The Metaphysical Position of Early Buddhism
Deepa Chaturvedi
Associate Professor & Head
Department of English
Government Arts College
Kota, Rajasthan, India
Abstract:
The ancient
Upanishadic acceptance of the Self or Consciousness as a part of the Absolute
or the Super Consciousness was in a way reinterpreted by the Buddha in his
concept of anattä, i.e. Non-Being. Whereas the Upanishadic metaphysics accepts
the amalgamation of the five khandas as contributory to the presence of the
Being, the Buddha sees the absence of the Self in this amalgmation, recognizing
the frugality of existence and calling it not -being. The paper here briefly analyses the theory of
Not Being propounded by the
Buddha and seeing whether the objective of both the Upanishadic writings and
the Buddha were the same in accepting the presence of the Self and rejecting it
respectively.
Keywords: Khandas, rüpa, arüpa,
Upanishadic, Atma
“Neither conceptualizing, nor conceptualizing wrongly, nor lacking
conceptualization, nor conceptualizing nothing-in one who has achieved this
state, sensory recognizable experience (rüpa)
ceases, for what is called ‘verbal proliferation’ (papaïca) has its origin in conceptualization.”
These
words of Aṭṭhakavagga of the Suttanipäta, which promote an
ascetic system of silence and repudiate our very cognitive apparatus or
faculties as based on linguistic and conceptual delineation is in fact the very
essence of early Buddhism.
The Sutta Nipāta—the Discourse
Group—is the fifth text in the Khuddaka Nikāya, or Short Collection,
which in turn is the fifth collection in the Sutta Piṭaka of the Pali
Canon. The Sutta Nipāta is a
collection of 72 suttas divided in five
chapters. In addition are two sets of
poems - the Aṭṭhaka Vagga, is a
set of sixteen poems which propagate the
theme of non-agglutinant, a non-osculant stand in life, and the Pārāyana
Vagga, is a set of sixteen
dialogues, between the Buddha and practised brahmans. The Sutta Nipāta in
itself is a compendious collection of Buddh’a teachings.
The
Buddha had himself rejected theoretical generalizations and avoided all
ontological questions and commitments regarding the being or the status of the
individual and the external world. But
the metaphysics as we commonly see it, as a philosophy that deals with the
first principles of things or reality, including questions and sub questions
about being, time, temporality, substance or matter, space, causation, identity
etc. finds place in a unique epistemology advanced by the Buddha. According to this epistemology the range or
the parameter of whatever is conceived , perceived or grasped is through the cognitive faculties or
apparatus which is embodied in the five ‘Khandhas’. The Päli terms for the five Khandhas – Rüpa, Vedanä, Saïïä, Samkhärä and Viïïana have been roughly translated by scholars in English as
matter, sensations, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness
respectively. Each entity in this world
is an amalgamation of these five Khandhas which give rise to the concept of a
living being or entity but there is no separate or individual entity that is
the self of that person. The Khandhas
are thus most often described as being aggregate parts, none of which,
individually or collectively, taken together or in parts, is one’s self. “What we call a ‘being’, or an ‘individual’,
or ‘I’, is only a convenient name or a label given to the combination of these
five”, states Rahula [1]. Thinking of
these as separate, as existing by themselves or as operational by themselves is
the greatest ignorance and leads invariably to Dukkha. In Theravada tradition, the five aggregates
are regarded as representing one physical (rüpa)
and four mental (arüpa) aggregates,
or collectively, mind and matter. So we
have no self but we are composed of the five aggregates.
But
this concept can be understood with the close aligned one-that of anattä. Attä means self and “an”
is a negative prefix. The teachings of
the Buddha state that all things, of whatever nature or description,
human-beings or otherwise, are anattä. And this theme is related to the one
discussed above – that is usually explained as stating that human beings comprise
of the five khandhas.
