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Aristotle, Dale S. Wright, Four Noble Truths, Nāgārjuna, Omar Moad, Pali suttas, rebirth, Saṃsāramocaka, suicide, Wilhelm Halbfass
I’ve often heard it said, rightly I think, that Buddhism cannot do without a concept of karma; it is too central to Buddhist thought. I don’t see this as a big problem in itself, even for those (like myself) who would wish to do without the supernatural elements in Buddhism. For karma, as Dale Wright has proposed, can be naturalized on Aristotelian grounds: virtue makes our lives better, because it makes us happier on the inside. In that sense, our good and bad actions come back to us as good and bad results, without any supernatural causation being involved. Buddhism may require karma, but we can have karma without rebirth.
The question troubling me now is: can we have Buddhism without rebirth? There’s a basic problem posed here by the First Noble Truth, the classic Buddhist idea that all is dukkha: all is suffering, painful, unsatisfactory, sorrowful, bad. If this is so, why not commit suicide? For a classical Buddhist, rebirth is the answer to this question, and the obvious answer. Suicide makes your dukkha even worse; as a bad, un-dharmic activity, it will trap you in a far worse rebirth, leave you far more sorrowful and suffering than you are.
But if there is no rebirth? Then death starts to look disturbingly like nirvana. The suttas are cagey about describing nibb?na; they’re more ready to say what it is not, and it is not like the sorrowful existence we face in worldly sa?s?ra. Etymologically, the Pali or Sanskrit word connotes “extinguishing,” like blowing out a candle. When they do venture to characterize nirvana the suttas identify it as peaceful, tranquil, undisturbed. And in those same suttas, while one can attain nirvana in life, the death of a person who has attained nirvana is spoken of as the highest nirvana, parinibb?na. The cycle of sa?s?ra and rebirth, on the other hand, is characterized as a weary, sorrowful place from which we would do well to escape if only we could. Seen in this light, an anti-supernatural worldview turns out to be oddly good and hopeful news: we don’t have to go through all the rigours of the Buddhist path to find the end of suffering. We merely have to die.
But if all this is so, the logical consequence seems to be one that would make most Buddhists, and everyone else, uneasy: we should end it all, quickly, with a suicide.
At least, that would seem to be the consequence for Theravāda tradition, in which our own liberation from suffering is paramount. But the consequences for Mahāyāna would seem even grimmer. True, without rebirth, the Mah?y?nist needs to prolong her own life in order to save others from suffering. But how can one best end others’ suffering? One might easily provide the answer: kill them. Universal euthanasia. One avoids suicide so that one can kill others. The conclusion is not as far-fetched as one might wish it were: Wilhelm Halbfass in Tradition and Reflection notes that classical Indian sources refer to a group called the Sa?s?ramocakas, who were said to practise compassionate murder in order to liberate others from suffering. But if we are led to the Sa?s?ramocakas’ position, we have at least prima facie reason to think something has gone seriously wrong, somewhere, with our reasoning.
I don’t think one can get out of this problem through a deeper examination of the concept of dukkha and its classification. True, the suttas tell us that there are three kinds of dukkha: basic dukkha (dukkhadukkha), dukkha from change (vipari??madukkha), and dukkha from conditions (sa?kh?radukkha). I’ve seen some people try and look to this distinction as a solution: for example, this essay by Omar Moad at the British magazine The Philosopher.
Only basic dukkha is obviously, visibly, immediately painful or sorrowful, and not everything is basic dukkha, it can be the other kinds. But the thing is, the other two are painful and sorrowful as well – we just don’t see it. All three are undeniably bad, and everything is composed of them. And contrary to Moad’s article, even dukkha from conditions, sa?kh?radukkha, does not merely arise from a limited perspective; it is part of the conditioned nature of things. As Moad notes, for those who have attained proper insight, “even the most blissful existence as a deva in one of the Buddhist Heavens would seem to be a miserable Hell.” Buddhists can remain optimistic in that there is a way out of all this – but that way involves transcending it all. And if rebirth is no longer an issue, one way to transcend it would be through suicide – or murder, if one is being altruistic.
