remain ‘Buddhist’. Two of the leading figures in this movement, in the UK and USA, Mark Williams and Jon Kabat-Zinn, recently guest-edited an issue of the academic journal Contemporary Buddhism (May 2011, vol. 12.1) where such questions were discussed by therapists and Buddhist Studies scholars, naturally without unanimity. There are very many books discussing sati and vipassanā in Pāli texts, and with the recent publication of Erik Braun’s study The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (2013) we have the beginnings of an in-depth political and cultural history of the movement also. (What is really needed here, amongst other things, is a scholarly, non-‘enthusiast’ study of Mahasi Sayadaw, who directly influenced many of the modern (Asian and Western)vipassanā teach- ers and was important in popularizing the (Mahā)Satipaṭṭhāna Suttas.2 In the context of such interests and concerns what, one might ask, does the Premodern Pāli tradition make of the concepts and realities of psychology and psychopathology? I agree with James Robson, who wrote: There has been increasing attention paid to the relationship between Buddhism and medicine, but despite the advances in a number of subfields, there remains a paucity of studies on Buddhism and madness. What was the early Buddhist doctrinal discourse on madness? How has the category of madness evolved within the Buddhist tradition?3 There is little academic study of traditional Pāli psychology in general beyond the obvious beginner’s level discussions of dukkha, the aggregates (khandhas), the sense-bases (āyatanas) etc., or sometimes treatments of Abhidhamma list- making, especially in relation to the psychology of action and perception4. 1. Note that here the Buddha is working with a binary opposition between the Arahant (for whom khīṇāsava is a technical term) and the unenlightened. As Peter Harvey reminds me, things can sometimes be more complex if one takes into account, as the Buddha does not do here, those on the Four Stages of the Path: the Stream-winner, Once-Returner, Non-returner and Arahant. 2. There is a helpful, if ‘enthusiast’ biography at http://www.buddhanet.net/mahabio.htm [accessed July 25, 2014] 3. From an abstract of a talk given at the University of California, Berkeley in 2012: see http:// ieas.berkeley.edu/cjs/events/2012.04.06w.html [accessed July 25 2014]. 4. Rupert Gethin’s magisterial and indispensable Buddhist Path to Awakening (2nd ed. 2001) does not deal with the issues I am interested in here. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2014 Madness and Possession in Pāli Texts 197 (Earlier attempts such as those of C. A. F. Rhys Davids are best regarded as prod- ucts of their time.) To my knowledge there are no contemporary books which deal systematically with Premodern Pāli accounts of what we now call psychopathology. There is one book, Buddhist Psychology: a Modern Perspective, by Edwina Pio (1988), which devotes 28 pages to a chapter on ‘Psychopathology’, and one article, by Stephen Berkwitz (2010) on ‘Madness and Gender’ in Pāli. (I shall have reason to disagree with the main thesis of this otherwise laudable piece below.) To some extent relevant are short pieces on specific topics, such as those by Maria Heim on ‘The Conceit of Self-Loathing’ (omāna) (2009), and ‘Shame and Apprehension: Notes on the Moral Value of Hiri and Ottappa’ (2012). Words and contexts for ‘madness’ In this article I want to offer the beginnings of a study of madness in Pāli texts, of all types and periods.5 It will be seen that words for the mad and madness occur in three over-lapping ways: 1. in contexts where actual, pathological madness (in which category Pāli includes states of spirit-possession) are being discussed; 2. in contexts where someone’s behaviour is described as being ‘like’ madness, or if the person is, deliberately or not, behaving ‘as if’ mad (for example, where the word viya is used); 3. in Buddhist evaluative contexts where, as in the quote from the Buddha given above, everybody apart from the Enlightened are figured as ‘mad’. Madness, in all its forms and levels of intensity (from pathology to lack of Enlightenment), is expressed in Pāli in three main ways, which parallel and over- lap with the three levels just distinguished: 1. the words ummāda and ummattaka, a noun (‘madness’) and adjective (‘mad’) from the root √mad; 6 2. in the concept of mada, from the same root, often translated less strongly as ‘conceit’, ‘pride’, ‘vanity’, or ‘intoxication’, of which there are many varieties; 3. and the use of words derived from √mad to indicate very basic and general factors in Buddhist psychology: pamāda and appamāda, often translated simply ‘negligence’ and ‘diligence’ respectively. The root √mad has the basic meanings in Sanskrit and Pāli of: to be drunk or intoxicated, to revel or delight in, to be glad or rejoicing, to be mad;7 the prefix ud (→ un before m, so Sanskrit unmāda → Pali ummāda, etc.) can indicate intensification, and probably does in this context. There are also words derived from the verb √kṣip, to throw (often with the pre- fixvi -, which can indicate dispersal), with citta, ‘mind’: thus citta-vikkhitta, ‘thrown in mind’, ‘deranged’, citta-vikkhepa, ‘derangement’. The concept of normality is 5. I do not claim to have found every reference in every Pāli text. But a reasonably clear picture emerges from what I have found. 6. According to OED the English ‘mad’ is from Old English gemædan, ‘to madden’. 7. Apt (2004 [1965]), s.v. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2014 198 Steven Collins often expressed with the term pakati: after the madness of grief, for example, people return to their ‘normal mind’ (pakati-citta) after a period of madness or suspension from the monastic Order monks and nuns return to being their ‘normal self’ (pakatatta). Eight kinds of madness I start with the only classification of forms of madness I have come across, from the commentary to a jātaka story, the Birth Story about Darīmukha (Ja III #378, III 238–246). In its list, as will be seen, numbers 1–4 are what one might call metaphorical madness, by which I mean that all those not on the path to Enlightenment suffer from them, by definition, while numbers 5–8 are what we would recognize as, actually or potentially, pathological. In this story the future Buddha, unusually but not uniquely, is not cast in the role of the hero; he is a king who is mad by sense-pleasure (kāmummattaka) and, initially at least, is unable to leave his kingship for the life of an ascetic renouncer.

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