Now how
to understand these two in unison and interpret both in the light of the
Buddha’s teaching has been a daunting task for scholars across the globe. The early Buddhist texts believed that human
being might not be understood properly in any positive way. The major part of the early Buddhist
tradition and scholarship was much concerned with what a human being is not,
laying stress on the negative prefix attached to attä - the self. And the
importance of these concepts could not be overlooked as all major secondary
sources of the Buddhist tradition laid stress on them as being the heart and
core of the teachings of the Buddha. The
doctrine finds place in the literature in a simple formulaic statement – ‘All
things are anattä’ and understood in
a more generic way would mean and refer to ‘the fact that things are a certain
way, and the fact that there is a regularity of things’ (sabbe dhammä anattä; dhammaṭṭ hitatä; dhammaniyämata [2]). But we usually find that the application of
the doctrine is but narrowly focused
when it says: that a, b or c is anattä
– where a, b and c refer almost always
to the human being, with its being, and usually with one or the other five
khandhas which go into the composition of the human being. Now this is a very important contextual
reasoning which tells us what sort of existence or being is denied and
therefore it leads us to deduce what a, b and c are not. But here lies the interesting part of the
deduction too and that is it opens itself to various interpretations as to the
implication of the doctrine.
And
these several interpretations as to what is being established, gives different
kinds of emphasis or direction to the concept of anattä in general and Buddhist teachings on the whole. Traditionally, the anattä doctrine has been interpreted alongside an explanation of
the chief requisites in the attainment of nirvana. In fact a lot of emphasis is given to this
concept, making it to be an indispensable and dominant part of the Buddha’s
teachings. This is the goal of the
Buddhist teachings, a path which leads to liberation from the cycle of birth,
death and rebirth to which a self is bound.
But one
thing needs to be made clear here. The
annihilationist whose interpretation is that nirvana is to be achieved by extinguishing
of the self, by annihilating the self needs to be looked into with caution as
the early Buddhist texts seem to deny this concept of the ‘blowing out of the
self’. Off late Buddhists and scholars
alike have successfully established a contrasting view, thereby refuting the
annihilistic view explaining that what needs to be blown out is not one’s self
but of what fuels one’s continuity.
The
interpretation which is now validated and accepted by Buddhist scholars like
Sue Hamilton and Noa Ronkin, categorically states that the relation of anattä to nirvana suggests that one has
to understand that one is not, nor does one have, and nor have one ever been or
had, an abiding self. The Buddhist
teachings lead to almost a culminating point in emphasizing a sort of a
negative experiential goal, an experience of not what your self is, but that
you do not have one. Ultimately you are
not. And this leads us to a more
positive metaphysics that the concept of anattä
is to be understood in conjunction with the teaching that one should understand
oneself in terms of the five khandhas.
Traditionally, the texts explain the relation between the anattä and the khandhas by way of an
analogy which says – “when all constituent parts are there, the word ‘cart’ is
used; in just the same way, where there are five khandhas, there is a
convention of a ‘living being’ [3].”
This is suggestive of the truth that the self is a composition or an
aggregate of five separate parts which, when together, constitute the
functioning self, but one must remember that apart from this temporary,
short-lived and fragile combination there is in fact no essential self, neither
has been in the past nor shall be in the future. This concept is a riddle and sometimes
appears to be in contrast to the overall Buddhist teachings taken
collectively. But as soon as we realize
that the focus of the Buddha’s teaching is not essentially on the personal
experience of the ongoing process of births and deaths but on our own personal
responsibility of acknowledging that through the effects of our desires,
perceptions, sensations and volitions, we have created our own present and will
create our own future. This leads us to
believe that if we are the creators of our own being, our present and our
future, we can also change it as we want or require. The famous injunction of the Buddha thereby
finds an echo in this concept which says ‘One is one’s own refuge, who else
could be the refuge?’ The reason for
dukkha is that these desires and perceptions emerge in a matrix of ignorance
and we keep encouraging them, fuelling them, and thereby fuelling our own self,
our own continuity. The great effort is
to de-fuel this continuity which needs to be blown out for that sacred goal of
the attainment of nirvana. As Sue Hamilton
says – “it is the qualitative side of one’s own mind that determines the
qualitative content of one’s rebirths.”
So we can say that the Buddhist teachings try to analyze how and why we
are continuing as we are and also tell us we can and how we can eventually
target liberation as our ultimate goal.