Is there a way out of the problem? I can see two. The most straightforward approach, which I have previously taken, is to deny the First Noble Truth: life is good. But in saying this, one denies a great deal of Buddhist tradition, at least as much as one would do by denying karma. A more Buddhist approach would be to take Nāgārjuna’s M?dhyamika lead and say nirvana is merely sa?s?ra properly viewed, so that the life of the bodhisattva is in fact blissful, much better than mere extinguishing. But if that’s true, then if we were to somehow know that someone will not become a bodhisattva, then would it not seem that that person is better off dead?
Thought-provoking as always, Amod. I wonder if we all (in the West or perhaps going right back to the early Buddhist community) have failed to recognize the “other half” of nibb?na. That half is a life lived freed from the three poisons; a liberated life. Sure, if we kill ourselves and there is no rebirth, we still get the extinguished effect. Yippee. But we might say that the Buddha did not seek extinguishing for extinguishing’s sake, but rather to live a life freed from the poisons.
So a healthy contemporary Buddhist, who doesn’t believe in rebirth, can still seek nibb?na with no thoughts of suicide because what she is after is not merely extinguishing, but also a life LIVED freely, psychologically liberated. If we think of nibb?na as necessarily including such a life (and not just as the negative extinguishing) then suicide would be absolutely out of the question.
I think such a view is likely what one would need to practise Theravāda Buddhism today without superstition – but I’m not sure it fits with traditional texts. (And yes, I know religious studies today loves to crap on the texts and say “lived religion” need have nothing to do with them, but that’s usually based on the kind of relativist view that takes away the whole point of identifying with a tradition in the first place.)
If all is indeed dukkha, and that dukkha arises from the very nature of things, then how can it be that living among those things is a constitutive part of nibb?na? It might be the traditional view that living a liberated life is a necessary prerequisite to the ultimate goal of extinguishing; but I’m not sure why it would be a prerequisite if extinguishing is the ultimate goal itself. And it does seem to be such. For if the Buddha’s goal relly was “to live a life free from the poisons,” which would end in natural death, then why was it that death, and not the life, which was referred to as mah?parinibb?na, the greatest kind?
Maybe there are answers to these questions, but I haven’t figured them out yet.
Well, let’s see. First, dukkha does not arise from the very nature of things, per se, but rather from ignorance regarding the nature of things. No ignorance, no craving, clinging, dukkha, and so on.
Ignorance likewise traps us in viewing the world solely in terms of conditioned things; remove the ignorance and we view the unconditioned, nibb?na (so goes the theory at least, I’ll let you know if/when I have personal confirmation of this).
Mah?parinibb?na might be best parsed as Mah?=great in terms of it being the Buddha’s (I don’t know of Therav?dins using the term to refer to anyone else), and pari referring to final or complete, meaning that the bodily support is now extinguished as well. I don’t think there is any claim that this is a *better* kind of extinguishing. In fact I believe the texts are clear that the nibb?na of an arahant and that of Buddha are phenomenally identical.
Focusing closely on the definition of nibb?na may put you in line with a long tradition of good analytic philosophy; but being a good analytic philosopher may put you in terrible ranks amongst Buddhologists. I think of those early Buddhologists who argued that paññ? was the highest goal and as such that ethics was just a sort of step in the ladder en route to it. I think the holistic view that maintains the importance of ethics and meditation alongside wisdom will prevail.
Well, in reading up on sa?kh?radukkha, as far as I could tell, it is about the nature of things. But admittedly I haven’t read much, and it’s relatively rare to see the three kinds of dukkha theorized anyway, so that could easily be a dispensable position. So moving on from there:
I actually tried not to define nibbana in the post above, since it really isn’t defined as such in the tradition; I just tried to get a sense of the meaning from the ways it is used. A typical analytic philosopher would probably tut-tut me on the vagueness in my use of the term. Having said that, I actually don’t mind being lumped in with early Buddhologists; in certain ways I kind of prefer it, as I had suggested in my post on performance theory. Early Buddhologists like Edward Conze weren’t afraid to criticize what they saw in the tradition, and I see that as more intellectually honest than the “hands off” approached today.