And here lies the whole crux of the Buddhist teachings. Buddha expects his followers to ‘Know’ and to
be ‘Enlightened’ so as to be able to crush and get rid of ignorance. This awakening is the road to nirvana and the
Buddha wanted us to awaken from this trance like slumber of ignorance to the
enlightened path of understanding the frugality of the existence of the self,
so much so that he denied answering questions pertaining to the existence of
the self only. But still the doctrine
could be understood in terms of showing how something works, i.e. the presence
of being rather than trying to analyze what is being or what it is not. It is important to note here that the
emphasis is on how all the factors and aspects of human existence in this cycle
of life are dependent on other factors.
In this context, Sue Hamilton explains that the structure of the anattä could be stated in the way that x
is the case because of y and can and will cease if y ceases, where x is
intrinsic to cyclical human existence.
This makes it quite clear that it is the correlated nature of all our
actions that explains the mechanism of both how one is responsible for one’s
own experiences, in the present and in the future, and also shows us the path
of achieving nirvana. The answer to the
riddle of escaping dukkha than is implicit: if we understand how this process
works in fuelling the continuity of the cycle of lives, we can do something about
changing it. The logic of the whole
concept therefore lies in guiding us to enable us to achieve salvation.
Further,
the metaphysical doctrine of Paticcasamuppäda strengthens the idea that
everything is dependently originated and not only this, it is due to this
dependent origin, it is supposedly conditioned (samkhata) too. In the whole experience of the self, there is
nothing, of whatever nature, which exists or occurs independently of the
factors that condition its existence. All such things are therefore
conditioned. It is not only the state of
any individual being at any given moment dependent on conditioning factors, but
so are all animate and inanimate objects of the world. And so this can also be said to be an
alternative understanding of the anattä
doctrine. If all things are dependently
originated, then it follows that nothing has independent existence or
self-hood, not even human beings. As
such, any existence of any kind cannot be permanent and stable as
non-dependence is the pre-requisite of such independent existence.
This interpretation
amply demonstrates that these teachings were in direct contrast to the other
prominent tradition of that time, notably those of the early Upanishads,
which categorically stated that in fact the essence of a human being, one’s
Real Self, is identical with the immortal and unchanging essence of the
universe. This is evidently expressed in
the Upanisadic formula ‘Atman is Brahma’.
Atman is the Sanskrit equivalent of the Päli word attä meaning self, and Brahman refers to the Universal
Absolute. So it goes to prove that the
Brahmanical tradition of the Upanishads in India at that time said that if one
realized, existentially speaking this micro and macrocosmic identity, then one
achieved liberation called moksha,
release from the cycle of lives on earth in which all human beings , otherwise
continue. So we conclude that early
Buddhist teachings are in contrast to the Upanisadic teaching that the essence
of one’s self is immortal and unchanging: identical with the essence of the
Universal Absolute.
Though
we have established that anattä also
refers to the fact that things are a certain way and that there is
regularity. And it is not to be debated
whether a being exists or not. The sole
concern here is the state of existence.
And howsoever different both schools seem, their objective is the same,
and that is annihilation of continuity.
References
- Rahula
(1985, p.25, chapter 6) is the locus classicus for a description of this.
- Sabbe dhammä
anattä; dhammaṭṭ hitatä; dhammaniyämata: AN I 286.
The formula is also found at dhammapada 5-7; 277-9; and cf. also MN I 336;
DN II 157.
- SN
1 135.
Bibliography
Hamilton, Sue, Early Buddhism: A New Approach. The I of the Beholder,
Curzon Press, Richmond, Surrey, 2000.
Jayatilleke, Kulatissa Nanda, Early Buddhist theory of knowledge, G.
Allen & Unwin, London, 1963.
Ronkin, Noa, Early Buddhist metaphysics. The
making of a philosophical tradition, Introduction. Routledge-Curzon,
London, 2005.
Rahula, Walpola, What the Buddha Taught. Unwin Brothers Ltd., Old Woking, Surrey, 1990.
Wijayaratna, Mohan, Buddhist monastic life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1990.