On the substantive issues: clearly s?la and sam?dhi are equally essential parts of the path, along with paññ?; the question is whether they’re parts of the goal. If nibb?na really turned out to be an extinguishing, then it might involve neither of the three in the end. On mah?parinibb?na, you may be right that the “mah?” means only that it’s the Buddha’s; but the question would then be whether his worldly nibb?na is referred to as mah? as well. If not (and I don’t recall that it is), that would at least suggest that something is greater about the mah?parinibb?na. And there remains the matter of the First Truth: if sabbam is dukkham, how does one get out of dukkham without getting out of sabbam?
How much of the core doctrines can you take away and still leave the religion intact? What do these core doctrines represent in moral terms? Was Jesus a sound English gentleman really? From the 19C such reductionism has been going on in Christianity and it was inevitable that Buddhism would receive a similar treatment. When you purge religion of its supernatural elements what is there left that anyone would want to commit themselves to? My view is not very much. Bland waffle is not a nutritious spiritual diet.
You may be right, Michael. The problem, it seems to me, is simply this: that to commit oneself to supernaturalism is to commit oneself to falsehood. Better bland waffle than arsenic?
Amod:
I thought opium was the drug of choice. Would you have the people operated on without anaesthetic?
You are of course absorbed as a scholar in historical criticism, religion as a phenomenon etc. Do you ever lapse into the devotee’s eye view through biography and memoir both of the heroes or saints and the regular troops with their ‘eight fallings nine risings’? What you might see there is not a progressive deadening or dulling or a sinking into the self obsession of the deluded rather an open ended growth into wisdom. Have you read any such life stories recently where you felt that perhaps the Freudian interpretation was inadequate in this case? In other words the primary meaning of sublimation was applicable.
I do read biographies, but the process I see unfolding is complex. I certainly wouldn’t read them on a simplistic Freudian view, only one in which Freudian interpretation is incorporated among others. (My favourite Freudian, Jeff Kripal, likes to say that Freud only got to the third cakra.)
To me the question of falsehood remains throughout. No doubt the great teachers and saints became better people overall as they progressed on their path; but it’s possible that they came to see the world more incorrectly as well. We previously discussed the question of whether one should lie to others to benefit them; the same question applies to oneself. If it makes you happier (and more courageous, more giving, etc.) to live a lie, should you proceed to do so? I sometimes ask myself this question when I see the happiness radiated by evangelical Christians.
Sabbe sa?kh?r? dukkha: all conditioned things are suffering. But not sabbe dhamm?… Yes, things within conditionality, which begins with ignorance, all is suffering. But nibb?na is, according to tradition, ever-present and unconditioned and just chalk full of sukha.
Philosophically, I don’t think there is as big a rift between Therav?dins and Mah?y?nins on the point that Samsara is Nirvana. It’s a matter of perspective. Therav?dins take the first-person perspective, wherein there IS an obvious difference between having defilements, suffering, etc and NOT having them; Mah?y?nins take the third-person perspective, wherein one still experiences the same reality, enlightened/clearly or not/ignorantly. But that is an aside.
I haven’t experienced much of this ‘hands off’ approach that you speak of :) I could give many details, but my professors, perhaps due to their philosophical training, have generally been quick to engage the tradition. Paul Williams famously calls those crazy siddha’s of early Tantra something like “immoral megalomaniacs” for thinking they could be enlightened and ignore the precepts. Damien Keown quotes him approvingly :)
Ethics and meditation: part of the path, but not the goal? Can you find a Roshi near you with a big stick to can ask this question? Certainly in Theravāda they are.
With all of this mah? stuff you’re forcing me to read source texts, and I’m not sure how I feel about that :)… But as far as I can see, in the .. the Buddha’s death/final nibbana is not described as mah?. The last bit of this is:
catutthajjh?n? vu??hahitv? samanantar? bhagav? parinibb?yi.
From the forth jhana, having arisen from, immediately the great one fully extinguished.
The “mah?” in the sutta title then probably refers then to the fact that this is the Buddha’s parinibb?na and not just that of some other arahat.
Hmm… I’m starting to think you’re on to something. (You’re forcing me to read source texts too, you know! I appreciate it.) I’m remembering that the most common formulation of the First Truth in the suttas is “birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha…” and so on to the summation that in short, pañcup?d?nakkhandh? dukkh?: the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha. And you could read that to say that, when one is liberated, the khandhas are no longer up?d?nakkhandhas but just khandhas – the clinging part is gone. I’m still a little skeptical on that, though. It does say aging and death are themselves dukkha, not merely aging and death when affected by clinging. Hmm…
to can ask? = to ask. I’m visiting SoCal now and I’m afraid it’s getting to my head.
I can ask cheezburger?
Geez, I need a proofreader… or to quit typing in the sun.
see, in the Mah?parinibb?nasutta the Buddha’s…
Ok, back to my strawberry dakini…
I don’t disagree with “nirvana is merely sa?s?ra properly viewed” however, I don’t see the bodhisattva life as blissful. We live in this relative world, using relative means of skillful communication in an attempt to draw others closer to the realization of the absolute world.
Would it not be easier to sit completely in this moment, making no attempt to form motivated thought to act on the bodhisattva vows?
I think the answer you maybe looking for comes in understanding the nature of dukkha; it is all things conditioned, and its infinite in its manifestations. I do not believe in rebirth, but then again I do not believe in anything (though that is a bit of a sardonic statement). Perhaps that is more of a Mahāyāna practice.
Now, this is the kind of post Amod that I can fully get behind…I like where you took this.
Glad to hear you liked it, Kyle. Really, I’d be surprised if anyone out there found out they agreed with – or disagreed with – everything on this site. One of the reasons I don’t practise any tradition right now is that my views are an uncomfortable fit with any of them (including Western liberal traditions like Unitarianism and Engaged Buddhism).
Could you expand on what you’re saying about the nature of dukkha? How does its being infinite answer the problem?
I think you asked ‘can we have Buddhism without rebirth?’ under the logical assumption that ‘But if there is no rebirth? Then death starts to look disturbingly like nirvana.’ I think this view takes the assumption that we are indeed privy to what happens to us after death, which we are not, well at least I’ll admit I am not. Does it matter in my practice if I believe or disbelieve in rebirth? How will accetpence of a concept change the difficult matter of dukkha?
If nothing else, we have to deal with what is right now, right here, and that is dukkha; my dukkha, your dukkha, everyone’s dukkha. The first noble truth is not just about suffering, it is about the unsatisfactory nature of life. It doesn’t mean that life isn’t good, special and wonderful, it just means our world view, if taken as absolutes, can never fit what really is absolute, therefore nothing will ever meet our expectations fully and complete. Perhaps I may be reborn as somehting else, perhaps not, I don’t know…but what I do know is this if life can be understood more in accord with reality, it can therefore be enjoyed to much higher level as well.That is if we only took the effort to see the nature of dukkha…believing that suicide would cause nirvanna is the same as not beleiving suicide would cause nirvanna..we just don’t know.
Crap, that felt like a post.
Kyle, as I read this comment I get a very strong impression of how East Asian (Ch’an/Zen) it sounds. That’s not at all to say you’re wrong; it might turn out that the East Asians got a better answer to this stuff than the South Asians did. I’ve found little in the Indian Buddhist texts that I’ve read to indicate that life itself can be enjoyed on a higher level if one understands it properly; rather, one detaches from it, finds an enjoyment that comes, in a sense, outside life. That’s true even among Mahāyāna thinkers like Śāntideva who would agree that nirvana is sa?s?ra properly viewed; there, even the enjoyment is itself illusory.
I actually don’t know very much about Ch’an/Zen. I do know that East Asian philosophies (not only Buddhist) tend to be a lot more worldly than South Asian ones. The East Asian Buddhists may have figured this question out better.
Dear Amod,
Greetings.
A friend sent me a link to your blog and I was concerned enough to write something.
The Dhamma is a means to freedom and happines, but if picked up in the wrong way, the Dhamma can be harmful. It seems you are advocating picking it up in that way.
Re the use of the English word “extinction” for nibbana, please read Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s book; ‘The Mind Like Fire Unbound’ which gives some background into the understanding of fire at the Buddhas time. This is very different to our common understanding now. In India and China fire was seen as an element which was always present in the atmosphere and which would ‘cling’ to a fuel to make a fire. When the fire went out, it was not dead, extinguished in the way we think of it, but had returned to it’s non-clinging state. He explains it very well.
In the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha points to this:
There is dukkha,
(not life is dukkha or “all is suffering, painful, unsatisfactory, sorrowful, bad.”)
dukkha should be understood,
(so one needs to investigate dukkha and how it has arisen)
dukkha has been understood.
(Aha!)
There is a cause of dukkha,
(which is craving, clinging to conditions or attaching to a sense of ‘me and mine’)
the cause of dukkha should be let go of,
(Let Go!)
the cause of dukkha has been let go of.
(Ahhh!)
There is the cessation of dukkha,
(which we often overlook)
The cessation of dukkha should be realized
(notice when it ceases, as all things do…)
The cessation of dukkha has been realized.
(enjoy that openness of mind when it is no longer contracted around an object)
There is the path leading to the cessation of dukkha
(the Noble Eightfold Path, which is a guide to good living and wise thinking)
The Eightfold Path should be cultivated,
(in one’s daily life)
The Noble Eightfold Path has been cultivated.
It is a practical teaching, which if applied can lead to freedom of mind and a joyful and connected life.
So we don’t have to attach to the body as oneself and then anihilate it, but let go of the attachment to the body and let it get on with it’s natural process. Take care of it, learn from it. Likewise for the thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sense impressions that arise… and cease, naturally.
The Buddha is pointing to the fact that all conditions are impermanent, changing, in a state of flux, and trying to hold on to that which is changing will inevitably lead to dukkha. The trick is to keep letting go, letting be.
English translations can be misleading and the Damma is meant to be practiced, and not only theorized about.
I wish you the joy of freedom from attachment, the joy of letting go, letting be.
Blessings to you.
Sister, thank you for your thoughtful comment. In effect, I agree with you that the Dhamma would be harmful if grasped in the way I described in this post. That’s one of the reasons I’m avoiding a grasp of it; I don’t consider myself a Buddhist or a dharma practitioner, though I’ve learned a great deal from people who do, as other posts on the blog will show.
The point about fire is a very helpful one, which I hadn’t considered. It’s not a matter of translation as such – I read Pali and have examined discussions of the Truths in Pali. Rather, it’s a matter of the background assumptions we bring into the discussion – even about matters as mundane as what it is for a fire to blow out. (To say that the meaning of nibbana connotes extinguishing a fire is not wrong, even if Thanissaro’s argument about the background meanings are correct; it just misses a point about what extinguishing a fire itself means.)
The question then might be what the non-clinging state of fire turns out to be. If the fire is literally unattached to its fuel, nibbana might still turn out to be a state most fully reached after death, in which the aggregates of consciousness are completely unattached to the body. (The Jains, I think, believed in a liberated state that looked something like this.)
Arnod,
One can discuss this a great length, but until does meditation and examines your own mind.
…it is only a concept…really.
I would recommend:
The Island: An Anthology of the Buddha’s Teachings on Nibb?na
Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro
Hi Was Once – I agree that meditation can be valuable to make ideas come alive in our minds; but that still leaves the question of whether they should. If it were indeed the case that suicide is the logical consequence of the First Noble Truth, then I’d be just as happy to have it remain a mere concept.
Logical??????
All life should be viewed as suffering.
If there is no rebirth, suicide ends life.
Therefore, if there is no rebirth, suicide should be viewed as ending suffering.
The goal of the Buddhist path is to end suffering.
Therefore, if there is no rebirth, a good Buddhist should commit suicide.
That’s pretty logical. There are some holes in it, and other commenters have done a very good job of pointing them out above, but there’s a pretty clear logic here, and if it holds, we may be better off not meditating on the First Truth.
I can’t argue that I sound Zen’ish, I mean that is my tradition.
“The goal of the Buddhist path is to end suffering.”
Not suffering, Dukkha…suffering alone limits the first noble truth into a bland talking point.
The Buddha never said that all life should be viewed as suffering, but I have a feeling your argument is based on the logical sequence of events if all things turned out to be true, rather than real world, real life experience.
And your logic is based on the assumption that Nirvana is real, or one would believe Nirvana to be real. I think that’s why I am drawn to Zen, a much more see for yourself approach.
If one believes in Dukkha, if one believes in Nirvana then your argument holds water…but the Buddha never asked anyone to believe.
And I am a horrible Buddhist. :-)
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